Reliance on Li Ion batteries in Oly Pen series

Aberaeron wrote:

alexisgreat wrote:

RedOctobyr wrote:

What will you do when Olympus stops producing them?Either find a manufacturer you're comfortable with (Wasabi, etc), buy old-stock Olympus batteries, deal with reduced life from your old batteries, or retire the camera, I guess. I expect you'd have aftermarket options for a while.

You could open the batteries and replace the cells with something suitable, but most people have no inclination to go that far with it.

I use lithium polymer (LiPo) batteries in a hobby. To reduce battery degradation over time, we store them half charged (~3.85V/cell, so ~7.7V total for 2 cells like these). And storing them in the fridge (not freezer), if not fully charged, also helps. These are simple things you could do to help slow the degradation your batteries.

Ha I might end up buying my batteries from you I was going to get Wasabi but after I looked them up on here I saw a lot of reports of them expanding and getting stuck in the camera after about 18 months of usage.

How often are you supposed to charge these batteries? Is it bad to charge them as soon as they get fully discharged?

It is bad to leave them discharged. Recharge as soon as they become run down and run them down until the camera stops now and again. They don't have a 'memory' but they do have a finite life. They don't publicise what that life runs to though. In general it should be many hundreds of charges, and into the thousands, with at least five years of life from most original equipment genuine batteries.

I buy generic copies and have had good luck with them so far, at a substantial cost saving.

Thank you! So at best I should have two of each battery type, letting extras sit around fully discharged is a bad idea.

These batteries self discharge over time. They have a safety system that shuts them down when in use to prevent total discharge because total discharge kills them stone dead with little chance of resurrection.
Put those two points together and you should be able to work out why you should not store fully discharged batteries for long. Ideally batteries should be stored with at least 50% charge. Personally I fully charge all batteries that have exhausted in camera, that evening or certainly within a few days. Without fail.