iPod Nano Battery Power Pack

iPod Nano Battery Power Pack

For most techno geeks, describing their gadgets, in technical terms, like the iPod nano is a breeze, even pleasurable.  They prattle on with the specs deftly like they’re just naming the days of the week, “it’s 4 gig,” “up to 2,000 songs in 128 Kbps AAC format,” “Frequency response is 20 Hertz to 20, K-Hertz,” “system req? Mac OS x version 10.4.8.”  But try asking him about the iPod nano battery.
    
“The battery? Er…it’s lithium-ion.”   You press on and he says, “It’s just lithium-ion, man.  You can charge it either via usb, or wall socket.  Why don’t you ask me about the video format? It’s….” and he prattles on.

Your iPod nano battery is a power pack, both literally and figuratively.  This rechargeable lithium-based technology is your iPod’s lifeline.  While it constantly provides the best performance to keep your gadget useful, as how it powers other devices like your notebook computer, iPhone, etc., it still is destined to find its way to landfills.  It expires.

It would be good for you then to have some basic details about your iPod nano battery added to your familiarity with the gadget.

Before everything else, let us review your knowledge of some concepts associated with the use and maintenance of batteries.  Battery playtime means the length of time your battery can power your gadget from charging to getting fully drained.  Battery lifetime is the time span your battery can power your gadget from the first charging until it needs to be replaced.  Apple.com describes charge cycle as, “using all of the battery’s power, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a single charge.  For instance, you could listen to your iPod for a few hours one day, using half its power, and then recharge it fully.  If you did the same thing the next day, it would count as one charge cycle, not two, so you may take several days to complete a cycle. (italics mine).”  Each charge cycle diminishes battery capacity slightly.  Your iPod nano battery is programmed to have 400 charge cycles.
    
Going back to that power pack of your iPod.  Yes, it is a lithium-ion battery.  It packs in higher power density than nickel-based batteries which gives you longer battery life in a much lighter package.   Lithium, a soft whitish metal like silvery cheese, is not only the lightest metal but it is the lightest known solid (it will float on gasoline).  What better choice to power a portable device like your iPod, than this?   And most importantly, lithium based batteries have no memory-effect which means you can recharge it whenever you want without affecting its charge cycle.  Nickel-based batteries remember each time you charge, which means its performance gets affected every time it is charged.

This is where the confusion started for most, because they were conditioned to wait for their Ni-Cad batteries to be fully discharged before recharging.  This is not the case with your iPod nano battery.  It’s so cool when you can charge whenever you want to.  This is also one reason that makes your lithium-ion battery more expensive than its Ni-Cad and NiMH counterparts.