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Healthiest way to charge Lithium Ion (self.technology)

submitted 3 weeks ago by root to c/technology

33 comments fedilink hide all child comments

When charging a phone wirelessly, there is sometimes significant heat generated. That combined with higher charging rates that are now coming out with the Qi 2 standard make me wonder what the ideal charge for the battery would be.

Most of the time I just toss my phone onto a wireless charger before bed, and don’t really care how quickly it charges. Would it be better to use a 5W brick with a charging pad? Should wireless be avoided and usb used instead?

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[–] TheGrandNagus 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Additionally, if you follow the "stay between 20% and 80%" advice, you're only ever getting 60% of your battery's capacity.

Why not just use it normally and get 100% of it? And then sure, in 3-5 years the battery may have degraded down to only holding 60% of a charge, but that means you're effectively in the same boat as above, except you got way more usability from the phone in the meantime, and you've not had to spend time stressing about your battery.

There's also nothing stopping you from spending £30-60 and getting a new battery after 4-5 years.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It's about usage patterns. If you know you only need 60% of the battery, charging it to 100% will degrade it more, for little utility. The newer Google phones get 7 years of updates, but without due care the battery will reach 80% of its capacity before that. On an aside, a battery is considered to have reached its end of life at a capacity reduction of 20%, and not 40%.

If you 100-0 the battery every day, then there's not much you can do. But if you're a lighter user, then using the 20-80% (or 40-60) part instead of the 40-100% part of the battery makes it last longer. And that's good in terms of environmental sustainability, reduction of e-waste, and you can use the phone for longer, too.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

The main thing (by far) degrading a battery is charging cycles. After 7 years with say 1,500 cycles most batteries will have degraded far beyond "80%" (which is always just an estimate from the electronics anyway). Yes, you can help it a bit by limiting charging rate, heat and limit the min/max %, but it's not going to be a night and day difference. After 7 years with daily use, you're going to want to swap the battery, if not for capacity reduction then for safety issues.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Because in 3-5 years I can just press a button and magically have 100% again when I need it. It's not the same boat at all.

The real question is why would you deliberately accelerate the degradation when you don't need it?

[–] TheGrandNagus -1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I already explained why you'd want to... So you get more use of your battery, and you're not having to think about your battery constantly.

It's virtually pointless to micromanage your phone battery like that.