Battery Types: Li-Ion vs. Li-Poly, NiMh, NiCd, & More
Battery Types: Li-Ion vs. Li-Poly, NiMh, NiCd, & More
2016-04-27
hey everyone today we were talking about
batteries battery types charging and
getting the most out of your batteries
for laptops phones whatever I am joined
by Patrick Stone and we if you're
wondering how this topic came about we
actually got into a fight over it and I
won so we're doing a video on how
different types of batteries so there's
there's lithium-ion yep what is the
other ones nickel cadmium and nickel
metal hydride or National Institute of
Mental Health right yes and I mah would
be the the chemical I guess composition
or something yeah and then also in some
mice like this new one we have here some
mice and other smaller devices use a
lithium polymer or a high poly right
tablet with it
yeah tablets use a lot of it and we'll
talk about what all those different
types of batteries are and how they work
and stuff like that so why don't you
start us out with some more of the
archaic forms of batteries yeah so I'm
old and these batteries are all just
kidding I know that but the nickel
cadmium and the nickel metal hydride
batteries have been around for a while
nickel cadmium I believe was the first
one that came out and the idea there is
that it's it's good but it can't produce
the same kind of I guess battery charge
that you want to have over a long period
of time that say like a lithium-ion can
and so the kind of the thing that went
through time was we started out with the
nickel cadmium and then eventually
somebody was like hey what about nickel
metal hydride nickel metal hydride was a
little bit better and the these are both
okay but these cells in these guys can't
really give us a lot of voltage whereas
they when they discovered the lithium
ion and stuff yeah it was a different
ballgame
well there's alkaline - ish is more
familiar to anyone using double-a
batteries that aren't rechargeable so
these alkaline ones they're sort of
single-shot you get them once this is
actually 1.5 volt battery and
technically this nickel metal hydride
one this is a rechargeable battery we
use for our camera
women and it's got 1.2 volts and so
something interesting we learned about
this yeah is that the 1.5 volt battery
will actually sort of on the surface of
things that looks like it should last
longer and and they sort of do in our
experience because the extra voltage but
they have a voltage one with voltage
depression depression is what it's often
a right you like a lot of people think
of rechargeable batteries like nickel
cadmium and nickel metal hydride as
having a memory effect thing that's
going on there but the term that is I
guess it's better for is a voltage
depression and what you're seeing is
that over time over the the use of the
battery the the nickel cadmium battery
is going to be like 1.5 volts and then
in a very linear way it's going to go
from 1.5 down to like 1.2 and then down
to like 1 and stop working yeah yeah and
and then appetizer deco cadmium with the
alkaline stop right now alkaline
batteries and then these guys what
they're going to do is they're going to
kind of stay 1.2 and just 1.2 in a nope
it's dead you ready yeah so that's the
that's the difference in those two for
sure and the so memory isn't the right
word for these but the voltage
depression works and then that applies
to the older laptops use the old nickel
did ma'am yeah like if you were two
laptops with those really great screens
that were like this big it had like 640
by 480 resolution those were the nickel
cadmium right and eventually made it to
like 600 or 800 about 600 resolution
nickel metal hydride batteries right and
then we we eventually got to this really
great 1024 by 768 resolution and that
was kind of the transition interval with
EMI yeah and so lithium ions what
everyone is pretty much familiar with on
the side of things that still being used
you'll find nickel metal hydride in
these types of batteries you don't
really find lithium ion in these from
what we've seen yeah and that's probably
because of some of the logic that
lithium ion requires yeah then he says
logic he's just talking about like that
there's these guys have circuitry inside
of them to manage the cells right so
these have a certain amount of cell
and when you research your laptop
batteries you'll see they all kind of a
different cell count and that partially
dictates the longevity of the battery
per use and when talking about battery
longevity there's there's a few key
items here one of them that probably a
lot of people don't know is that your
battery actually is sort of lying to you
when it says that there's a 100% charge
it's not actually a hundred percent of
what this is capable of because it will
sort of section off a piece of the
battery as reserve yep and that's
because once it falls below a certain
percentage depending on the battery once
it falls below a certain percentage
charge the lithium actually becomes
volatile and can combust and so they'll
use this logic in part to control that
and make sure it doesn't fall too low in
normal use I mean unless you're cool
with having batteries exploding on your
shelves which actually happened with
some laptops on planes if you look it up
they were I think one of the articles
called them terrorists laptops and it's
because the charge was the battery was
defective and I used the magnesium
housing for the laptop and so it made
fire so you don't want that and that is
why these will lie to you about the
actual life of the battery so
interesting thought here is looking at
battery life so when lithium-ion
batteries first came out your battery
life was an hour and you were excited
that it was an hour you were just saying
how battery life and now if your laptop
doesn't have six hours of battery life
you're thinking what the heck is going
on
so the question may be hey did the
lithium-ion batteries get better right
or what changed how things go if you hit
me with something so I can start with
the hardware mm-hmm so lower TDP CPUs
GPUs especially as you move towards the
ten nanometer process yep you know that
this is why TDP is important because
you'll see chips that are drawing like
14 watts or something for the really
low-end stuff
yeah versus verses like 7080 whatever
you know the pan
years ago back first-gen Nehalem was
like 140 watts and now Intel's down to
the 40s 50s yeah so that's that's
certainly one thing mmm another thing I
was thinking about too is we mentioned a
few minutes ago that the chips inside
the batteries kind of control you know
is the better charge the better not
charged
how many charge cycles working with I'm
going to have to manage the the
circuitry itself has gotten more
intelligent right so being able to
manage the charge and discharge the
battery how rapidly the discharge is
occurring that kind of stuff that's
helping the batteries to last longer as
well
yeah then charge cycles is sort of a
constant with lithium-ion batteries so
these batteries kind of almost very
vaguely like NAND there's a certain
amount of cycles they can go through
before it's it's basically dead so if
you've ever held on to a laptop long
enough you will eventually get
notifications from Windows that the
battery needs to be replaced soon yeah
and that's because it's no longer
getting the charge it used to and so
these batteries kind of on average will
be 500 to 1000 charge cycles meaning how
many times they can be charged and as
you burn through those it will reduce
the the effective length of the battery
per charge mm-hmm and that also impacts
a couple of other things but the charge
cycles specifically they it's not all
sort of one level of abuse the charge
cycles are more abusive if you charge
them a certain way yep if you blast the
battery with current like you know
there's little speed chargers right
that'll spare batteries for your phone
so those will charge you up pretty
quickly sometimes yeah but I mean how do
they they do it by lasting voltage right
right yeah so you know when you're
talking about power there are two it two
real parts there there's the voltage in
the current and the battery voltage like
your computer needs say like 19 volts
and that's listed on the battery if you
look at the battery labels 14.4 for this
one and 11.1 right here and then it has
a milliamp power piece here and so when
you're talking about the power you're
talking about your current and your
voltage and so charging the battery back
up you're
you're more worried about your current
and you are with your voltage your
voltage isn't really changing and so if
you have like a quick charger you're
you're shoving I this is kind of a bad
way to say this shoving current back
into the battery faster then really the
chemical processes are ready to commit
to and so that can that can be not good
for the battery right and again we're
using looser terminology here
yeah well also in terms of things the
users can see if you do that with your
cell phone
personally anyway you'll normally see
that the if you charge to a hundred
percent with a non-standard charger for
the phone you might see that the hundred
percent actually is shorter yeah usable
life than using your wall charger so
that is that's part of that yeah and
then best practices for battery charging
so one is used the correct charger yes
absolutely if at all possible
like don't switch from your factory
charger because their factory charger
will usually have the exact same voltage
and current specs that your battery does
and it's going to charge your battery
the way it's supposed to a lot of times
the charger and the battery the
microchips inside of them will actually
talk to each other that is if they're
you know high enough quality a lot of
them are just you know real basic but
hey if it sign of quality they'll talk
to each other and they'll understand how
to work together and that again will
make your battery last longer and it's
going to make your computer last longer
as a user which rate and charge cycles
wise you want to try and be as unabie
Civ as possible so when you're using
your laptop or other device do try to
occasionally run it down and when you're
charging if let's say you put your
laptop away for a while you don't use it
and it's kind of good practice to just
unplug it and and let it sit and then
you're Betty will be slightly drained
when you turn it back on depending on
how long you leave it sitting because if
they don't hold a charge forever but it
will be better for it than just
constantly delivering sort of a trickle
to the ya-ya
and one of the things too it is a good
idea every once in a while to just like
drain your battery all the way and then
charge along back oh right that's a good
idea
helps with them sort of memory thing
even though it's not really supposed to
yes yeah okay it helps your battery to
operate at its fullest potential let's
just say right and then the last type of
battery these lithium polymer ones I'm
holding up this mouse because I think
this has one I know a lot of wireless
mice do the reason they do is because
it's sort of a conformable battery yeah
so it's actually like a pouch of I guess
like a liquid almost and that that can
be shaped around whatever is inside of
your device so if you have a weird area
like this we now have a square surface
right to spread hard cells across and
you can use a hawai poly your lipo yep
exactly right so that's really new but
otherwise they're basically lithium ion
in terms of present size yeah yeah we
were reading when we're doing some
research we try to do that every one so
every research we're reading that the
original lithium polymer batteries work
the same as lithium ion batteries right
but kind of the the nomenclature has
become that lithium polymer batteries
are just lithium ion technology at this
point yeah at this point they're
technically the battery this is a
lithium-ion polymer or something like
yeah I think it's which I but basically
lipo battery yep so that's more than you
ever wanted to know about batteries
hopefully hopefully helps someone out
there we have an old article I've
written about best practices for laptop
charging and charge cycles so I'll link
that below it's pretty old but it's all
the rage stuff yeah it's worth it yeah
it's good good stuff to know so thank
you for watching as always patreon link
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time
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