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A lot of these could be mitigated if phone makers were willing to put in a slightly larger capacity battery and apply more conservative max-min limits in their

A lot of these could be mitigated if phone makers were willing to put in a slightly larger capacity battery and apply more conservative max-min limits in their battery management system. But I guess companies are happy to keep sales up via planned obsolescence.

photojosh 9y ago
My phone rarely gets below 50%, and I'd say it only gets below 20% a handful of days a year. But yes, I've often thought it would be nice to have a toggle to say "Prolong battery life (as in years)... I only want a 90% charge since I'm not going to be using much tomorrow." I've wondered too whether I should only use a slow (1A) charger for the overnight charge rather than the full 2.4A. But then again, I only keep my phone for 2 years before passing on it, so I've not had to care that much.
- kalleboo 9y ago
  It looks like Sony's Android phones have this option https://www.phonearena.com/news/Sony-Xperia-Marshmallow-update-beta-includes-soft-charging-allowing-the-battery-to-live-longer_id82551 https://www.phonearena.com/news/Sony-Xperia-Marshmallow-upda...
- lorenzhs 9y ago
  I know ThinkPad laptops have this (mine is set to charge up to 90% and only start charging if it's below 80%), and I think I've seen it in some custom kernels for Android ROMs a few years ago, but I'm not aware of any popular devices supporting something like this.
  - gambiting 9y ago
    Sony phones have that, I have an Xperia Z5 and you can select an option to "prelong battery life", where the phone only charges it up to 80% and stops(the scale shifts, so 80% shows as 100%, but internally the battery is never at 100%).
- jandrese 9y ago
  I have a Lenovo laptop with this feature. It only charges the battery up to about 60%, which is fine since that laptop is plugged in a lot. When I am planning to take it out I'll turn off battery safer mode and let it fully charge.
acchow 9y ago
Tradeoff between weight, battery life, and battery lifetime. I'm glad phone manufacturers heavily optimize for the first 2 and not the latter.
- ZeroGravitas 9y ago
  I'm sure that one of the Tesla founders stated that one of the reasons that device batteries failed after a couple of years is because longer life wasn't prioritized by the companies buying them and so not much effort was put into that dimension. You can spin this in a bad way ("planned obsolescence") or a good way (they were optimising for other things that customers valued), but the point remains the same, if car manufacturers (or grid storage units) require longer lifetimes, then it's not a hard physical limit at the current lifetimes that's been hit yet.

photojosh 9y ago

My phone rarely gets below 50%, and I'd say it only gets below 20% a handful of days a year. But yes, I've often thought it would be nice to have a toggle to say "Prolong battery life (as in years)... I only want a 90% charge since I'm not going to be using much tomorrow." I've wondered too whether I should only use a slow (1A) charger for the overnight charge rather than the full 2.4A. But then again, I only keep my phone for 2 years before passing on it, so I've not had to care that much.

kalleboo 9y ago
It looks like Sony's Android phones have this option https://www.phonearena.com/news/Sony-Xperia-Marshmallow-update-beta-includes-soft-charging-allowing-the-battery-to-live-longer_id82551 https://www.phonearena.com/news/Sony-Xperia-Marshmallow-upda...
lorenzhs 9y ago
I know ThinkPad laptops have this (mine is set to charge up to 90% and only start charging if it's below 80%), and I think I've seen it in some custom kernels for Android ROMs a few years ago, but I'm not aware of any popular devices supporting something like this.
- gambiting 9y ago
  Sony phones have that, I have an Xperia Z5 and you can select an option to "prelong battery life", where the phone only charges it up to 80% and stops(the scale shifts, so 80% shows as 100%, but internally the battery is never at 100%).
jandrese 9y ago
I have a Lenovo laptop with this feature. It only charges the battery up to about 60%, which is fine since that laptop is plugged in a lot. When I am planning to take it out I'll turn off battery safer mode and let it fully charge.

acchow 9y ago

Tradeoff between weight, battery life, and battery lifetime. I'm glad phone manufacturers heavily optimize for the first 2 and not the latter.

ZeroGravitas 9y ago
I'm sure that one of the Tesla founders stated that one of the reasons that device batteries failed after a couple of years is because longer life wasn't prioritized by the companies buying them and so not much effort was put into that dimension. You can spin this in a bad way ("planned obsolescence") or a good way (they were optimising for other things that customers valued), but the point remains the same, if car manufacturers (or grid storage units) require longer lifetimes, then it's not a hard physical limit at the current lifetimes that's been hit yet.