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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?

#331

Post by Night_Thastus »

_yb2s wrote: post #330
Night_Thastus wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not at all… basically no devices let you limit charge to any desired preset level. Apple devices have a system that slows down/pauses the charging so the device spends less time fully charged, but still charges to 100% eventually. With careful management, you can as much as triple or quadruple the usable lifespan of a regular lithium battery consumer device.

I don't mean at the user level, I mean done automatically by the hardware, firmware or OS.

I was under the impression all phones already do this.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#332

Post by westonmyers »

almog wrote: post #10

I recently bought a Pixel phone after having Samsung for a few years. Immediately the one thing that annoyed me was the lack for both limiting charge as well as enforcing slow charging. Both not only are useful for long term battery life but also, since I'm an occasional thruhiker (right now on my way to Mexico along The Continental Divide Trail), they make better use of my power bank. Without rooting the device thes…

For devices in that scenario, I've started using a hardware solution: Chargie[0].

0: https://chargie.org

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#333

Post by bayindirh »

mrguyorama wrote: post #329
bayindirh wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, my wife's work supplied EliteBook's battery has been replaced today due to excessive swallowing, and it's definitely younger than my 2014 MacBook Pro.

An entire production run of Macbook Pro 2015s had to be recalled and replaced because the batteries were inflating and bursting into flames.

...and Samsung recalled two series of their flagship phones to replace their batteries, and fail (and cancel the model altogether). Because of their failure, planes started and still continue to announce phone charging related security measures during take-off.

Every company makes big mistakes. Also Apple once built laptops with self-cooking GPUs, a couple ones very fragile keyboards, a series with too-sensitive screen coatings.

We can write tons of problems with every producer. The most important metric is whether they're learning from that or not. As far as I can see Samsung and Apple learnt their lessons.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#334

Post by technothrasher »

criddell wrote: post #199
artimaeis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I'm still holding on to my 2015 Kindle Voyage. I don't like any other model I've tried, and they stopped selling these Voyages many years ago now. So I have to deal with the old battery. But it still lasts for a week or so, I just have to charge it on weekends. When it was new it would go for about six weeks. I know you can buy Chinese replacement batteries for it, but I worry about the quality control of those, so until the battery goes completely dead I'll stick with it. Then I might try an aftermarket battery out of desperation.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#335

Post by Kirby64 »

circuit10 wrote: post #165
Kirby64 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost to replace the battery on iPhones, which most people would consider to be “difficult to replace” is only $100 directly from Apple. Really seems like paying an extra $100 every 2-3 years is a decent deal for something that has 20% more battery.

> Really seems like paying an extra $100 every 2-3 years is a decent deal for something that has 20% more battery. Maybe if you have a lot of money to waste, but people should have the option to choose

They do on modern iPhones? You can pick: 20% less battery life, and your battery likely won't need to be replaced for 5-6 years, or 20% more and you'll get normal battery longevity.

Also, we're talking in the context of a $1000-1200 phone for the base config. 10% of that cost for a replaced battery does not seem outrageous to me.

As someone else pointed out, the cheaper phones Apple sells have correspondingly cheaper battery repair costs.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#336

Post by Hextinium »

vuln wrote: post #256
Zetobal wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPhones with degraded batteries have the tendency to shutdown on peak loads. Default is fine but only after a big fat pop-up with the option to deactivate it.

As if the typical user (not anyone that browsers hn) actually reads the _big fat popup_ and would just click through anyways. With no care or worry about what that pop up said or the implications. Apple “You clicked a pop up that said you accepted random shutdowns and reboots due to a degraded battery instead of allowing us to degrade performance to enable a stable experience with a degraded battery.” How would you e…

Default to speed and then the first time a device has crashed "your battery has worn to a level that we will have to start slowing down your device or it will keep crashing, will you accept these crashes or slow your device?"

That would be transparent and also allow decisions, if AppleCare also allowed for free battery replacement after receiving that message it would be a PR boon, not a kerfuffle.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#337

Post by Rapzid »

shortcake27 wrote: post #280
Rapzid wrote: 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.

> and haven't had an issue. Every lithium battery in every device you’ve used has degraded. It’s not a manufacturing issue, it’s a chemistry issue. If you haven’t had an issue, then you aren’t paying attention, or you don’t keep your devices for long enough for the degradation to be a problem. This doesn’t mean there’s no issue, this just means the issue doesn’t affect you personally. A small change in charging habit…

I guess I'm just inattentive, ignorant, dismissive, and environmentally unconscious.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#338

Post by panda888888 »

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…

I have a slightly older iPhone, and the "Optimized battery charging" setting only kicks in maybe 10% of the time for me. I don't love your proposal of mislabeling the percentages, but I really wish there were a way to make my iPhone only charge up to 80% and then stop.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#339

Post by culi »

mrguyorama wrote: post #328
culi wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's THE argument From people I've talked to, it seems like the VAST majority of people are under the impression that Apple does this as a planned obsolescence practice. In fact, this thread is the first one I've come across where most people seem to get the point of the feature

The planned obsolescence was when Apple put a small battery in a flagship phone that could no longer produce the required voltage and/or current to keep up with hardware demands despite being only moderately used. Apple is the same company that brags about forever years of software updates, but plenty of people were running into this issue after only a few years, including my own mother who's iPhone couldn't even mak…

This is a tangent to the original point, but I'll play. Apple iPhones have long had some of the highest battery lives of smartphones on the market despite having some of the smallest batteries. Since they only have to worry about a single OS, they can optimize away to achieve this. Smaller batteries means less environmental harm, lighter phones, and more space for other parts. There are endless reasons to bag on Apple, but the fact that they can achieve much better battery life with much smaller batteries is not one of them

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#340

Post by Izkata »

euroderf wrote: post #139
euroderf wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which begs the question: if I charge my new Mac with an iPhone charger (8W), will it lengthen the battery life ?

Answering peer comments: oh but it DOES work. I forgot my charger in another town so I bought a USB-A/C cable and tried it out. Again, the iPhone charger is 8W. This is also the value reported by '/usr/sbin/system_profiler SPPowerDataType | grep Wattage' When the Mac is open and in use (2023, M2) the iPhone charger can just about keep the charge level level, depending on usage. But then when I close the Mac, it can e…

My crude understanding is the charging speed wouldn't directly have an effect, but the heat generated by faster charging would.
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