On October 24 I received an order of 2 batteries. The order was placed September 26. I have 3 more orders that I placed after that.
I have some new Efest 18650 batteries ready for the SVD, do they need a charge before I pop 'em in?
With today's lithium batteries, it absolutely does not matter if they are fully charged, with a single exception that I'll note below. The batteries have no memory and battery life is unaffected by the amount of charge they're given. You can give a battery a partial charge over and over again without harming the ability of the battery to accept a full charge. You can recharge them at any time without having to let them discharge down to a given voltage first, and again, this will have zero effect on the life or potency of the battery.
The following old knowledge is wrong regarding today's lithium batteries but continues to be repeated over and over:
1)you have to fully charge every time or the battery will lose its ability to be fully charged.
2)you must fully discharge every time before recharging or the battery will have shorter life and will lose its ability to be fully charged.
3)you should fully charge a battery before first use. (The truth is that you can if you want to, but there's no harm done if you don't.)
Following #2 incorrect instruction above will actually result in a very short life for your battery. The only way to shorten the life is to let them fully discharge. That's why the vast majority (all?) VV or VW devices have built-in circuitry to shut the PV off when voltage gets to about 3.3 or 3.2 volts. That's the exception I mentioned earlier, because if you're using an unregulated mod, you should not allow the battery to become fully discharged.
I've got a nitecore charger, you can put the batteries in at any time, they don't need to be flat, and it charges them just enough to be full again, then slows right down to keep them topped up.
it's not like the old rechargeable batteries and chargers where you had to time how long to charge them for and turn the charger off to stop them over charging.
the destructions for my charger also say don't charge on a flammable surface or leave them unattended. yikes.
Any responsible manufacturer of chargers will have such warnings as part of the usage instructions. The Nitecore is among the safest and best chargers available.
Woo Hoo 
