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Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?

• Neil44 3y ago
  I kept my XS max for about 5 years, and always charged it with a 5w pad overnight. Battery health after 5 years was 86% which is pretty decent.
• userbinator 3y ago
  Neither too full nor too empty seems to be the sweet spot, but of course those who'd rather you buy a new one once in a while will optimise for other things than total cycle life energy. The newish "high voltage" (>4.2V/cell) cells are an excellent example of this; they've come up with better material chemistries that resist degradation and would let cells last many times longer for the same capacity, but instead they just push the cells harder so they end up lasting roughly the same amount of time for a few tens of % increase in capacity.
• Arainach 3y ago
  I've given up trying. If a device is willing to lie to me and only charge to 80% while saying it's charged, great, but all of this "try to stay in a range" logic flies in the face of reality. Every device I use besides my cell phone, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo 3DS has atrocious power drain when not in use. OS does not matter. Windows laptop, Linux laptop, ChromeOS laptop, Android Tablet, Amazon Tablet, you name it, if I set it down at 80% and come back 48 hours later it will be below 25%. So I just leave them plugged in when not in use, and to hell with battery longevity.
  • mcronce 3y ago
    FWIW, I can't speak to other operating systems, but with Linux (maybe requiring cooperative hardware? I'm actually not sure) you can configure it to stop charging at a certain % if the charge controller doesn't have reserve. I can find a link if you're interested; IIRC it was easy to setup and easy to temporarily disable if you need to fully charge for e.g. a long flight without outlets
    • Tostino 3y ago
      Most laptops come with some software bundled that helps configure this. Dell does I know. So did Lenovo.
    • myself248 3y ago
      https://linrunner.de/tlp/index.html https://linrunner.de/tlp/index.html
      • scns 3y ago
        https://linrunner.de/tlp/settings/battery.html https://linrunner.de/tlp/settings/battery.html
      • jonah-archive 3y ago
        Hey -- I don't see another way to get in touch with you, so advance apologies for the comment spam. In a past comment you mentioned that you used to run the Ricochet modem wikispace and have a bunch of documentation/etc -- perhaps I can host them on the Internet Archive? Particularly interested in the Garage Gateway stuff, I've never seen the code and I have an otherwise working Ethernet Radio & pair of poletops I'd love to get properly running. Email's in my profile if you'd like to get in touch.
    • thrtythreeforty 3y ago
      This does require firmware support but it's pretty seamless in Plasma. It requires a root password which is slightly irritating. At one point I went through the PolicyKit contortions to allow normal users (me) to change it.
  • vGPU 3y ago
    Even my iPad has horrible background drain. My iPhone is the only device I have that I can calmly leave at 15% when I go to bed and know my alarm will still work in the morning.
    • cryptoegorophy 3y ago
      Yeah, same experience with iPhone. Can leave it at 20% then when I wake up it would drain like 5% or so.
    • justworkout 3y ago
      I had an iPad that I bought 5? years ago and I could leave that thing in sleep mode for literal weeks at a time and I'd still have a mostly full charge. I "upgraded" to a Pro 2 years back and the first thing I noticed was it'd go from a 100% charge to 60% to even 40% overnight. All apps closed, freshly rebooted and did nothing but charge it the previous night before unplugging it. A lot of comments online say "This doesn't happen. You're doing something. And it's certainly not wifi and bluetooth because those don't use battery while idle so do NOT turn those off!" I tried everything that was recommended, turning off iCloud, uninstalling random apps, etc. Then I got into a habit of turning bluetooth off every night and my battery would only drain about 4-6% a day while idle. Turning off wifi as well and I get about 2-3% drain per night. I have no clue what Apple is doing, but when putting my iPad to sleep at night with any sort of wireless on, the device connects to every fucking thing it can find but wouldn't do while awake. I never even synced my Airpods with my iPad and made sure to delete them when they did connect, but still, if I leave bluetooth on before going to bed, my iPad will connect to my airpods while they're in the case, drain them to 0% (even after fully charging the Airpods before sleeping. It's not even possible to drain the case's battery with actual usage that fast!), then drain 40% of its own battery. I can't make sense of it. In short, turn all wireless off when you're done for the day. iPads/iPhones are annoying in that you can't turn them off from the drop down menu though, so you need to go through settings or make a shortcut.
      • gnyman 3y ago
        The amount of background crap has been steadily increasing on Apple devices, you're probably right in your observation that it's related to wireless/Bluetooth. I have a iPad 2 (yes, the one from 2011) which I keep around with the plan to turn it into a house-automation screen and I'm always surprised when I look at it every 2-5 months to see it still has a decent chunk of battery left. And it's in sleep, not turned off. I just checked it, it's at 76% with a standby time of 562h (23.4 days). And this is with WiFi turned on. Im really impressed, it's after all a 12 year old battery. And the device was in daily use for the first 4 years and then less frequently. This is a side topic but I find it's a good example of forced obsolescence, because there is nothing wrong with it other than the fact that it does not support modern web standards or modern iOS apps which makes it trash for most people.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • artimaeis 3y ago
    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 atypical devices. Screenshot from said iPad’s battery screen: https://postimg.cc/xcHpy5Sr https://postimg.cc/xcHpy5Sr
    • bluSCALE4 3y ago
      iPhone does not reflect these gains. I did own a Huawei and I felt those really had slow drain.
      • artimaeis 3y ago
        I'm not sure I've gone more than a day without looking at my iPhone in years probably (not great, I know..) but I've not had any notable standby drain issues. That is, I've never left it at something like 80% and come back to it hours later for it to be drastically lower. I'm pretty religious about what apps are allowed background data, and notifications in general. But I never turn off any of the radios.
    • gamblor956 3y ago
      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.
      • JBiserkov 3y ago
        That's a joke, right? The battery held a charge for 6 years?!
        • gamblor956 3y ago
          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.
  • Dylan16807 3y ago
    > So I just leave them plugged in Isn't that exactly why you want a device that can self-limit? It doesn't need to lie.
    • jader201 3y ago
      If you leave it plugged in all the time, battery life doesn't matter. Self-limit or don't. I'm rarely away from a power source for very long (and when I am, I'm not on my phone much). So I just leave it plugged in all the time. I've very rarely had my battery die on me, and like OP, I leave mine plugged in all the time. At night or while working, it's charging. Even after a few years, I don't notice much of an impact. I'll sometimes notice it's getting low (again, if I'm out of my routine), and just charge it.
      • Dylan16807 3y ago
        It's plugged in when not in use. A single use that takes it away from an outlet can last a good while.
      • The_Colonel 3y ago
        > At night or while working, it's charging. It doesn't have to be charging all the time. Some laptops have "intelligent" detection of the "usually plugged-in" state and won't keep the battery charged 100% at every moment, but will allow dropping it somewhat before charging again. I suspect MacBooks are doing this quite aggressively (while lying about 100%), since their batteries tend to last (in terms of cycles) longer than windows laptops.
        • em-bee 3y ago
          i thought that if the battery is charged the device will simply ignore the battery and run directly from the wire. so a fully charged battery should not be affected at all. repeatedly dropping down and recharging sounds like a bad idea.
          • The_Colonel 3y ago
  • beAbU 3y ago
    I've found this to be true as well. Sample size of 1: My Android tablet, Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra, loses something like 10%/day when on standby. I don't use it every day, so either I have to leave it plugged in the whole time, or have the foresight to charge it the day before I want to use it for something. What /really/ annoys me is I have this really really old Android tablet. I think it's running Anrdoid 5 or 6 or something. It's only really good for light web reading and nothing else. When it's charged, it'll standby for literal months. It can lay in my drawer, forgotten, and then a month later I can pick it up and it'll be still above 60%. When in use the battery drops like a lead balloon, within the hour it's dead. But standby is fantastic. Why can't modern Android do that any more?
  • alliao 3y ago
    I had an Nintendo NDS, that thing was a beast in stand by power consumption, the battery was tiny I think no more than 2000mAh but every time I flipped it open it had power
  • i5-2520M 3y ago
    My samsung tablet (wifi) has an average idle drain of 0.3% per hour, meaning what you see in 2 days would take a week. On windows laptops hibernation can also fix idle drain, but that is a bit of a hack. The 3ds is atrocious though, even with wifi off. With wifi it can't even last a day.
  • matheusmoreira 3y ago
    I don't understand why devices can't switch to external power when plugged in. It's like they simultaneously charge and discharge the battery instead of bypassing it.
    • vladvasiliu 3y ago
      I think some do. I don't use my macbook anymore so don't have it on hand to check, but both my HP laptops (one running windows, the other linux) and my iphone seem to not fluctuate the battery charge if I leave them plugged in. The iphone doesn't even get warm, which can happen when it recharges from a drained battery. The laptops won't even attempt to charge if the battery's above a certain threshold, like 95%. My linux laptop barely moves from my desk, so it regularly spends multiple days on end with the battery showing something like 96%.
    • kube-system 3y ago
      Depends on the device. Some do. Some actually can't, because they are capable of drawing more peak power than their wall chargers provide.
      • FeepingCreature 3y ago
        Yeah I can notice the battery dropping on my Thinkpad even when it's powered on, if I put moderate to heavy load on the CPU. So it has to be using the battery like a buffer.
  • rpigab 3y ago
    My Microsoft Surface Pro 4 can do 100% to 0 in less than 48hrs, powered off the whole time. It's old now, but it became that way in the first 2-3 years, without even using it that much. It's such a pain to use because when it's at zero, If I plug it in and power it on, it'll boot Windows, then at any moment will power off by itself, maybe because Windows doesn't want to run at low battery, maybe it's consuming more than what is being charged, idk. I have set the desktop background to 0x000000, removed all non-essential startup services, reinstalled it from scratch, etc. So everytime I want to use it, I have to wait till it's 5-10% before powering it on. The worst part is that if you look it up online, some ppl say it changed drastically after some Windows update, can't confirm because it's not my main PC, I don't remember the exact moment where it had this problem.
    • tzs 3y ago
      Similar with my Surface Pro 4. After a couple years of casual use (it was my "browse on the couch" computer) the battery was significantly degraded. I think a big part of the problem is that "off" doesn't necessarily mean "off". If you just do "Shutdown" from the menu it is just some kind of suspend or hibernate state (I'm not sure which...PC hardware and Windows have a bunch of different "not fully on" states). It's still doing stuff that uses power. It's also doing periodic things like automatic updates. The net result I believe is that even though from my point of view it was only being used occasionally, it was actually going through a battery cycle almost as often as if it had been my main computer. I haven't used Windows in a while so don't remember all the details, but I think if you hold shift while invoking "Shutdown" it shuts down more than a shiftless "Shutdown". There are also command line commands that will shut down even more. I never did find a way to shut it down enough that I could not use it for a week and still have a usable charge on it. Hey, do you have occasional problems with disk encryption? Every so often when I open it I get some obnoxiously bright screen telling me I need to enter my Bitlocker recovery key. But if I cancel that it goes ahead and boots and has no trouble decrypting the disk.
      • rpigab 3y ago
        No, I don't have disk encryption set up on the Surface.
  • throitallaway 3y ago
    Do you leave your Nintendo Switch in standby mode or hold the power button for a few seconds for a full power off? If I don't do a full power off, the battery is gone after a few days in standby mode. It's really annoying when I forget to do it and am welcomed by a dead switch. My Switch is often outside of WiFi connectivity, and I wonder if it's constantly searching for a known network to latch onto.
  • LeifCarrotson 3y ago
    If you shut down your Windows laptop or Linux laptop completely, or remove the battery, the battery will not drain. I've accepted that manufacturers cannot or do not care or will not give me instant wake without atrocious power drain during sleep. Modern solid-state storage boots up really fast, and my browser, IDE, text editor and other tools are pretty good at restoring my working state after boot.
    • J_Shelby_J 3y ago
      Windows laptops are embarrassing. I don't want to only use Apple, but why can't anyone else make a laptop that doesn't require a Human BMS? When I got my first Macbook for work, I was amazed to open it after a week of traveling to find it booted instantly at full charge. Meanwhile my old HP would play slack notifications in my backpack as it's going through the x-ray machine at the airport lmao
• causality0 3y ago
  Most of the devices that allow charge limiting don't have battery cutoff anyway, so you're discharging to 79% and charging to 80 over and over again. I've observed that in my ThinkPad. Fretting over ultimate lifespan doesn't seem worth it, especially at the wild charge rates devices have now.
• almog 3y ago
  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 these two features are not available (well, I can achieve slow charging by using a cable that only supports certain voltage and current)
  • binkHN 3y ago
    By default my Pixel will slow charge when I set it down at the end of the day and be at 100% when my alarm goes off in the morning.
    • almog 3y ago
      Yes, It does that based on some none-transparent parameters. For example, right now my phone will try to slow charge at night. However, charging at night is impossible for me as the temperatures are too low (10f is nothing unusual right now on the divide). So, I have to set a fake alarm (or change my time zone) in hope that adaptive charging mode will trigger slow charging. It doesn't always work.
    • hyperhopper 3y ago
      If you go to bed late, wake up early, need to charge for a few minutes at a party, etc, android slow charge at best doesn't work, and at worst works against you. I have no idea how setting charging settings on our mobile computing devices is something that is not supported in 2023
      • almog 3y ago
        Right, it is somewhat configurable on Samsung phones, which is why I was so surprised when I realized it was less so on Pixel phones.
  • kumarharsh 3y ago
• rootusrootus 3y ago
  I kinda wish my EV would just set the apparent 0% and 100% points at a level that guaranteed X cycles, where X corresponds to perhaps 200K miles. As capacity and fast charging infrastructure improves, it'll be less important for me to access the top 20% of the battery just to make a road trip feasible. Hell, I'm okay with it just being a lie that I can control. Let me choose those points.
  • seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    I find it a lot easier to keep my EV between 20 and 80% than my cell phone. Just plug in whenever you come home and set your top charge to 80%.
  • magicalhippo 3y ago
    BMW i3 does that, kinda. I checked the raw data against the claimed battery size, and the in-car 0-100% was 20-80% of the battery. My new Renault Megane E-tech does not do this. Instead it has an option to limit charging to a given percentage (if you set it to 100% it'll ask if it's just next charge) and the manual states that if you have less than 15km range the car might switch off at any moment without notice... Let's just say I was mildly surprised about the latter. Both cars had battery guarantees though, the Megane's is minimum 80% SOH after 8 years or 160000 km, with no reservations against charging to 100%.
  • Reason077 3y ago
    > ”I kinda wish my EV would just set the apparent 0% and 100% points at a level that guaranteed X cycles, where X corresponds to perhaps 200K miles.” They already do! In most EVs, 0% is not really zero: you can typically drive another 20-40 miles before it finally dies. Most EVs will easily have a battery life of 200K miles, with some capacity degradation. Active battery management such as limiting the max charge is more about preserving the battery life beyond this, and reducing degradation. And all of this becomes less necessary with LFP battery chemistry, which is leas fussy about charge levels and less susceptible to degradation.
    • Gigachad 3y ago
• Zak 3y ago
  I've been using ACCA[0] for years to limit charge on my phone, usually to 60%, but higher when needed. I also limit the charging speed most of the time. It performs like new despite the phone being over three years old. I'm determined to keep it usable as long as I can because I prefer its size and analog headphone jack over what's available now. Actually replacing the battery, however looks like a big hassle, so I'm determined to put that off for years. [0] https://f-droid.org/packages/mattecarra.accapp/ https://f-droid.org/packages/mattecarra.accapp/
  • windex 3y ago
    If phones with easily replaceable batteries arrive due to legislation, it would be one major win, less waste and more peace of mind.
    • helf 3y ago
      [dead]
    • macintux 3y ago
      I'm not so sure it would result in less waste. Apple will replace the batteries cheaply and recycle them; how many user-replaced batteries will go in the trash? How many extra batteries will people buy and never use, or replace their batteries before they actually need to?
  • usefulcat 3y ago
    I've been trying a similar experiment for several years now. I have a four year old iPhone, and for most of its life, the battery level has been kept between 30% and 70%. Settings => Battery => Battery Health and Charging says that the maximum capacity is 91%. No idea whether that's better or worse than average, but I mention it so others can compare. I can say that this is the first time I've tried this experiment, and this phone has already outlasted any previous phone I've had.
    • shaunkoh 3y ago
      Did you have an automated way to do that?
• belltaco 3y ago
  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 Apple does with old iPhones) driver of phone upgrades.
  • Panzer04 3y ago
    Top charge in a lithium battery is very arbitrary. Most batteries can tolerate going higher than the specified 4.2v, up to 4.3 or 4.35v - but the cycle life degradation is not worth the extra capacity.
    • starky 3y ago
      This is exactly the answer. Especially with Li-Ion cells everything is a compromise. You can extend the life of the cell by a fair amount, but then it won't last as long before you have to re-charge. Similarly, if you charge it quicker, then it reduces the lifetime of the cell. I honestly don't understand how people worry about their batteries in their devices so much. I give pretty much zero care into how I treat the battery in my devices other than to try to charge them before it drops down too low (which is where most of the damage occurs if you do it repeatedly) and I can only think of 1 or 2 times where my devices battery has worn out before I end up replacing it.
      • baq 3y ago
        I replace my devices when the battery wears out because I can get a new phone in 5 minutes and the battery takes a week to replace in this forsaken country.
      • J_Shelby_J 3y ago
        I've babied my iphone x battery (battery case ftw) and it's at "86%" after five years. Even with all the nice features apple offers for battery management they still design their phones to have undersized batteries and encourage usage patterns that degrade the battery in ~2 years, when they could just slightly increase the thickness of the phone and increase the lifespan to ~5 years. Very conservative depths of discharge and charging termination voltages can extend life spans into the 10,000 cycle ranges which is effectively forever for a device with a finite lifespan. And it wouldn't increase the weight of the phone too much: doubling battery capacity isn't doubling the size of the phone or even the battery itself. Just the active material in the battery.
• Waterluvian 3y ago
  As a consumer do I have to worry about this or will BMS handle things? My kid runs his 3DS until it shuts off and I was wondering what impact that kind of behaviour might have.
  • Gigachad 3y ago
    I wouldn’t expend any energy worrying about it. It’s meant to shut off before causing any damage. And even if you could slightly extend the life by babying the battery, who cares, you can trivially replace the 3DS battery for cheap.
• Panzer04 3y ago
  The rule of thumb is you roughly double cycle life for every 0.1v lower you go (approx. 10% of charge). I would only restrict the full charge level of you never need the full charge available anyway. Eg. I only use about 60% of my phone's battery, so I can comfortably restrict it to 85% and have plenty of leeway to avoid running out. If there's a decent chance you need the full battery, just use the full battery. Also consider how long you expect to keep a device. A couple of years of daily charging is 700 cycles, so worth considering preserving battery lifetime if it suits you.
  • helf 3y ago
    Iirc the chevy volt only lets you use around 60% of the battery pack under normal conditions. Love my volt. 104K miles, 10 years old, no signs of battery performance degredation yet. My last volt had 156k and same age and same performance (got totalled :( )
• Casteil 3y ago
  I've used the 80% max charge setting on a 15 pro since the first week or so. FWIW, it seems Apple has it charge to 100% occasionally (about once a month) even with the setting active. I wish you could have iOS artificially adjust/map the visible battery level reading to your 0-80% limit (as 0-100%) - starting at 80% gives undue battery anxiety... but the other reason I use the 80% limit is that it still lasts DAYS and I don't have to think about charging it every day. That and battery longevity is nice on a phone that may go on for 5+ years.
  • Kirby64 3y ago
    Any BMS needs to charge fully to have the most accurate charge capacity, so it’s no surprise it automatically charges to 100% occasionally. Shouldn’t really matter for longevity if you’re doing it rarely.
• tobias2014 3y ago
  Here are some good references on this with actual measurements, see e.g. table 4 on how many discharge cycles you can get out of a certain maximum voltage / charging level: https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-lithium-based-batteries https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-... https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-204-how-do-lithium-batteries-work https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-204-how-do-lithium-... https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-501a-discharge-characteristics-of-li-ion https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-501a-discharge-char... On Thinkpads you can use tp_smapi to set charge start and stop thresholds https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/tp_smapi https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/tp_smapi
• rabuse 3y ago
  I'm in the "flashlight nerd" gang, and I've learned to store my long-term storage li-on batteries at near 50% capacity to extend their life tremendously. I've also implemented this strategy with my portable chargers, and they've lasted for years now at full capacity still.
  • remram 3y ago
    Full half capacity?
    • rabuse 3y ago
      The total capacity, meaning the battery's original mAh capacity.
• cantSpellSober 3y ago
  "Adaptive Charging" is the answer to this problem no? My phone lowers the rate of charging so it's only at 100% by the time you wake up. Even just making it easier to replace the battery ("right to repair") would mitigate this.
  • valenterry 3y ago
    No. It's better but still stresses the battery when loading to 100%. Best is to load slowly (or so that the battery doesn't get too warm) to 80% or 90%.
• vagab0nd 3y ago
  Tesla suggests charging their new LFP type battery to 100% regularly. Why isn't this new type of battery more widely used?
  • kragen 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery#Lower_energy_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery...
  • jakobson14 3y ago
    Because it has less energy density in favour of more stability.
  • kccqzy 3y ago
    Patents only expired in 2022.
• gsky 3y ago
  I remove my laptop battery while using it at home. Its 12y old and still going strong.
• Joel_Mckay 3y ago
  1. All batteries have an aging characteristic whether they are charged or not (around 6% loss per year). For example, a home solar array or EV should prioritize the largest practical capacity budgets allow. Thus, the performance remains more consistent throughout the entire service life. This also reduces the discharge load stress on the cells reducing wear, and exposing greater energy capacity through efficiency gains. 2. There are several types of Lithium batteries with unique charge cycle limits. A common 4.2v cell is ideally rated for 8000 cycles if shallow cycled, and slow charged. Accordingly, deep cycling a LiPol or LiIon below 60% into the dead pre-conditioning zone or in the Constant-Current mode will reduce the life to well below 4000 cycles. 3. 80% or 100% full is meaningless because accessible energy depends on temperature (outside 4'C to 50'C is bad), chemistry, and loading. Typically, even the cheapest Lithium charge management ICs have a hysteresis built into the cycle, and will let the cells stand-by after charging until the cell internal resistance self-drains a bit of power in time before charging again. 4. Li batteries do not like trickle-charging or rapid-changing, and in a way the "100%" indication icon often means just that. Over-boosted the cell into the 112% capacity range to provide a short-term capacity boost. This wears out the cell 15% faster, but many tends to do this... so who would know the difference. I'd wager the Apple team added the 80% mode to turn off this boost trick, at the cost of "boosted" capacity. 5. There are consumer chargers for Lithium cells with temperature and impedance monitoring while charging. These are highly recommended if you have 21700 or 18650 cell based equipment. Unlike other options these chargers will show you a rapid impedance change when the cell has an internal problem (dendrite fusing in polymers etc.) Read the manufacturers app notes for your cells. They will often disclose the conditions their chemistry is stable (Samsung and Sony are usually the best). There are so many various types of cells out there... most of them are crap. This text is just a starting point, and should be assumed as another ill-informed internet opinion until validated under your own efforts. YMMV Best regards =)
• fy20 3y ago
  Does anyone know how limited charging works with balancing? As I understand balancing only happens when batteries reach their full capacity. A bit of background: Batteries are made up of cells which have ever so slightly different voltages. If you have three 3.7v cells in series to make a 9.2V some cells will be 3.68V and another could be 3.72V. This is bad, because when you charge the battery it is charged as a whole unit - the BMS will simply stop charging when it reaches 9.2V (or whatever it is set to). Over time the difference between the cells will increase, which could ends up with one cell being 3.9V and another 3.5V. tThis will result in you damaging the higher cells (which if overcharged enough could cause a fire) and the lower cells will not be fully charged so the battery will have a lower capacity. My understanding: Balancing is designed to fix this. The idea is that there is a resistor in series with each cell, and it turns on when that cell reaches the set point, e.g. 3.70V. That way when you charge the battery as a whole to 9.2V, you know each individual cell is also 3.70V. This is a naive solution though, as for larger batteries you will have cells in parallel and you can't use this approach there. The better approach would be to charge each cell individually, but as I understand even large batteries like Powerwalls do not do this.
  • Joel_Mckay 3y ago
    1. Balancing does not change the internal impedance of cells with different aging characteristics. You will be constrained by the weakest cell behaving more like a crude resister in the pack over time. 2. Balancing does ensure the capacity of all cells is maximized, but does not match each discharge characteristic under load. Thus, the method can improve cell life under shallow changing, but can't atop unbalanced loading with random cell impedance mismatch. There are good chargers and special meters that can help match a set of cells. Best of luck =)
• rzimmerman 3y ago
  This is an excellent answer and explanation. It’s helpful for people that want a deeper understanding of what’s going on with lithium batteries and where the 80% recommendations come from. But in terms of general advice that does the most good for the average person, I strongly recommend just doing whatever the manufacturer says. Just use the device and charge it when you want. Live. Some team at Apple, Tesla, Google, whatever, spent 9 figures plus figuring out how to charge the battery so that it meets lifetime guarantees under normal use. There’s too much bad advice out there. Don’t discharge fully every cycle/occasionally (that was NiCd specific, and it was bad advice then). Don’t obsess about turning things off, force quitting apps, putting your car in neutral, or whatever dumb thing your neighbor said. That being said, the answer here is correct, but keep in mind how that works with the battery management your device already has. Tesla explicitly recommends a lower limit. Do it. Apple phones limit charge cap to 80% until before you wake up. That’s great.
  • moffkalast 3y ago
    I for one would at least like it to be configurable as much as possible so I can pick if, say, I want my laptop to only stay on storage voltage when I keep it constantly plugged in, or say my phone shutting down at 15% instead because the morons designing it have glued in the battery, or alternatively allow going lower for a bit more damage if I'm lost in a forest and need every mW I can get before it dies. Call it consumer choice. I'm so fucking tired of every affordable BMS on the market being hardwired to cut charge at 4.3 V (beyond what the charger will even reach per cell, so you get no top balancing lmao) and allow going down to 2.5 V like bruh what are you even protecting at that point, staying at those extremes for any amount of time will destroy the battery anyway. It would've cost them 2 cents to replace fixed resistors with those screw potentiometers for range adjustment.
• tinybear1 3y ago
  One of my pet peeves is how people get so dismissive about limiting their battery charge. People will even get defensive, as if it is a personal attack or something. Empirical evidence has shown time and time again that it is a-matter-of-fact that stopping charge at 80% will prolong a lithium-ion battery. [1][2][3] I mean, it’s one thing to be believe that it is “too inconvenient” or that “life’s too short to micromanage my phone battery”, and another to blatantly spread lies that stopping charge at 80% is a “myth” with no benefit. And maybe that “micromanagement” argument was true 5 years ago, but nowadays nearly every device can automatically limit charge levels, e.g.: iPhone 15 and above iPhone 14 and below with a smart-plug[4] Most Samsung phones/tablets Sony phones/tablets Any rooted Android Any decent EV Windows: Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Microsoft laptops MacOS through AlDente[5] Linux: TLP for most manufacturers[6] And honestly if your device can’t automatically limit charge, I concede it probably isn’t worth the micromanagement. But those kinds of devices have small, cheap, and easy to replace batteries anyway. It’s a heck of a lot different to drive to the Apple Store and spend $250 for a MacBook battery versus the $30 battery and half hour of work for Nintendo Switch. [1] https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-lithium-based-batteries https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-... [2] https://accubattery.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/sections/202397985-AccuBattery-Research-and-Methodology https://accubattery.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/sections/202397985-... [3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352484719310911 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235248471... [4] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/how-to-set-an-automation-to-turn-off-charging-at-80.2315533/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/how-to-set-an-automatio... [5]https://github.com/AppHouseKitchen/AlDente-Charge-Limiter https://github.com/AppHouseKitchen/AlDente-Charge-Limiter [6] https://linrunner.de/tlp/settings/bc-vendors.html https://linrunner.de/tlp/settings/bc-vendors.html
• talldatethrow 3y ago
  The battery in my pixel 4xl failed two times under warranty and then a third where googles service provider wouldn't do it again for me. (The ribbon connector is actually what fails). So I went to Amazon and bought a $14 kit that came with a battery AND tools. Did it myself in 15 minutes. (Whereas the UBreakIfix vendor took like 2 hours of my time between dropoff and pickup). The Amazon battery has lasted longer than 3 Google official batteries did. Even so, I no longer worry about batteries when all these cheap kits and instructions exist.
  • djmips 3y ago
    You did all this in 15 minutes? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1gVWGAw8do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1gVWGAw8do Let me guess, the back cover wasn't stuck on very well from the repeated battery replacements.
    • talldatethrow 3y ago
      Yes, 15 minutes or less. There's like 3 screws to undo on the battery clamp and 4-5 for the camera or whatever. That's it. I suppose yes it was a not stuck together as well as a new phone.. I wouldn't know since a certified Google place had fixed it prior. So if it was stuck together like new, it would have taken me a few extra minutes with a heat gun. Still much much faster than having a pro do it for me.
      • djmips 3y ago
        Well that's comforting because I have my Pixel phone and a new third-party battery sitting in a box on my desk and I feel just a little intimidiated to tackle it. I will try it now.
• ra 3y ago
  We just got a Tesla model Y. When we picked it up, they told us to charge it up to 100% at least once per week. Is there something different about these batteries?
  • speedgoose 3y ago
    You probably have one with a LFP battery. They have a different chemistry that is cheaper, have a lower energy density, are less powerful, don’t like cold, but that can often be charged to 100%. The reason you need to charge it to 100% so often too is that it’s the voltage on a LFP battery is all over the place and the battery management system (BMS) has a hard time to keep track of the remaining capacity. Those system usually rely on the voltage but they can’t on this kind of battery. So charging to 100% will let the car know an accurate battery state of charge: full. I have a model y with a classic LG lithium battery and I almost never charge to 100% and the car is discouraging charging that high in its user interface. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_batte...
  • nortlov 3y ago
    Some models (RWD?) are equipped with LFP (lithium iron phosphate) batteries. Tesla recommends setting a charge limit of 100% and, as you mentioned, charging up to 100% at least once per week. https://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/10ji8yk/lfp_vs_lithiumion_whats_the_difference_and_which/ https://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/10ji8yk/l...
    • ra 3y ago
      Yes - ours is RWD.
  • eqvinox 3y ago
    The percentage is irrelevant, what matters is the charge termination voltage, which AFAIK is lower on all electric cars because you care about battery longevity. I.e. if the same cells were in a laptop, your car showing 100% might only be 80% in the laptop, and it's all good. (What the actual charge termination voltage [and cell type] is, I sadly don't know and don't know where to find…)
• sprokolopolis 3y ago
  On Android, I use a terminal script called Advanced Charging Controller (ACC) to automate keeping the battery under 80% and some other battery saving tweaks. It allows you to charge to any value (like 80%), then stop charging until it discharges to another set value, which triggers it to start charging again. That was you can keep it between something like 70% and 80% while you leave it charging over night. It also has settings to keep the batter under a specified temperature and trigger cool-down intervals if it gets to a particular temperature. It can use a job scheduler to switch between different profiles for different days, or events. There are also some frontend apps, which let the user control the script with a more friendly GUI ("AccA" or "ACC Settings"). Link to the script: https://github.com/VR-25/acc https://github.com/VR-25/acc This does require root permissions, though.
  • unstuck3958 3y ago
    AccA is awesome! I used it to repurpose my decade old Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime as a custom wall clock and alarm. I couldn't figure out how to power it without a battery, and If I had plugged it in all time I was risking an exploded battery. Enter AccA, it remains between 50-55% all the time, along with prioritizing battery-idle mode (which means the device tries to draw power directly from the external power source).
    • sprokolopolis 3y ago
      That is a good idea. Years back, I had a very old phone that I used as an alarm clock and media player. It would have been nice to not worry about charging. I did disable the mobile and wifi radios, which saved a tons of battery.
• beefnugs 3y ago
  This can't really be that big a deal. My framework laptop used to have a setting right in the bios about not charging past 60% if you plan to keep it plugged in all the time... at some point they just bug broke that feature and never bothered to fix it ever again. These are smart people and I trust that it can't really matter that much or they would have fixed it by now
• fomine3 3y ago
  I really want 80% limit feature on TWS earphones. It has small battery, perhaps fully utilize battery capacity for longer battery life, harder to replace battery (especially with waterproof). I'd like to have a 80%-100% slide switch on the case, but it would be too nerd feature.
• negative_zero 3y ago
  There is so much confusion, misinformation and naive testing about this topic. I've only learned about this "80% battery thing" when researching EVs recently and it seems to have been (maybe) spawned by the Nissan Leaf many years ago. And now it's appearing on HN seemingly once a week. What has changed? Is someone running an information(or disinformation) campaign? Blog or app to promote? I've not spoken earlier for fear of being downvoted into oblivion: I am sorry to say, but this 80% nonsense is just ... terrible advice and is 90% wrong. Like "skipping a daily coffee will let you retire 10 years sooner" wrong. (And all these lovely graphs I see thrown around are from poorly setup and poorly controlled tests using small samples or maybe even they're faked idk). To be horribly simplistic about it, the biggest factor in battery ageing is thermals. So if you want actionable advice on increasing the longevity of your battery (in the mobile phone context): Don't let it get hot, which means things like: * Take off that awful plastic insulator you call a phone case. (But we need phone cases) * Charge it slowly. Lower charge rate = less heat = happier battery. (But people love charging their phone in 1 minute) * Charge at human ambient temperature. (But on my bed, in the sun is easier) I guess those are inconvenient and poor sound bites. I'm sorry, but consumer devices (especially phones) have poor thermals and the environment they're subjected to sucks. That's just a fact of life (and economics and physics). Very simplistically, the only way "charge to 80% only" *might* be helping you is by keeping the battery cooler (In which case the above advice is much better).
  • appointment 3y ago
    I think people are confused because of the advice to not charge above 80% on fast DC chargers, but that is about the exponential reduction in safe charging speed at high state of charge, not battery degradation (excepting old versions of the Nissan Leaf with bad battery management). If you fast charge to above 80% you are wasting your own time and the time of other people waiting to charge, so manufacturers usually quote fast charge times for a 10% to 80% charge, which is both more realistic and make the cars look better.
  • jve 3y ago
    Tesla charges battery to 80%. The supercharger charges it there in less than an hour and manages thermals. And it charges very slowly at the end. Tesla battery lasts very well. Keeping battery between 20-80% is healthy. Your comment kind of implies that 80% charge is irrelevant, but the things you mention PLUS the discharge depth or how full you charge also affect the equation from what I gather. https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1110149_tesla-model-s-battery-life-what-the-data-show-so-far https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1110149_tesla-model-s-b...
• nottheengineer 3y ago
  I can highly recommend ACC (and the ACCA app [1] for setup). It lets me limit my phone to 90% charge with the ability to ignore the limit temporarily when I need to. That's very useful for fixing the battery calibration, which can go bad when using ACC. It has reduced my battery wear by 40-50% according to Accubattery's capacity graph. [1] https://github.com/MatteCarra/AccA https://github.com/MatteCarra/AccA
  • dagurp 3y ago
    A few people in this thread have recommended it but you need a rooted phone for this, right?
    • nottheengineer 3y ago
      Yes, as far as I know you do. I don't know how they did it, but it even works when the phone isn't booted.
• FooBarWidget 3y ago
  I wish my car can self-limit to 80%. Right now I have to set a timer to remind myself to unplug. If I forget to set the timer, I'm screwed. If at the exact moment it's inconvenient to go unplug, I'm screwed. Replacing the battery costs 18000 EUR.
  • LUmBULtERA 3y ago
    What car do you have? I've been used-car shopping for an EV and every one I've looked at here let me limit charge.
    • FooBarWidget 3y ago
      Mercedes plug-in hybrid from 2015.
• The_Colonel 3y ago
  Samsung phones have a good feature which limit charging to 85%. The only thing it's missing is the easy "I want full charge today" button, you need to go deep into settings to toggle this. The other minor annoyance is that subjectively the battery charged to 100% seems to make a bigger difference than the reported 15% indicates - it seems like 30% or even more. Maybe some battery recalibration issue. But it doesn't bother me that much since 85% still carries me comfortably through the day.
  • JohnKemeny 3y ago
    You (or at least I) can add a quick toggle button called Protect Battery. This makes it as easy to toggle as all the other options like wifi, bluetooth, etc.
    • The_Colonel 3y ago
      Indeed, very useful, thanks for the tip!
    • prima-facie 3y ago
      This is brilliant, thank you!
  • borplk 3y ago
    Pro tip: go to the settings app and type "prot" in the search bar at the top, the first search results will be "Protect battery", so you don't need to navigate to it step by step
• osdril 3y ago
  FYI, on Apple Silicon Apple included a firmware-level "hard-switch" to limit the charge to 75/80% only. It was discovered by marcan while working on Asahi and in my experience it's much more convenient than the built-in ML-based solution (and also less hacky and bloated than AlDente). See this discussion [0] on GitHub for the explanation and this snippet [1] for easy use. This solution also works while the laptop is sleeping, the only limitation is that it doesn't survive reboots. [0] https://github.com/actuallymentor/battery/pull/163 https://github.com/actuallymentor/battery/pull/163 [1] https://github.com/actuallymentor/battery/pull/163#issuecomment-1774022322 https://github.com/actuallymentor/battery/pull/163#issuecomm...
  • rxyz 3y ago
    this switch is available to users on iPhone 15's
    • osdril 3y ago
      I know, I hope Apple will decide to expose it to everyone in the future, since it's already implemented..
      • teekert 3y ago
        It would be very easy to implement in software. Just display a green and yellow/red bar on the battery status icon and allow for people to say full is 80%, empty is 20%. Or something. For me it is well worth going from charger to charger (they are everywhere, especially if you put some wireless chargers here and there) if that means the phone can still do a full day after 5 years. I generally use phones until they stop working. I'm into my 3rd year with my iPhone 12 mini, the phone is still super fast, takes great pictures and still feels like "my new phone".
  • AnonC 3y ago
    I use the paid version of an app called Al Dente [1] to set the battery charging level to a specific limit. The app has a free mode. It has more features than what I stated, and works on Intel Macs and Apple Silicon Macs (limited only by what the underlying hardware allows). [1]: https://apphousekitchen.com/ https://apphousekitchen.com/
• FlyingSnake 3y ago
  Pro Tip: Use this nifty charge limiter¹ on your macbooks to limit your laptop charging. I can see a noticeable improvement in my MBP battery life. 1: https://github.com/AppHouseKitchen/AlDente-Charge-Limiter https://github.com/AppHouseKitchen/AlDente-Charge-Limiter
  • osdril 3y ago
    I think this [0] native approach is preferable [0] https://github.com/actuallymentor/battery/pull/163 https://github.com/actuallymentor/battery/pull/163
• avhception 3y ago
  Thanks, this post led to me finally getting around to limiting my Thinkpad's charging thresholds and discovering TLP (Linux power-tuning utility) in the process :)
• MilaM 3y ago
  This seems to be good advice for single cells. But what about packs with cells wired in series and parallel? My understanding is, that packs always come with a battery management system (BMS) that will balance the cell voltages and therefore compensate for slight variations between cells that can manifest during use and charging. This seems to be necessary for both performance and longevity of the pack. Now the question is, do these BMSs work properly if you never or rarely charge your pack to 100%? I tend to charge packs to 100% to give the BMS a chance to do the balancing and then keep it off a charger for as long as possible. Not sure if my thinking is correct though. Maybe someone with more knowledge could chime in.
  • tantalor 3y ago
    > do these BMSs work properly if you never or rarely charge your pack to 100% I'm no EE, but from the instructions I was given, the answer is no, the BMS requires 100% charge to kick in and "top up" the lower cells. The recommendation was to do that every n=few charging cycles.
• empiricus 3y ago
  But where can I see real data and graphs about millions of batteries in phones and laptops, not these anecdata "i have a phone which lasted blah years".
• cubefox 3y ago
  This post doesn't give any actual argument why you should charge your device only to 80%. If you use your phone for, say, four years, and charge it to 100% regularly, how much will the battery life deteriorate during those four years? I assume if the fully-charged capacity after three years is still at least 80% of the original, then regularly charging it fully was absolutely worth it. The point is that deterioration in battery capacity has to be compared to the loss of usable capacity if you only charge it to 80% voluntarily. By the way, they also warn from fully discharging the battery, and recommend an charge range from 30% to 80%. This would mean you limit yourself to only 50% of the capacity. It is questionable whether gains in battery lifetime can outweigh this loss in realistic scenarios. The main lesson seems to be that you shouldn't fully discharge your battery when you can avoid it easily, and not fully charge it if you know in advance that you won't need the full charge.
  • nrvn 3y ago
    Bought my previous iphone in early 2018. Changed the battery this spring because its health reportedly fell below 80% of its maximum capacity. I could not care less to be honest. Always charged to 100%. Dropped the phone multiple times throughout its lifetime. Fully discharged at random. Exposed to 50°C and direct sunlight as well as well below zero. 5 years is a good job done for a non-replaceable battery. And the cost of replacement was like 50usd or something in apple store. The question is: why should I start bothering?..
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • lutorm 3y ago
      If you were talking about the battery in your EV, the cost of replacement would be a bit higher. There are more things with batteries than iphones.
  • dncornholio 3y ago
    > This post doesn't give any actual argument why you should charge your device only to 80%. It does, it tells you the battery will degrade 5 times less compared to charging it to 100%. If that is worth it is up to you to decide. I charge my phone daily, it's usually around 40% at the end of day so charging it to 80% should only benefit me.
• nrvn 3y ago
  It feels like manufacturers decided to offset their lawnmowing to end users. I am not an expert in this field but 0% charge is not zero as far as I know. Completely drained battery cannot be charged and is usually unrecoverably dead. As for 100% again there is a speculation that 100% does not reflect the full charge and if it does, then the battery itself has safeguards to cut off power. I want my device to plug in and out without much thinking as this is the scenario 99% of customers will follow. So the device I am charging should be smart enough to handle overheating, overcharging, its battery’s lifecycle, etc. and I believe it is possible to do without involving end users into this decision making. If the lower threshold is 30% let it be so. Tell me via notification to connect a charger to help the precious energy cell stay safe and healthy. If the upper is 80% just lie to me saying that you are fully charged when in reality you are rotating the ions. Just be consistent in the average behavior and that’s it.
  • Roark66 3y ago
    In a microfpv world (tiny drones) it used to be pretty common to overvolt li-ion batteries to fill them "beyond 100%". These days manufacturers sell you batteries rated to charge to 4.35V,but they don't last long this way. Some mad people even charge huge 6c-2500mAh batteries like this, but it is insanity.
• xxs 3y ago
  Charge Li-Ion to 4.21V and that's that. The rest (over 4.25) is overcharging. If you see the voltages charged - it's clearly outside the spec. Using a voltage -> percentage table is just a gimmick that has managed to stick. The entire discussion is littered with percentages that aside being non-scientific, mean absolutely nothing at all as they are not comparable. Most tool batteries, vacuum and mower robots - all charge below 4.2V - yet phones (and some laptops) are special. Morealso charging it to '80%' means little as we have no clue what charge profile: constant voltage [how high]/current is used and when.
• findthewords 3y ago
  " 100 % " is a matter of definition. It's planned obsolescence, simply put. What is generally agreed upon as " 100 % " is the voltage that makes the capacity drop to ~ 80 % after 300~350 full charge cycles. This means your device battery is at end-of-life after a full year of daily full charge cycles. Why we've defined it as such, I don't know. If we wanted our batteries to live longer we could simply change the definition of " 100 % " indicate 600 full charge cycles. In practice it would mean something like dropping the peak capacity voltage from 4.20 Volts to 4.10 Volts.
• teekert 3y ago
  I always try to keep between 20-80% with my iPhone and consequently always feel bad about my AirPods. The case is always as empty as possible, the pods as full as possible. They spend almost their entire life at 100% as a result of the charging case. Even though I always use them at a max of 1 hour or so at a time. In other words: I first need to drain the case to the very bad 0% to get the pods to go down, otherwise they sit at 100% almost always because sometime I don't use them for days. I hope Apple designed for this... I really wish I had more control over my device's charging cycles. I generally use phones until they really die (replaced my OnePlus 3 with an iPhone 12 mini because the power button broke and battery was down to 10 hrs or so), iPhone 12 mini still feels like my new phone and works great, I see myself using it for years to come (especially because I think it is the perfect size). Perhaps I should get a non-charging AirPods case somewhere.
  • jetrink 3y ago
    > The case is always as empty as possible, the pods as full as possible. They spend almost their entire life at 100% as a result of the charging case. Even though I always use them at a max of 1 hour or so at a time. I wouldn't assume that Apple hasn't thought about this or that your earbuds are telling you the truth about their charge level. I have a Jabra headset that is four years old, and it is smart enough to profile my usage and optimize its charging. In normal use, I wear it during the workday and plug it in every night. In response, it slowly charges up to about 60% by morning, which is more than enough to get through the day. However, when I go on a trip and charge it less frequently, it responds by quickly and fully charging when I do get a chance to plug it in. (I only wish I could tell it when I'm about to leave on a trip, but the battery has lasted four years of almost daily use now, so it's a small price to pay.) If Jabra can do this, Apple can too.
  • koromak 3y ago
    Well if it matters, I'm astounded at my airpod Pro's battery life. Going on four years of daily use, and I still get 3.5 hours straight hours out of them every night
• Rapzid 3y ago
  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.
  • 0xbadcafebee 3y ago
    If the company gives you a "battery saver" option, always enable it. If they don't, see if you can find 3rd party software to, or unplug it at 85%.
  • shortcake27 3y ago
    > 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 habits could prolong the life of billions of devices, a huge win for the environment. You shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the idea just because you personally aren’t affected.
    • Rapzid 3y ago
      I guess I'm just inattentive, ignorant, dismissive, and environmentally unconscious.
• 0xbadcafebee 3y ago
  Another important rule: Never leave a lithium-ion battery at 100% charge (or <10% charge), or in an unventilated/hot area, for a long time. It makes battery swelling more likely. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/18/lithium-ion-battery-swelling-why/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/18/lithium... https://bgr.com/tech/samsung-galaxy-batteries-might-have-a-serious-swelling-issue/ https://bgr.com/tech/samsung-galaxy-batteries-might-have-a-s... https://www.reddit.com/r/spicypillows/comments/gebotv/faq_what_to_do_if_you_have_a_swollen_battery/ https://www.reddit.com/r/spicypillows/comments/gebotv/faq_wh...
• spallas 3y ago
  Most comments focus on consumer electronics where battery replacement is around $70-200. However the biggest impact is actually on EVs, where replacement costs are of much greater concern. For large batteries supporting buildings or power plants, there's usually an optimization software that balances energy usage opportunity costs, and the amortized costs of battery degradation (personally built one in my previous job).
• _yb2s 3y ago
  I use a Chargie (chargie.org) hardware device to limit charge on my devices to 80%, and the batteries last nearly forever. Currently typing this on a 4 year old iPhone with like new battery function. I highly recommend these, I’ve been using them since they were first sold. I have no affiliation, but am a very satisfied customer. For my Macbooks I use an app called Al Dente. I still have have 2016 MacBook with like new battery life. People will ask is this worth it? Isn’t it a pain to have a device only charged to 80%? It is totally worth it- because I only do it 80% thing when staying home, so when I travel my devices have full battery health and don’t run empty when I most need them.
  • Night_Thastus 3y ago
    Is that really necessary? Don't basically all modern phones, laptops, tablets, etc all have battery protection software built-in?
    • _yb2s 3y ago
      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.
      • Night_Thastus 3y ago
        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.
        • _yb2s 3y ago
          All phones have hard coded battery management, but where to set the "100%" level, which trades off the longevity vs battery capacity is fixed, and not user adjustable. As a phone manufacturer, they want to advertise long battery life, so push more towards that than I would like, and can't decide based on context (e.g. staying home vs travel). There is literally no reason for this not to be a user settable parameter on all devices, other than that there is no incentive for manufacturers to do so. Most electric cars however, do have the ability to set this. However, because phones are locked down for security reasons, there is no way to make these software adjustable with an app, unless you root the device. Hence the need for a hardware solution.
• dragontamer 3y ago
  Note: changing the chemistry is likely an option. Lead-Acids prefer to sit at 100% or even slightly overcharged. Figuring out the 80% point of li-ion is difficult due to the flat discharge curve.
• acyou 3y ago
  For people who care about this, I would recommend float charging at 40%, slow charge to 60% before use, then slow discharge to 40%, preferably all done at 10 degrees C. And, for safety reasons, you should ideally have supervised charging in a fireproof bunker. Empty fireplaces and concrete basement floors can work in a pinch. If you don't care, just use your device normally and buy a new one when the old one's cycle life starts to suffer. If you want to be somewhere in the middle, try to plug it in reasonably soon after it dies, or ideally before it dies. Keep an eye on your devices on the first charge after you buy them, and on the first charge after a drop or impact, watching for smoke, burning plastic smell and swelling. Don't attempt to charge a swelled battery, and dispose of lithium ion batteries properly. Disclaimer: All the above advice is given without warranty, do your own research and don't rely on this advice for your safety.