TL;DW: 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.
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].
Pixel 8 Pro.
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.
That works if you have a correct sleep schedule… this feature only enabled like 20 times in my life, and half the time it disabled itself because I used my phone during the night
If you’d watch the video you may realize it’s not needed.
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.
But the point of this video is whether the things you have control over make a significant difference.
Well not charging to 100% all the time will improve your battery life, and if you keep your devices a long time and have a usage pattern that allows charging it less like I do (I leave mine on a wireless charge pad at work), then it makes sense to make some adjustments to that particular setting.
Nah, I can’t be bothered by that. And the only device’s battery I really had issues with was a seven years old laptop, years ago. BMS and software will almost always know better than the user these days.
Max charge level is not something the BMS can decide for you because it’s a trade off between battery health and daily charge level. That’s why they ask you to choose.
Who’s doing the asking there? Neither my laptop nor my phones asked anything.
According to the settings on my current phone, the automatic setting will decide by itself to limit the maximum charge overnight, then plan to go full charge around the time my alarm should fire.
But, again, that’s the kind of micromanagement that would yield a tiny fraction of “maybe improvement” over the lifetime of the damn thing. I’d rather have a device works all the time for 6 years than have a device that’s sometime undercharged for 6.1 years.
Depends on the phone I’m sure but every device I own has this setting.
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.
I’m not saying your opinion is wrong or that you have to watch the video or anything like that, but videos like this are made so that you can see the testing procedure and judge it’s validity without just having to assume they did their job right. I wouldn’t trust someone just saying “yup, tried it out, doesn’t really matter 👍🏽”
Yeah I mean there is a progress bar, you can just jump to the results if you are in a hurry.
You can if you just want the results but the value of a video like this is going over the process and the detail, so you know how much to trust it.
I’m sorry that you’re allergic to information.
Given that video is the format with generally the lowest useful information transmission rate, I think you’ve got that the other way around.
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.
We always want better :)
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 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.
This is somewhat masked because my car has fast wireless charging. I just put my phone down and when I get somewhere my battery is topped off
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)
FYI: During this test it saved about 5% of SoH.
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
I bet thats wrong, but I know ….
There’ve been usage changes
- iPhone has “Optimized Charging” where it predicts usage and tries to keep about 80% charge until it expects you to use it
- iPhone has “Adaptive Performance “. Maybe not charging but tries to gradually ramp to “low power mode” to be gentler on the battery
- all phones likely have refined charging curves to match battery technology
It is, but phone manufacturers know this and already programmed their charging circuits to take it into account.
But if you’re using 18650 cells or some other lithium based battery for other purposes (vapes for example), it’s something to keep in mind.
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.
Source?
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.
Yes, but that 100% is not really that. It has been programmed to display that percentage, when i reality its 80%.
No, I’m saying that not all manufacturers have that limit, and it’s a relatively new setting (last few years). If you have an older phone or something not from the top few manufacturers, it might not have that feature.
This is like spinal tap. Yeah but my phone charges to 110%. I don’t think you understood what they’re trying to say. Changing what 100% means isn’t a setting or “relatively new”
No, they’re saying that some hardware manufacturers report 80% as 100% (as you noted) while others do not. Just like some manufacturers report 5% as 5% while others report 10% as 5% with the realization that most people misjudge when they’ll be able to charge.
I’m saying when your phone charges to 100%, some manufacturers take that to mean 80% of capacity, whereas others actually charge the battery to 100% of capacity.
Exactly, which is neither a user setting or relatively new. Battery manufacturers have always had to decide what voltage is what state of charge (percent).
The user setting where you limit it to 80% is on top of what the previous commenter was describing
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.
He’s not talking about 80/20 limits. he’s talking about material breakdown at extremes. Not all manufacturers spec in 80/20 limits. AFAIK, only Samsung actually lets you stop it completely at 80, the rest just try to let it sit no higher than 80 all night.
If they were saccrificing 40% of runtime to keep you from having to replace your battery, that would 100% be in the sales pitch.
And honestly, that article isn’t a great source of truth. A number of the statements in there are inaccurate or, at the very least, misleading.
Charging beyond 100% or below 0% is mostly BS. The proper max voltage of the battery is a physics thing, they are in equilibrium at 4.7 / cell. Picking at a low power limit is up to the manufacturer and their choice in power distribution circuitry. He asked the chemist if you could overcharge or overdischarge a battery and mistook that as an answer that it was feasible to overcharge/overdischarge them.
“Leaving a charger plugged in at the wall and turned on wastes energy False (well, maybe a tiny bit)” This is still true for many chargers, and calling it out as a little bit in his own arbitrary numbers is disingenuous.
“Batteries perform worse when they’re cold False (mostly)”
Rest assured, your C rating is wildly affected by temperature; he’s trying to again call it out as slight, which is making his own narrative.
“Powering off a device occasionally helps preserve battery life False”
The whole time your phone is on, you are charging or discharging. Those cycles wear on the battery any time you shut your phone off, you are in the least damaging mode for your battery, especially if it’s around 50% or so.
“Using an unofficial charger damages your phone True”
100% BS, using a crappy charger might damage your phone. Buying a quality 3rd party chager is no problem at all.
The author doesn’t appear to have a strong electronics background and he didn’t ask the right questions or fully understand the importat parts of the answers
“And if too much current is delivered to a battery, that could mean ripping out too many of those lithium ions and leading to the same kind of degradation you read about earlier. That’s not to say that all off-brand chargers will be this bad, Griffith notes, but you’re still probably better off sticking with an official model.” is not the same as “Using an unofficial charger damages your phone”
Article rests on one expert. That assistant professor’s publication list doesn’t seem to contain evidence about it, plus the quotes in the article don’t directly say it happens.
Maybe it does, but that article only seems to be guessing based on (admittedly reasonable) theory.
Iirc the reason Samsung phones were exploding a few years back is because they fucked up the settings for battery management.
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.
Ok, before i watch the video, no damage is not what great scott found from his testings… ( https://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!
It’s a true conclusion, though, although it’s not real world applicable.
It is, if you are just dealing with bare batteries without any kind of protection, but if you are dealing with cellphones/modern smart devices, not so much
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.
Non-magnetically-aligned wireless chargers are far worse than fast charging.
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!?
I’m hoping for ranged wireless charging. Everything is always charged when Im inside.
Just live in a microwave. Problem solved!
Only with the correct iOS version though.
Not doable without some very expensive addons to your house - like IR charging from ceiling
Everything is always charged when Im inside.
That’s living in microwave, I’d say its not going to ever happen
https://news.mit.edu/2019/converting-wi-fi-signals-electricity-0128
I’m fine with infrastructure overhaul. We build new houses every day.
We just need to be clever enough to do it without cooking ourselves
Wifi is limited to ~100 miliwats of power, and what reaches you and your phone is in range of microwats or even less. You can’t charge your phone with it.
Magnetic portable battery packs are fantastic too.
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.
I have a one plus phone.
The super vook charging works very well. It feels like less than 10 minutes to go from 10 to 80 percent.
The Chinese have it right with the food too. Love me egg foo yung
sure grandpa
You’re so cool. You can just throw your phone at charging plate to cook itself, while you can’t use it. But it looks cool. Cool tech for cool people.
It makes my wife considerably less pissed off when I come to bed late and am not fumbling with cables, so it’s a win for me.
She gets pissed off if you take 2 seconds to plug a phone in? Are you alright brother?
Well if I wake her up then yes. No one likes being woken up.
Wireless charging sucks. It costs significantly more energy to charge the same battery to full.
Your phone doesn’t have that much energy stored in it. 5 watt hours or so? Now consider the energy cost of making usb-c cords
The charging pad itself probably requires a USB-C cable itself? It takes much more materials to make them than a cable…
It doesn’t have plugging and unplugging cycles and doesn’t get bent in different directions, so it will basically never break unless you use the phone while holding the charging pad
So I’m expected to hold a wireless charger as well? When I can just have a light cable plugged in, generating less heat and for less time? Unless you are buying really low quality cables, they shouldn’t break and unless you are aggressive with it, the cable and the port will last years. When they eventually wear out, the cable is recyclable and depending on your phone, the USB-C port replaceable.
Wireless charging is for toothbrushes.
Nobody said you must get rid of wired charging.
Over four years I’ve broken three or four cables. Every time it’s because the phone moved while plugged in. Whether it’s my error (forgetting it’s plugged in) or the cat knocking the phone down, nothing breaks when the phone falls down from the wireless charger
[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.
It’s literally a few watt hours. Not kilowatt hours, watt hours. I pay $0.08 per kwh, so after a few years of wireless charging I might pay $1 more
But the USB-C cord might break in less than that time and cost more. Manufacturing cords is never going to be green, but electricity can be made renewable
The charging pad might also break and they require cables themselves, plus all the materials to make the charging pad, plus every phone has to support wireless, which is even more materials. I’ve never broken a USB-C cable, that’s a user issue, you are either being way too aggressive with them, buying low quality ones, or both.
You keep on connecting and reconnecting the USB-C cable, and if you use it while charging you probably bend it.
The cable in the charging pad never gets unplugged
You can’t use a wireless charger while in bed. Unless it’s magnetic, then it’s also got the bending risk.
I lay in bed all the time with my phone charging, the cable bends, but I’m aware of it, it’s never broken. I’ve had this specific one for 4 years now.
What if I want to charge in a different room? Do I buy another wireless charger? That’s more cost and material again versus just a cable. Do I unplug the charger and take it with me? Cables just make way more sense. Your phone is tethered to something either way, might as well do it the more efficient and green way and plug a cable in.
If you yank a magnetic stick on charger it just disconnects. If you yank a wired cord it can break it.
I never said you must stop using wired charging. If you’re using it while charging and it works for you, you can continue to do that.
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.
That makes sense but has it actually been tested?
They tested that too, actually. Heat, I mean. It’s in a different one of the channels videos. It’s easy to find, since the channel only has like 10 videos and only a few are about phones .
But keep in mind the phone will throttle charging speeds when it gets warm, so the battery doesn’t end up getting much warmer, it just takes forever to get a full charge (especially when using a thick case that puts further space between the charging coils and also acts as thermal insulation, thus reduces the phones ability to cool down)
It is still keeping the battery warmer which degrades it faster regardless if its being charged or not.
are we not going to see results of the half cycle vs the full cycle? unless im dumb and missed something (its possible)
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?
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.
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?“
No.
Well. It could be worse than what everybody says
is the poupe deck really what i think it is
Corollary:
How not following trends and drinking paint thinner boosted my B2B sales
Are we talking about water-based paint?
I believe that paint thinner does contain water
Not if it’s for oil based paints.
Water-based paints can be thinned with water, so technically water is a paint thinner… which is safe to drink.
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.”
That’s no longer true. As reporting quality continues to decline and 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”
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.
TL;DW: No
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.
Tap for spoiler
The iPhone air is great, isn’t it?
I’ve been a “Pro” user for as long as they’d had that distinction vs. lower end and the “it’s a small tablet” size.
As humorous as this sounds, this is not at all how battery chemistries works.
Some chemistries just charge faster than others.
for the common types of Lion or Lipo batteries, they max out pushing 2C which is around 30 minutes.
For something like LTO, where you lose capacity/density, you can get that up to like 4C (very rough numbers here as this all depends on the temperature of the battery while charging, age and other factors).
So like… this could have been accurate if this was referring to switching to LTO, but afaik, no one makes LTO batteries in this form-factor (not that it can’t be done though).
So put in a big-ass battery and artificially block it at 20% for “full”? 😁
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.
That’s pretty awesome
modern phones last long enough , that you likely wont see significant degradation unless you somehow using it for 10+years. most people would have switched phones multiples by then.
Just what I wanted to know. Thanks!!
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.
Yeah, but it’s my 0.5% /s
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.”
