Stop Charging your Phone Overnight!

[Defconed]

1 hour ago, MattMatt said:

The mentality many have here winds me up. I see this so frequently now on most topics, where people are in their own bubbles and don't stop to consider someone else might be different. If this information doesn't apply to you then you do your thing but this doesn't make the video wrong, stupid or less informative. 

 

We're also talking about levels of preservation that depend heavily on a lot of variables. There are so many yet some people try and argue they've had a phone for years and charged it fully all the time without issue... as if this advice is now null and void??? The difference in performance after years of use will likely be difficult to perceive unless you compare it with a new battery. Someone claiming their battery is fine after being abused might have 70% total capacity remaining after a few years and someone else who tried to care for it may have 75% or 80%. It will make a difference but not necessarily night and day, all batteries will die in the end. Also one person's idea of abusing a battery is likely very different to the next. Even where you live (temperature) will effect the lifespan.

 

No one is telling you to use just 10% of your battery, or keep it between 40-80% else certain death will follow. It's providing a framework of information that can alter your decisions over time and help preserve your battery better when you can and circumstances allow it. You can choose to follow the advice more closely or ignore it, or somewhere in between but the information isn't wrong or stupid. 

 

Even Tesla provides the option to charge to only 80% to reduce wear on the battery.

 

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/448466037441179649
 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en-gb"><p lang="und" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/cairnz?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@cairnz</a> 80% to 30%</p>&mdash; Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/448466037441179649?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">25 March 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
 

 

 

take a look at the latest post before talking about bubbles
the vid didn't explain about the definition of "cycle" while its reference does, that's a part of the problem

[MattMatt]

56 minutes ago, Defconed said:

take a look at the latest post before talking about bubbles
the vid didn't explain about the definition of "cycle" while its reference does, that's a part of the problem

I read every post, clearly there are some useful or interesting posts but obviously the rest of what I said went over your head.

[MattMatt]

Moving on to what Defconed is talking about, maybe I see his point. Fast charging is all about getting more power (watts) through the USB cable. USB is so ubiquitous that they can't just change the connector all the time and where they have, (type C) it still needs to remain small and compact which limits the current that it can carry. The solution, raise the voltage.

 

Once this higher voltage reaches the phone or device, there will be some form of buck converter to reduce this to a suitable charging voltage, simultaneously raising the current inside the phone, after the power has gone through the cable. 20v @ 1 amp in the cable can become 5v @ 4 amps in the phone. (ignoring losses)

 

That said you could actually charge a single cell lithium battery directly with 12v but with strict criteria. If you hook up a 12v current limiting supply to a lithium cell, the voltage across the cable will match the battery, say 3.7v and it will happily charge at the limited current. So long as the supply is disconnected when the voltage reaches fully charged, 4.1 or 4.2v all is fine, if you don't then it will continue to charge until it explodes, literally. This doesn't help fast charging because by connecting directly the voltage would drop across the cable to match the battery so you'd be back to square one trying to pump high current through it.

[Defconed]

15 minutes ago, MattMatt said:

That said you could actually charge a single cell lithium battery directly with 12v but with strict criteria. If you hook up a 12v current limiting supply to a lithium cell, the voltage across the cable will match the battery, say 3.7v and it will happily charge at the limited current.

Exactly, the vid didn't mention the adapting stuff at all, the voltage part in the vid is totally unrelevant to the wear of battery
PS: TypeC to C and some proprietary wire can allow up to 3 or even 5amps across the line(C to C line needs to have embedded Emark chip to report that it allows 3/5A) And there are products in market that uses 5V 4A/5A fast charging. e.g. FCP VOOC
Low voltage fast-charging can be more efficient(on the phone end, since omitting the adapting process reduces waste heat), and high-volt implementation allows it to work across more cables.
Though it should be noted that even QC allows something like 6V 3A, apparently this can be a more adaptive solution

 

[Colonel_Gerdauf]

A few issues with the video:

1) The arguments made regarding 100% charge make zero sense when taking into account how batteries work on an electronic level.

2) The video omits talking about the safeguards that a battery has in order to prevent overcharging and overuse of the charge cycles.

3) Strong claims are being made about battery longevity which are demonstrably false.

[Defconed]

17 hours ago, Colonel_Gerdauf said:

A few issues with the video:

1) The arguments made regarding 100% charge make zero sense when taking into account how batteries work on an electronic level.

2) The video omits talking about the safeguards that a battery has in order to prevent overcharging and overuse of the charge cycles.

3) Strong claims are being made about battery longevity which are demonstrably false.

James claim that they're just presenting a option on lower batt wear, and to be honest safeguard doesn't protect you against reasonable wear
e.g. 3.3v~4.2v on regular 3.7v Li-Poly batt 
 

what's wrong with the 1) ? can you explain it?

btw how do you snip quoting? 

[System Error Message]

4 hours ago, Defconed said:

James claim that they're just presenting a option on lower batt wear, and to be honest safeguard doesn't protect you against reasonable wear
e.g. 3.3v~4.2v on regular 3.7v Li-Poly batt 
 

what's wrong with the 1) ? can you explain it?

btw how do you snip quoting? 

The way that lithium ions work as a battery isnt what people think. Any battery when empty readily accepts voltage compared to when full so you can actually trickle charge non rechargeable batteries, this part the video got right, but everything else it got wrong. Lithium ions are designed to be fully charged and discharged 500 times before losing capacity. If you charge and discharge your battery only half way, then after 1000 times will capacity be start to be lost. Capacity is also lost from age as well so even if you use just 30% of capacity you're not actually going to get 1500 charge cycles (not full) till the capacity starts to drop as age sets in first.

 

You might as well just charge it from empty to full each time.What the video showed was charging it up so frequently that you'd be using a powerbank, thus draining that powerbank instead.

 

My advice is that you should just make the best use of your phone to avoid charging it from flat everyday. As i mentioned previously my samsung galaxy s4's battery lasted 5 years and only lost a bit of capacity towards the end , the battery still works fine but i switched to a larger high capacity battery knowing i'd need to use it a lot more where i went. If you want your phone's battery to last long then try optimising the power use so you charge it once every 2 to 3 days, or charge it from half or low everyday. have a shortcut to turn off GPS, wifi, etc for when you dont need them. Get rid of those horrible laggy social apps like facebook from your phone, go through the settings and use something like greenify and set yourself to check social when you want and not whenever a message comes through. Every chipset is different in the way they draw power so they can be different to optimise.

 

What truely harms battery life is heat, charging it too fast and drawing out a lot of amps from it. Fast charging doesnt harm battery life because it charges based on the battery profile which is fast when its flat, slow when its near full. Even the battery percentage devices shown can be a lie as well depending on how one defines the percentage.

 

Remember that unlike other batteries, lithiums dont care when you charge them from their capacity, so if you charge them from 50% use everyday it is the same as charging up from 0% every 2 days. You can also leave your device plugged in as that wont wear out the battery. Many devices have a smart enough controller to allow discharge to avoid losing battery life when plugged in with the battery not being used (its why on your laptop you dont see your battery charging at its rated capacity as discharge was allowed when left full).

 

@LinusTech This video of yours was absolutely horrible. Please spend time around EEEs and do some research, i know you do some research but i think you hit wrong info.

 

edit: there are people out there who use crappy phones or batteries with crappy controllers (or none) or cheap chargers. While those devices are more of a minority they arent exactly safe and need manual care in regards to charging/discharging. Although apple tunes their batteries to stuff more capacity rather than longevity so i guess you can say that they are in this same set of devices as well. Lithium ions do a lot better than other battery types in being consistent, however they arent the best battery when it comes to drawing a lot of amps which is why cars still use lead acid batteries or super capacitors where a lot of amps need to be drawn. This is why not drawing a lot of power at once is the best thing for your battery life so try not to game heavily on batteries.

[Colonel_Gerdauf]

7 hours ago, Defconed said:

what's wrong with the 1) ? can you explain it?

In short, what your devices read as capacity and what is actually stored in the batteries are almost never the same values. What Linus says about cramping near 100% makes sense on the surface, until you realize that the batteries have a hybrid reserve/buffer amount that the device can never see (in the case of lithium-ion, it is around 20%). What that means is that when the battery is fully drained (or so it seems), there will always be a reserve 20% charge to help the battery stay physically alive. On the other hand, in a full charge situation, there will always be a 20% empty buffer in order to prevent the battery from stalling and/or damaging itself.

And to get more into the safeguards, there is a now-old tech that portable devices use which limit the current when it gets to charging beyond a given percentage. Apple has publicized using this tech, and it should not be too surprising to find this in most, if not all, modern portables. Another part of this, that mainly deals with the charge cycles themselves, is a systems that periodically disconnects the link between external power and the batter at full charge, and reconnect at a specific interval (Apple does this at 95%, though it may vary with other companies).

People keep claiming that different charging schedules harm the batteries, but they often base that on information that is woefully outdated or incomplete. Most of their claims come from either their ignorance on how batteries actually work, or data which was valid before lithium-ion batteries existed. What truly harms batteries are heat, physical pressure, and deep charge/discharge cycles.

[System Error Message]

26 minutes ago, Colonel_Gerdauf said:

 deep charge/discharge cycles.

doesnt apply to lithiums and deep cycle lead acid batteries. Lithiums have a consistent profile, you can fully charge and discharge them, but as you said controllers have a reserve. The reserve is there for safety as overcharging/discharging lithium is unsafe, however doing so also coincidentally improves battery life. Many brands would want you buying often, so they'd rather have a low life battery but they cant do that without risking the user experience and safety of their product.

 

Batteries wear out as the barrier between electrolytes and the cathode and anode break down as the purpose is to only allow electrons to flow, but not the molecules as the reaction would be severe. This is why lithiums explode when you overcharge/discharge the battery itself as the barrier breaks down so the internal chemicals can touch and react. 

[MattMatt]

10 hours ago, System Error Message said:

The way that lithium ions work as a battery isnt what people think. Any battery when empty readily accepts voltage compared to when full so you can actually trickle charge non rechargeable batteries, this part the video got right, but everything else it got wrong. Lithium ions are designed to be fully charged and discharged 500 times before losing capacity. If you charge and discharge your battery only half way, then after 1000 times will capacity be start to be lost. Capacity is also lost from age as well so even if you use just 30% of capacity you're not actually going to get 1500 charge cycles (not full) till the capacity starts to drop as age sets in first.

 

You might as well just charge it from empty to full each time.What the video showed was charging it up so frequently that you'd be using a powerbank, thus draining that powerbank instead.

 

My advice is that you should just make the best use of your phone to avoid charging it from flat everyday. As i mentioned previously my samsung galaxy s4's battery lasted 5 years and only lost a bit of capacity towards the end , the battery still works fine but i switched to a larger high capacity battery knowing i'd need to use it a lot more where i went. If you want your phone's battery to last long then try optimising the power use so you charge it once every 2 to 3 days, or charge it from half or low everyday. have a shortcut to turn off GPS, wifi, etc for when you dont need them. Get rid of those horrible laggy social apps like facebook from your phone, go through the settings and use something like greenify and set yourself to check social when you want and not whenever a message comes through. Every chipset is different in the way they draw power so they can be different to optimise.

 

What truely harms battery life is heat, charging it too fast and drawing out a lot of amps from it. Fast charging doesnt harm battery life because it charges based on the battery profile which is fast when its flat, slow when its near full. Even the battery percentage devices shown can be a lie as well depending on how one defines the percentage.

 

Remember that unlike other batteries, lithiums dont care when you charge them from their capacity, so if you charge them from 50% use everyday it is the same as charging up from 0% every 2 days. You can also leave your device plugged in as that wont wear out the battery. Many devices have a smart enough controller to allow discharge to avoid losing battery life when plugged in with the battery not being used (its why on your laptop you dont see your battery charging at its rated capacity as discharge was allowed when left full).

@System Error Message Who am I going to believe, you or Tesla and other manufacturers who spend millions on research and say to only charge to 100% when needed. It is in their interest to have their batteries last as long as possible otherwise bad PR will be heading their way very quickly. Phone's only need to last 2-3 years before people accept a less optimal battery performance but cars and power wall's need to last much longer.

 

 

8 hours ago, Colonel_Gerdauf said:

In short, what your devices read as capacity and what is actually stored in the batteries are almost never the same values. What Linus says about cramping near 100% makes sense on the surface, until you realize that the batteries have a hybrid reserve/buffer amount that the device can never see (in the case of lithium-ion, it is around 20%). What that means is that when the battery is fully drained (or so it seems), there will always be a reserve 20% charge to help the battery stay physically alive. On the other hand, in a full charge situation, there will always be a 20% empty buffer in order to prevent the battery from stalling and/or damaging itself.

And to get more into the safeguards, there is a now-old tech that portable devices use which limit the current when it gets to charging beyond a given percentage. Apple has publicized using this tech, and it should not be too surprising to find this in most, if not all, modern portables. Another part of this, that mainly deals with the charge cycles themselves, is a systems that periodically disconnects the link between external power and the batter at full charge, and reconnect at a specific interval (Apple does this at 95%, though it may vary with other companies).

People keep claiming that different charging schedules harm the batteries, but they often base that on information that is woefully outdated or incomplete. Most of their claims come from either their ignorance on how batteries actually work, or data which was valid before lithium-ion batteries existed. What truly harms batteries are heat, physical pressure, and deep charge/discharge cycles.

@Colonel_Gerdauf There will be a buffer, perhaps not as much as 20% but within the normal operating voltage of the battery there is no specific point that suddenly damages it more, it's gradual. Charging to 90% is better than 100% and 80% is better still, even with a buffer on top of that. Then there's the balance of getting use from the battery which goes back to my previous post, everyone is different. Some people need to use 100% of the capacity but others are able to take steps to preserve their battery more, it doesn't make the information wrong. It's a guideline to assist you in making decisions that effect the life of your battery.

[System Error Message]

49 minutes ago, MattMatt said:

@System Error Message Who am I going to believe, you or Tesla and other manufacturers who spend millions on research and say to only charge to 100% when needed. It is in their interest to have their batteries last as long as possible otherwise bad PR will be heading their way very quickly. Phone's only need to last 2-3 years before people accept a less optimal battery performance but cars and power wall's need to last much longer.

 

 

As i said, depends on the charge controller. I would not believe tesla much either. Regarding cars thats a different issue because with cars you are pulling a lot of power from those batteries, hence why you should not accelerate hard with your tesla if you want the batteries to last long.

 

Since tesla is manufacturing their own batteries, they can set their own rules for their own batteries. Hence tesla's advice only works for tesla. Perhaps you may want to ask why this is and the reason is simple, tesla needs to compete against petroleum based cars, so to get the range they need to eek out as much power as possible, not to mention that those motors can draw a lot of amps.

[Defconed]

14 hours ago, System Error Message said:

doesnt apply to lithiums and deep cycle lead acid batteries. Lithiums have a consistent profile, you can fully charge and discharge them, but as you said controllers have a reserve. The reserve is there for safety as overcharging/discharging lithium is unsafe, however doing so also coincidentally improves battery life. Many brands would want you buying often, so they'd rather have a low life battery but they cant do that without risking the user experience and safety of their product.

 

Batteries wear out as the barrier between electrolytes and the cathode and anode break down as the purpose is to only allow electrons to flow, but not the molecules as the reaction would be severe. This is why lithiums explode when you overcharge/discharge the battery itself as the barrier breaks down so the internal chemicals can touch and react. 

it does, different charging depths do affect the speed of battery wearing
e.g 20%-50% is different from 70%-100%

[Defconed]

14 hours ago, Colonel_Gerdauf said:

hat Linus says about cramping near 100% makes sense on the surface,

when discussing smart batt with BMIC, the percentage we're discussing are usually SOC% given by the PMIC
since it simple won't allow you to drain it further beyond 0%
let's keep that part for PMIC developers

[Zodiark1593]

On 5/14/2018 at 10:52 AM, James said:

2. Is correct. You phone will stop fast charging around 70% BUT charging to higher capacity (90-100%) is still stressful to the battery, regardless of how slowly you do it

Keeping a battery at a high level of charge for long periods of time can damage it. (My old laptop suffered from this). For a short period of time, would it matter much?

 

Preferably, I would like Android to show 100% at a voltage level that doesn't cause undue wear (even in my use case that requires extended portable hotspot usage), and expose an "overvoltage" toggle to get that last bit extra if one plans to be away for a long period of time. Just to make the user feel fuzzy, the battery percentage with "overvoltage" enabled would top out at 125%.

[System Error Message]

On 19/05/2018 at 10:02 PM, Defconed said:

it does, different charging depths do affect the speed of battery wearing
e.g 20%-50% is different from 70%-100%

only a little bit, as i said in some posts that the battery wear from charging it high is insignificant. If you think about devices that always drain their batteries, like phones, you can charge it up to full because it spends little time full as it spends most of the day being drained.

 

A lot of batteries like a slow long drain. If you consider how people charge and use their phones, charging it everyday from 0-100% will wear it out within 2 years but this is based on what the manufacturer wants for the 500 full cycle charges before it starts to lose capacity. If you treat the battery exactly the same but charge it up every 2 days, it will last for 4 years before significant capacity lost.

 

What im saying is that the biggest factor to your lithium battery life isnt keeping your battery not full (except for a few months) or picking a charge range but how much you actually use it. If you only charge up to 70% and charge it again from 40% it will still last for the same amount of time because you're still using the same amount of energy and completing the amount of cycles, and if you only use 30% a day, age will be the main killer.

[GNU/Linus]

I use this app to tell me when my phone is at 96% charge and then unplug it. It does not require a root and is pretty reliable. I don't know how much this helps with my phone's battery health, but it definitely makes me feel better.