Battery pulls are not hard on the phone, and in fact if you get into a daily habit of doing so you may find things run a little smoother. Simple reboots don't reset your phone as completely as a battery pull does. As for the battery question, I have the extended battery as well. I've used it constantly for about the past 3 weeks without needing to switch over to the stock battery at all, which I put a full charge on when I last used it.

Ironically (for this threads timing that is) I finally ran into a situation where I needed it last night. I had pulled it off the charger very early yesterday morning and used it even more than usual (any I'm a heavy, HEAVY user normally anyhow). So I was at Buffalo Wild Wings last night and my battery warning came up. I was writing out some long posts and texts so I didn't want it to cut out on me and lose anything. So I opted to switch batteries before I completely ran out of juice (at first I didn't think I'd brought my extra battery, but a quick check revealed it was in my back pocket after all... I was so happy!). When I popped it in the battery meter read 100% full even though like I said it'd been about 3 weeks since I last charged it. So my guess is you won't run into much of a problem unless you expose it to extreme weather shifts (like going from a really cold car to a really warm house or something like that). I've found that situations like that can effect some batteries. Though I'm not exactly sure about lith-ion batteries.

 

I noticed a flaw with the battery manager with telling how much battery life is left. I bought a spare battery, charged it up, and decided to switch it with my stock battery to see if it would work. When i pulled the stock battey, it showed 70% life. I put the spare one in and it showed 100%. so all is well, right? Nope. I switched back to the stock battery with 70% life, and all of a sudden the stock was now back up to 100%. When I switch batteries, no matter how much life is left on it, the battery app will show 100%. the spare battery is not a stock replacement but an off brand battery. So be careful with non motorola batteries as you may get false readings on battery life.

 

Li PO batteries will sit on a shelf charged and stay charged for a long time. Without the need for a Maintenance charger, though like all batteries it wouldn't hurt.

So if you charge up your spare, and let it sit for a month or 2, not a major worry. If someone made a special charger for it, sure would be nice. But, not necessary.

Don't worry too much about it.

Also the battery manager is calibrated to the voltage out put and temp of the battery over time. SO trading out batteries all the time may throw off your battery indicator/manager. (under spare parts or using the settings - about phone section look up the battery condition and you will see the parameters the phone is checking all the time)

It will change a bit and have to re-calibrate.

EDIT: Without doing some math and tests on a battery pack, I don't know of a set number to tell you. But short times (less then 3 months) shouldn't be a problem.

 

Great thread! Ive wondered this myself!

 

I disagree with this.

Someone please provide evidence, or even reasonable logic, that powering down the phone - which shuts down the operating system, clears the memory, and powers down the device - is somehow less complete than a battery pull.

Blackberries operated in sleep mode, so battery pulls were useful to actually shut it down. The DX does not do this, as evidenced by the exact same bootup time if you power it on or insert the battery.

 

Well I came directly from Blackberry.... perhaps I still have that logic stuck in my head.

 

Then how does a battery pull fix being stuck at the Big W and powering on/off doesn't?

 

I presume you mean the "Big M"?

Does the power button even work when stuck there? There are reasons to pull the battery to cut power to the device if you somehow can't power it off (though these cases should be rare - holding down the power button for an extended period of time (10-15 secs?) powers the device down even if it's frozen) - but I still haven't seen evidence that battery pulls actually do anything.

If someone has some kind of controlled testing they did, I'm more than happy to change my mind. I just haven't seen anything other than one-off anecdotes that are often not very specific anyway (e.g. "my phone was acting weird so I rebooted. It was still acting weird so I did a battery pull. Now it's fine.").

 

Never went as far as doing any controlled testing, but I have noticed a few random things like, for instance I was having trouble with my Hotspot turning on. I kept hitting it, and it would say it was trying to connect, but then about 15 seconds later it would say it was unable to connect to the server. So I tried doing a fast boot... same thing. Then I did a hot boot... still no connection. I powered the phone off and rebooted into recovery and hit 'reboot system'... the hotspot still refused to connect. Once I pulled the battery out, waited to put it back in for 20 seconds or so, and booted it back up, my hotspot connected.

Now, I honestly don't know what stops the hotspot from connecting. I have no clue what the problem is there. All I know is it took me running through this scenario two or three times before I just started doing battery pulls whenever my hotspot refused to connect.

Just little things like that (there are more, like sometimes an icon or two will disappear from my homescreen, and in its place will be the folder/gear default icon.... then after a battery pull the icon will magically reappear) kept me in that mind set that pulling the battery somehow performed a more complete power cycle than simply turning off the power. But I certainly wouldn't stake my reputation on it.