Recalibrating Battery Charge Indicators

Laptop computers, cell phones, handheld radios, and many other types of battery-powered electronic equipment have battery charge indicators. They work on various principles, depending on the types of batteries the equipment is designed to use. Most of them give wrong indications if different types of batteries are substituted. That can result in equipment automatically powering-down before batteries are fully-discharged. However, most charge indicators become inaccurate over time even if the right batteries are used, because they are designed to automatically recalibrate according to maximum and minimum charge levels reached over several charge/discharge cycles. Even though some types of rechargeable batteries last longer if they are not fully discharged, every thirty, or so, charge/discharge-cycles batteries should be fully charged and then fully discharged to recalibrate charge indicators and associated automatic shutdown systems. ©2005 Tigertek, Inc. All rights reserved.

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