If you’re an iPhone snob like me, you find yourself talking to anyone you can about the latest apps from the store, that new case you saw on the iPhone Blog, the funny / jealous looks people give you on the street thumbing your iPod app around, etc etc.

After glorifying in it’s awesomeness enough, someone will eventually say to me “yeah, but it has shit for battery life.”

And here’s the shocker: I disagree. I’m fairly satisfied with my iPhone’s battery life. And for that matter, I’ve always been satisfied with my cell phone batteries for as long as I’ve had cell phones in my life. Same with laptop batteries. What do these rechargeable batteries (usually) have in common? They’re Lithium Ion batteries.

Bottom line: Lithium Ion batteries DO NOT have to degrade in battery life. All you have to do is take better care of them. And all THAT requires is 3 easy changes in your life, and the habits you develop in charging your batteries.

Check past the jump for these 3 steps and a quick explanation.

So, here are the three steps to maintaining a NEW rechargeable lithium ion battery for your cell phone, laptop, or other device: 

1. Always charge your battery to 100%
2. Every now and then; drain your battery to 0%
3. NEVER charge your battery to less than 100% (slightly related to #1)

• (where 100% = whatever your device’s “full charge” status might be, i.e. five bars, a “fully charged” message, or an actual percentage)

Not that hard right? 

Keep in mind #1 and #3 are more important than #2. You may say, “Hey, my cell phone goes dead all the time, so at least I’m doing that right.” Well the truth is, it may only be going dead because you weren’t following steps #1 and #3. So if you’re not doing #1 and #3, don’t even worry about #2.

The best way to kill your battery is to charge it to less than 100%, then go about using it. A lot of people do this, and you may do it more often than you think. Remember that morning you woke up, forgot to charge your phone the night before, had to go to work in an hour and just stuck your phone in the charger for a half hour before leaving? Yeap, that (or those) time(s) killed your battery. It’s why you’re always cursing around 5 PM about how your phone is about to die… and it turns into a battery killing cycle, because then by 5 PM, you’re charging it again for another quick half an hour. And you lose more battery life.

But how is this true? Why? Honestly, I could try and explain the exact science of batteries, but I think what’s more important to know is how we (humans) are like batteries, and how we (humans) are unlike batteries.

How we are like batteries

Remember high school chemistry? Lithium is an element, a pretty volatile one for that matter. Just try and keep in mind that batteries are natural products which power electronics; they are the bridge between all electric technology and nature.

Imagine that humans are products you buy, and each human was built to perform a certain task. I know, I know, I’m weird, bear with me here. You came fresh from the store as a “Jogging Human.” Wouldn’t that be nice if it were true, eh mate?

So, you came back from the store all fresh. Your maximum capacity was 8 hours of jogging (obviously miles would make more sense for joggers, but hours works better for the battery corelation. Like I said, bear with me).

For a little while, your owner has you jogging all 8 hours a day. But later on, your own decides to only have you jog 6 hours a day, because watching you jog (equate this to playing games on your new phone) got kind of boring after a week. Your owner only uses you as much as he/she needs you to jog a day, which is roughly 6 hours a day, 2 hours less than your store-fresh capacity.

Then comes a day when you need to jog 8 hours for your owner. But there’s one problem – you’re so used to only jogging for 6 hours, that those extra 2 hours you used to be able to jog for became real tough for you. You might pull through, and be able to jog all 8, or you may get to 7. But either way – if you haven’t jogged the full 8 hours somewhat recently, it’s going to be hard. For a battery, if it hasn’t fully used it’s maximum capacity in a long time – it may simply not be able to. 

So that’s why it’s important to fully drain your battery from time to time. Once a month would be fine. Think about doing this as just a test for your battery’s confidence – if you do it often enough, it will always remember how to jog as long as it used to when you first got it. This all relates mostly to step #2, what’s left is to explain #1 and #3…

How we are NOT like batteries

Humans are pretty incredible because we have the ability to change. While in the above jogger example, a human could eventually re-learn to jog for that 8 hours. But a batter, however, has a very pessimistic memory. If you don’t drain a battery completely at least once a month, it will simply lose the ability to. And it can’t go to the gym and get it back.

This works the other way too, with charging, and is more often than not the culprit of lost battery life. I’ve given examples of how most people end up giving their batteries just a “quick charge” – I’m sure you’re very familiar with these situations yourself.

SO STOP IT (at least as much as you can).

Everytime you only charge your battery to 60%, then use it without charging it back to a 100% relatively soon, it “forgets” what a 100% used to mean. It will lose it’s ability to fully charge itself. This is a slow process; but it’s one that if you’re not aware of it being a danger, you’ll do too often, and be left wondering why your battery only works 80% as well as it used to.

So make a habit of charging your battery to 100%, or at least trying to as often as possible. Sure there will be times when you simply can’t – you have to leave, there’s some sort of emergency, you woke up late, etc etc etc. Don’t sweat it. Just realize that if you keep doing it, you will lose a significant amount of battery life.

So now that you (hopefully) understand why – try and charge to 100% whenever humanly possible, and every now and then, wear that bitch out – let it know it’s there to work.

Batteries are as natural as you are, and will get as lazy as you let them get.