Treat your batteries right

Dunno what planet you guys are on, but here on Earth 40 degrees is uncomfortably hot as an ambient temperature.

Do you think condensation and moisture are hidden gotchas?

About 27 years ago, I first heard that storing batteries in the fridge extended their life. I had a radio controlled jeep that would was a battery hog.

I kept a bunch of D cells in the fridge (prolly Duracell) and they ended up rusted with even shorter lives than the non-refrigerated ones.

My almost 5-year old TiBook runs hot ALL the time and my battery is crap now. But I think I'll hold off on refrigerating my new battery until I hear more evidence that rust won't set in.

A battery is a chemical assembly where a chemical reaction is happening and provide current (small particles travel from a point to another). If you put it in the fridge, you decrease the cinetic, meaning the speed, of the reaction: particles travel a lot slower. This is why the charge is kept for such a long time.

The fact that the unused battery stored in the fridge still had most of its capacity does not refute the charge cycle claims. It was kept cool AND it didn't have many charge cycles so it could have been either factor.
A very poorly constructed experiment.

Typo: Celsius

Er, TUAW, there are people around the world reading the blog and the US is one of the few countries still using the archaic Fahrenheit temperature scale.

It's also not scientific and likely to lead to polar landers crashing onto Mars.

At least write 40°F (4.5°C) to make it clear.



PS Metric countries rarely translate Ray Bradbury's book into "Celsisus 232" ;)

@harsh
I think they meant the battery maintained 95% of its CAPACITY after 2.5 years because it was kept in the fridge with ~50% charge

Hmmm. Now I'm worried. My iPod runs very hot when I use it in my car (Kensington charger/transmitter). I keep it in the center console in the front seats, and sometimes if it's been in there a while, it becomes uncomfortable to the touch. I imagine part of that is the charging (the charger seems to keep trying even after the battery is apparently at 100%). And part of it is because I live in Phoenix.

lol. what i think he meant is that the battery had 95% capacity after being stored in the fridge at 50% charge..

;)

You're saying that it had a 95% charge after being stored at a half charge? How does that make sense? The fridge charged up the battery from 50% to 95%? I think not.