adelgary said:
I always charge it when the light turns red, and I know that's supposed to be okay because Li-ion batteries don't have the "memory effect", but should I completely drain the battery out at least once a month or something? Or is it totally a non-issue?
Non-issue. Li-ion has no memory effect, but more to the point, its rated for a certain number of full cycles (charging from 10-100%) In the case of the GBA, its about 500 charges. The trick of it is, a full cycle recharge causes a significant amount of stress to the battery chemistry. If you charge partial cycles (ie, from 30%-100%, 50-100%, 70-100%), you are actually likely to get more the equivalent of 500 full charges and then some, because the battery has not been as stressed.
It is possible to over-cycle a Li-ion battery, but you should be fine if you charge it every few days, or whenever it goes red. Once your system has gone through the equivalent of 500 full charges, the damage starts to become noticeable in the form of reduced battery lifetime. You can keep using and recharging it, but it will slowly, over time, get worse until the point of uselessness.
There are three other problems with Li-ion:
-Long term negligible strength (basically, leaving it empty for months at a time) will actually result in further battery damage. Unused rechargeables continue to drain at a small rate, and if it goes too far below the empty baseline, it won't be able to recover.
-Storage charge: If you're going to leave a Li-ion battery or device out of use for awhile, leave it around 40% charge (or say, from empty, a half hour charge). A year of storage can damage a fully charged battery by 20%-30%, while a 40% charged battery suffers a maximum damage of around 10%.
-Overcharging: This isn't the fault of the user, but chargers that aren't quick enough to finish the charge and shut off are likely to do intensify the amount of damage done every cycle.
