Is it even worth it to follow Accubattery advice?

[MoreDef]

Hi,

I've recently gotten into using Accubattery and doing research on what would be best for my device. Accubattery, along with other sources, have advised that you only charge your battery up to 80% and advise against letting it run below 50%. That leaves one with 30% of battery to use before having to plug in. On top of that, best battery practices advise against using your phone while it's charging, because that will also damage your battery.

My concern is, it seems like trying to save battery severely cripples the overall usefulness and convenience of a device. Using only 30% of the battery at a time seems counterintuitive to a device that's supposedly made to last the entire day. Is it worth it to even follow these rules? I mean, what's worth more to you android users, being able to use 30% of a phone for 4 years, or using it to it's full potential for 1 or 2 years?

I'm really thinking of deleting the Accubattery app and just sticking with my charge to 100% and letting it run down to 10% every day while getting 5-8 hours of SoT. Being paranoid about battery is becoming more of a hassle than it is a convenience.

Thoughts?

 

[Rukbat]

Accubattery, along with other sources, have advised that you only charge your battery up to 80% and advise against letting it run below 50%.

You can charge to 98% with no problem. That has nothing to do with the battery, it has to do with the charging chip. It's supposed to stop the charge at 100%, but if that fails, you can cook the battery and destroy it.

50%? That gives you the longest battery life. See Table 2 at Battery University - How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries. 45% isn't going to cut the life that much. But drop it to 10% and you'll get about 700 charge cycles from it - maybe 25% of those (175 cycles) giving you the normal time to discharge, then dropping off, until you'll go from 98% to 10% in an hour or two.

best battery practices advise against using your phone while it's charging, because that will also damage your battery.

No, unless it causes the battery to get warm. Intensive gaming and quick charging at the same time would probably be bad. Reading a page on a site while charging normally isn't much different from charging while the screen is blank.

Using only 30% of the battery at a time seems counterintuitive to a device that's supposedly made to last the entire day.

I don't know where you got the "supposed to last the entire day", but that's not how cellphones ar designed. They're designed to sell, and to sell new ones every year. (Keeping a phone for 5 years doesn't do the manufacturer any good.) No one wants to carry around a 3 pound Gel-cel battery. Lithium batteries are light and can be formed into any shape, including very thin. (Aside from solidified hydrogen [which occurs at less than 30° above absolute 0], lithium is the lightest metal.) But lithium batteries are not deep-discharge batteries. If you canb only get 6 hours from the phone, carry a charger or power pack with you. (And since a power pack is a lithium battery, run it between 50% and 98% also.)

Is it worth it to even follow these rules? I mean, what's worth more to you android users, being able to use 30% of a phone for 4 years, or using it to it's full potential for 1 or 2 years?

I use 55% of my battery and, since user-replaceable batteries went out of fashion, and it costs $60 or more to replace an $8 battery, it's best to use it that way. Running a battery down to 10% every charge cycle can kill it (as in "doesn't charge, and discharges rapidly") in a month or two. If you get a new phone every 5 months, and don't care that you won't get any trade-in, drop it down to 25% every time. But if you plan on keeping the phone for a while, get ready to replace batteries.

I'm really thinking of deleting the Accubattery app and just sticking with my charge to 100% and letting it run down to 10% every day while getting 5-8 hours of SoT. Being paranoid about battery is becoming more of a hassle than it is a convenience.

You can do that - but as I said, get ready to replace batteries. You don't need Accubattery to tell you to charge the battery when it gets down to 50% (or 45%) - install GSam Battery Monitor and set the low battery alarm.

 

[MoreDef]

Thank you for the insight and reasoning behind your response and opinion. I will try GSam Battery Monitor.

In my defense, all day battery is a term that all cellphone companies use when describing their products. So it wouldn't be entirely incorrect to believe that the product you buy should last the entire day on one charge.

Anyway, what would be a good set of numbers to work between? Charge to 90, discharge to 55?

Thank again. I guess I'm just confused about how there's a whole subgroup of battery enthusiasts who focus on total screen on time, often times riding their devices to single digits numbers, and there's also a group who doing charge past a certain point, don't go lower than s certain point, and charge incrementally throughout the day...and both camps obsess over battery life, but are doing exact opposite things to show how good their battery performances are.

 

[PackersOwner1]

IME the problem started when phone makers stopped offering replaceable batteries, and when Quick Charge 2.0 came along. I've had two phones succumb to battery bloat, and both had non-replaceable batteries and QC 2.0.

Before then I'd think nothing of leaving my phone on the charger whenever I wasn't using it, as I did with all of my lithium battery powered devices. That's how it should be. Most rechargeable battery packs have tiny computers in them that talk to the battery charger so that nothing bad happens.

Apparently phone makers were in such a hurry to make thinner and thinner phones, they cut corners. Every battery chemistry can make some gas, and most battery makers deal with it by either making the cases strong enough to contain the high pressure until the gas changed back to its original phase, or by venting the gas to the atmosphere. I don't know for sure, but it could be that gas buildup in lithium cells wasn't a problem until phone makers made batteries non-replaceable. (I know I didn't care about how long one battery lasted when I had two spares in my pocket.) The combination of fast charging and flimsy internal battery design was a bad combination. Quick Charge 2.0 provided six times the current of regular USB, but was not a battery charger per se. Although the QC wall wart communicates to the phone over USB, it doesn't communicate with the battery. So if the battery overheats and starts to bloat, QC 2.0 didn't know or care.

I haven't had any problems with devices using USB-C and the USB power delivery spec, that wasn't made by Qualcomm. Nevertheless I have started keeping my phones between 40% and 80% charge per the instructions the consensus of battery experts that I know. Better that than have my pristine phone defiled by a spudger.

If I'm going out for a while, I charge up to 100%. My USB-C phones don't get hot like the QC 2.0 ones did, and the same experts also recommend charging to 100% then discharging to 0% (or until the phone shuts off), then charging back to 100% once a month to calibrate the phone to the true battery capacity.

If you trade in your phone for a new one every year, I'd say that you shouldn't worry. Just use the USB power supply that comes with the phone you're using, and when you get a new phone, put your hand on the back while its charging to see how warm it gets. Some phones let you disable fast charging. My newest laptop has a rudimentary function that limits charging to 66%. I charge my phone using a USB power source that delivers about half the maximum power that my phone could use. Hopefully future products will give more options.