51–60 of 249 posts
You can control the battery % at which a device will begin and stop charging - so there's no need for this. Idk what all this misinformation is about.
Sure, but the battery gets heated when left plugged in, which is not good for its health.
You should have talked to Google, instead of numerous people. http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_li... Summary: Similar to a mechanical device that wears out faster with heavy use, so also does the depth of discharge (DoD) determine the cycle count. The shorter the discharge (low DoD), the longer the battery will last. If at all possible, avoid full discharges and charge the battery more often…
Finally, a citation, thank you.
I hate to sound like an ass, but I think I need to say something anyway... Is this the kind of question we want at HN? It's been done to death elsewhere, and is easily answered with a quick search. I know there can be a fine line between a good, thought-provoking question and a useless one, and, to me at least, this seems too far on the "useless question" side of things. It's about basic hardware maintenance, and I'm…
My current ThinkPad w540 does not seem to do this in Linux, so I suspect that either Linux or Lenovo has solved the problem, but I haven't really investigated what happens. I leave my ThinkPad plugged into a dock most of the day at the office like I did with the W700, but it's battery still has almost full capacity a year later and can still keep it running for 5+ hours on a full charge. (Linux could never get the 7+ hours that it can get under Windows and I haven't run Windows for more than 1 hour in almost a year.)
The battery lost 50% of its capacity. The laptop was almost exclusively used while connected to the charger.
So if there hasn't been a big change in how laptop batteries work in the last few years I'd recommend removing the battery whenever the charger is connected if possible.
You could remove the battery when its charged and stay on the cord. Because battery life is heat-related. And leaving a charged battery in the laptop when you have a cord is chewing up lifetime without benefit.
Good advice. The only caveat being this only works for certain laptop models
> For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time. An ideal use would be a commuter who uses her notebook on the train, then plugs it in at the office to charge. This keeps the battery juices flowing. If on the other hand, you use a desktop computer at work, and save a notebook for…
The actual preference for getting the MOST DISCHARGES out of a lithium ion battery is discharging it to 50%. This, however, doesn't not to equate to longest battery life (in terms of age) for the use within a laptop/phone.
Edit: There is something state of charge estimation models which may rely on this variable to decide how full they'll charge the battery. If you don't fully discharge and fully recharge the battery to update this capacity value, the SOC estimation model might overcharge the battery, thus decreasing the lifespan.
Disclaimer: my knowledge of the field is from ca 2010.
1) Lots of deep discharge cycles do negatively affect battery life. Try not to jump between 0% and 100% too much.
2) Li-ion batteries do not love being at 100% SOC (state of charge). As batteries become more dense, the membranes become thinner. High SOC equates to high chemical potential, which will break down membranes faster. As such, avoid leaving your battery at 100%. This wasn't as much of a problem with older batteries with thicker membranes, but is becoming more and more an issue as we try to squeeze every ounce of density out of batteries.
3) Roughly 70% SOC is where a battery is happiest, but the whole range of ~30-80% is pretty happy for a li ion cell. Try to keep your battery at ~70% or so overnight, at 50% or so for long sleeps.
A good usage pattern: plug in and let charge to 90%, unplug and use for a couple of hours, plug back in at 50% or so, rinse and repeat.
This tells me that leaving your battery plugged in whenever possible is good, since it minimizes the number of cycles you're putting on the battery. If you unplug the battery once it's fully charged (and proceed to use it), you're just subtracting cycles from the battery's life.
On the other hand, apparently there's a cost to letting the battery sit at 100% charge for too long. I don't know how long "too long is", but Apple's battery site says this about long-term storage: "Do not fully charge or fully discharge your device’s battery — charge it to around 50%. If you store a device when its battery is fully discharged, the battery could fall into a deep discharge state, which renders it incapable of holding a charge. Conversely, if you store it fully charged for an extended period of time, the battery may lose some capacity, leading to shorter battery life." [2] Keep in mind this is specifically talking about long-term storage only.
Taken together, I interpret all this to mean that it's best to leave the laptop plugged in at 100% whenever possible, provided that you're occasionally taking it out and using it (so it's not "long-term storage").
That said, I'd love to see some quantitative benchmarks to confirm all this. ;)
References:
As I sit and look at the replies already coming in, may I just add an enormous [citation needed] to the entire discussion? A question brought on by too many conflicting anecdotes can not be resolved by throwing another unsourced anecdote on the pile. (Incidentally, I'm at least a bit curious myself as to the answer, and have my own pile of conflicting anecdotes I've read.)