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Q: Best way to charge your cel phone? (always keep it 20%-80%?)

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by stevepea, Sep 22, 2020.

  1. stevepea

    stevepea Senior Member

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    I recently read an article about charging your cel phone in the NY Times:
    Is Charging Your Phone All Day Really That Bad? - The New York Times

    And the part that interested me was the best way to most limit degradation of the battery.

    Please, I don't want to debate on whether it's "worth the trouble" or not (it probably isn't).
    What I'm interested in, is simply the science of the batteries -- if it's true or not.

    Basically the article says it's better to keep the battery between 20%-80%
    (ie, not let it go to zero, and not charge to full).

    Two questions:

    (1) Is it indeed better for the battery (esp when talking about a cellphone battery) not to charge to full or let it run to zero?

    (2) Would the same apply to a Prime battery? Would that mean it's better for the battery not to be charged to full? (It never reaches zero really, because of the buffer). If I only need 2/3rds of the battery is it better to stop charging at 2/3rds or 3/4ths point, instead charging to full, or better (for the battery) to charge to full? Wouldn't it be the same as the cell phone battery in principle?

    With absolutely no scientific basis at all, I always thought it was better to charge the battery until full instead of (for instance) stopping it at 80% or 90%. I guess I was wrong?

    Here's the passage in the article:
    --------------
    Charging your battery to full capacity less frequently, and not letting it run totally dry, can extend its life — somewhat. Putting less stress on the electrodes results in less degradation, and ultimately higher capacity for a longer period of time.

    “It is possible to prolong the battery life by not completely charging and not completely discharging,” Mr. de Vries said. “So we’ll say stay between 20 percent and 80 percent or so.” The battery lifetime is “inversely proportional to the amount of lithium ions that you put in the electrodes.”

    This is one reason Apple offers optimized battery charging on its iPhones, keeping the charge below 80 percent until you need the battery topped off. Android doesn’t have a similar system-level algorithm, but individual manufacturers like OnePlus and Asus have introduced their own optimization features.
    --------------
     
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  2. Salamander_King

    Salamander_King Senior Member

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    For longevity of the lithium battery, yes 20%-80% charge practice is better. AFAIK, it is well documented and established scientific fact. I am not an expert in that field, but if you do even a cursory search, you will find plenty of scientific as well as anecdotal evidences supporting this.

    As for the PRIME battery, the same applies, but Toyota has made the charging by owner easier by not allowing the battery to be ever fully charged or fully drained. The buffer exist on both top and bottom portion of the SoC. 100% charged traction battery is really ~84% and traction battery depleted (for EV drive) is really ~14% although this limit can change a bit depending on the condition. So you don't have to worry about 20%-80%. It is already taken care of by the car computer.

    As for the notion that "better to charge the battery until full instead of (for instance) stopping it at 80% or 90%" comes mostly from old battery technology when the "memory" effect was problem mostly on NiCd battery.
     
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  3. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    Lead-acid batteries also do better when charged to 100%. We might see a shortage of starter batteries once the pandemic passes.

    So what is best charge level varies with the chemistry. Honda overly discharged the NiMH in their earlier hybrids, that lead to early death, but the majority of cars using traction packs have top and bottom limits on the charge to avoid that. Tesla may be the only one that allows a (near) 100% charge, and they warn against doing so regularly.
     
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  4. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    why don't computers, phones and etc limit the charge and discharge to 60% of total capacity? it would be impossible for me to pull that off on my own
     
  5. Salamander_King

    Salamander_King Senior Member

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    I think simply because it would add cost to manufacturing and most manufacturers advertise the full charge to zero for the battery life. If the phone or computer routinely does not get that the consumers are going to complain. I find for the removable type battery found in most of laptops, it is now cheaper to just buy a new battery pack than trying to extend the life of the OEM battery pack by strict 20%-80% charge cycle. I really hate many of newer phone design in which the battery is not easily user removable. That's one of the reason I still use old Lumia phone with removable battery pack. A full charge lasts for a week stand by, and new packs are super cheap. I have a couple of extra battery in my car and and in a drawer.
     
  6. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    maybe an after market charger?
     
  7. Salamander_King

    Salamander_King Senior Member

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    Maybe such "smart" charger exist or maybe under development, but I don't know. The article sited by OP points the fact that iPhone is already including such software control for charging the phone. For someone who want to prolong the battery, maybe living with only 60% usable battery SoC is acceptable, but for most users, that would not fly very well, I would think. Most smart phone is replaced in 2-3 years anyway. They are either out dated by lack of hardware or lack of software update. It is totally different from the use case of a car which most people expect to last for a decade or longer.
     
  8. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    you can make it optional, with warnings like tesla. if it already exists on i phone, that's great.

    i got about 7 years on my macbook pro, before longevity really started to tail off.
     
  9. Salamander_King

    Salamander_King Senior Member

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    I don't have iPhone, but my other half and kids are i lovers. I don't think DW even knows anything about charge optimization. Yeah, my Pixelbook purchased used has sealed battery and is already 3+ years old. When the battery degrade, I may attempt to change the battery DIY, but chances are it will be out of support update cycle (currently 5 years? for all Chrome OS) before that happens. Is your macbook still getting security updates? I don't know how long Apple supports it. I recently had to get rid of a work computer that was running Windows 7 Pro OS for lack of security update. I don't remember how old the machine was, but I am sure it was less than 7 years.
     
  10. jerrymildred

    jerrymildred Senior Member

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    iOS has done something like that for the last 2-3 years. If you charge overnight, it'll charge up to 80% and then finish charging just before your usual time of starting to use it. So it still fully charges, but doesn't sit with a full charge for most of the night. Same with the Apple Watch with the new OS. Still no such thing on laptops, unfortunately.

    On the bottom end, you just need to keep an eye on it. My iPhone Pro Max is pretty amazing. I let it charge while I have breakfast. That usually brings it to 80-90%. I'll use it all day. Then use it all day the next day. The following morning, it'll be back down to 45-60%. I'll charge during breakfast and it'll be back to 80-90%.

    These Macs will run the upcoming MacOS11 (Big Sur).
    • MacBook (2015 or newer)
    • MacBook Air (2013 or newer)
    • MacBook Pro (Late 2013 or newer)
    • Mac mini (2014 or newer)
    • iMac (2014 or newer)
    • iMac Pro (from 2017)
    • Mac Pro (2013 or newer)
    Not all will be able to take advantage of all the features due to hardware limitations. On top of that, the two previous versions of MacOS still get security updates according to the site I checked. But they might not be as solid as the current version.

    On the phone end, iOS 14 will run on any phone that runs iOS 13, which goes back to the iPhone 6s (September, 2015).
     
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  11. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    sounds like we're all set with prime and apple then.

    i looked at replacing the mac battery, wow, i'm no where near that skill level.
     
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  12. Isaac Zachary

    Isaac Zachary Senior Member

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    From what I understand Li-ion batteries do best close to 50% charge. 95% to 5% is better than 100% to 0%, 90% to 10% even better and 85% to 15% still better. Even 75% to 25% is a little better than 80% to 20%, although I do believe that after that there's very little return. I will say this though: normally heat is the number one battery killer, not state of charge.

    And it's not just getting to those extremes that's hard on a Li-ion battery, but rather staying there, especially in the heat. If you need 100% then charge up right before you're going to use it, not let it sit on the charger all night at 100%. I guess some charging systems do that according to what you all have posted. The same goes for discharge. If you need to discharge down below 25% it's best to charge it back up sooner than later. The lower you go, the better it is to charge it up past 25% or so as soon as possible.

    I think some companies, like Nissan, let their batteries get close to extremes for marketing reasons. It's cheaper to put in a smaller battery and get as close to 100% and 0% as possible and then boast about how far the car or phone or whatever can go on a single charge. Personally I like how Chevy did it with the Volt. From what I understand they purposely hold back nearly 50% of the battery capacity, effectively charging from like 25% to 75%. But as the battery ages and loses capacity, the car automatically adjusts those numbers to give the driver the same capacity, making the battery not only last much longer, but not causing the driver not notice any difference until some 50% of the battery capacity is lost, which may be many, many years, if not decades, by the time that happens.

    For me I put my phone on the charger at night for a short time only if I've used it down below 30%. And I don't charge it up very much. In the morning I put it on the charger and keep an eye on it as I get breakfast and what not. When I see it's above 75% I take it off. Since I don't monitor it constantly it may end up at 78% or 83% or 92%. The goal is to pull it off the charger as close to 80% as I can.

    If I ever find a way to "smart charge" my phone I will do that instead. One idea I have is to make a charging stand with a built in timer. I actually kind of did this once before for several months, but that was with a slow charging phone and using a manual timer. But it worked pretty well I'd say, usually landing pretty close to 80%. I made a spread sheet of how many minutes it would take to charge to 80% based on the current state of charge. If I build my charging stand I'd put a slow charging charger in it and a timer that can turn that many hours (probably 2 to 4 depending on the battery and charger) and then write the current state of charge beginings on the timer itself. That way I could plug in the phone, look at it's current state of charge and then twist the timer to that number and come back in a couple hours and have a phone charged to 80% or there abouts.
     
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  13. jerrymildred

    jerrymildred Senior Member

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    Wanna try something really scary? I replaced the solid state drive on my office iMac with a larger one so I could use the SSD as the main drive and the platter drive as a second drive rather than having them combined in a hybrid drive like Apple ships it. Had to totally disassemble everything. The display is taped down instead of held by magnets & screws like in the old days, and some of the wires and connections are so thin it almost felt like taking apart a spider web and putting it back together. Thanks to a mostly helpful tutorial video, I managed to pull it off without damage even with having to open it back up to reconnect the wire that caused the "mostly" above.

    End result was a faster machine with more storage, which helps because I deal with lots of large audio, video, and graphics files. But it was sure nerve wracking. :D

    Sounds just about like my routine.
     
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  14. Salamander_King

    Salamander_King Senior Member

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    With any Apple hardware, the device is so expensive and most of them are not repairable, and even if they are repairable, any parts for it are not cheap. I have been using very popular Dell Latitude for most of my Windows laptop needs. Even though my daily workhorse is now Chrome OS Pixelbook, I still use several Windows boxes for various tasks around house. With Dell laptop, even a machine that was a few thousands $$$ when it was out new can be had for a fraction of the original price in 2 years. My current 3 laptops in use are all bought used.

    It usually works fine and if I need to replace any parts or upgrade any components, then plenty of compatible parts and components are available and can be had fairly cheap. I bought an used DELL latitude laptop that was out of business lease. The model came out in 2016 and I bought it late 2018. The laptop still had effective Dell warranty that was transferable. The unit was originally priced at somewhere around $1700 when new, but I got mine for less than $300. It worked fine, I upgraded ssd to 1TB from smallish 256GB an added 8GB of ram to make it 16GM total. But recently, it quit taking charge when connected to an AC adapter. As it turned out it was failed resister on the system board power control circuit causing the short whenever AC adapter was plunged in. Watching the YouTube video which was made almost exclusively by Indian computer gurus, I learned how to fix it, but to do it correctly I would have to first identify which resister is the failed one, and then un-solder the resister and re-solder a new resister onto the mother board. The cost of resister is probably a few dollars at most, but I did not have the skill to perform this repair myself. Then I thought of buying a just mother board to replace it. But the cost of the mother board was almost close to an used unit of the same model now at about $200. So, I ended up buying another used working DELL laptop of the same model for $200, then swapped the 1TB SSD and moved additional RAM from the broken unit into working unit, then sold non-working unit on eBay for $100. Net cost to me was $100. It is so much cheaper and easier buy, use, and fix popular DELL units than any other brand of computer.
     
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  15. jerrymildred

    jerrymildred Senior Member

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    As for fixing, I think I've spent about $90 on repairs of the various MacBook Pros, iPhones, iPads, and iMacs over the years. The only repair was to re-pot an overheated GPU in a 6-year old 2009 iMac. I've never had a moment's trouble with any other device since I got that iMac in late 2009. I think Apple has two major design criteria; reliability and difficulty of repair. :ROFLMAO: While the up front cost can be higher than a cheap Windows machine, it's not much higher than ones with equivalent performance, and the total cost of ownership is often less.

    The main thing is to avoid Windows. If I could find equivalent Linux apps for everything I do, I'd go back to Linux. I really like it. Maybe. I'm really spoiled by being able to copy & paste between all my devices, my watch unlocking my computer, and the various other conveniences in the Apple ecosystem. Once you get used to it, it's hard to give it up.
     
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  16. Isaac Zachary

    Isaac Zachary Senior Member

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    I've never had any major problems with Windows, at least on my machines. The biggest complaint that Windows forces updates is easily resolved by just keeping an eye on it. If it says it needs an update, update it after you're done; instead of pushing it off day after day until Windows decides it needs to update or else. It may be one more thing to think about, but it's not that hard, really.

    I'm also kind of a cheapskate. To me, my Surface Go was very expensive at $550. That's nearly twice what I paid for my Prius! But it's not just a tablet. It's also my laptop and my desktop. I have several working monitors I've found for free, two of which sit at my desk along with two printers, a scanner, a Blue-Ray drive and a USB hub. And I can do all of this off of one device. I don't need to worry if I can or can't copy between devices, or if I can download off the cloud something I had on another device, which isn't always an option since I live in an area with bad internet service. We went for 4 days without home internet just a couple weeks ago. And out and about, I have a limited data plan on my phone and we don't get signal a lot of places we go. So if I had a laptop and a tablet, I'd have to take both anywhere I go just in case. Either that or make sure I had a redundant copy on both.

    Plus there are certain apps I need that only work on Windows, not Linux or even Mac. And there are cetain benifits of having a touchscreen laptop/desktop. I can plug my tablet in and do desktop work on the two monitors and sign documents with my pen all on one machine, without having to move the document from device to device.

    What drives me nuts is having to give up my Windows phones. I loved my Nokia Lumia 930! Now I got this Android Pixel 4a that I'm trying to figure out. And on top of that, it just updated and now has a touchscreen glitch that makes it near impossible to scroll or gesture. Which is very hard since they decided to ax the navigation buttons so gestures are the only way to get around on it. I got it to use the Torque Pro app, but now it doesn't even work, so I'm going to revert back to Android 10 on it as soon as I get a chance.
     
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  17. Salamander_King

    Salamander_King Senior Member

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    I know many who use Apple products think Windows OS causes all the troubles in the world. But truth is that Windows OS does not cause the hardware failure. And almost any windows box can also be used as Linux box. Most of my older windows laptops are re-purposed to run Linux, and some are dual or triple bootable in Windows, and several distributions of Linux including some Android variants. That being said, I do admit Apple makes extremely well integrated hardware for users. Having a monopoly on OS and certified hardware is a huge advantage compared to Windows OS or Android OS. I just dislike Apple's marketing scheme and will never buy their products. Fair competition leading to better and cheaper products for consumer is what I am after.
     
    #17 Salamander_King, Sep 23, 2020
    Last edited: Sep 23, 2020
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  18. Salamander_King

    Salamander_King Senior Member

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    I am still using my Lumia 635 with Windows Phone 8 OS as my daily go to mobile "phone". Yeah it's OS is defunct. I get no more update and many of apps no longer works. But for my very basic phone call, text message, e-mails, web browsing, music player, audio book, not so great but good enough photo and video, and a few other convenient apps like calendar, calculator, unit conversion, timers, etc., it still works fine. The battery last 7 days in stand-by mode. It has user removable battery, so I always have a few extra battery just in case I need it, though I have not had the battery goes dead on me using this phone last 7 years. The great thing is that it was only ~$100 7 years ago and I have been paying only $3.33/mo for the MVNO sim from H2O. I do have additional Android phone I use regularly, but they are not used as a "phone".
     
    #18 Salamander_King, Sep 23, 2020
    Last edited: Sep 23, 2020
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  19. jerrymildred

    jerrymildred Senior Member

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    I've never heard of that one. :LOL: But people believe all kinds of things.

    My problem was mostly that MS falsely accused me of stealing their software too many times. Got tired of having to reauthenticate my OS after plugging in a new printer or any number of other things that led them to accuse me of thievery. This was back in the XP days when I thought they had a really good OS. So, I went to Linux and loved it, but they didn't have the video editing software I needed. If they'd had something like iMovie (free on a Mac) I'd never have left Linux. I guess MS doesn't use that marketing practice anymore, but they did it enough to me to lose a customer for good. And then there was the time I got a virus on a Windows computer I was building while I was downloading anti-virus software. It was that quick!!

    As I see it, Apple really has two objectives. One is to make money -- the main purpose of all business. The other is to provide a superb customer experience -- something that should be the primary means by which they make lots of money for the investors. Some other tech companies (not MS, but you know who I mean) make their money mostly by selling their "customers'" data to their real customers, the people who buy that data. The newest iOS gives users unprecedented control over what data those companies can access.

    So, yeah, while I don't agree with everything Apple does (nor do I agree with everything anyone does), the end result for me is stuff that just works. I love to tinker and Apple makes that a little harder, but for me, the main thing is that it works all the time because it's a tool. If it was a toy for me, I might feel differently.
     
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  20. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    i had several dells, but the motherboard always fried after 4-5 years. so i tried apple, and it's been pretty good for 7 years, but the battery is weak (er).

    of course, the apple was 3 times the price of a dell, so it's a bit of a tossup? no virus with the mac yet (except covid :unsure:)
     
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