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Lithium ion batteries that can handle a thousand to several thousand charge cycles and only see 80% reduction in capacity have been available for ten years. My

Lithium ion batteries that can handle a thousand to several thousand charge cycles and only see 80% reduction in capacity have been available for ten years. My 2013 Macbook Pro has just such a battery, rated for 80% capacity after 1000 cycles, and it lasted over 6 years before the battery's internal resistance rose enough that heavy load would cause a brownout and the machine to force sleep. Yet they are not in widespread use; most devices have prioritized capacity/weight/size over longevity, Apple included. My current M1 has lost 10% of its capacity after just 120 cycles and less than a year of ownership, even using a utility that allows you to set a limited maximum charge level to preserve the battery. And the battery is less accessible, less replaceable. Battery companies and device manufacturers don't care. There's no incentive for anyone involved and consumers have gotten used to replacing devices every few years. Solid state batteries with 10k charge/discharge cycles are never going to happen for the same reason incandescent bulbs are purposefully manufactured by every single lightbulb manufacturer to fail when they figured out a hundred years ago how to make them last forever. We need something like a e-waste import duty, tax, fee, or 'recycling deposit' on devices with non-replaceable lithium ion batteries.

h0l0cube 3y ago
> Solid state batteries with 10k charge/discharge cycles are never going to happen for the same reasons, which are identical to the same reason incandescent bulbs are purposefully manufactured by every single lightbulb manufacturer to fail when they figured out a hundred years ago how to make them last forever. My first phone was NiCad Nokia. Later Nokia monochrome display phones used Li-ion well before smartphones. I use an iPhone now, but if a user-upgradeable Android phone came out with a solid-state battery, I would switch.
PaulKeeble 3y ago
Its a bit of a myth for ever lasting bulbs, its more complicated than that. The life time was a trade off of colour and brightness. If you made them very red shifted and quite dim then there are bulbs that are very old still around, but they don't produce much light and never did. The harder you drive the filament the better the light properties but the quicker it died. The industry choose a point for trade offs as a standard. You can watch about the history of it on Technology connections. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY Saying that the Dubai Philips LED bulbs really do last a lot longer since they have twice the filaments and run the filaments a lot less hard as a result (as well as being more efficient). It is possible nowadays to make an LED that wont fail anytime soon although LEDs are already much better than incandescents in that regard but there are ones that will likely survive your lifetime available at a higher price but only in Dubai. Most LED bulbs are designed to fail sooner, but they are also cheaper. Those 10k recharge batteries are absolutely coming and we will have them in a few years time, li-ion as it stands today will simply be obsolete.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  I'd be happy with an LED bulb that lasted a year. I haven't yet found one that can do that reliably. Remember that 60W incandescent bulbs costing $0.25 used to be available that met that goal. We've taken huge steps backwards on interior household lighting.
  - Reason077 3y ago
    > "I'd be happy with an LED bulb that lasted a year. I haven't yet found one that can do that reliably." I do remember in the early days of LED bulbs, many were quite unreliable, especially dimmable ones. It was probably more the electronics in them failing more than the LEDs themselves? But now days LED bulbs seem much more reliable and I very rarely have to replace them. In fact the only bulbs I can recall replacing in the past 18 months living in my current house were some old CFL bulbs that hadn't actually completely failed, but had gradually become a bit too dim. Certainly, now days, I need to replace bulbs far, far less often than in the old incandescent days where it was a regular chore in any house. (Also, now days I avoid using old-style dimmer switches, and even removed some in one house I lived in. Better to get a smart bulb with it's own built-in dimming if you want it.)
    - SoftTalker 3y ago
      What brand of LED bulb do you buy? I'm consistently replacing one or two bulbs a month around the house. I don't know if it's the electronics or the LEDs; I don't really care either.
      - artimaeis 3y ago
        Jumping in to recommend Cree if they're still around. Used to be able to get them at Home Depot here in the US. I started going Cree when I was renting 10 years ago, I've yet to have a single failure of the bulbs that I've drug with me to the place I live now. Have at least 25 bulbs currently in the house that are Cree LEDs. Their reliability actually has me frustrated at the current trend of lighting fixtures with integrated LEDs that I have 0 trust in.
Reason077 3y ago
> "Yet they are not in widespread use; most devices have prioritized capacity/weight/size over longevity, Apple included. My current M1 has lost 10% of its capacity after just 120 cycles" A simple way to significantly extend battery longevity is to limit charge to 80% (only charging to 100% occasionally when you know you might need it, like a long day travelling). Unfortunately Apple doesn't yet provide this option on most of it's devices, other than the iPhone 15 line. But you can use third-party apps to do it on Macs.
- JodieBenitez 3y ago
  > doesn't yet provide this option on most of it's devices it has this though: https://www.macinstruct.com/images/2022/optimized-charging.png https://www.macinstruct.com/images/2022/optimized-charging.p...
  - Reason077 3y ago
    Yeah, that doesn't work very well in my experience. Not aggressive enough about stopping at 80% unless your routine is very regular. I want it to always stop charging at 80% unless I say otherwise.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
huytersd 3y ago
There is a huge difference between 1000 and 10,000 charge cycles. 30 years is longer than a human generation.
abhinavk 3y ago
> Solid state batteries with 10k charge/discharge cycles are never going to happen for the same reason incandescent bulbs are purposefully manufactured by every single lightbulb manufacturer to fail when they figured out a hundred years ago how to make them last forever. Technology Connections has an interesting video on this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY
eru 3y ago
> There's no incentive for anyone involved and consumers have gotten used to replacing devices every few years. If anything, I would have thought that devices are good enough know that people don't exchange them quite so often? Especially laptops. I can still reasonably comfortably use my 2016 laptop today. In 1993 using computer from 1986 would have been a much bigger downgrade.
usefulcat 3y ago
> even using a utility that allows you to set a limited maximum charge level to preserve the battery Please tell me what that utility is--I've long wanted something like that but have yet to find anything like it. FWIW, I've been doing something similar with my phone, but manually. I found an unusually low current charger that charges the phone at a rate of ~5% per hour, and I almost always keep the battery level between 25% and 75%. So far the phone is 4 years old and iOS claims that the maximum capacity of the battery is still 92%.
- eviks 3y ago
  Aldente is one such app

h0l0cube 3y ago

> Solid state batteries with 10k charge/discharge cycles are never going to happen for the same reasons, which are identical to the same reason incandescent bulbs are purposefully manufactured by every single lightbulb manufacturer to fail when they figured out a hundred years ago how to make them last forever. My first phone was NiCad Nokia. Later Nokia monochrome display phones used Li-ion well before smartphones. I use an iPhone now, but if a user-upgradeable Android phone came out with a solid-state battery, I would switch.

PaulKeeble 3y ago

Its a bit of a myth for ever lasting bulbs, its more complicated than that. The life time was a trade off of colour and brightness. If you made them very red shifted and quite dim then there are bulbs that are very old still around, but they don't produce much light and never did. The harder you drive the filament the better the light properties but the quicker it died. The industry choose a point for trade offs as a standard. You can watch about the history of it on Technology connections. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY Saying that the Dubai Philips LED bulbs really do last a lot longer since they have twice the filaments and run the filaments a lot less hard as a result (as well as being more efficient). It is possible nowadays to make an LED that wont fail anytime soon although LEDs are already much better than incandescents in that regard but there are ones that will likely survive your lifetime available at a higher price but only in Dubai. Most LED bulbs are designed to fail sooner, but they are also cheaper. Those 10k recharge batteries are absolutely coming and we will have them in a few years time, li-ion as it stands today will simply be obsolete.

SoftTalker 3y ago
I'd be happy with an LED bulb that lasted a year. I haven't yet found one that can do that reliably. Remember that 60W incandescent bulbs costing $0.25 used to be available that met that goal. We've taken huge steps backwards on interior household lighting.
- Reason077 3y ago
  > "I'd be happy with an LED bulb that lasted a year. I haven't yet found one that can do that reliably." I do remember in the early days of LED bulbs, many were quite unreliable, especially dimmable ones. It was probably more the electronics in them failing more than the LEDs themselves? But now days LED bulbs seem much more reliable and I very rarely have to replace them. In fact the only bulbs I can recall replacing in the past 18 months living in my current house were some old CFL bulbs that hadn't actually completely failed, but had gradually become a bit too dim. Certainly, now days, I need to replace bulbs far, far less often than in the old incandescent days where it was a regular chore in any house. (Also, now days I avoid using old-style dimmer switches, and even removed some in one house I lived in. Better to get a smart bulb with it's own built-in dimming if you want it.)
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    What brand of LED bulb do you buy? I'm consistently replacing one or two bulbs a month around the house. I don't know if it's the electronics or the LEDs; I don't really care either.
    - artimaeis 3y ago
      Jumping in to recommend Cree if they're still around. Used to be able to get them at Home Depot here in the US. I started going Cree when I was renting 10 years ago, I've yet to have a single failure of the bulbs that I've drug with me to the place I live now. Have at least 25 bulbs currently in the house that are Cree LEDs. Their reliability actually has me frustrated at the current trend of lighting fixtures with integrated LEDs that I have 0 trust in.

Reason077 3y ago

> "Yet they are not in widespread use; most devices have prioritized capacity/weight/size over longevity, Apple included. My current M1 has lost 10% of its capacity after just 120 cycles" A simple way to significantly extend battery longevity is to limit charge to 80% (only charging to 100% occasionally when you know you might need it, like a long day travelling). Unfortunately Apple doesn't yet provide this option on most of it's devices, other than the iPhone 15 line. But you can use third-party apps to do it on Macs.

JodieBenitez 3y ago
> doesn't yet provide this option on most of it's devices it has this though: https://www.macinstruct.com/images/2022/optimized-charging.png https://www.macinstruct.com/images/2022/optimized-charging.p...
- Reason077 3y ago
  Yeah, that doesn't work very well in my experience. Not aggressive enough about stopping at 80% unless your routine is very regular. I want it to always stop charging at 80% unless I say otherwise.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

huytersd 3y ago

There is a huge difference between 1000 and 10,000 charge cycles. 30 years is longer than a human generation.

abhinavk 3y ago

> Solid state batteries with 10k charge/discharge cycles are never going to happen for the same reason incandescent bulbs are purposefully manufactured by every single lightbulb manufacturer to fail when they figured out a hundred years ago how to make them last forever. Technology Connections has an interesting video on this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY

eru 3y ago

> There's no incentive for anyone involved and consumers have gotten used to replacing devices every few years. If anything, I would have thought that devices are good enough know that people don't exchange them quite so often? Especially laptops. I can still reasonably comfortably use my 2016 laptop today. In 1993 using computer from 1986 would have been a much bigger downgrade.

usefulcat 3y ago

> even using a utility that allows you to set a limited maximum charge level to preserve the battery Please tell me what that utility is--I've long wanted something like that but have yet to find anything like it. FWIW, I've been doing something similar with my phone, but manually. I found an unusually low current charger that charges the phone at a rate of ~5% per hour, and I almost always keep the battery level between 25% and 75%. So far the phone is 4 years old and iOS claims that the maximum capacity of the battery is still 92%.

eviks 3y ago
Aldente is one such app