I make apps for a living, so I have a stack of mobile devices on my desk at any given moment. But three of them (my phone, laptop, and tablet) aren’t for testing – they’re my digital tethers, my connection to world. So I have to keep them powered up. After all, I can’t very well survive a bus ride without streaming music from my phone to my noise-canceling headphones while banging out an email or two on the tablet, can I? No really – can I?
Batteries are as subject to the second law of thermodynamics as the rest of the universe – their electrons are gradually going from a state of ordered usefulness to chaotic irrelevance; that is to say they die and have to be recharged.
One important thing I learned awhile back, though: you can totally break a battery if you don’t completely drain it now and again. Turns out modern lithium-ion batteries can develop a memory – if you don’t run them dry or “condition” the battery, it will “remember” and not fully charge anymore, resulting in a decreased capacity. And the worst thing you can do is leave it plugged in all the time. Electrons need to move!