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Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

electronics.stackexchange.com

261–270 of 362 posts

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#261
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many products have components that downgrade under specific situations and they never explicitly tell the customer - and most customers don’t ask because it’s “complicated tech” they don’t want to know about it.

I think a lot of laptops do this because their cooling system is too weak for the CPU. The Lenovo Thinkpad t480s comes to my mind: with factory settings, the CPU was unable to reach its advertised boost frequency nor maintain its max non-boost frequency for more than a few minutes. After 5 to 10 minutes, the machine was usually running at 300/400mhz under its advertised clock speed. Undervolting helped a lot but coul…

Thinkpads, for a long time have had a fan speed that's possible, but never reached by the firmware's automatic mode. On Linux, this sets the fan to its true maximum:

    # echo disengaged > /proc/acpi/ibm/fan
I use the thinkfan utility to run the fan more aggressively, including 'disengaged' over 70C.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Do we know they actually didn’t tell people? Does anyone read through the “What’s New” pop-ups after they upgrade the OS

I'm an avid reader of pop-ups and release notes. They didn't tell people.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#263
post #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…

I use the paid version of an app called Al Dente [1] to set the battery charging level to a specific limit. The app has a free mode. It has more features than what I stated, and works on Intel Macs and Apple Silicon Macs (limited only by what the underlying hardware allows).

[1]: https://apphousekitchen.com/

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#264
post #253
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this switch is available to users on iPhone 15's

I know, I hope Apple will decide to expose it to everyone in the future, since it's already implemented..

It would be very easy to implement in software. Just display a green and yellow/red bar on the battery status icon and allow for people to say full is 80%, empty is 20%. Or something.

For me it is well worth going from charger to charger (they are everywhere, especially if you put some wireless chargers here and there) if that means the phone can still do a full day after 5 years.

I generally use phones until they stop working. I'm into my 3rd year with my iPhone 12 mini, the phone is still super fast, takes great pictures and still feels like "my new phone".

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#265

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…

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Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#267

I always try to keep between 20-80% with my iPhone and consequently always feel bad about my AirPods. The case is always as empty as possible, the pods as full as possible. They spend almost their entire life at 100% as a result of the charging case. Even though I always use them at a max of 1 hour or so at a time. In other words: I first need to drain the case to the very bad 0% to get the pods to go down, otherwise…

> The case is always as empty as possible, the pods as full as possible. They spend almost their entire life at 100% as a result of the charging case. Even though I always use them at a max of 1 hour or so at a time.

I wouldn't assume that Apple hasn't thought about this or that your earbuds are telling you the truth about their charge level. I have a Jabra headset that is four years old, and it is smart enough to profile my usage and optimize its charging. In normal use, I wear it during the workday and plug it in every night. In response, it slowly charges up to about 60% by morning, which is more than enough to get through the day. However, when I go on a trip and charge it less frequently, it responds by quickly and fully charging when I do get a chance to plug it in. (I only wish I could tell it when I'm about to leave on a trip, but the battery has lasted four years of almost daily use now, so it's a small price to pay.) If Jabra can do this, Apple can too.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#268
post #266

I'm a simple man. My phone needs a charge I plug it in. When it's charged and/or I need it I unplug it. I largely trust companies to get these basics right and haven't had an issue.

If the company gives you a "battery saver" option, always enable it. If they don't, see if you can find 3rd party software to, or unplug it at 85%.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#269
post #205

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…

Bought my previous iphone in early 2018. Changed the battery this spring because its health reportedly fell below 80% of its maximum capacity. 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 c…

If you were talking about the battery in your EV, the cost of replacement would be a bit higher. There are more things with batteries than iphones.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#270

I wish my car can self-limit to 80%. Right now I have to set a timer to remind myself to unplug. If I forget to set the timer, I'm screwed. If at the exact moment it's inconvenient to go unplug, I'm screwed. Replacing the battery costs 18000 EUR.

What car do you have? I've been used-car shopping for an EV and every one I've looked at here let me limit charge.

Mercedes plug-in hybrid from 2015.
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