Should I remove the battery when A/C is plugged in?
Many laptop users have this question and we will answer it right now: The answer is: YES and NO, it depends on the situation.
Having a battery fully charged and the laptop plugged in is not harmful, because as soon as the charge level reaches 100% the battery stops receiving charging energy and this energy is bypassed directly to the power supply system of the laptop.
However there's a disadvantage
in keeping the battery in its socket when the laptop
is plugged in, but only if it's currently suffering
from excessive heating caused by
the laptop hardware.
- So, In a normal usage, if the laptop doesn't get too hot (CPU and Hard Disk around 40ºC to 50ºC) the battery should remain in the laptop socket;
- In an intensive usage which leads to a large amount of heat produced (i.e. Games, temperatures above 60ºC) the battery should be removed from the socket in order to prevent unwanted heating. The heat, among the fact that it has 100% of charge, is the great enemy of the lithium battery and not the plug, as many might think so.
- Full battery discharges (until laptop power shutdown, 0%) should be avoided, because this stresses the battery a lot and can even damage it. It's recommended to perform partial discharges to capacity levels of 20~30% and frequent charges, instead of performing a full discharging followed by a full charging.
- Laptop batteries contain a capacity gauge that
allows us to know the exact amount of energy stored.
However, due to the charging/discharging cycles,
this sensor tends to be inaccurate overtime.
Some laptops include in their BIOS, tools to
recalibrate this battery gauge, which is nothing
more than a full discharge followed by a full charge.
So to calibrate the gauge, it should be performed, in every 30 discharge cycles, a full discharge non-stop , followed by a also, non-stop, full charge.
An inaccurate gauge can lead to the fact that the the battery capacity values are are wrong. The battery may report that it still has 10% of capacity when in fact it has a much lower value, and this causes the computer to shutdown unexpectedly.
Discharge (or charge) cycles consist of using all that battery charge (100%) but not necessarily all at once.
For example, you can use the laptop for some minutes in a day, using half its capacity e then fully charge it. If you did the same thing in the next day, it would be counted a discharge cycle and not two, so it may take several days until a full discharge cycle is completed.
