Submitted 2 weeks ago by popcar2@programming.dev to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLS5Cg_yNdM
TL;DR: Fast charging over 2 years only degraded the battery an extra 0.5%, even on extremely fast charging Android phones using 120W.
And with that, hopefully we can put this argument to rest.
“And with that, hopefully we can put this argument to rest.”
That’s not how the internet works, but nice try though ;-)
I disagree!
You fool! You fell into the classic blunder! All this time it was I, Dio!
However the Battery Saver mode on Androids that only charges the battery up to 80% DOES extend battery life. Substantial evidence shows that a high State of Charge accelerates degradation through: solid electrolyte interphase growth, loss of lithium inventory, and loss of active materials. (See: mdpi.com)
Here’s a fun fact: phone manufacturers know this. So what they call “100%” is not actually 100%. Your phone will not charge your battery to full. Battery charging is already designed around this.
Got proof? I’ve not cracked open a phone for a while to see if the component labelling matches the interface, let alone tested capacity of an extracted battery directly.
That depends on the manufacturer, some do, some don’t. My phone has a setting to control the max charge, so I set it to 80% when I got it.
Source?
I always find the same study referenced, which was good science but also almost 30 years old. I wonder if this is still true for modern batteries?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but as far as I know there haven’t been significant changes in Li-Ion and LiPo batteries aside from extra density - which would only increase the effect. But it seems like solid-state batteries are starting to hit the real world now
FYI: During this test it saved about 5% of SoH.
It must help as my dad’s S23 (which I happen to use now) has about 88% battery life with 870 cycle counts (he always charged to 80% with said option), and for that I am grateful.
Betteridge’s law of headlines: “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.”
„Is drinking Paint thinner really as bad as everybody says?“
Well. It could be worse than what everybody says
Corollary:
How not following trends and drinking paint thinner boosted my B2B sales
No.
Are we talking about water-based paint?
You joke, but I actually know some contrarians that would legit try it if this was a headline they saw.
Maybe it can be modified to something like:
“Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by yes or no, whichever seems the most obvious.”
Nope:
Betteridge’s law of headlines is an adage that states: “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.” It is based on the assumption that if the publishers were confident that the answer was yes, they would have presented it as an assertion; by presenting it as a question, they are not accountable for whether it is correct or not.
That’s no longer true. As headlines focus more and more on outrage clicks straying further and further from the content, all too many can now be answered with ”n/a”
Tl;DW: No
I hadn’t watched the video yet, but my phone’s going the opposite way. It run slow charge overnight when it feels like it’s going to be enough for it to be fully charged the next morning.
We really should let electronics and tight software take care of these little things.
My phone tells me every night that it’s slow charging and it will be full by <the time I have my alarm set for>.
iPhones do this as well, I assume both will also do it without the alarm as mine has simply learned what time I take it off the charger normally.
Its kinda funny as I remember when people wanted a phone that could last all day because there was plenty of time to charge on the nightstand. Feels like batteries got way better and people got lazy about plugging them in.
people got lazy about plugging them in
always have been, here. the old cdma flip phone went about a month between charges, even when it was 5+ years old. the new volte one sucks. with a higher power draw and the shitty 4g signal here, i have to plug it in every few days. the only ‘plus’ is that i always know where a charger cable is now, because it’s usb-c and i use that for other things, too.
We always want better :)
We just spend more and more time on our phones. I still charge every night. Each new phone I’ve gotten has had more battery life than the last but I also use the phone constantly, so it’s no more likely to last the day.
If you’d watch the video you may realize it’s not needed.
No need to wait aeons for someone who enjoys the sound of their own voice to slowly and laboriously explain it like astronomy to a dog. Someone wrote 15 words and I read it in about a half-second.
The point is that I never had to care about battery management for years. I just leave the phone doing its thing. Not that it’s useful or not useful to do so.
The whole point is that I leave that in the hand of people that know.
Non-magnetically-aligned wireless chargers are far worse than fast charging.
Far worse at what? Wasting energy? That isn’t what the video is testing.
At killing batteries faster - the wasted energy creates heat, which degrades the battery.
Wireless charging is a gimmick like 3D TV was. There's only one use case, and it's car use. But it doesn't need to be fast. In every other case it's worse than cable in every aspect
A phone with wireless charging is a bit niche, but if only all my little devices had wireless charging; earbuds, vape, tablet, controller, remote, etc. I’d set a charging mat in the middle of the coffee table and have all my devices just be charged and ready to go. Now it’s just a mess of wires, with the only thing I keep glued to my hand featuring wireless charging!?
Wireless charging sucks. It costs significantly more energy to charge the same battery to full.
yup, the chinese brand have it right. Fast charging is amazing, just put the phone on charge for like 10-20 minutes and you can forget about your battery for another day. It’s great.
Magnetic portable battery packs are fantastic too.
[citation needed]
https://www.ifixit.com/News/94409/wireless-charging-trading-efficiency-for-convenience
It's true, but wireless charging is still inefficient and should be avoided.
Ok, before i watch the video, no damage is not what great scott found from his testings… ( youtu.be/iMn2yVoEqPs ).
so i have no idea what to believe anymore, but my (based) experience is that it does damage it. Ill have to watch later.
Yea, but that wasn’t a great rest. I love Great Scott, but a lot of comments fairly call out his conclusion.
Most (all?)phones don’t charge at full speed to 100% charge, they fast charge when the battery is almoast empty, and charge slower the more full it gets.
Right, so basically he removed the software aspect in his tests which removes systems to protect the battery. I assume without them, it is damaging, like what great scott found.
Ye, he should have continued his experiments then!
Those circuits he made up doesn’t take into account that the phones have built in protections that alternate the input based on charge level.
This is the type of scientific method that can put all this nonsense to rest. I really appreciate their work proving that the difference between fast/slow/30-80% is insignificant to the majority of people.
Thanks!
Battery lore has been cargo-cult woo since the NiMH days… most of it feels like manufacturers saying “oh, I’m sorry you didn’t get our advertised life, you must have done something wrong.”
I always thought that charging beyond 85% or so is what degrades batteries. The LiPos of my quadcopter actually actively reduce their charge if left sitting somewhere for a longer period of time. To prevent them from going up in flames.
It does, but the battery charge controller in your phone already does that. What it shows you as 0-100 is 20-80 of the actual battery. Others may or may not.
What you call 0% or 100% on a battery is an arbitrary number anyway. Absolutely never do this for safety reasons, but back when I worked for a battery lab I did experiments where I discharged cells to below 0V.
The idea with fast charging is it’s going to generate more heat. That extra heat is what damages the batteries life
I’ve got some devices I’ve been fast charging for 8 years; it seems to be more of a problem as the device ages; but that’s offset by having it ready to use again quickly.
This isn't a fair like-to-like test though. They used iPhones, which use one battery and then for their 120W test they used iQOO 7, which has two batteries that charge in parallel. They aren't testing the charge rate effects on a single battery, but just how different phones behave.
While it's an okay test to see how certain models of phones hold up, it's not a test for longevity of a single battery using fast and and not-as-fast charging.
So the title, as it often is these days on YouTube, is misleading.
No they did a fast and slow charging group for iPhone, and also did a fast and slow charging group for Androids. Did you not pay attention.
And with that, hopefully we can put this argument to rest.
wow… the idea that the anecdotal evidence of some youtuber should be the proof, not the engineering and chemistry knowledge of people who designed the battery and charging system and know how it works, is on par with the belief that global warming is caused by farts of the turtles carrying the earth. sad noises.
Which part contradicts what the engineers or scientists think?
That’s a great TL:DW;
Now I want an iPhone that can charge in 20 minutes. :)
Wish granted, the battery is now small enough to slow charge to full in 20 minutes.
The iPhone air is great, isn’t it?
He he Xiaomi 120 watt charge. 19 minutes from zero to full. Well I only have tried from like 12% to 80+ because that was more than enough and I wont let it go to zero-zero. I don’t use it regularly, not because I fear for my battery but it does get the phone warm and warm/cool cycles are bad for electronics.
The day the battery degrades I’ll just have it swapped for a new one, I think we’re far enough into the battery revolution to no longer really care about all this any more.
I love when YT amateurs act as if they are able to produce proper studies that are relevant in any fucking way
If you have a problem with it, tell us why.
I think this accurate or close to it for phones but my laptop battery a Dell has degraded very quickly through 50 plus or more cycles of battery like 15 percent. It went from 59wh down to 50wh and it ebbs and flows. Runs Linux mint and installed power top and some other low power mods to help dumb things down to conserve. I feel like arm processors vs x86 are wildly different.
What kills the batteries is keeping them at 100% charge all the time, especially when the laptop is hot. Some laptops do have the ability to limit the maximum charge. Setting the maximum charge to 60-80% when the laptop is going to be plugged in for a while will extend the battery life. It is necessary to occasionally do a full charge to keep the capacity sensor calibrated though.
Just what I wanted to know. Thanks!!
Yeah, but it’s my 0.5% /s
are we not going to see results of the half cycle vs the full cycle? unless im dumb and missed something (its possible)
I would rather see another two years before I call this totally an over argument. Most people are keeping phones for a few years now.
BlackLaZoR@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
It's as if engineers knew what they're doing.
QuadratureSurfer@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Granted, with all the planned obsolescence happening, you could also argue that engineers “knew” what they were doing.
BlackLaZoR@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
Planned obsolescence happens but it's not as common as most people think it is.
RightEdofer@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
I’m sure this happens but with batteries the companies really are just desperately trying to get more capacity and life out of them. The chemistry just isn’t at all where they want to be.
amorpheus@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If engineers were the ones in control that would mean something.
As I see it, phone manufacturers have zero reasons to keep the battery degradation low, but many reasons to push advertised capacity and charging speed. If you were cynical, you could also assume that they’re trying to make sure the battery doesn’t last too long because they want to keep selling new phones.
binarytobis@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I think we all know that if an engineer went to upper management and said “I can charge these batteries faster, but it degrades the battery life by 20% over a year.” they would have said “Do it! We won’t mention that last part.”
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Yep. I’m gonna miss real engineering with the coming Ai-driven Idiocracy.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
You say that like batteries don’t need replaced every few years or that they didn’t design the Samsung Note 8 phone that kept catching on fire.
Engineers get told to make the phone charge as quickly as possible, while still lasting 2 years. After that, the company with those engineers pretty much wants the battery to fail, so they can sell a new device.
The one thing I wanted to see from that video, was also just testing the batteries until they went below like 75% capacity. The initial degradation may start off similar for capacity, but that doesn’t mean it will stay that way.
FauxPseudo@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Engineers have the best of intentions. The Bean counters have very different intentions and they’re the ones that corporate listens to.
frongt@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Well, except for the engineers on the Samsung Galaxy Note 7. They put the battery terminals too close together, making it really easy for a short to occur.
BlackLaZoR@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
Samsung notoriously fucks up something up in their phones - from shitty interface changes, to excessive battery drain. Just buy Pixel instead