Don't stress the 'slow' charging (your battery sure doesn't)

[Aquila]

No links, So, you're the source for your knowledge. OK.

I get why you might want additional links, but it's not his job to do your research for you. However it should be noted that nothing in the statement that you quoted is debatable.

Here's the statement: "Fact of the matter is, every single one of these batteries has a finite life, and how long (or short) that life is depends on how it is used. Some usage patterns help more than others, some hurt more... some 'best practices' can be a major pain in the butt for some people, but no one is forcing you to follow any of them".

Every battery does have a finite life. That's common sense. How it is used does impact the longevity, also common sense. Usage patterns being helpful or harmful is just restating the same thing, so falls under common sense. Best practices being a pain in the butt for some people is also common sense. And no one forcing you to adhere to best practices, also common sense.

There's no need for a citation for any of that because it falls under common knowledge that we all share by virtue of being able to recognize that obvious statements are obvious. I mean, sure, we could go grab an article from a scientific journal which would establish that batteries do not have infinite lifespans and we could link to battery university or wherever to show that there are things that are recommended and that there are other things which are not, and that those things are recommended, or not, based on their impact to overall battery health. Or we could just recognize that obvious statements are obvious and move on.

I'm still running my three year old Droid Turbo. A beastly 3,900 mAh battery. For the first 18 months or so I could get through almost 2 days without recharging. After running it down to 30%-40% I would put it on the charger in the afternoon/evening of the 2nd day and either pull it off somewhere in the 90% full charge range or when it hit 100%. Toward the end of two years I was finding I needed to charge it around noon and then it was in the morning. Finally, for convenience sake, I just stuck it on the charger when I went to bed the previous night.

Now here I am three years later and I usually can't make it to bedtime before I have to charge my phone.

So, my question is: If I were to be OCD about charging my battery, never let it surpass 100% charge for more than an hour, what would be my gain in battery longevity? Would I just now be going to overnight charging? Or would I have shifted my charging routines back only a month or so?

Because unless you can show me I'd save more than three months of degradation following all the crazy battery care theories I see on the internet, I'm not going to worry about it. And I am someone that keeps their phone for at least two years.

It is incredibly unlikely that we're going to run into someone in the forums that is going to have the qualifications to be able to take the information given above and be able to quantify anything conclusive. There's not enough information and there are so many variables that I'd seriously doubt anyone who even tried. Here's what we know: Your battery life was good and progressively got worse. Yeah, that's common sense, we know that happens. The question of how much it ought to happen under ideal conditions versus the rate at which yours deteriorated is one that isn't going to be answered here. Most of that question would revolve around the battery itself, compared to other batteries from that specific batch. The rest would center less on your charging habits than on your usage habits. When and where the device was used and what for and for how long. What temperatures was the device exposed to, what was the signal strength, what was the rate of idle discharge, what was the rate of usage discharge, was turbo charging utilized or third party chargers using QuickCharge 2.0 or generic usb chargers that max at .5A, etc.

The complexity of that question is why the best practices ought not be taken as gospel, but instead used to construct general guidelines of how and when to charge IF your goal is to maximize the longevity of the battery.

 

[sixty_four]

In a perfect world, I suppose it would be nice if a phone gave you the option; either charge with a focus on speed or to maximize longevity. But given the choice, the best choice for an OEM is to pick the latter. And this is exactly what Google has done... A full charge from 15% takes about 2.5 hours. If you give consumers the choice between a 2h charge and a battery that will only last a year before going downhill, or 2.5h and give them 2 years, I think most will take the longer choice.

That's a tough call. I would think that, in the interests of selling more phones when consumers want a refresh from their "old phone that has sh1tty battery life", an OEM would lean towards the former and market it as such.

I don't ever recall seeing a manufacturer advertising service life of a battery but I have seen lots of ad blurbs highlighting the quick charge features of their products. The average consumer would not likely question (or even realize) how quick charging can affect battery service life.

 

[Mike Dee]

But most do. There was a study earlier in the year that showed that the average consumer keeps their phone about 21 months. In the US, it's 22, up 2 months since 2014. And one of the most common complaints that users have is that their phone's battery just doesn't last as long as it did when they bought it. If you saw the Pixel 2 ads, Google made it a point of emphasis that the 2 should do better in this regard...

Now, granted, there are kiosks in malls across the country that specialize in quick battery swaps, but I think everyone would prefer to not have to drop $50-$100 to do this.

In a perfect world, I suppose it would be nice if a phone gave you the option; either charge with a focus on speed or to maximize longevity. But given the choice, the best choice for an OEM is to pick the latter. And this is exactly what Google has done... A full charge from 15% takes about 2.5 hours. If you give consumers the choice between a 2h charge and a battery that will only last a year before going downhill, or 2.5h and give them 2 years, I think most will take the longer choice.

I was mainly referring to the type that don't subscribe to your advice.

 

[Aquila]

I mean.. Everyone here (I hope) understands that getting your oil changed in a timely manner will help your car's engine perform at its best for as long as it can.... No one questions that... but you aren't going to be able to go on to Ford or BMW and see a chart that says 'change it every 5000 miles, get 150K miles. If you do it at 7500, you'll get 125K"

Exactly this. It's common sense that it is helpful, but it is not a 1:1 correlation with the longevity of the engine because it is not the only factor. Industry analysts probably can't quantify the returns on this because ignoring all other factors would be a grave mistake.

What they might be able to do is create a spectrum.

Example:
Criteria A: If you drive like crap (constant and rapid speeding up and slowing down, consistently speeding, etc.) vs if you pay attention far ahead and drive defensively, making gradual and safe changes in velocity and obey traffic laws
Criteria B: If you are proactive about scheduled maintenance or only fix things when they break
Criteria C: The frequency on which you have oil and fluid changes performed
Criteria D: The year of your vehicle when purchased and how long you have had it
Criteria E: The types of and frequency of various weather patterns that the car is driven in

These 5 criteria (or others, this is just an example) may be able generate a score that could be applied to a driver and vehicle to give a picture of expected wear and tear on that particular vehicle. But even then it'd probably be a range.

 

[Aquila]

Really? These are the best answers?

Yes, this means this was already addressed in more detail earlier in the thread. That's the "as indicated earlier" part. I mean, I suppose I could retype the whole thing or link to it or quote it again... but I figured a brief recap of the point that specifically addresses that user's question is more efficient and more helpful to the user. The user was specifically asking if it makes sense to try to adapt their habits or not, and the rest of the context of my reply, which you left out, is that what they are doing is pretty normal and how important a change may be would be based more on how long he intends to use the device.

Leaving that context out in this case would fall under the logical fallacy of exclusion, as the inclusion of the missing information very thoroughly changes the conclusion one would reach had they have all of the information available.

 

[LeoRex]

I don't ever recall seeing a manufacturer advertising service life of a battery but I have seen lots of ad blurbs highlighting the quick charge features of their products. The average consumer would not likely question (or even realize) how quick charging can affect battery service life.

I am guessing you are going to start to see more. Samsung was one of the first OEMs to even mention it when they released the S8/S8+... and Google made it one of the key talking points in their online and TV promos.

People are keeping these phones progressively longer, and with that comes more people running into these longevity issues. Those kiosks replace a lot of worn batteries... and I suspect that people might have just resigned themselves to replacing them because they've never been told that it can be avoided (or at least minimized) and not just by them being obsessive about charging patterns... OEMs can make go a long way in helping this. I'll go back to the 6P... Had that phone not been released with a battery set up to charge to pretty much its absolute peak voltage, there would have been far fewer people cranky that their phone can't last even half as long as it did when they bought it a year earlier.

 

[sixty_four]

I am guessing you are going to start to see more. Samsung was one of the first OEMs to even mention it when they released the S8/S8+... and Google made it one of the key talking points in their online and TV promos.

People are keeping these phones progressively longer, and with that comes more people running into these longevity issues. Those kiosks replace a lot of worn batteries... and I suspect that people might have just resigned themselves to replacing them because they've never been told that it can be avoided (or at least minimized) and not just by them being obsessive about charging patterns... OEMs can make go a long way in helping this. I'll go back to the 6P... Had that phone not been released with a battery set up to charge to pretty much its absolute peak voltage, there would have been far fewer people cranky that their phone can't last even half as long as it did when they bought it a year earlier.

I hope you're right. I kept my last two phones for 2 years (Moto X 2013 and Nexus 6P). I had to do battery replacements on both of those. I did the X myself and had UbreakiFix do my 6P. My DIY results were better than what the pros did to my 6P. I'm hoping to keep my Pixel 2 for 2 years and am dreading the day I'll need to replace its battery. How will that affect the IP67 rating?...doubtful it'll be good for that.

 

[LeoRex]

I hope you're right. I kept my last two phones for 2 years (Moto X 2013 and Nexus 6P). I had to do battery replacements on both of those. I did the X myself and had UbreakiFix do my 6P. My DIY results were better than what the pros did to my 6P. I'm hoping to keep my Pixel 2 for 2 years and am dreading the day I'll need to replace its battery. How will that affect the IP67 rating?...doubtful it'll be good for that.

Well... opening up any of these things will pretty much clobber that rating.

As for replacement... I hope.... I hope what I've seen so far will yield dividends later on.

That's funny about UBreakiFix.... I had them replace my 6P as well since I didn't have the cycles to do it myself at the time, and they did some cosmetic damage to a few parts of the frame in the process. Phone ran great and you couldn't see it with a case on it, so I got what I wanted.

 

[Markgo87]

I happened upon this topic from the trending list. I'm not sure if I agree with some of the conclusions in this topic, but from what I recall in engineering, heat kills. Heat facilitates unwanted reactions that can degrade the life of a material. With that said, leaving your phone plugged in may or may not affect your battery life adversely. It depends on how much energy is converted to heat instead of useful energy. Surely playing a 3D game while plugged in is not advisable since it'll quite heat up a phone compared to leaving it alone overnight. So my advice is to not bother with micromanaging your battery. However, don't do anything while charging your phone. It's bad mmkay?

 

[natehoy]

How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries - Battery University

All numbers on Lithium batteries are averages because there are many other factors (did you drop it? Are you using a charger that might fluctuate voltages wildly? etc). So the numbers that Battery University gets are all based on "all other factors being equal".

The net result is that they are authoritatively stating based on quite a lot of controlled testing that keeping a battery at higher voltages shortens life.

See Table 3 of the link above - if you leave your phone plugged in to a charger on the bedside table in an average-to-slightly-warm room, you can expect something around to an additional 15-20% battery degradation by leaving the phone on the charger for 6 hours a night when it's already full (that adds up to about three months in a year stored at 100%). NOT because the charger is adding charge constantly, but because your battery is being stored at 100% charge.

If you want to get truly obsessive about battery capacity, unplug your phone at about 80% charge as often as possible. You can expect a near-tripling of the number of cycles out of the battery - which means you can fairly reasonably expect 90-95% of initial capacity after a year or two. (See Tables 4 and 6 for details)

"As often as possible" doesn't have to mean "always" - if you know you have a long day ahead of you with nary a charge station in sight, charge it up overnight so you start out near 100% for the day. Doing this occasionally will have an unnoticeable effect.

A quite reasonable real-life compromise is to put a really slow charger next to the bed for overnight charging. It both reduces the heat generated by the recharging process and has your battery sitting at 100% for less time overall. It's not as good for battery longevity as unplugging it overnight, but you get to wake up to a 100% charge, which is very convenient. So find that old 0.5-0.75A unit you were thinking about throwing away and plug the charge cable next to the bed into that instead.

 

[paradroid]

So my advice is to not bother with micromanaging your battery. However, don't do anything while charging your phone. It's bad mmkay?

So using a phone as a gps and music during a road trip is bad for the battery? My last phone would really heat up when doing that.

 

[Aquila]

So using a phone as a gps and music during a road trip is bad for the battery? My last phone would really heat up when doing that.

If charging at the same time, yeah that's not ideal. Hot battery = bad. If there's any way to charge first, then use it as such, then charge after, that'd be better but if your situation doesn't allow that, let it burn?!

 

[natehoy]

I charge my phone overnight so I have a full charge in the morning. This is bad? When should I charge phone? I don't want to start the day with a low charge as I may not have the opportunity to get it charged during the day.

Get a low-amperage charger (that 0.5A that came with an older phone? Perfect.) that will charge your phone more slowly overnight. That significantly reduces the time the phone sits at 100%, but still means you wake up to 100% charge.

 

[paradroid]

If charging at the same time, yeah that's not ideal. Hot battery = bad. If there's any way to charge first, then use it as such, then charge after, that'd be better but if your situation doesn't allow that, let it burn?!

What about running on battery for a few hours then plugging it up for a half hour. Alternate something like that on a long road trip.

The built in battery thing kind of sucks, I never worried about hurting batter life with replaceable battery phone.

 

[natehoy]

So using a phone as a gps and music during a road trip is bad for the battery? My last phone would really heat up when doing that.

Heat = bad. The hotter you make a battery and the longer you make it hot, the faster it degrades. In very extreme cases, that degradation can be very sudden and dramatic and thermite-like, but that's exceedingly rare with a good battery and temps where you can actually keep your hand on the phone without getting immediate blisters from the heat.

If your phone doesn't feel really warm and/or it's not being measured by something like GSam well above 80 degrees (F), then charging and using it for whatever you are doing at the time is probably fine.

If it gets really warm, then you are probably shortening your battery life and should consider whether you really need it to do everything it is doing (and if you do, aim the AC at it if you can to at least try to mitigate the temps, or take it out of any rubber or foam cases that might be defeating its ability to shed heat.

 

[natehoy]

What about running on battery for a few hours then plugging it up for a half hour. Alternate something like that on a long road trip.

Less time hot = better for the battery. There are many ways of reducing heat+time. That is certainly a viable one.

Reducing the battery drain by doing things like turning off the screen while you are going down the highway, and reducing temperatures by aiming cool air at the phone (or at least not having the car throwing HOT air at it), can help, too.

 

[Aquila]

What about running on battery for a few hours then plugging it up for a half hour. Alternate something like that on a long road trip.

The built in battery thing kind of sucks, I never worried about hurting batter life with replaceable battery phone.

Alternating would be better than constant, yes.

 

[natehoy]

The built in battery thing kind of sucks, I never worried about hurting batter life with replaceable battery phone.

I agree. If my Note 4 could keep better HSPA and LTE signal I'd still be using it (and still do, at home - where it is my TV remote and the device I use to cast my HBO, Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming media to my Smart TV).

 

[jsarino]

That's funny about UBreakiFix.... I had them replace my 6P as well since I didn't have the cycles to do it myself at the time, and they did some cosmetic damage to a few parts of the frame in the process. Phone ran great and you couldn't see it with a case on it, so I got what I wanted.

I'm about to tackle that with my Nexus 6P...got a replacement OEM battery, have alot of the iFixit tools (when I swapped the battery from my Nexus 5 awhile back). Been waiting for a good time to work on it. The part that I worry about is if I can take it apart without damaging the casing or display along the way.

I've been good about charging my 6P from the beginning, but has degraded to a point where I have to charge twice/day. I now have the Pixel 2 XL, so my hope is with the way it charges now, just maybe it'll degrade less so after two years.

 

[KWKSLVR]

As someone that relies heavily on laptops for work, the best advice I ever learned was to keep my battery between 20% -80%. It's true on my Macbook, it's true on my Alienware. I have a nearly 3 year old Alienware 17 r2 that still lasts over 7 hours on a charge. Dell's desktop mode works and when I need to fully charge it and use it on the go, it treats me well.

I abused by 6p battery, and it showed. I'm treating my P2 much kinder.