Will trickle charging affect ipad battery life.

It is not how slowly a battery charges that effects its life as much as not letting it fully discharge between charges and not fully charging it between uses that damages its lifetime.


Dah•veed

Charge it as you find convenient. Apple recommends to go through at least one charge cycle per month (charging the battery to 100% and then completely running it down) for proper reporting of the battery’s state of charge. Otherwise, your iPad battery is designed to retain 80% of it's original capacity after 1,000 full charge cycles.

See this: http://www.apple.com/batteries/ipad.html

Source?

David is way off base when it concerns Lithium battery technology. Cadmium batteries had issues with short charge cycling, but Lithium batteries do not. Follow the link provided to the Apple page on iPad battery use.

Standard Technology
Lithium-ion polymer batteries pack in a higher power density than nickel-based batteries. This gives you a longer battery life in a lighter package, as lithium is the lightest metal. You can also recharge a lithium-ion polymer battery whenever convenient, without the full charge or discharge cycle necessary to keep nickel-based batteries at peak performance. (Over time, crystals build up in nickel-based batteries and prevent you from charging them completely, necessitating an inconvenient full discharge.)

I bow to your superiority!

I've been keeping the iPad plugged in when I use it at home. Is this a bad idea?

This is not correct for Lith Ion batteries. Fully discharging does not effect the battery life nor is it needed. In fact, you only have so many full charge and discharge cycles before the battery starts to loose capacity. The more you can leave it plugged into AC power, or charging it as soon as you get to AC power without letting it fully discharge, the longer the battery will last.

And you come along 6 hours after this has already been corrected and I have conceded the correction is accurate and correct me again because...

Although I am not sure how totally accurate this is;

charging it as soon as you get to AC power without letting it fully discharge, the longer the battery will last.

Only partially discharging the battery and topping it back up still counts against the total number of recharge cycles according to Apple. If you fully discharge the battery in one day and recharge it, that is one cycle. If you use half of the battery in one day and recharge it and then you use half the battery the next day and recharge it, that also is one cycle; .5 + .5 = 1

But it has 1000+ full cycles according to Apple, and then it will still charge to 80% after that, so these batteries are looking at serving for a number of years to come.

For proper reporting of the battery’s state of charge, be sure to go through at least one charge cycle per month (charging the battery to 100% and then completely running it down).

from the apple ipad battery link above:

so not done for any memory problem.

You trickle charge in the hope you don't use up one of the 1,000 life cycle numbers. You still have to fight the total life and MFBF of the battery pack.