Should I drain before recharging?

No, recharge it whenever you need too. It’s honestly better for the device to remain plugged up because its running off the wall not the battery.

I asked about that practice when I bought a new camera recently. The salesman said they’re making batteries better than they used to and so you don’t have to do that any more. You can just recharge.

Most things nowadays use Li-Poly batteries which need a full drain-and-charge cycle only for the first charge, and about once a month afterwards, and that mostly to keep the monitoring circuit calibrated to account for cell wear.

Now, cheaper/older items that use NiCad batteries require this religiously. In fact, NiCads memory effect is the cause for many of the bad things associated with rechargeables.

Li-ion batteries might get damaged if they go down to 0 charge too often. 50% is the happy zone.

@RocketGuy True, but the circuitry usually shuts the device down before 0%; my Droid X refuses to go below 5%, and I have to start overriding shutdowns at 15%. Other devices I have behave similarly. Therefore, I wouldn’t worry about out for a device that sees daily use, though I would leave a 40–50% charge if I planned to not use something for a while

I’ll bet some devices have a non-zero limit, but show it as 0% so normal people don’t ruin their batteries. I know the Tesla Roadster does that.

@RocketGuy Precisely. Not only has battery technology come a long way, so have the methods of managing them.