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Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

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Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#151
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by reducing performance like Apple does with old iPhones What Apple did was clock down the CPU of iPhones with degraded batteries in order to reduce peak load which would otherwise result in crashes that would have made the device borderline unusable below some charge percentage. Yes, they should have shipped the feature off by default and with a toggle, but the feature itself was amazing as it let already old phon…

> "What Apple did was clock down the CPU of iPhones with degraded batteries in order to reduce peak load" It wasn't what Apple was doing that was the problem, it was the fact that they were initially quite secretive about it! People just started noticing their phones slowing down without explanation. Now days iOS tells if your battery no longer supports peak performance, which is the right thing to do. > "Yes, they s…

>People just started noticing their phones slowing down without explanation.

Also, Apple already had somewhat of a reputation; this was far from the first time they would do shitty things, blame the users, and/or refuse to communicate what's going on.

It's a classic case of 100% right and 100% fired: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDO24U3hMkU

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#152
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That way it will make people aware These are all electronic devices. You can also just put big warnings in software instead of calling it 125%. It's not any different from filling up a blender, water bottle, etc. to 80% instead of 100% to avoid creating a mess. Sooner or later people will know to avoid charging batteries to 100%. > that they are reducing the battery life by overcharging Unfortunately their capitali…

> Unfortunately their capitalist asses probably want you to reduce the battery life faster and buy a new device This tactic would work great in a world with only one phone manufacturer.

My anecdotal evidence is that people tend to stick to the same brand when upgrading phones.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#153

Samsung phones have a good feature which limit charging to 85%. The only thing it's missing is the easy "I want full charge today" button, you need to go deep into settings to toggle this. The other minor annoyance is that subjectively the battery charged to 100% seems to make a bigger difference than the reported 15% indicates - it seems like 30% or even more. Maybe some battery recalibration issue. But it doesn't b…

You (or at least I) can add a quick toggle button called Protect Battery. This makes it as easy to toggle as all the other options like wifi, bluetooth, etc.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#154
FYI, on Apple Silicon Apple included a firmware-level "hard-switch" to limit the charge to 75/80% only. It was discovered by marcan while working on Asahi and in my experience it's much more convenient than the built-in ML-based solution (and also less hacky and bloated than AlDente).

See this discussion [0] on GitHub for the explanation and this snippet [1] for easy use.

This solution also works while the laptop is sleeping, the only limitation is that it doesn't survive reboots.

[0] https://github.com/actuallymentor/battery/pull/163

[1] https://github.com/actuallymentor/battery/pull/163#issuecomm...

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#155

Samsung phones have a good feature which limit charging to 85%. The only thing it's missing is the easy "I want full charge today" button, you need to go deep into settings to toggle this. The other minor annoyance is that subjectively the battery charged to 100% seems to make a bigger difference than the reported 15% indicates - it seems like 30% or even more. Maybe some battery recalibration issue. But it doesn't b…

Pro tip: go to the settings app and type "prot" in the search bar at the top, the first search results will be "Protect battery", so you don't need to navigate to it step by step

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#156
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on your definition of dismal. Any phone repair shop can open phones and replace batteries. There are also disassembly videos for most models on YouTube. I looked at them, ordered parts and replaced the battery on my Samsung A40 when it started to discharge too quickly. I also replaced the camera after a hard crash on the floor broke the autofocus. Maybe not having Samsung shops makes all of that dismal but…

Market fragmentation among Androids means that nobody stocks parts for anything and the margins are so low, a lot of shops will only do the brands they want to. I couldn't find anyone to replace the battery in my Google Nexus phones, every time I tried, in a major metropolitan area. Ended up having to do it myself. You can walk into nearly any cell phone shop in the world with an iPhone and walk out with a replaced b…

I'm not sure that the problem is fragmentation inside an operating system. It's how widespread some brands are. I never had such problems with any Samsung phone I owned, even a Sony Xperia one years ago. I guess that it means that Apple, Samsung and even Sony (back at the time) are more mainstream than Google and for shops it's not worth to keep spare parts of Google phones. To be fair, the last time I had to replace a screen of a Samsung because it dropped down flat on the screen instead of on a corner, I had to wait one day for the replacement part to arrive to the shop. I put the SIM in the old phone or in my tablet and went back the next day. I'm not replacing the screen myself, it looks to require some extra skills compared to a battery.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#157

On Android, I use a terminal script called Advanced Charging Controller (ACC) to automate keeping the battery under 80% and some other battery saving tweaks. It allows you to charge to any value (like 80%), then stop charging until it discharges to another set value, which triggers it to start charging again. That was you can keep it between something like 70% and 80% while you leave it charging over night. It also h…

AccA is awesome! I used it to repurpose my decade old Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime as a custom wall clock and alarm. I couldn't figure out how to power it without a battery, and If I had plugged it in all time I was risking an exploded battery. Enter AccA, it remains between 50-55% all the time, along with prioritizing battery-idle mode (which means the device tries to draw power directly from the external power source…

That is a good idea. Years back, I had a very old phone that I used as an alarm clock and media player. It would have been nice to not worry about charging. I did disable the mobile and wifi radios, which saved a tons of battery.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#159

Pro Tip: Use this nifty charge limiter¹ on your macbooks to limit your laptop charging. I can see a noticeable improvement in my MBP battery life. 1: https://github.com/AppHouseKitchen/AlDente-Charge-Limiter

I think this [0] native approach is preferable

[0] https://github.com/actuallymentor/battery/pull/163

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#160

I wish they would label it so that it shows 100% charge when it's actually charged 80%, and then give an option to 'overcharge' a configurable amount till 125% (the current 100%). That way it will make people aware that they are reducing the battery life by overcharging, and be picky when they overcharge. But this won't happen because reduced battery life is a big direct and indirect(by reducing performance like Appl…

Panasonic Let's Note series had an eco button that charges it up 80% only, man I love that series of laptops.
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