Do new, uncharged batteries degrade?

Thought I might get an extra battery (an unused Panasonic) for my 29 if the price is right on Ebay, but since my current battery has considerable life left in it, and I may not need the new one for a while, I was wondering if the unused Lith-Ion batteries get stale just sitting around. Thanks.

 

I think all Li-Ion batteries degrade over time. I bought a laptop a while back and never charged the battery. I went to use it a year later and It was totally dead. I think for storage you're supposed to charge it halfway and then the lower the temp you store it at the slower it degrades. There was a thread about it a while back.

 

Li-Ion batteries start to degrade right after they are manufactured.

 

Yes... You can buy a dead or depleted "New" battery as several members have here on the forum. If they are not stored correctly they can degrade even faster... The best way would be to see if you could get the date of manufacture and try to get a newish one. Your best bet would be to buy from a known good seller that sells a lot of them. (Then read their reviews/feedback.) Go from there...

 

They definitely degrade faster if they are unused than if they are in regular use.

They will often recover if they are not too far gone, I have a Vaio notebook and a PDA I use rather irregularly. Generally the batteries are terrible after they have been stood for a few months, but recover well after a few days regular charging and discharge through use.

As Connor says, they should not be stored fully charged.

Happily, the 'new' Toughbook ones I've bought - and five of the six in secondhand Toughbooks - have been in excellent condition.

One thought with a Toughbook specifically is NOT to run a battery recalibration on a battery that's been stored until it has had plenty of use and at least a dozen charge & discharge cycles, so it's fully settled at whatever useable capacity it has.

If you recalibrate while it's still recovering from storage, you may 'freeze' the capacity as far as the computer is concerned and it will predict the battery going flat before it really does, and you will never be able to use it's true capacity.

 

Has anyone here ever tried getting their battery serviced by a place where they replace the cells? For example, I've seen the following website:
- http://www.batteryrefill.com/laptops/Panasonic/

Thoughts?

 

RCX... If you search here there is a very long thread that discusses that very issue. I can't remember who the best one was... But they voted and they listed it in there...

 

Thanks, very helplful as usual.