201–210 of 362 posts
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…
This is an excellent answer and explanation. It’s helpful for people that want a deeper understanding of what’s going on with lithium batteries and where the 80% recommendations come from. But in terms of general advice that does the most good for the average person, I strongly recommend just doing whatever the manufacturer says. Just use the device and charge it when you want. Live. Some team at Apple, Tesla, Google…
I'm so fucking tired of every affordable BMS on the market being hardwired to cut charge at 4.3 V (beyond what the charger will even reach per cell, so you get no top balancing lmao) and allow going down to 2.5 V like bruh what are you even protecting at that point, staying at those extremes for any amount of time will destroy the battery anyway. It would've cost them 2 cents to replace fixed resistors with those screw potentiometers for range adjustment.
There is so much confusion, misinformation and naive testing about this topic. I've only learned about this "80% battery thing" when researching EVs recently and it seems to have been (maybe) spawned by the Nissan Leaf many years ago. And now it's appearing on HN seemingly once a week. What has changed? Is someone running an information(or disinformation) campaign? Blog or app to promote? I've not spoken earlier for…
By the way, they also warn from fully discharging the battery, and recommend an charge range from 30% to 80%. This would mean you limit yourself to only 50% of the capacity. It is questionable whether gains in battery lifetime can outweigh this loss in realistic scenarios.
The main lesson seems to be that you shouldn't fully discharge your battery when you can avoid it easily, and not fully charge it if you know in advance that you won't need the full charge.
This post doesn't give any actual argument why you should charge your device only to 80%. If you use your phone for, say, four years, and charge it to 100% regularly, how much will the battery life deteriorate during those four years? I assume if the fully-charged capacity after three years is still at least 80% of the original, then regularly charging it fully was absolutely worth it. The point is that deterioration…
I could not care less to be honest. Always charged to 100%. Dropped the phone multiple times throughout its lifetime. Fully discharged at random. Exposed to 50°C and direct sunlight as well as well below zero. 5 years is a good job done for a non-replaceable battery. And the cost of replacement was like 50usd or something in apple store.
The question is: why should I start bothering?..
I want my device to plug in and out without much thinking as this is the scenario 99% of customers will follow. So the device I am charging should be smart enough to handle overheating, overcharging, its battery’s lifecycle, etc. and I believe it is possible to do without involving end users into this decision making.
If the lower threshold is 30% let it be so. Tell me via notification to connect a charger to help the precious energy cell stay safe and healthy. If the upper is 80% just lie to me saying that you are fully charged when in reality you are rotating the ions. Just be consistent in the average behavior and that’s it.
There is so much confusion, misinformation and naive testing about this topic. I've only learned about this "80% battery thing" when researching EVs recently and it seems to have been (maybe) spawned by the Nissan Leaf many years ago. And now it's appearing on HN seemingly once a week. What has changed? Is someone running an information(or disinformation) campaign? Blog or app to promote? I've not spoken earlier for…
Tesla charges battery to 80%. The supercharger charges it there in less than an hour and manages thermals. And it charges very slowly at the end. Tesla battery lasts very well. Keeping battery between 20-80% is healthy. Your comment kind of implies that 80% charge is irrelevant, but the things you mention PLUS the discharge depth or how full you charge also affect the equation from what I gather. https://www.greencar…
I don't mean to merely imply that only charging up to 80% charge is (essentially) irrelevant. I mean to state that it is.
What actually happens at around 80% is that the charging regime changes. It's nothing to do with "making the battery age less". A lithium battery has two charging regimes: Constant Current and Constant Voltage. Up to about 80% a lithium battery is charged with constant current => charge speed is limited by the maximum output current of the charger => bigger charger faster charger speed => happy customer.
Above ~80% you switch to Constant Voltage. Charger now charges at a constant voltage and the charge current drops off following a log curve. The closer you get to 100% the lower the current => battery charges slower and slower the closer you get to 100%. This is a simple matter of physics and is the antithesis to "Fast Charging" which is why fast charging always talks about charging up to 80%.
"but the things you mention PLUS the discharge depth or how full you charge also affect the equation from what I gather."
Yes, depth of discharge (DoD) does affect battery ageing. But there's also a dozen other factors as well. Some affect the battery life more than DoD.
So yeah don't waste your life trying to compile custom kernels or whatever to only charge to 80% :) Just help the battery keep cool with what I posted earlier. It's all you can do. Worry about other things in life :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Apple's know-how in battery management is always a couple of generations ahead of its closest competitor. > M powered MacBooks added (...) Things that Lenovo laptops have had for a generation?
IBM Thinkpads have "cap charge at n%" setting since 1999 or something, but it's not smart. You set it. It was also present in HP and Dell's business notebooks for quite some time, but again, it's not smart. Just a pre-defined percentage. Apple manages maximum charge capacity automatically depending on the way you use your computer.
Apple cannot predict where you are going to use laptop on AC power at home or whether you are going somewhere and need a full charge. So manual control is better.
It feels like manufacturers decided to offset their lawnmowing to end users. I am not an expert in this field but 0% charge is not zero as far as I know. Completely drained battery cannot be charged and is usually unrecoverably dead. As for 100% again there is a speculation that 100% does not reflect the full charge and if it does, then the battery itself has safeguards to cut off power. I want my device to plug in a…
Some mad people even charge huge 6c-2500mAh batteries like this, but it is insanity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
FWIW, I can't speak to other operating systems, but with Linux (maybe requiring cooperative hardware? I'm actually not sure) you can configure it to stop charging at a certain % if the charge controller doesn't have reserve. I can find a link if you're interested; IIRC it was easy to setup and easy to temporarily disable if you need to fully charge for e.g. a long flight without outlets
https://linrunner.de/tlp/index.html