M10 battery charging conundrum

[marcg]

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I'm not particularly asking for advice here because as far as I'm concerned my problem is sorted – but I'm flagging this up to others who might have a similar problem.

I have two M10 batteries. When each of them is apparently fully charged using the standard Leica  charger, the in-camera battery status reading for one of them returns – 100%.
The second battery returns a reading of 85%.
It doesn't matter how long you leave the battery in the charger, the charger's charging lights are fixed but the camera returns a reading of 85%.

If instead of charging the battery in the standard Leica charger, I put it in a NiteCore charger, it immediately continues to charge and eventually reads out that it is full. When it is then put into the camera, the battery returns a reading of – 100%.

As I said above, I'm not bothered. I prefer the double NiteCore charger anyway – but it's a bit curious all the same.

Maybe somebody has already reported this on this forum – I haven't looked

Edited May 25, 2021 by marcg

[Jeff S]

FWIW, Leica Miami discontinued carrying the Nitecore charger due to customer issues (don’t recall specifics, but discussed in one of their Red Dot Forum Camera Talk series).  Coincidentally, the customer reviews of the product on the B&H site also indicate problems.  I have no personal experience, as my Leica charger works fine.

Jeff

 

[marcg]

My Leica charger works fine as well – except for the anomaly with that particular battery. I suppose it's the battery – but also anomalous that it then appears to charge up correctly with the NiteCore.

I have no problems with the NiteCore - ... Yet.

[RMF]

I believe there are at least two generations of the NiteCore M10 charger but I don't know what issue they addressed or how to tell the versions apart.

[Photoworks]

The first Nitecore charger for M10 fist gen had some issues, but this is now 2 years ago, the replacement works well

I wish it would be just got one battery like the SL2 battery charger for easy travel and charge from power bank.

[adan]

On 5/25/2021 at 6:03 AM, marcg said:

I have two M10 batteries. When each of them is apparently fully charged using the standard Leica  charger, the in-camera battery status reading for one of them returns – 100%.
The second battery returns a reading of 85%.
It doesn't matter how long you leave the battery in the charger, the charger's charging lights are fixed but the camera returns a reading of 85%.

You might try "calibrating" the battery  - run that battery right down to as close to 0% as you can, through regular use, and/or leaving it in the camera with the LCD on, and the camera set to "never sleep" until the camera shuts down due to low battery power. Then recharge it with the Leica charger and see what happens.

BTW - since someone else is sure to mention it - that is not a "good" practice for every day, since done repeatedly and often, it will shorten the battery life. Modern Li-ions prefer being "topped up" from partial charge. But not a big deal to do once, if a battery is acting up anyway.

If that doesn't work, the battery may simply be reaching end-of-life. Which is usually approximately 300-500 charge-discharge cycles.

I had one M9 battery that eventually refused to charge more than 90% under any condition, as reported by the camera. That was after 6-7 years of recharging every few days. "Recalibrating" didn't work. Bought a new battery.

As to why the Nite-Core may seem to work - could just be different settings in its safety circuits. It's willing to "push" the lithium ions back into place harder or longer.

In the long run, that may not be a good thing.

https://batteryguy.com/kb/knowledge-base/why-dont-lithium-ion-batteries-last-forever/

[marcg]

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Thanks for that information above.

The battery is relatively new and has probably only had 30 or 40 charge cycles.

I scarcely ever use the Leica charger – I'm much happier with the Nightcore so I will just run with it.

As I suggested, one of the batches gives similar readings using the charger, the Nightcore and the camera. So they are quite consistent.

[marcg]

I'm just giving this heads up in case anybody is interested – but maybe everybody knew it already and I was the last to find out.

Anyway I was charging my batteries and for some reason or other I used a "PD" Power Delivery mains adapter.

To my surprise, the little screen on the Nitecore charger started to display "quick charge" and the charging display started to change very quickly.

Not only that, instead of simply charging one battery at a time as it normally does, both batteries are charging at the same time and at the same rate.

Mind you, the whole thing started to get very hot.

Fast charging is not good for batteries and should only be used if you really need a replenish battery quickly. Normally speaking it's much better for the life expectancy of the battery to put on a trickle charge overnight – but it was useful to know that the Nitecore would do this.

Quite a surprise to me – although as I've said, maybe everybody knew already and they simply weren't telling me.

 

Edited July 24, 2021 by marcg

[Helge]

@adan

there is no such thing as “calibration” of a Lithium based battery.

The only applicable calibration refers to the actual battery indicator, however since one of the batteries shows a 100% reading when fully charged, this should be correct. The other battery however seems just worn. The lifetime of today’s lithium polymer batteries is at about 1000 full cycles of charging (respectively more for partial cycles) after which the battery should be at ~80% of capacity.

@marcg

just continue using that weaker battery, just taking the shorter runtime into account until it’s too low.

[marcg]

The running time of both batteries is excellent

[Helge]

In that case, you shouldn‘t worry.

[beewee]

Problem with the M10 Nitecore charger is that after the batteries are fully charged, rather than just cutting off the circuit, it will start discharging one of them. The longer you leave it, the more it will discharge. This is a design flaw.

[Photoworks]

6 hours ago, beewee said:

Problem with the M10 Nitecore charger is that after the batteries are fully charged, rather than just cutting off the circuit, it will start discharging one of them. The longer you leave it, the more it will discharge. This is a design flaw.

the first few had a problem and they have been corrected. if you have an early one you can get it replaced.
 

I had no issues in the last 2 years