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Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

electronics.stackexchange.com

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Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#291

Post by mananaysiempre »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #222
aikinai wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the latter have Power Nap enabled?

Don't have my MBP (late 2013) on hand to check, but IIRC the power nap was enabled only when plugged in. That's the issue with regular PCs: most don't have the choice anymore to use S3 suspend. They default to "modern standby", the half-assed copy of Apple's power nap.

IIUC both Intel and AMD haven’t supported S3 on their CPUs for a couple generations now. The functionality is still technically in the firmware, but it’s broken to a varying extent.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#292

Post by bhpm »

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…

Why even go that far? Just call 100% what is actually 80% on the battery and call it a day. We already get “actual formatted capacity less” when it comes to data storage, and EV batteries are generally under-provisioned.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#293

Post by Tade0 »

osdril wrote: post #289
AnonC wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

I don't know if they changed this, but I think AlDente follows a polling approach where it periodically checks the charge level and enable/disable the charging accordingly. Such solution is more hacky and it also could cause some sleep-related issues. The SMC key discovered my marcan is nicer because it enables the same functionality without having to poll anything, as it's built into macOS. Furthermore, I don't care…

I had such a switch in my old Samsung laptop. Works much better than software-based solutions, which are often simply unreliable.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#294

Post by venj »

Zak wrote: post #261
venj wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Indeed, and for the t480s we could undervolt the CPU to help with thermals but these are not normally accessible to the end user.

So if you are an average user of a Lenovo laptop without technical skills, you probably have a machine that does not meet the advertised performance, and no way to fix it.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#295

Post by dncornholio »

cubefox wrote: post #204

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…

> This post doesn't give any actual argument why you should charge your device only to 80%.

It does, it tells you the battery will degrade 5 times less compared to charging it to 100%. If that is worth it is up to you to decide. I charge my phone daily, it's usually around 40% at the end of day so charging it to 80% should only benefit me.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#296

Post by jackmott42 »

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…

The battery ages faster the more it is charged. It is approximately linear. Nothing special about 80%, you could draw the line anywhere.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#297

Post by Tagbert »

nxobject wrote: post #257
Qwertious wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

Well, duh. You're holding it wrong. /s

I never could get that to not work. No matter what I did the signal didn't degrade.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#298

Post by Tagbert »

TerrifiedMouse wrote: post #150
Reason077 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

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.

A lot of laptops do this when running on battery power. Do they pop up notices telling users they are running in reduced power mode?

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#299

Post by _yb2s »

I use a Chargie (chargie.org) hardware device to limit charge on my devices to 80%, and the batteries last nearly forever. Currently typing this on a 4 year old iPhone with like new battery function. I highly recommend these, I’ve been using them since they were first sold. I have no affiliation, but am a very satisfied customer.

For my Macbooks I use an app called Al Dente. I still have have 2016 MacBook with like new battery life.

People will ask is this worth it? Isn’t it a pain to have a device only charged to 80%?

It is totally worth it- because I only do it 80% thing when staying home, so when I travel my devices have full battery health and don’t run empty when I most need them.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#300

Post by Night_Thastus »

_yb2s wrote: post #299

I use a Chargie (chargie.org) hardware device to limit charge on my devices to 80%, and the batteries last nearly forever. Currently typing this on a 4 year old iPhone with like new battery function. I highly recommend these, I’ve been using them since they were first sold. I have no affiliation, but am a very satisfied customer. For my Macbooks I use an app called Al Dente. I still have have 2016 MacBook with like n…

Is that really necessary? Don't basically all modern phones, laptops, tablets, etc all have battery protection software built-in?
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