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Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

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Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#351

Post by dghughes »

SushiHippie wrote: post #245
dghughes wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People that know about the 80% trick may then only charge it to 80% of the 80% which now shows 100% which would be 60% (if my morning fog brain is getting it right). But if they know it's actually only 80% when showing 100% they'll charge it to 100%. Then people will complain "they don't make phones like they used to".

80% 80% would be 0.8 0.8 which is 0.64 -> 64%

Thanks but the 100% battery capacity is hidden but still accessible otherwise you couldn't ramp it up past 100% that's why I say it's 60%.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#352

Post by mwarkentin »

Reason077 wrote: post #175
cnity wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just like macOS has Can you please direct me to where this is possible in MacOS? I can't see any option to configure a charging cap except some "smart" option which has been on this whole time but always charges to 100%.

It's not possible to set a hard limit in macOS without third party utility like AlDente [1]. I was referring to the built-in "Optimised battery charging" feature. When this is active and has decided it will cap charging at 80% [2], you get a "charge to full now" option in the battery menu. [1] https://apphousekitchen.com [2] I do agree that this feature sucks and rarely actually works, unless you have a very predicta…

I leave my laptop plugged in 95% of the time so in practice this caps it at 80% (helpful).

I suspect quite a few people do that so it probably is net-good overall, but agree it doesn’t work well if you’re moving around a lot.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#353

Post by danhau »

osdril wrote: post #290
nottorp wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My older intel based macbook pro has started to tell me i use it mostly plugged in and won't charge higher than 80% on its own. There's also a 'charge now' button. I'm not even on a recent Mac OS, it's still on Monterey. No extra apps to handle battery. Of course, it doesn't look like a hard limit, but something triggered by usage patterns.

My problem with the built-in charging limiter is that if you are not extremely consistent in your usage patterns (I am not), it basically never kicks in. I much prefer a manual solution.

This is my problem as well. It‘s nice _when_ it kicks in, but too inconsistent.

Why oh why can‘t Apple just add a hard 80% limit switch somewhere in the battery settings. What happened to thinking of nature, guys?

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#354

Post by nathanasmith »

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 find running on battery, lots of things are throttled or disabled. CPU is slower for example.

FWIW, the performance and CPU features are the same on Mx based MacBooks whether they're plugged in or not.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#355

Post by sherry-sherry »

deely3 wrote: post #186
sherry-sherry wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Do you force close the apps? Don't do this unless an app is unresponsive/not working correctly. It will just make apps slower to restart, using more power than it would if left to suspend/un-suspend as it's meant to.

Issues is: how can I know is app working correctly? I have 15 apps "in memory", my phone started lagging, what should I do?

What do you mean how can you know? If the app isn't responding, I force-close it. That's all.

>I have 15 apps "in memory", my phone started lagging

I wish I could tell you... I have 60+ apps 'in memory/suspended' always. I only close an app if there's an issue. I restart my phone maybe once a month, usually from a software update.

The only ways I've seen my phone (iPhone 13, so two years old) lag is: - playing a demanding game and it gets too hot/throttles - using music via bluetooth + GPS + charging at the same time (gets too hot) - when opening 15+ new tabs in Safari simultaneously (like a group of bookmarks), weirdly makes the whole iOS UI stutter for a bit.

I haven't been able to make it lag otherwise.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#356

Post by nottorp »

danhau wrote: post #353
osdril wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with the built-in charging limiter is that if you are not extremely consistent in your usage patterns (I am not), it basically never kicks in. I much prefer a manual solution.

This is my problem as well. It‘s nice _when_ it kicks in, but too inconsistent. Why oh why can‘t Apple just add a hard 80% limit switch somewhere in the battery settings. What happened to thinking of nature, guys?

Hmm yeah, I changed my pattern and used the laptop on battery for like a week and the charging only to 80% message is gone.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#357

Post by circuit10 »

Kirby64 wrote: post #335
circuit10 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You seemed to be arguing that no one needs this feature and it doesn’t need to exist. Not everyone buys the latest iPhones straight from Apple, I’m typing this on someone’s old iPhone 7 and it works fine. The battery life isn’t great but maybe if Apple had implemented this feature earlier it would be better. Replacing the battery would probably cost almost as much as the phone if I did it via Apple.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#358

Post by luuurker »

rekoil wrote: post #346
luuurker wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To replace the battery you need to know there's a problem with the battery. But the iPhone didn't tell me the issue was the battery. It happened after a software update if I remember correctly, so I did everything from formatting it to reducing the graphics load by using the accessibility settings... nothing worked. When I went to the nearest Apple store, the guy told me that I should probably get a new one. I don't…

I think it's equally possible Apple actually didn't know how many phones would be hit by the feature when they launched it. They knew that old devices (especially common with the well-selling iPhone 6) would fail at peak demand, and wanted to address that, but they probably didn't have an accurate figure of exactly how many devices would be covered by the feature as initially configured. That it took them as long as…

There was a communication problem, but the main problem was the slow iPhones. I bought the phone and Apple then made it slow and laggy. I wouldn't be here complaining if they added a setting to disable the throttling (which I probably didn't yet need at the time as the phone had never shutdown before the update).

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#359

Post by gamblor956 »

JBiserkov wrote: post #91
gamblor956 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently picked up my Surface 3 for the first time since 2017. It had a 66% charge from the last time I used it... It's not so much the OS as the device firmware, since the Surface 4 runs the same OS but has significantly worse battery performance.

That's a joke, right? The battery held a charge for 6 years?!

It did. I was surprised myself since I thought the battery would be completely dead (as in, 0 charge and incapable of holding a charge) but I am using right now and it still has about the same battery life as it did before.

Re: Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

#360

Post by Kirby64 »

circuit10 wrote: post #357
Kirby64 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You seemed to be arguing that no one needs this feature and it doesn’t need to exist. Not everyone buys the latest iPhones straight from Apple, I’m typing this on someone’s old iPhone 7 and it works fine. The battery life isn’t great but maybe if Apple had implemented this feature earlier it would be better. Replacing the battery would probably cost almost as much as the phone if I did it via Apple.

I'm not sure what you're arguing for here? I'm not aware of any phone that offered a charge limiting option (Android included) 7 years ago. And replacement parts for super old phones remain relatively high in comparison to the value of the device. This is just like cars; at some point it isn't worth fixing/repairing it.
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