New Battery for L735 Toshiba Laptop

Maybe not dead but low.

It's important not to fully discharge a Li-Ion battery, else it may not be possible to charge it again. Down to 10% should be sufficient for your purposes.

Li-ion batteries contain a protection circuit that shields the battery against abuse. This important safeguard also turns the battery off and makes it unusable if over-discharged.

How to Awaken Sleeping Li-ion - Battery University

bartjunited said:

Is discharging the battery using it until its dead?

Yes. As Ken says above, it will not be completely dead because your power options will shut down when the battery reaches "Critical battery" level** which might well be 3% / 5% / ... If you still have any power management utility that Toshiba might have installed then that might take control and shut it down even before Windows power options have a chance to do this for you.

I always follow the instructions to discharge 3/4 times with any new battery just so I do not get stung by my non-compliance if there turns out to be a problem that I have to contact the seller about. I am not convinced it is necessary with li-ion batteries but I decided just to fall in line each time I bought a new battery.

** Personally, I never set "Critical battery" level for less than 3% because that was a default I have found on two new laptops over the last few years - so, again, I am just falling into line. If I ever crash out through loss of battery power as the battery ages then I increase "Critical battery" level to, say, 15% and if that ever allows a crash through loss of battery power then I conclude that it is time to replace that battery.

Do please note that all references to 3% / 5% / 15% are percentages of what the battery can currently manage because that is what Windows battery percentages mean. What a battery can currently manage reduces as the battery ages. You can always check what it can currently manage in comparison to its design capacity by running a PowerCfg battery report then examining the output file - sample syntax

Code:

powercfg /batteryreport /output "WhateverFolderYouChoose\battery_report.html /Duration 1"

unless your [old?] computer cannot run this command in which case you would run an energy report

Code:

PowerCfg -energy -duration 0 -output "WhateverFolderYouChoose\EnergyReport.html"

but battery reports are prefererable because they are shorter so there is less data to wade through.

Denis

Critical battery level is in
Control panel, Power options
[or go through Settings, System, Power & sleep, Additional power settings]
Then click on the power plan's Change plan settings, Change advanced powers settings, battery section.

You will also see a Battery level called Reserve. This is a notification-only item - no action takes place.

Denis

And about phone batteries

Li-ion technology is the same in all li-ion batteries so all the general guidance above applies to both. I have not had a phone that tells me what its Critical battery level is let alone allow me to alter it. I would expect all modern phones to have such a hidden setting somewhere.

I have never experienced the battery drain to which the 'battery university' refers [I first saw that webpage a few years ago and have been unable to find any corroboration of their story].
- I deliberately took one phone battery down to 1% charge earlier in the year just to demonstrate that the maker had fixed a power fault [on their second attempt]
- The phone warned me at 1% that problems could occur if I forced it to stay on below this level.
- The warning was about loss of software & data rather than triggering some fatal chip setting within the battery.

Denis