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> Now Steve wants to warn the public about the dangers of LiPo batteries if left on charge for a substantial amount of time. I've also occasionally heard recom

> Now Steve wants to warn the public about the dangers of LiPo batteries if left on charge for a substantial amount of time. I've also occasionally heard recommendations from people to not leave devices charging because it may potentially wear out the battery prematurely. This may be a myth. But I always wonder -- why would the charging circuit not moderate the charging and mitigate such risks? Why should I as a user be responsible for providing just the right amount of charging?

petee 9y ago
The charger should prevent this, but if it's not designed to fail-safe it could be contributing to the issue...
- jacquesm 9y ago
  And the battery circuitry should prevent this as well. So even if the charger is faulty there is supposed to be a thermal runaway protection circuit right on top of the battery itself that would cut the power to the battery before something catastrophic would happen. Also, the battery should be given some room to swell in the design.
pmlnr 9y ago
Thinkpads can be told to limit charging, say, between 50-70%, but that is a very rare feature.
- antongribok 9y ago
  You can do this on the Dell XPS series laptops, as well as the (older?) Sony Z-series. I have my Dell set to start battery charge at 75% and stop at 85%.
  - Quenty 9y ago
    The XPS line also tries to detect what to do based on usage patterns. Neat BIOS feature.
- _trampeltier 9y ago
  All Fujitsu Lifbooks I had in the last 10 years have another setting. They do not start to charge the battery if the are more then about 95% charged. So there is no need to take the battery out while working "on cable power". I often see somehing like "97% full, not charging"
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- lorenzhs 9y ago
  That's a battery longevity feature and not a safety feature, though. Any consumer electronics device should be safe to charge to 100% and be left plugged in.
craftyguy 9y ago
That's exactly what charging circuits are supposed to do. I suspect the circuit in this case was damaged or faulty.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  Probably faulty, since HP has a laptop battery recall for HP ENVY laptops from 2014. https://www.consumerreports.org/computers-internet/hp-recalls-laptop-batteries/ https://www.consumerreports.org/computers-internet/hp-recall... This is just a good reminder people should keep aware of recalls for products they own, especially ones with batteries.
  - solarkraft 9y ago
    This probably takes HP off the hook. Still, as a consumer, how would one know? Do you have to periodically search yourself for the case one of your products is faulty? This seems hard.
    - exikyut 9y ago
      This immediately made me think of haveibeenpwned. Reading the replies in this subthread, it becomes (somewhat) blindingly obvious that this is an excellent space for a viable startup. - Mobile app (all platforms) that you can carry around with you at all times so when you go "oh! I haven't registered my blah" you can do it in 30 seconds on the spot (or at least start the process) - bam, inertia gone - App works by having you take photos of device(s); it figures out what kind of thing it is, clarifies specs it can't work out from the photo, and tells you where to find the serial number for the given device (and I can't see why you can't take a photo of that too and the app can OCR it) - It partners with hundreds of manufacturers to communicate and electronically sign your registration information - When you move it handles the info update process for you - (Manufacturers that require unambiguity could send you verification emails, and while the app would (obviously) not have access to these emails or the verification clicks, it would know what files had complete/correct/wrong info and be able to call out the action items in the flood of emails you would periodically receive) And obviously, last of all, - When a device is recalled or anything goes wrong with it, you receive recurring app notifications and periodic emails to let you know what's going on - The app has a one-tap flow to allow you to say "I want to return my device" which would kickstart the process of for example the manufacturer mailing you a return box --- This would be hard. Really hard. Stupidly ridiculously hard; the key word here is "vendor compliance". But if you could pull this off, you'd wind up "baked-in" as a part of worldwide industry. You'd be the app everyone used to handle recalls if you got everything right. I don't think this exists yet, at least not in the form I've just described. I constantly see little recall dockets (A4 papers) at my local supermarkets (in Australia). Sometimes there's a photo, sometimes there's only a text description of the product. Everyone's handling this themselves, and duplicating work. This system could provide centralized returns handling both for vendors and consumers. Hmm. This seems like a fun one to take a crack at, and I'm interested enough to have a go. It'd probably take 5 years to get to minimum viability though, FWIW.
wanderer2323 9y ago
The short happens inside the battery itself because of the dendrite growth (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwLUD41f15U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwLUD41f15U) By the time it happens, it is generally too late to shut off the charging circuit -- it helps and it happens but the battery destruction is already underway. The question next is whether it will catch fire or simply 'swell up'. At this point it's mostly up to luck, the available fire-prevention mechanisms are stronger battery enclosures, which would be heavy, bulky and expensive -- exactly the things most consumers do not want and would vote against with their money, reducing the profits of the company innovating in this direction. Another way to prevent fires would be attempting to detect dendrite growth by the changes in observable battery state (capacity, amperage, etc). This is hard, expensive and will likely give a lot of false alarms requiring warranty replacement, once again hitting the would-be innovator in their pockets.
- andrei_says_ 9y ago
  Literally last week I had a conversation with Apple about a swollen laptop battery. They said it’s not a fire hazard but I should replace it and not use the laptop. And, refused to replace it because it was in a “vintage” laptop. Carefully crafted language.
  - a_t48 9y ago
    You should have sat down at one of their tables and plugged it in. :)
  - eumoria 9y ago
    6 months ago is 'vintage' to them. How old was the laptop?
    - shawkinaw 9y ago
      Actually "vintage" has a specific meaning and is at least 5 years after the product is no longer manufactured. See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624.
    - 9y ago
rb808 9y ago
The other part being the recommendations not to always fully charge Lithium batteries. How come you can't configure the device or charger to do this? its 2018 already.
- konschubert 9y ago
  I could do that on my Thinkpad.
  - kpil 9y ago
    I liked that feature, especially so for office "luggables" that stays on the desk charging most of the time. That really seems to spare the battery compared to keeping it at 100%. I've replaced the battery in other laptops much more often.
- kawsper 9y ago
  Some devices does this, if you are on Linux and are using a Thinkpad, you can fetch tp-smapi-dkms or acpi-call-dkms, and run the following: echo 40 | sudo tee /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/start_charge_thresh echo 80 | sudo tee /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/stop_charge_thresh Then it will stop charging once it reached 80% and only start charging when it drops below 40%.
  - ssebastianj 9y ago
    I don't know if that it's exclusive on ThinkPads but I love that feature. Now I'm using TLP[0] to re(calibrate) the batteries (main and extra) on a ThinkPad running Linux, it uses "tp-smapi-dkms" or "acpi-call-dkms" behind the scenes. [0] http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-linux-advanced-power-management.html http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-linux-advanced-power-man...
- Symbiote 9y ago
  My Sony ZX1 sometimes pops up a message when I plug it in "Battery saver: your battery will be fully charged in time for your alarm at 07:00" or something like that; I can charge it faster with an option on the message if I want to. It would be nice if this feature defaulted to charging to 95% or whatever. I usually know in advance if I'll need that extra 5% for a long journey.
jobigoud 9y ago
> the dangers of LiPo batteries I think it's Li-Ion batteries in laptops, not LiPo. LiPos have a tendency to degas/explode unexpectedly even when the charger is good. Multicopter/drones use LiPo batteries and there are multiple horror stories of pilots having their house destroyed. We have now learned to store them in special fireproof bags/containers even when not charging, never charge them unattended, always have a fire extinguisher near the charging station, etc. BTW I see a phantom hanging on the wall... Maybe he tried to charge the laptop battery with the LiPo charger?
- jacquesm 9y ago
  I absolutely loathe the degree to which manufacturers will embed LiPo's into just about everything including wearables without disclosing the fact. If you're clever about this sort of stuff and see a certain form factor coupled with larger than expected operating times you can infer the presence of LiPo's with some accuracy but your average consumer doesn't stand a chance and has no idea what the difference between all these different battery chemistries is in the first place and what the implications are.
  - mmagin 9y ago
    Unfortunately we're getting to the point where there's rarely any choice.
    - isostatic 9y ago
      30 years ago we didn't walk around with half a dozen bombs on our body. As a society we have decided that the benefits outweigh the risk, but it's still easy to not walk around with battery devices in our pockets/bags, or even charging at home. It's not as hard as opting out from cars and the roads, which kill dozens every week in the UK alone.
  - eclipxe 9y ago
    LiPos or Li-Ion?
kqr 9y ago
There are two parts involved here: 1) prevent the battery from exploding? This it should do. 2) Prolong battery life? This requires not charging to 100%. I think it's fairly clear why most users don't want their things to stop charging at 75%.
- bhhaskin 9y ago
  Just change the external scale. 75% is now 100%. Users are none the wiser and battery life is prolonged.
  - tomn 9y ago
    Or maybe they'll buy the competing product that has 25% more runtime, or is 25% thinner, or is 10% cheaper etc.
  - kickopotomus 9y ago
    Most smart battery chargers do this. 0% is not really 0% and 100% is not really 100%.
  - wlesieutre 9y ago
    Then your competitor with the same battery cells says 85% is the new 100% and now they have longer battery life than you do.
    - ericd 9y ago
      And then maybe your competitor gets an announcement on every plane reminding people not to buy their product :-)
      - kqr 9y ago
        No, because again, this is not about preventing batteries from exploding. They already shouldn't explode. This is purely to give them a longer lifespan – which is not that attractive to producers, who I assume want to sell more batteries.
cesarb 9y ago
> because it may potentially wear out the battery prematurely. This may be a myth. I thought it was a myth too, so when I got my first cell phone, I left it plugged whenever I was home, even when I had used it so little that it was still showing full charge. After a time, however, its battery started to get "fat". I bought a new battery, and since then only plugged the charger when the phone was no longer showing full charge. That battery still works, and is still as "thin" as it was when bought.
- ihattendorf 9y ago
  Which is anecdotal, the first battery could have just been defective or failed earlier.
- melq 9y ago
  Sounds like it was a defective battery rather than charging controller. Although depending on how long ago you got your first cell phone, I'm sure a lot has changed.
- newnewpdro 9y ago
  Batteries are of varying quality and constituent purity, this is not a conclusive observation.
lopmotr 9y ago
The user may want the battery charged asap but the intelligent charger might decide that now isn't the time for that and really annoy you. If the battery requires complicated charging and discharging schedule, like old ones that had to be discharged before charging, or periodically, then this has to be controlled by the user because you won't want to wake up one morning and find your charger has intelligently flattened the battery for you, or failed to charge it because it's time to let it drain all the way down.
- usrusr 9y ago
  A toggle "prepare off-grid use", nothing more complicated than that. You could even try some implicit haptic UI ideas like having two power ports, one for operating (that only charges when the battery is dangerously low) and one for complete charging (that also runs the device, but it's clearly designated as the "charging port"). With USB power delivery that would not even waste case surface, it would be an entirely internal change to make one more USB-C power capable.
solarkraft 9y ago
Many charging circuits in larger systems like vehicles do allow setting a limit below the theoretical maximum charge to preserve the battery's health. Options to do this exist in laptops, but mostly just on enterprisey, higher-end models, are not set by default and not very well known.
sandworm101 9y ago
>>> ... charging because it may potentially wear out the battery ... It is true that overcharging a battery will do damage, potentially fire-type damage. The issue is that every "device" contains a charge controller to manage this. A laptop should not / will not overcharge its battery. By leaving it plugged in you are relying upon the charge controller to do its job. But remember that we trust such voltage regulators 24/7 in our cars, on our planes, and with nearly every consumer electronic plugged into a wall outlet.

petee 9y ago

The charger should prevent this, but if it's not designed to fail-safe it could be contributing to the issue...

jacquesm 9y ago
And the battery circuitry should prevent this as well. So even if the charger is faulty there is supposed to be a thermal runaway protection circuit right on top of the battery itself that would cut the power to the battery before something catastrophic would happen. Also, the battery should be given some room to swell in the design.

pmlnr 9y ago

Thinkpads can be told to limit charging, say, between 50-70%, but that is a very rare feature.

antongribok 9y ago
You can do this on the Dell XPS series laptops, as well as the (older?) Sony Z-series. I have my Dell set to start battery charge at 75% and stop at 85%.
- Quenty 9y ago
  The XPS line also tries to detect what to do based on usage patterns. Neat BIOS feature.
_trampeltier 9y ago
All Fujitsu Lifbooks I had in the last 10 years have another setting. They do not start to charge the battery if the are more then about 95% charged. So there is no need to take the battery out while working "on cable power". I often see somehing like "97% full, not charging"
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
lorenzhs 9y ago
That's a battery longevity feature and not a safety feature, though. Any consumer electronics device should be safe to charge to 100% and be left plugged in.

craftyguy 9y ago

That's exactly what charging circuits are supposed to do. I suspect the circuit in this case was damaged or faulty.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
Probably faulty, since HP has a laptop battery recall for HP ENVY laptops from 2014. https://www.consumerreports.org/computers-internet/hp-recalls-laptop-batteries/ https://www.consumerreports.org/computers-internet/hp-recall... This is just a good reminder people should keep aware of recalls for products they own, especially ones with batteries.
- solarkraft 9y ago
  This probably takes HP off the hook. Still, as a consumer, how would one know? Do you have to periodically search yourself for the case one of your products is faulty? This seems hard.
  - exikyut 9y ago
    This immediately made me think of haveibeenpwned. Reading the replies in this subthread, it becomes (somewhat) blindingly obvious that this is an excellent space for a viable startup. - Mobile app (all platforms) that you can carry around with you at all times so when you go "oh! I haven't registered my blah" you can do it in 30 seconds on the spot (or at least start the process) - bam, inertia gone - App works by having you take photos of device(s); it figures out what kind of thing it is, clarifies specs it can't work out from the photo, and tells you where to find the serial number for the given device (and I can't see why you can't take a photo of that too and the app can OCR it) - It partners with hundreds of manufacturers to communicate and electronically sign your registration information - When you move it handles the info update process for you - (Manufacturers that require unambiguity could send you verification emails, and while the app would (obviously) not have access to these emails or the verification clicks, it would know what files had complete/correct/wrong info and be able to call out the action items in the flood of emails you would periodically receive) And obviously, last of all, - When a device is recalled or anything goes wrong with it, you receive recurring app notifications and periodic emails to let you know what's going on - The app has a one-tap flow to allow you to say "I want to return my device" which would kickstart the process of for example the manufacturer mailing you a return box --- This would be hard. Really hard. Stupidly ridiculously hard; the key word here is "vendor compliance". But if you could pull this off, you'd wind up "baked-in" as a part of worldwide industry. You'd be the app everyone used to handle recalls if you got everything right. I don't think this exists yet, at least not in the form I've just described. I constantly see little recall dockets (A4 papers) at my local supermarkets (in Australia). Sometimes there's a photo, sometimes there's only a text description of the product. Everyone's handling this themselves, and duplicating work. This system could provide centralized returns handling both for vendors and consumers. Hmm. This seems like a fun one to take a crack at, and I'm interested enough to have a go. It'd probably take 5 years to get to minimum viability though, FWIW.

wanderer2323 9y ago

The short happens inside the battery itself because of the dendrite growth (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwLUD41f15U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwLUD41f15U) By the time it happens, it is generally too late to shut off the charging circuit -- it helps and it happens but the battery destruction is already underway. The question next is whether it will catch fire or simply 'swell up'. At this point it's mostly up to luck, the available fire-prevention mechanisms are stronger battery enclosures, which would be heavy, bulky and expensive -- exactly the things most consumers do not want and would vote against with their money, reducing the profits of the company innovating in this direction. Another way to prevent fires would be attempting to detect dendrite growth by the changes in observable battery state (capacity, amperage, etc). This is hard, expensive and will likely give a lot of false alarms requiring warranty replacement, once again hitting the would-be innovator in their pockets.

andrei_says_ 9y ago
Literally last week I had a conversation with Apple about a swollen laptop battery. They said it’s not a fire hazard but I should replace it and not use the laptop. And, refused to replace it because it was in a “vintage” laptop. Carefully crafted language.
- a_t48 9y ago
  You should have sat down at one of their tables and plugged it in. :)
- eumoria 9y ago
  6 months ago is 'vintage' to them. How old was the laptop?
  - shawkinaw 9y ago
    Actually "vintage" has a specific meaning and is at least 5 years after the product is no longer manufactured. See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624.
  - 9y ago

rb808 9y ago

The other part being the recommendations not to always fully charge Lithium batteries. How come you can't configure the device or charger to do this? its 2018 already.

konschubert 9y ago
I could do that on my Thinkpad.
- kpil 9y ago
  I liked that feature, especially so for office "luggables" that stays on the desk charging most of the time. That really seems to spare the battery compared to keeping it at 100%. I've replaced the battery in other laptops much more often.
kawsper 9y ago
Some devices does this, if you are on Linux and are using a Thinkpad, you can fetch tp-smapi-dkms or acpi-call-dkms, and run the following: echo 40 | sudo tee /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/start_charge_thresh echo 80 | sudo tee /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/stop_charge_thresh Then it will stop charging once it reached 80% and only start charging when it drops below 40%.
- ssebastianj 9y ago
  I don't know if that it's exclusive on ThinkPads but I love that feature. Now I'm using TLP[0] to re(calibrate) the batteries (main and extra) on a ThinkPad running Linux, it uses "tp-smapi-dkms" or "acpi-call-dkms" behind the scenes. [0] http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-linux-advanced-power-management.html http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-linux-advanced-power-man...
Symbiote 9y ago
My Sony ZX1 sometimes pops up a message when I plug it in "Battery saver: your battery will be fully charged in time for your alarm at 07:00" or something like that; I can charge it faster with an option on the message if I want to. It would be nice if this feature defaulted to charging to 95% or whatever. I usually know in advance if I'll need that extra 5% for a long journey.

jobigoud 9y ago

> the dangers of LiPo batteries I think it's Li-Ion batteries in laptops, not LiPo. LiPos have a tendency to degas/explode unexpectedly even when the charger is good. Multicopter/drones use LiPo batteries and there are multiple horror stories of pilots having their house destroyed. We have now learned to store them in special fireproof bags/containers even when not charging, never charge them unattended, always have a fire extinguisher near the charging station, etc. BTW I see a phantom hanging on the wall... Maybe he tried to charge the laptop battery with the LiPo charger?

jacquesm 9y ago
I absolutely loathe the degree to which manufacturers will embed LiPo's into just about everything including wearables without disclosing the fact. If you're clever about this sort of stuff and see a certain form factor coupled with larger than expected operating times you can infer the presence of LiPo's with some accuracy but your average consumer doesn't stand a chance and has no idea what the difference between all these different battery chemistries is in the first place and what the implications are.
- mmagin 9y ago
  Unfortunately we're getting to the point where there's rarely any choice.
  - isostatic 9y ago
    30 years ago we didn't walk around with half a dozen bombs on our body. As a society we have decided that the benefits outweigh the risk, but it's still easy to not walk around with battery devices in our pockets/bags, or even charging at home. It's not as hard as opting out from cars and the roads, which kill dozens every week in the UK alone.
- eclipxe 9y ago
  LiPos or Li-Ion?

kqr 9y ago

There are two parts involved here: 1) prevent the battery from exploding? This it should do. 2) Prolong battery life? This requires not charging to 100%. I think it's fairly clear why most users don't want their things to stop charging at 75%.

bhhaskin 9y ago
Just change the external scale. 75% is now 100%. Users are none the wiser and battery life is prolonged.
- tomn 9y ago
  Or maybe they'll buy the competing product that has 25% more runtime, or is 25% thinner, or is 10% cheaper etc.
- kickopotomus 9y ago
  Most smart battery chargers do this. 0% is not really 0% and 100% is not really 100%.
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  Then your competitor with the same battery cells says 85% is the new 100% and now they have longer battery life than you do.
  - ericd 9y ago
    And then maybe your competitor gets an announcement on every plane reminding people not to buy their product :-)
    - kqr 9y ago
      No, because again, this is not about preventing batteries from exploding. They already shouldn't explode. This is purely to give them a longer lifespan – which is not that attractive to producers, who I assume want to sell more batteries.

cesarb 9y ago

> because it may potentially wear out the battery prematurely. This may be a myth. I thought it was a myth too, so when I got my first cell phone, I left it plugged whenever I was home, even when I had used it so little that it was still showing full charge. After a time, however, its battery started to get "fat". I bought a new battery, and since then only plugged the charger when the phone was no longer showing full charge. That battery still works, and is still as "thin" as it was when bought.

ihattendorf 9y ago
Which is anecdotal, the first battery could have just been defective or failed earlier.
melq 9y ago
Sounds like it was a defective battery rather than charging controller. Although depending on how long ago you got your first cell phone, I'm sure a lot has changed.
newnewpdro 9y ago
Batteries are of varying quality and constituent purity, this is not a conclusive observation.

lopmotr 9y ago

The user may want the battery charged asap but the intelligent charger might decide that now isn't the time for that and really annoy you. If the battery requires complicated charging and discharging schedule, like old ones that had to be discharged before charging, or periodically, then this has to be controlled by the user because you won't want to wake up one morning and find your charger has intelligently flattened the battery for you, or failed to charge it because it's time to let it drain all the way down.

usrusr 9y ago
A toggle "prepare off-grid use", nothing more complicated than that. You could even try some implicit haptic UI ideas like having two power ports, one for operating (that only charges when the battery is dangerously low) and one for complete charging (that also runs the device, but it's clearly designated as the "charging port"). With USB power delivery that would not even waste case surface, it would be an entirely internal change to make one more USB-C power capable.

solarkraft 9y ago

Many charging circuits in larger systems like vehicles do allow setting a limit below the theoretical maximum charge to preserve the battery's health. Options to do this exist in laptops, but mostly just on enterprisey, higher-end models, are not set by default and not very well known.

sandworm101 9y ago

>>> ... charging because it may potentially wear out the battery ... It is true that overcharging a battery will do damage, potentially fire-type damage. The issue is that every "device" contains a charge controller to manage this. A laptop should not / will not overcharge its battery. By leaving it plugged in you are relying upon the charge controller to do its job. But remember that we trust such voltage regulators 24/7 in our cars, on our planes, and with nearly every consumer electronic plugged into a wall outlet.