[kontesto]

I just got my blackberry yesterday and have been playing with it for a little bit. Now I want to start syncing it up with my computer but if I plug it in via USB, it will charge right? But I'm supposed to drain the battery for the first charge so how will this work?

KM

[jibi]

its a Li-on battery, so draining it is NOT good. keep it charged. first charge should be a full one, and each one after that can be whatever. you can keep it on charge for as long as you want, as well - you won't damage it. search for Lithium or battery or something like that and there's a best practices speech from Mark and myself and some others.

[kontesto]

Mark's message says this

You need to break in the BlackBerry battery. Charge-discharge it fully about 3 times. This will max the battery life of a fresh, new Lithium ion.
Note: once you do that, don't get in the habit of fully discharging the battery everytime -- to prevent wearing it out -- lithium batteries can be damaged with excessive deep discharges like a car battery can be.... When breaking in the battery, make sure you keep it plugged in long after the battery says it is fully charged (i.e. overnight), you really want to trickle-charge your BlackBerry to top-off your battery.

So you're saying break it once with a full charge/discharge and then just be normal?

So in other words don't sync it to the computer until its discharged fully once.

[jibi]

i don't personally believe mark's statement, but you can take that

you won't run out your battery life anytime in the next 5 years or more, and i doubt you'll still have the phone at that time in your life. so just charge it up for 10+ hours (or how many ever are recommended by RIM) and then just be happy afterwards. i honestly think that fully discharging the Li-on batteries is a bad thing to do, but thats my personal opinion based on my research of the subject matter.