Doubt it will make a difference. The charger has 3 modes indicated by its leds (well, 4 if you count the discharge cycle which you have to initiate manually). It first charges, with the led lit up all red. Then, after a while it turns to green. After some more time, it remains green, but starts blinking.
Now, I lost the manual, but given some common sense, and knowing how battery chargers operate, it's pretty obvious that red means charging, green means trickle charging and blinking means "I'm done, get these batteries out already".
However, I just put in the batteries I charged today, and the led came up red. It's been about five minutes ago (acting on your suggestion to double charge them), but it appears your idea might work after all. Damn charger ain't as automated as I assumed.
I'll report on battery life later, once the double charge has run its course, and after some sleep (it's a quarter to 6 in the morning over here
)
Edit: that might explain their piss-poor performance in my digital camera as well. Granted, I mainly use it indoors, meaning it needs to use the flash a lot, and I use the LCD as a viewfinder (default setting is off, and manual suggests leaving it that way), but they drain unreasonably fast.
ps: something else I noticed is that when I leave those batteries, after a normal one cycle full charge, and try to use them after a month, the gp2x already marks them as "medium" or "empty" (don't remember which one it was), and playtime was drastically shortened. Now I don't have much experience with NiMH, and I know all batteries drain by themselves if not used after a while, but I don't think it's normal if your batteries drain themselves to near depletion just sitting on a shelf for a month. So either the batteries are at fault here (hard to believe; all 8 are new, bought them especially for the gp2x, and now use them in the camera as well) or the charger charges my battery to only a fraction of their full capacity.
