Comment That's why my phone *appears* to charge so fast... (Score 1) 479
I noticed that when I charge my phone, it goes from 1 very lonesome red bar to 3 or 4 within about 20 minutes. It can appear to be fully charged within 1 hour but we all know it takes several hours to get there.
On a related note, I was working with RFID tags several years ago. We worked very hard to give the customer an accurate read on battery life. We had a "dot-on-the-map" application that located items and if the battery died... not only would the item not be located but you might not find it to swap the tag.
We ultimately went with a GREEN, YELLOW, RED scheme in which the customer knew that the GREEN state was longest, YELLOW was shorter and RED meant immanent loss of power within a day or 2. Total shelf life was about 4 years.