Is there a break-in procedure that you need to perform when you charge a new vaio battery?

This may sound a bit of a silly question considering that Li-ion batteries don't suffer from memory effect, but are there any recommendations for charging a new battery i.e do I need to fully charge and then fully discharge the battery several times to reach full capacity, and so that the battery meter is accurate?

 

I think if that was the case then the manufacturers would get you to do that in the start up manual. The sony's have been pretty reliable on holding charge for me. I suppose the only tip being if you mostly have it plugged in have it set at the 80% charge. I usually let the battery run low before recharging if I'm using out and about as opposed to drip charging - I've heard that apple advise this for battery care on the iPhone.

 

No, you don't need to do a special procedure with a new battery. If I were you, I would fully charge the battery with the computer off, then pull out the A/C and run down the battery to 5-10%, activate the battery care (I use 80%) and you will be fine. Your battery will wear (the chemicals degrade) if you leave it fully charged for a longer period or you run down to a too low voltage. The battery has a management that prevents it from running too low, but set the hibernation break to 5-10% charge is a good idea in my opinion.

 

Thanks for the info, I didn't think that I needed to do anything with the battery apart from charge it and use as normal, but there are websites that say different things, i.e. that you need to calibrate the fuel gauge so that the charge level displays accurately.

 

I did not see a VAIO yet where you did need something like that. If you charge it completely, it will stop charging when the cells reach their max. voltage (I think it was 4.2V per cell). When you discharge then, the management chip reads the current and the cell's voltage continously and when the cells reach their minimum voltage (think 3.0V), it can sum up the current over the time and tell you the discarging capacity. The battery does that when charging as well. By doing so, it can compare the designed capacity with the actual measured capacity and tell you the battery wear in percent.

Long story short, the cycling of the battery IS indeed kinda calibration of the software stuff. But since the hardware level (voltage of the cells) is absolute, there is no need for a special calibration.

 

The Thinkpads are the only laptops I know of that allow for calibration. That's really only to make the "time left" reading accurate.