It’s like Murphy’s law for mobile devices: Right at the least possible  convenient moment, your PDA/smartphone battery goes dead. There’s a lot of voodoo flying around the Internet about how to squeeze the most juice out of those lithium cells, but no hard data. Me, I do evidence-based. I want double-blind placebo-controlled experiments, darn it!

Groucho has posted the results of his own recharging regimen tests over on his Nokia N95 blog. I’ll let him tell you about it:

I have run some tests on three N95s all purchased at the same time and all with batteries of approx the same age and they have had approx the same usage. I have charged each of three in different ways-
A. Was charged only every night (approx 6 hours) and nothing during the day, for a week.
B. Was charged when it went flat.
C. Was charged at every opportunity, day and night.
After the week, at the next opportunity when the phones all had an end of charge fall together, they were all unplugged and left without any use at all.
A, lasted for 50.5 hours.
B, lasted for 22 hours.
C, lasted for 58 hours.

So it’s not double-blind or placebo-controlled, and it’s only three phones. But you know, the difference between B versus A or C is pretty huge. Running your battery totally dry time after time does not make that battery happy. And when your battery isn’t happy, you aren’t happy.

via Menneisyys’s blog on Smartphone and Pocket PC Mag.com