How long will the V20 last?

[Mooncatt]

Apple is under big scrutiny for slowing down iPhones.

To be fair, that was due to old batteries that had high internal resistance and the program change that made them slow down would restore full performance when the battery was changed.

 

[flyingkytez]

To be fair, that was due to old batteries that had high internal resistance and the program change that made them slow down would restore full performance when the battery was changed.

Also to be fair, it only happened to a small number of people, while the entire population were forced to have a slow OS from the update. Also, lack of transparency, not telling the public but instead the public finding out themselves.

Ask any Note 4 owner who updated their OS and regretted it. And then ask any Note 4 owner that avoided the update and still have a perfectly working Note 4.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BddYltPHySc/

This is actually good news, and good they got caught. Apple is being pulled from shelves in some countries and it's going to hurt Apple. Now it'll make manufactures think twice before doing "planned obsolescence", which not everyone will still agree is happening but it really is.

 

[tickerguy]

Apple is under big scrutiny for slowing down iPhones. From my past experience, I feel like Samsung use parts that will only last up to a certain point before dying, especially from a final software update that makes it obsolete (my Samsung TV died within 2 years, cheap capacitors designed to last 2 years).

One of Samsung's best ways of doing this is to use quite-cheap switches for the buttons. They literally fall apart internally after a couple of years. I've changed a few dozen of them over the last decade for people and the advent of the "sealed battery and case" thing has made that MUCH more of a high-wire act in terms of risk of destroying the device that it used to be. I have a proper hot air rework station but first you have to get the board out of the device without trashing it!

 

[Mooncatt]

Also to be fair, it only happened to a small number of people, while the entire population were forced to have a slow OS from the update. Also, lack of transparency, not telling the public but instead the public finding out themselves.

I don't think anyone is going to deny the lack of transparency, but again, this was not a planned obsolescence update. It was either that, or have phones shutting down early due to batteries going bad. Either way, performance and use will be impacted. And like I said above, replacing the battery gives those phones full performance. It's also my understanding that this is an across the board update, making even the latest phones also have it. So those with new phones unlucky enough to have a weak battery from the start would've also had a slow down.

 

[tickerguy]

I don't think anyone is going to deny the lack of transparency, but again, this was not a planned obsolescence update. It was either that, or have phones shutting down early due to batteries going bad. Either way, performance and use will be impacted. And like I said above, replacing the battery gives those phones full performance. It's also my understanding that this is an across the board update, making even the latest phones also have it. So those with new phones unlucky enough to have a weak battery from the start would've also had a slow down.

Ah, and here's the problem with that -- Apple's software knew the battery was defective, but by slowing down INSTEAD OF WARNING THE USER THE BATTERY IS DEFECTIVE Apple illegally evaded its warranty responsibility -- which includes the battery during the warranty period.

That's fraud.

 

[Mooncatt]

Ah, and here's the problem with that -- Apple's software knew the battery was defective, but by slowing down INSTEAD OF WARNING THE USER THE BATTERY IS DEFECTIVE Apple illegally evaded its warranty responsibility -- which includes the battery during the warranty period.

That's fraud.

The Note 7 (the device itself) didn't warn the user ahead of time before its battery went poof. My wife's Droid Razr didn't notify her before her battery decided to sort circuit internally. Have Samsung and Motorola committed fraud by not having their phones warn of an impending battery problem? By the same token, was Apple committing fraud by not letting users know when their batteries were getting weak before this OS change? Remember, the iPhone batteries in question were already worn out, and this change only affected how the phone dealt with it.

And who's to say a worn out battery is a warranty valid claim in the first place? If you are a heavy user, or have bad charging habits, your battery will wear out quickly. I would not expect a company to warranty my battery for that, as that is not a defect. That is a user created issue. Does the situation suck for Apple users? Yes. Did Apple do anything legally wrong such as fraud? My guess is no.

 

[flyingkytez]

I don't think anyone is going to deny the lack of transparency, but again, this was not a planned obsolescence update. It was either that, or have phones shutting down early due to batteries going bad. Either way, performance and use will be impacted. And like I said above, replacing the battery gives those phones full performance. It's also my understanding that this is an across the board update, making even the latest phones also have it. So those with new phones unlucky enough to have a weak battery from the start would've also had a slow down.

I heard the 6, 6s, and 7 getting it. Whether we know if Apple was actually trying to fix phones or it was planned obsolescence, we will never know. But you can say folks will be visiting Apple to get the new iPhone X! They really have no choice.

Also I don't really understand why the phone would shut off because of a weak battery, I've never experienced that ever with any Android phone. All a weak battery would do is just drain faster.

 

[flyingkytez]

Ah, and here's the problem with that -- Apple's software knew the battery was defective, but by slowing down INSTEAD OF WARNING THE USER THE BATTERY IS DEFECTIVE Apple illegally evaded its warranty responsibility -- which includes the battery during the warranty period.

That's fraud.

That's right, where's the CHOICE? If I had a choice, I'd say leave it alone.

 

[flyingkytez]

The Note 7 (the device itself) didn't warn the user ahead of time before its battery went poof. My wife's Droid Razr didn't notify her before her battery decided to sort circuit internally. Have Samsung and Motorola committed fraud by not having their phones warn of an impending battery problem? By the same token, was Apple committing fraud by not letting users know when their batteries were getting weak before this OS change? Remember, the iPhone batteries in question were already worn out, and this change only affected how the phone dealt with it.

And who's to say a worn out battery is a warranty valid claim in the first place? If you are a heavy user, or have bad charging habits, your battery will wear out quickly. I would not expect a company to warranty my battery for that, as that is not a defect. That is a user created issue. Does the situation suck for Apple users? Yes. Did Apple do anything legally wrong such as fraud? My guess is no.

Technically no fraud committed but definitely lost the trust of millions of users, and trust is hard to give nowadays especially with a secret. Also, most manufactures will replace a battery within the 1 year period... unless they have a tracking software that tells them your habits which I think is a privacy violation (ahem, OnePlus?).

 

[Mooncatt]

But you can say folks will be visiting Apple to get the new iPhone X! They really have no choice.

Yes they did, they can replace the battery (which Apple slashed the price on) and get their regular performance back.

Also I don't really understand why the phone would shut off because of a weak battery, I've never experienced that ever with any Android phone. All a weak battery would do is just drain faster.

I posted a bit about this in the battery life thread, and it relates to voltage sag. In short, any demand placed on a battery will cause a reduction in voltage. As a battery ages, this "sag" becomes more pronounced. I'd post a screen shot, but the app is gliching. I did post some in my voltage sag reply in the other thread if you really want to see.

Depending on the health (or lack thereof) of the battery and the demand placed on it, the sag can drop below the minimum voltage required to power the phone. At that point, the phone can immediately shut off without going through the power down sequence. This is why most any time a battery health topic pops up here, the person with the problem will mention the phone shutting down before the gauge reads 0%. When I tested mine the other day, it shut off at 4%. That's not all that horrible, but I've seen some users report shutdowns with as much as 20% left.

 

[Mooncatt]

...unless they have a tracking software that tells them your habits which I think is a privacy violation (ahem, OnePlus?).

If it's only tracking charging and power consumption, then it's not a privacy violation. It's no different than a car manufacturer denying a warranty claim on a blown motor because there was evidence of abuse/neglect and you don't hat paperwork showing you kept up with proper preventative maintenance.

 

[mwake4goten]

Yes they did, they can replace the battery (which Apple slashed the price on) and get their regular performance back.



I posted a bit about this in the battery life thread, and it relates to voltage sag. In short, any demand placed on a battery will cause a reduction in voltage. As a battery ages, this "sag" becomes more pronounced. I'd post a screen shot, but the app is gliching. I did post some in my voltage sag reply in the other thread if you really want to see.

Depending on the health (or lack thereof) of the battery and the demand placed on it, the sag can drop below the minimum voltage required to power the phone. At that point, the phone can immediately shut off without going through the power down sequence. This is why most any time a battery health topic pops up here, the person with the problem will mention the phone shutting down before the gauge reads 0%. When I tested mine the other day, it shut off at 4%. That's not all that horrible, but I've seen some users report shutdowns with as much as 20% left.

This is what my HTC One M8 does everytime. In fact it regularly shuts down at anywhere between 30-40%. I only just it as my backup phone so it's not too much of a problem. I could replace the battery but I don't trust anyone to do a good enough job as it is one of the hardest batteries on the planet replace.

 

[Mooncatt]

This is what my HTC One M8 does everytime. In fact it regularly shuts down at anywhere between 30-40%. I only just it as my backup phone so it's not too much of a problem. I could replace the battery but I don't trust anyone to do a good enough job as it is one of the hardest batteries on the planet replace.

I feel your pain. I had two M8's that the USB ports went bad on, effectively killing the phone just as a bad sealed battery would. The second one was out of warranty and I had a local shop try to repair it for me. They never could, but at least didn't charge me for it.

 

[tickerguy]

The Note 7 (the device itself) didn't warn the user ahead of time before its battery went poof. My wife's Droid Razr didn't notify her before her battery decided to sort circuit internally. Have Samsung and Motorola committed fraud by not having their phones warn of an impending battery problem? By the same token, was Apple committing fraud by not letting users know when their batteries were getting weak before this OS change? Remember, the iPhone batteries in question were already worn out, and this change only affected how the phone dealt with it.

And who's to say a worn out battery is a warranty valid claim in the first place? If you are a heavy user, or have bad charging habits, your battery will wear out quickly. I would not expect a company to warranty my battery for that, as that is not a defect. That is a user created issue. Does the situation suck for Apple users? Yes. Did Apple do anything legally wrong such as fraud? My guess is no.

Actually, it IS a warranty item within the one year warranty unless excluded explicitly, and Apple does not exclude it.

The problem results from how the manufacturers program their charge controllers. There's a right way and about 50 wrong ways to charge a lithium battery. You can shave safety margins too if you're stupid, and more than a few have with bad results (e.g. Samsung's infamous exploding phones and more than a few people who have had "bulging" batteries that they caught before they shorted, sometimes because it broke the glued-on rear cover!)

The correct way to charge a lithium chemistry battery is to allow current to run at somewhere between 0.7C and 1.0C (depending on the quality of your thermal monitoring and tolerance for risk) until the cell voltage gets to 4.2V, but do not allow cell temperature to go over 100F (if it does, halt charging until it drops back under.) This is a charge state of somewhere between 60 and 85% depending on both temperature and charge current.

Then hold voltage at 4.2V until current falls to between 0.1 and 0.3C (for a 3,000mah battery this is somewhere between 100-300ma -- split the baby and call it 200ma), again, not allowing temperature over 100F (if it does, once again, stop the charge until it falls back.) The cell is full at this point.

The problem is that the first phase will take about 45 minutes (acceptable) but the saturation charge will require upwards of two hours if you used a reasonable rate originally (e.g. 0.5-0.7C) and three hours+ if you didn't. Nobody wants to wait that long and in fact "how fast does it charge" has become a consumer comparison point so all the manufacturers will run the voltage up to 4.3V and a few go a bit beyond that. Beyond 4.3V is dangerous, incidentally, as it can promote offgassing in the cell (the infamous "bulging" batteries are caused by this.) This means that very small errors in the trimming of your charge controller's sense circuits lead to Samsung-style disasters. I do not believe, incidentally, that the Samsung issue had anything to do with the batteries themselves, as evidenced by the "second batch" that also caught fire. Odds are the issue was in the charge controller trimming -- it was running just a bit too high on the transition voltage and if you do that the odds are very good you'll plate metal in the cell which will rather quickly result in a short on a fully-charged cell (and a fire.)

Second, you need two sets of very-accurate current and voltage sense inputs to the charge system; one at the output of the charge controller and a second at the input to the regulator for the phone's circuitry, so you can subtract back out the phone's actual use (so as to obtain the net going into the battery if the phone is on.) If anyone is actually using those I've never seen that data exposed where you can get at it, so I suspect they're not -- they are instead are "guessing" using the CPU's internal monitoring and "best guess" for the other items that are on (e.g. screen brightness, GPS, etc), which is NOT accurate enough to do it right.

The problem with abusing the cells is that it dramatically shortens their cycle life. Charge 'em hot or hard and the expected 500 full cycles drops fast; running constant-current charge to 4.3V instead of 4.2V, for example, will take a solid 100+ cycles off the expected cell life at least and maybe as much as half the service life, especially if the device gets hot while charging on a routine basis.

But it does charge quite a bit faster.....

 

[Mooncatt]

Actually, it IS a warranty item within the one year warranty unless excluded explicitly, and Apple does not exclude it.

The problem results from how the manufacturers program their charge controllers. There's a right way and about 50 wrong ways to charge a lithium battery. You can shave safety margins too if you're stupid, and more than a few have with bad results (e.g. Samsung's infamous exploding phones and more than a few people who have had "bulging" batteries that they caught before they shorted, sometimes because it broke the glued-on rear cover!)

The correct way to charge a lithium chemistry battery is to allow current to run at somewhere between 0.7C and 1.0C (depending on the quality of your thermal monitoring and tolerance for risk) until the cell voltage gets to 4.2V, but do not allow cell temperature to go over 100F (if it does, halt charging until it drops back under.) This is a charge state of somewhere between 60 and 85% depending on both temperature and charge current.

Then hold voltage at 4.2V until current falls to between 0.1 and 0.3C (for a 3,000mah battery this is somewhere between 100-300ma -- split the baby and call it 200ma), again, not allowing temperature over 100F (if it does, once again, stop the charge until it falls back.) The cell is full at this point.

The problem is that the first phase will take about 45 minutes (acceptable) but the saturation charge will require upwards of two hours if you used a reasonable rate originally (e.g. 0.5-0.7C) and three hours+ if you didn't. Nobody wants to wait that long and in fact "how fast does it charge" has become a consumer comparison point so all the manufacturers will run the voltage up to 4.3V and a few go a bit beyond that. Beyond 4.3V is dangerous, incidentally, as it can promote offgassing in the cell (the infamous "bulging" batteries are caused by this.) This means that very small errors in the trimming of your charge controller's sense circuits lead to Samsung-style disasters. I do not believe, incidentally, that the Samsung issue had anything to do with the batteries themselves, as evidenced by the "second batch" that also caught fire. Odds are the issue was in the charge controller trimming -- it was running just a bit too high on the transition voltage and if you do that the odds are very good you'll plate metal in the cell which will rather quickly result in a short on a fully-charged cell (and a fire.)

Second, you need two sets of very-accurate current and voltage sense inputs to the charge system; one at the output of the charge controller and a second at the input to the regulator for the phone's circuitry, so you can subtract back out the phone's actual use (so as to obtain the net going into the battery if the phone is on.) If anyone is actually using those I've never seen that data exposed where you can get at it, so I suspect they're not -- they are instead are "guessing" using the CPU's internal monitoring and "best guess" for the other items that are on (e.g. screen brightness, GPS, etc), which is NOT accurate enough to do it right.

The problem with abusing the cells is that it dramatically shortens their cycle life. Charge 'em hot or hard and the expected 500 full cycles drops fast; running constant-current charge to 4.3V instead of 4.2V, for example, will take a solid 100+ cycles off the expected cell life at least and maybe as much as half the service life, especially if the device gets hot while charging on a routine basis.

But it does charge quite a bit faster.....

I'm well familiar on the technical best practices to charge a lithium, and I think the manufacturers do ok in that respect. Even quick charging doesn't break the 1.0C barrier (even if they did, there are designs out there that could allow a 5C charge on some Lipo batteries, so that's also feasible).

Where I see most of the problems with reduced battery life are people charging to 100%, then draining it completely over and over. No amount of programming, short of a hard shut down when low and reducing the max voltage so that you can only utilize the middle portion of the battery capacity, will stop people from doing that. People want to run full cycles on their batteries and darn the consequences. Worse are the ones that charge before bed or overnight, leaving their phones at a high charge level.

In the past, that didn't matter because you could easily replace the batteries. Now it matters big time, but the majority of the public don't realize they play the biggest role in battery health. Just look at the cavalier attitude about it in any battery related post. Just recently I saw someone go so far as to say just leave it plugged it because it's not going to hurt anything.

 

[tickerguy]

With a properly-set charge controller it doesn't materially hurt the battery to leave it plugged in all the time when not in use. The problem is that there's no phone made that has said properly-set controller in it.

"Properly-set" means you charge to 4.2V, saturation charge the rest of the way and then shut the charger off completely until voltage drops below about 3.8V. Even better is to stop charging entirely at 95% (about 0.12-0.15C current at 4.2V) and again, do not turn charging back on until you go under 4.0V (at least.) The latter would leave you with a 90%+ battery whenever you unplug (somewhere between 90-95) and yet not do any sort of material harm to cell life at all.

Lenovo's charge controller for the X220 I own does this by default; it has a "full" mode you can set that will charge all the way, but I don't use it. The difference in runtime is immaterial in giving up 5% of capacity on purpose, and the results are clear: I've owned the unit since 2011 and it has had one battery replacement as its capacity dropped under 80% or so at about four years of age and got annoying -- the second battery, which is currently in use and roughly three years old at this point is still perfectly serviceable. I expect to need to replace it in another year or so. Laptops are also fitted with a multi-cell pack which is materially more-difficult to balance-charge correctly so you don't wind up with a weak cell shorting out on you from being reverse-charged by accident.

The other thing that comes into play is that the reason consumers charge their phones this way is that manufacturers refuse to put enough battery capacity into the device to last a full day under any reasonable use paradigm. That in turn is because then you can't brag about how small and thin the phone is since, of course, battery capacity is a physics thing, and that causes people to insist on leaving the house in the morning with a 100% charged battery lest they run out of power at 3:00 PM before they can plug it back in. If manufacturers put another 25% in capacity into the cells there wouldn't be a problem with this since you could easily charge in the evening to 85% or so, let the phone rest overnight and still get through the day with what remains in the morning.

Incidentally BlackBerry got pretty close with the Z30 and Passport. There weren't many complaints of battery failures on those, but a large part of it was that they didn't have undersized batteries in them either!

 

[recDNA]

Today, most phones last 2-3 years before problems start showing (notably Apple, and recently the Samsung Note 4). Since the battery is removable, I'm thinking a very long time like 10 years. What do you think? I recently gave away a super old BlackBerry phone, but I turned it on and it still worked like it did 10 years ago. Why are some smartphones dying fast?

Good luck finding batteries for it in 5 years.

 

[tickerguy]

The bigger issue is the new bandplans showing up, at least in the US. 600Mhz not being there won't hose you today, but in a couple of years you will wish you had it.

The same thing happened with 700Mhz, especially on T-Mobile. They had roaming deals they shut off as soon as they deployed 700Mhz in a given area. If you didn't have a phone that could talk 700Mhz you went from decent, roaming service in those areas to NOTHING overnight.

Roughly half the landmass of the lower peninsula of Michigan had that happen..... it'll happen again.

 

[flyingkytez]

Actually, it IS a warranty item within the one year warranty unless excluded explicitly, and Apple does not exclude it.

The problem results from how the manufacturers program their charge controllers. There's a right way and about 50 wrong ways to charge a lithium battery. You can shave safety margins too if you're stupid, and more than a few have with bad results (e.g. Samsung's infamous exploding phones and more than a few people who have had "bulging" batteries that they caught before they shorted, sometimes because it broke the glued-on rear cover!)

The correct way to charge a lithium chemistry battery is to allow current to run at somewhere between 0.7C and 1.0C (depending on the quality of your thermal monitoring and tolerance for risk) until the cell voltage gets to 4.2V, but do not allow cell temperature to go over 100F (if it does, halt charging until it drops back under.) This is a charge state of somewhere between 60 and 85% depending on both temperature and charge current.

Then hold voltage at 4.2V until current falls to between 0.1 and 0.3C (for a 3,000mah battery this is somewhere between 100-300ma -- split the baby and call it 200ma), again, not allowing temperature over 100F (if it does, once again, stop the charge until it falls back.) The cell is full at this point.

The problem is that the first phase will take about 45 minutes (acceptable) but the saturation charge will require upwards of two hours if you used a reasonable rate originally (e.g. 0.5-0.7C) and three hours+ if you didn't. Nobody wants to wait that long and in fact "how fast does it charge" has become a consumer comparison point so all the manufacturers will run the voltage up to 4.3V and a few go a bit beyond that. Beyond 4.3V is dangerous, incidentally, as it can promote offgassing in the cell (the infamous "bulging" batteries are caused by this.) This means that very small errors in the trimming of your charge controller's sense circuits lead to Samsung-style disasters. I do not believe, incidentally, that the Samsung issue had anything to do with the batteries themselves, as evidenced by the "second batch" that also caught fire. Odds are the issue was in the charge controller trimming -- it was running just a bit too high on the transition voltage and if you do that the odds are very good you'll plate metal in the cell which will rather quickly result in a short on a fully-charged cell (and a fire.)

Second, you need two sets of very-accurate current and voltage sense inputs to the charge system; one at the output of the charge controller and a second at the input to the regulator for the phone's circuitry, so you can subtract back out the phone's actual use (so as to obtain the net going into the battery if the phone is on.) If anyone is actually using those I've never seen that data exposed where you can get at it, so I suspect they're not -- they are instead are "guessing" using the CPU's internal monitoring and "best guess" for the other items that are on (e.g. screen brightness, GPS, etc), which is NOT accurate enough to do it right.

The problem with abusing the cells is that it dramatically shortens their cycle life. Charge 'em hot or hard and the expected 500 full cycles drops fast; running constant-current charge to 4.3V instead of 4.2V, for example, will take a solid 100+ cycles off the expected cell life at least and maybe as much as half the service life, especially if the device gets hot while charging on a routine basis.

But it does charge quite a bit faster.....

External battery charger plus a cooling fan = effective safe charging at low temps which means better longevity. High heat damages the battery overtime... learned that the hard way with wireless charging on my S6 Active.





BTW these are laptop cooling pads from eBay, keeps the phone/battery cool while charging.

 

[tickerguy]

The LG battery cradle charger (the external one you have) doesn't heat the battery materially while charging. Then again it's not real fast, and while I have yet to stick a data logger on it for voltage I'd take a bet it plays more to-the-rules than the phone does.