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Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

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Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#171

Post by i5-2520M »

Arainach wrote: post #3

I've given up trying. If a device is willing to lie to me and only charge to 80% while saying it's charged, great, but all of this "try to stay in a range" logic flies in the face of reality. Every device I use besides my cell phone, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo 3DS has atrocious power drain when not in use. OS does not matter. Windows laptop, Linux laptop, ChromeOS laptop, Android Tablet, Amazon Tablet, you name it…

My samsung tablet (wifi) has an average idle drain of 0.3% per hour, meaning what you see in 2 days would take a week. On windows laptops hibernation can also fix idle drain, but that is a bit of a hack.

The 3ds is atrocious though, even with wifi off. With wifi it can't even last a day.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#172

Post by kergonath »

dandy23 wrote: post #107
hilux wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's well-established that iPhones have longer average lives than Android phones.

Really? If that is true, I wonder how much is due to the fact that the phones are more expensive so people take care of them more or delay their next purchase. It's not because the actual quality would be better. If you pull statistics you also have to filter out the sub 150 dollar Andoid phones which may well have shorter average usage life.

> Really? If that is true, I wonder how much is due to the fact that the phones are more expensive so people take care of them more or delay their next purchase.

Even if it were the case, it does not matter. What does matter is the amount of matter that ends up in landfills. As a matter of fact, we should be pushing for better built, longer lasting devices even if it means spending a bit more in the short term.

> It's not because the actual quality would be better.

Second-hand iPhones are all over the place here in a way that Samsung Galaxies are not, even though they are more popular. You can argue that it is not a proof of high quality, but it is at least a proof that build quality is high enough that 4 years old devices are on average in a good enough state to retain a high resale value.

> If you pull statistics you also have to filter out the sub 150 dollar Andoid phones which may well have shorter average usage life.

Which precisely is the problem. “But they were cheap” is a terrible excuse as we keep burning more non-renewable resources and shovel up heaps of electronic waste in landfills. Besides, we need to look at cost per year, not cost per device as a cheap device you have to change often is more costly over the long term. I am not saying only Apple devices can have high build quality, but it seems nobody is pushing OEMs towards that direction in Android-land.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#173

Post by rat9988 »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #128
actionfromafar wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn’t explain what it did. The feature was amazing, the presentation misleading.

No, Samsung and others spread a bunch of FUD that Apple was crippling their phones to force people to upgrade, and Reddit and HN apple-haters ate it up. Still to this day people on HN repeat it like it's fact, and when you correct them, shift the goalposts to "well they didn't TELL people."

This is not a goalpost shift. It's THE argument. I'm not sure what arguments are there for alternative narratives.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#174

Post by alpaca128 »

crashmat wrote: post #119
kragen wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most recent phones and laptops have batteries that require advanced tools and chemicals to remove and replace

Laptops also? I didn't realise it had gotten this bad anywhere but in Macbooks.

Pretty much all thin modern laptops, Surface Pros etc use copious amounts of glue for different parts. With the worst offender iirc being the Surface Laptop which can't be opened at all without damaging the keyboard.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#175

Post by Reason077 »

cnity wrote: post #164
Reason077 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. All we're asking for is an optional "limit charge to 80%" feature. And, just like macOS has, you can have a very easily accessible "charge to full now" option for those times when you know you're going to need a full charge. Don't forget, "100%" isn't really 100% any more after a year or two of charging to 100% all the time. You've probably lost 20% or so of your battery's capacity and it will be charging…

> just like macOS has Can you please direct me to where this is possible in MacOS? I can't see any option to configure a charging cap except some "smart" option which has been on this whole time but always charges to 100%.

It's not possible to set a hard limit in macOS without third party utility like AlDente [1].

I was referring to the built-in "Optimised battery charging" feature. When this is active and has decided it will cap charging at 80% [2], you get a "charge to full now" option in the battery menu.

[1] https://apphousekitchen.com

[2] I do agree that this feature sucks and rarely actually works, unless you have a very predictable charging schedule.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#176

Post by prima-facie »

belltaco wrote: post #14

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…

Samsung phones have an option called 'Protect battery' which limits the charging to 85%.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#177

Post by close04 »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #128
actionfromafar wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn’t explain what it did. The feature was amazing, the presentation misleading.

No, Samsung and others spread a bunch of FUD that Apple was crippling their phones to force people to upgrade, and Reddit and HN apple-haters ate it up. Still to this day people on HN repeat it like it's fact, and when you correct them, shift the goalposts to "well they didn't TELL people."

The fix had an impact on a core metric of the device: performance. This was the best technical solution to gain longevity, and it was in the interest of users. But doing it under the radar left everyone wondering if it had ulterior motives and let the rumor mill go crazy. Transparency is good even when everything is upsides & roses, and especially important when there are some compromises to be made.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#178

Post by tjoff »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #131
tjoff wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right but I disagree. Yes, devices do not charge batteries to 100% as that is directly damaging. And they don't discharge to 0% for the same reason. So they charge to something slightly less. But that slightly less is for all intents and purposes the only definition of 100% we, as end users, have. It's like saying that your CPU is actually only running at 70% clock frequency but overclocking it to 100% would…

While I agree with your general take and hate that my iphone can't be capped to 80% [0], and love that my otherwise crappy hp laptop can be capped to something like 85% (and reports both cap and max capacity), I don't agree with your final take. To take the phone example, mine usually ends the day around 85%. I just don't use it too often. But I sometimes absolutely do and would trade months of battery life for not b…

But that 20% that makes all the difference will only make a difference when the phone is new.

Otherwise the opposite is true. Refraining to charge fully makes all the difference and saves you from a tough spot.

Which in turn is why (was a bigger problem before) the sentiment that it doesn't matter how good/bad battery life I have as long as it lasts me a day. Well, if you do a complete cycle every day a year old phone will not last a day anymore...

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#179

Post by The_Colonel »

JohnKemeny wrote: post #153
The_Colonel wrote: post #137

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.

Indeed, very useful, thanks for the tip!
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