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Alex:
To increase the lifetime of the battery, run it down to as close as you can to 0%, and then charge it all the way back up in the charger. Try to avoid charging it at 50% or 70%. Running it all the way down, and then charging it all the way back up is much healthier for the battery, as with most devices such as iPods, Laptops and camera batteries.
This is absolutely NOT TRUE, all the B&O phones are designed to sit on the charger, regardless of use, for as long as you want without any effect on battery life.
In B&O phones the handset monitors the battery capacity and charges accordingly, in the case of a BeoCom 4 it explained on page 5.
Running your battery down to 0% and recharging will do nothing for you battery life in your BeoCom 4, as for the other devices that Alex mentions, I have no experience with iPods but in the instructions for my Mac powerbook it suggested an intitial run down to zero then a full charge ONCE, after that I can plug & unplug the mains as required.
No that's conditioning the battery, not normal charging, and that involves leaving it with no charge for 24 hours as well.
Admittedly it doesn't affect batteries as much as it used to, and was mainly in Lithium-Ion batteries, and affects Nickel-Cadium batteries to a much lesser degree. The affect is still there, and there is no way of getting around it. It's just part of the nature of the way batteries work. I'm not entirely sure of the chemistry behind it, but I'm sure one of our chemists could explain it (possibly Chris?). There is a scientific explanation for it though, I remember being told, but I can't remember what I was told! It's an effect B&O can have very little control over though other than managing the battery well (which they do), but it will never completely go away.
The best way to get around it I'm told by a physics technician (in our physics department) is to always charge batteries all the way down and then all the way back up again. Works for him, he still gets 5 hours of charge out of a 4 year old Acer laptop battery!