Sony battery care function feature

My Sony notebook has a feature called battery care function and I noticed that it says that when I enable it it gives me two choices one is so it will only charge upto 50% and one upto 80%. Now it said that if I have it always plugged in using AC mostly then set it to 50% and if I use the battery often and on the go basicly then set it to 80%. Now will this really save the life of the battery using these features? Or if it best to have it turned off and let it always charge upto 100% at most.

 

Been using the battery feature on my FW for almost 2 years - wear level is 1% and still lasts what it did new. I do the same for my netbook. Charging batteries to 100% kills them quickly. It's a nice feature - use it.

 

Li-on batteries prefer to sit at 50% charge, the further you stray from center the fester they wear out. Running it until dead is the worst thing you can do though. The idea of battery care is that it will let your battery stay closer to where it wants to be, sparing it from unnecessary wear.

Does it work?
I think so, but I haven't seen anything that conclusively proves it. My Sz battery that has it is in great shape though and I attribute it to battery care.

 

That's the idea. Past chemistry lessons have taught me that Lithium ion batteries suffer 'degradation', or in layman's terms in that too low or too high a charge can eliminate chemicals crucial for holding charge.

That's why you see instruction manuals of your new batteries saying charge for at least 8 hours etc etc etc. It's to get those 'dormant' chemicals 'activated' again after being unused for a period of time (you actually have to fully charge and discharge the battery a few times to get the 'burn-in' effect) . And if you turn on brand new gadgets with their Li-ion batteries, they are usually near the 50% mark.

Use the 80% setting if you are mobile often. In my case, I use the 80% and once it recharges to that, I take the battery out and continue with AC only. My VGN-Z is now 2 years old and battery wear is 3%. That wear there happened after a weeks worth of continued, unrelentless charge and discharge cycles as I was mobile for a decent 6 days...