Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

electronics.stackexchange.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 362 posts

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#191

Post by usrusr »

vultour wrote: post #188
onetimeuse92304 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some more responsible device manufacturers are doing this. For example, the industrial equipment I worked with charges batteries much more sustainably, also by charging it with less current. Remember, there are multiple factors when it comes to batteries degrading. Voltage (how far the battery is charged) is one of them, but so is the charging current (how fast ) and also the temperature during and outside of chargin…

I don't understand the obsession with fast charging. I can probably count the number of times I needed to charge my phone instantly on one hand. The other day I bought a MagSafe charger because my new phone doesn't fit properly on my old wireless charger, turns out it doesn't support the "legacy" 5W power bricks. Now it's sitting unused in the drawer because I don't want to charge with more than 5 watts.

Also an issue for travel-friendly charging solutions: there just aren't any truly lightweight USB-C cables that merely support the old USB2-era maximum currents that are perfectly fine for overnight charging. If you count grams, you're ent4irely better off with certain cable models of bulky A to micro-B + adapter.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#192

Post by chrismorgan »

bayindirh wrote: post #124
rekoil wrote: 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…

Apple's know-how in battery management is always a couple of generations ahead of its closest competitor. My 2008 MacBook Pro was able to detect battery problems one year before they started to manifest physically. They did it by adding another controller and an independent firmware to the battery itself, but there was no better tech at that time. M powered MacBooks added auto hold-off (discharge to 80%, keep it ther…

> My 2008 MacBook Pro was able to detect battery problems one year before they started to manifest physically.

That may or may not be noteworthy. Despite half my family using MacBooks, and some having had major battery problems, I’ve never heard of such a notification as you describe (including at least one where I’d certainly have expected to hear about it). And the similar system SMART for storage devices is notoriously unreliable: I’ve personally had devices with dire warnings chug along merrily for plenty more years, and observed one or two failures that never received any warnings.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#193

Post by vladvasiliu »

Reason077 wrote: post #145
vladvasiliu wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

Absolutely agree.

But my response was to the parent comment (emphasis mine):

> Noone should ever charge to more than 80%. That is short sighted and environmentally moronic. After less than two years a device will have more capacity at 80% than the same battery will have at 100% if it was charged to 100%.

My point is that I find there are legitimate uses cases for sometimes charging to 100%. And, indeed, those cases are much better served if most of the time I only charge less. In my case, this could be much less (50% of my iphone's battery is more than enough 360 days a year – and I know beforehand when it's going to be one of those 5 remaining days)

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#194

Post by fingerlocks »

rat9988 wrote: post #173
KennyBlanken wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do we know they actually didn’t tell people? Does anyone read through the “What’s New” pop-ups after they upgrade the OS, or just blindly dismiss them?

Apple provides a very comprehensive user manual that ships as a pre-installed app on every phone. There are large headings describing the latest features right when you open it.

I don’t recall being unaware of this feature before it became a “scandal”, but I’m one of those weirdos that reads the release pop-ups.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#195

Post by bayindirh »

dalore wrote: post #190
bayindirh wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant the automatic one. My charge cycles are not very predictable, but periodically my Mac says that It'll hold-off charge, and uses battery until 80%, then uses power adapter. Then charges the battery fully later in the day if I'm connected. Sometimes it flat out refuses the charge. Then I disconnect and use the battery until 30% or so. Then charge when convenient (clarification: It'd possibly charge if I hit a c…

> Why not? I find running on battery, lots of things are throttled or disabled. CPU is slower for example. That's probably a good reason for why not.

I generally do mundane tasks like SSH sessions or zoom meetings when I'm on battery. Heavier tasks are always offloaded to my desktop system, most of the times, so running on battery here and there doesn't impact many things in my case.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#196

Post by Gloomily3819 »

rekoil wrote: post #116
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…

> 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…

All the shit was deserved for altering phones without the consent of the consumer. I don't care how good they had in their hearts, get the user's consent first.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#197

Post by willvarfar »

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…

But then the unscrupulous competitor advertising 100 hours will get customers and the responsible company advertising 80 hours doesn't, even if they advertise 20 hours overcharge?

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#198

Post by bayindirh »

chrismorgan wrote: post #192
bayindirh wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's know-how in battery management is always a couple of generations ahead of its closest competitor. My 2008 MacBook Pro was able to detect battery problems one year before they started to manifest physically. They did it by adding another controller and an independent firmware to the battery itself, but there was no better tech at that time. M powered MacBooks added auto hold-off (discharge to 80%, keep it ther…

> My 2008 MacBook Pro was able to detect battery problems one year before they started to manifest physically. That may or may not be noteworthy. Despite half my family using MacBooks, and some having had major battery problems, I’ve never heard of such a notification as you describe (including at least one where I’d certainly have expected to hear about it). And the similar system SMART for storage devices is notori…

I used three batteries on that particular MacBook and it always shown a "! Service Battery" warning before things went bad. The battery life, and shape of the battery was indicative of anything, either.

Oh, don't bring up SMART. I remember long-testing >100 disks, and most of them passed (it took hours), and all of them failed within 10 days after facing real workloads. We needed a temporary storage for migrating things, but we lost no data, because it was just a copy operation.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#199

Post by criddell »

artimaeis wrote: post #16
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…

I just picked up my 2017 iPad Pro. It was last charged Nov 15. Been sitting by the bed mostly unused since. Currently at 80% charge. I haven’t experienced what you’re describing on an Apple device since they switched the laptops away from Intel chips. In my experience, the OS does matter. I can’t believe how bad the rest of the industry is at this. Amazon’s Kindle line is incredible at this IME, but those are pretty…

Which Kindle do you have?

A couple of years ago I finally upgraded to an Oasis and the Oasis battery life is significantly worse than my previous Paperwhite. It’s still good enough — I have to charge every two weeks — but the Paperwhite was better.

The Oasis is still my favorite Kindle (it’s my third).

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#200

Post by robertlagrant »

rgblambda wrote: post #152
robertlagrant wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think that depends on the brand. If they like the product, then yes. If the product has terrible battery life, probably not so much.
Post reply on HN