The so called "memory effect" in NiCad batteries is largely a myth

the MAIN source of pain in rechargeable batteries is the discharge rate. Remember, a battery is generating energy by letting a chemical reaction occur bwetween two ionized components. This invariably results in crystal growth

The faster you let the battery discharge, the faster the resultant crystal growth. And if you remember playing with Rock Candy as a kid, the faster the crystals grew, the larger they were.

Unfortunately, the larger a crystal is, the more stable a bonding structure it is. Which means that if you discharge at a rate above the "ideal rate" for a particular battery, you will grow crystals that are large enough that you cannot re-dissolve them at normal charging levels. Shipboard systems for example provide an Overcharge rate to deal with this in Lead Acid batteries, but you can't do the same thing with a cell phone or similar device.

Older phones OVER Specced the battery capacity. OTOH, newer phones started going down the "pocket phone" path - by UNDERSPECING battery capacity and essentially over-discharging the batteries - thereby shortening their lifecycle by the creation of the above oversized crystals.

See the gotcha is that while the electronics inside the phones have dramatically improved their power consumption requirements, the actual physics of Radio Transmission haven't changed. And hence the amount of power needed for your phone to talk to the tower hasn't changed much.

What this means is that if your phone heats up as you talk or charge it, what is going on is that it is being discharged at a rate above the design ideal. Now battery designers have been working hard to increase surface area (surface area has a lot to do with rated Discharge Rate), but as phones get smaller and smaller, and laptops more and more powerful this becomes a problem

On the laptop side, the part that currently is starting to become a significant factor is memory. 4 GB of RAM clearly drains more power than 1GB or RAM. Similarly faster RAM consumes more power than slower RAM.

So while the expert consulted is right - your battery WILL die, one thing to realize is that shorter calls mean longer battery life.