Poll: Charging Electronic Devices

[Ernie]

What are your habits and patterns as it relates to charging electronic devices?

[Ken]

I could care less about my phone frankly. If i forget to charge it at night...shrug. I can do without it that day. Or I can charge it in at work. I have a drawer full of discard/lost chargers and cables at work that I've accumulated over time that kids have left behind in the classroom and never reclaimed.

But my e-bike? If I'm getting ready to go to work and find that I forgot to charge my e-bike then I am in a world of hurt and have to quickly make inconvenient carpool arrangements with my wife. So I'm much more obsessive about making sure the bike is charged compared to my phone.

I don't really use any other electronic devices that require charging on a regular basis.

[temporal1]

2) i charge my iphone and ipad 1-2 times each in 24 hrs. a phone is a necessity for me, esp for safety. my family now depends a lot on brief text messages, rather than phone conversations. we live in different time zones, we’re considerate about time of day.

any type of basic personal phone would do for me. my family gave me a basic iphone. i mostly use it as a phone. when away, i use its GPS. GPS has improved over time. i get appointment alerts on it. weather. time. photos.

8) i didn’t mark 8. i used to keep my ipad plugged in all the tume. quite convenient.
(my family said i shouldn’t, it’s hard on the battery.) it’s now usually next to the charger. i use the ipad a lot like a laptop.

[steve-in-kville]

Laptop is plugged in 95% of the time.
Phone gets charged overnight. Most I've ran it down during the day was to 30-ish%.
I have an ancient tablet that gets used once a week. I've left that go dead a few times.
My running watch gets charged once a week.
Video camera gets charged when needed.
GoPro's- I have spare batteries in a charger.
I have two handheld radios that get placed in a base charger almost daily (one is nearing retirement).
I keep a battery bank in my satchel in the event something were to happen.

[Neto]

I have an old laptop that I VERY rarely use (got it used from Dell Auction, probably around 20 - 25 years ago). We only go it because we were still going to the village, where there is no line power, and a desktop would be too large and heavy anyway. I have only ever had one laptop that I really liked, a Toshiba T1000 LE.

So my cellular telephone is the only rechargeable battery device I use (other than battery drills & other power tools). I very seldom fast-charge it with the wall cord. I do the slow charge using a USB cord, from my computer, and usually only charge up to 80%. (I usually do this in the evening, while I'm doing invoicing and other business-related work (or while wasting time on MennoNet, looking for non-political discussion topics....). It has not shut down due to low battery for months - I cannot recall the last time that happened.

I thought this topic might be about charging habits as related to maintaining battery life expectancy. Some say that charging beyond 80% on a regular basis causes early battery failure. The same for fast charge, just like for automobile batteries - a slow charge is always better. But these are completely different battery technology, so I'm not sure what to believe. The older laptop batteries ('older' as in those for the T1000 LE, which was new in 1990) developed a 'memory' from being recharged before reaching the discharged state. But on ours, I had to sometimes 'shock' it by flashing it on 12VDC. (The actual voltage for the battery was, if I recall correctly, 7.2 VDC.) Otherwise, it was not recognized, and would not charge.

The same thing can happen with a severely discharged automobile battery, if you have a modern 'smart' battery charger. The old type (non-electronic) battery charger didn't sense anything about the condition of the battery - it just sent the charge voltage to the terminals. The newer types are said to be able to equalize the individual cells, and recover a damaged battery, but I don't have one of those.

Back to cellular telephone battery charging habits - I would be interested in hearing the opinions and experiences of others in this regard.

(None of the options in the poll described my practice, so I did not respond.)

[Ernie]

You can now select up to 8 options in this poll.

[Josh]

I need option 12. I frequently use my laptop not plugged in, which easily can run 10+ hours in a charge. Since I rarely work 10 straight hours in a row, I plug it in when it gets low which takes around a half hour to quick charge.

[mike]

I am obsessive about keeping my phone charged due to business obligations. My iPhone is over 3 years old and still easily lasts all day and then some. If I'm driving, it's plugged in and charging. My iPad is used primarily for personal use and I don't worry about it a lot. Its battery lasts a long time, and when it's low I just make sure it gets charged. I don't have a laptop anymore. My last laptops were Chromebooks, but I just didn't use them that much.

[Bootstrap]

I keep an eye on the levels and recharge as needed. I have chargers out and ready to use.

I care a lot about keeping things charged. Most of my devices have pretty good batteries.

[Bootstrap]

The one L pol's a politician,
The two L poll measures opinion.
But I feel a little droll
When I see a three L polll.

( Inspired by https://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/en ... a-day/lama )