>I was in a conversation with an acquaintance, that my cell/mobile battery seems to be weakening. The conversation lead to the talk that the rechargeable batteries probably have a counter of no. of times the battery has discharged, very probably with the intelligence the batteries now have.

In a sense Lithium Ion are like that. They have a finite number of years (3 years) from time of mfr until they are dead if you use them or not.

> So to prolong the life of the batteries is to keep them charged before they display the run-down icon, this prevent the counter to increment. I said I was under the impression that the batteries are meant to be run down, so they charge fully the next time round.

This depends are the type of battery. Lithium Ion you don't have to cycle down and will die in 3 years regardless, but NICADs you must since they will develop a memory and think they are discharged before they really are.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_ion_battery
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicad#Memory_effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-acid_battery

Aw shucks a serious answer to a funny question. :-)