charging

[Kim]

What is the best way to fully charge the battery? Thanks

 

[canderson]

What is the best way to fully charge the battery? Thanks

In the dock, if you believe TomTom, although I have never had any problems using a standard A~miniB USB cable with my 720. It's more convenient than the dock -- it works with my TomTom, my Garmin handheld, one of my cameras, my Pentax portable printer and a couple of other devices.

 

[doctormstein1]

What is the best way to fully charge the battery? Thanks

I have been using the dock connected to the tomtom USB to AC adapter for over 3 years. Although it has worn down the battery, its still doing better then others on this forum.

 

[mvl]

One rule of thumb with all lithium ion devices is to never let the battery get low, as that's what hurts battery life.

It's not so much how your charge the TT, just try to always keep it plugged in when its on, so that the battery stays near full charge. That will give it the longest life.

 

[Kim]

CAn you have it turned off when it is on the charger, or turned on? I keep mine docked with the power strip to my computer left on!

 

[dhn]

It can be left off and still get power to the battery.

 

[Gerhard]

chaging battery

Some of the comments are very interesting. Just got a replacement battery for tmy GO 730. The instructions read as follows:
Charge the battery for 12 hours without interruption for the first time.
After charging use the system untill it drains out the power.
Repeat this at least 3 times to prevent the battery from not functioning properly.

As stated earlier, it is also my belief that Li battery should never go to "no" power left.

Any comments on these instructions?

I use the dock connected to a PC via USB.

 

[canderson]

Charge the battery for 12 hours without interruption for the first time.
After charging use the system untill it drains out the power.
Repeat this at least 3 times to prevent the battery from not functioning properly.

As stated earlier, it is also my belief that Li battery should never go to "no" power left.

Any comments on these instructions?

Yes. Follow those steps. It makes more sense than you might think. Note that all of the high end LiPo manufacturers for the demanding RC business recommend this as well. If you don't do it for any other reason, it's useful to get the unit's gas gauge calibrated.

What you are doing in step 2 isn't as awful as it sounds. The TomTom (and many other intelligent devices) will prevent the LiPo pack from being discharged below a minimum per-cell voltage ... that's one thing you do NOT want to do to them. When you run your TomTom until it shuts down due to low battery, you aren't really "draining out the power". You're really just dropping the charge to the minimum safe point. You are entirely correct that no LiPo battery should ever be drained anywhere near "no power left".

LiPo is pretty goofy stuff. As an example, if you wish to store your TomTom, the ideal way to do so is with about a 50% charge on the battery when you perform the hard reset with power off.

See article here:

http://batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm