Okay, I'll leave this here for those who want to actually learn why charging (and keeping) over 80% is not ideal.
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries
Those who don't want to learn and believe "modern" fixed everything (actually quite conversely we did exactly the opposite, we optimized chargers and batteries for run time, not service life), keep chirping your tune. Don't worry, there are plenty of replacement batteries for all of you with super busy life styles.
Might as well discharge to 40%, turn your phone off, put it in a ziplock bag, and throw it in your fridge. The service life of your battery will TRULY be prolonged then.
JAG87 thinks he is the only one with internet access.This is why you're being called pretentious. Did you really think that most of us giving advice in this thread had not already read those articles and taken them into account when we gave our advice? Did you really think that somehow you managed to acquire a shard of information that we've completely neglected? Did you even bother to digest our comments that when balancing the need to preserve the battery against the need to actually USE our devices, that generally you can just leave your modern device plugged in?
Or are you simply firm in your opinion that everyone ought only use their phones in a manner that minimizes battery degradation at the expense of "minor" things like actually using the battery capacity that's so desperately being preserved?
This is why you're being called pretentious. Did you really think that most of us giving advice in this thread had not already read those articles and taken them into account when we gave our advice? Did you really think that somehow you managed to acquire a shard of information that we've completely neglected? Did you even bother to digest our comments that when balancing the need to preserve the battery against the need to actually USE our devices, that generally you can just leave your modern device plugged in?
Or are you simply firm in your opinion that everyone ought only use their phones in a manner that minimizes battery degradation at the expense of "minor" things like actually using the battery capacity that's so desperately being preserved?
I think you actually said it best - run time has a much higher priority than service life. I don't care if I have a perfectly linear battery that exhibits no hysteresis if I can only get a couple of hours of charge on it. And overall the market agrees with this --> as long as the battery can get through about two years that satisfies most of what people want anyways.
Like you're infallible of course.But of course not. AT forum members are infallible and always take everything into account when giving out advice.
It's pretty idiotic to compare the capacity of a battery to the speed of the car instead of the capacity of the tank yes. (and it's not like leaving your phone plugged in is remotely like running your car constantly at redline in terms of wear and tear).PS. your last paragraph is idiotic. Hey, my car can top out at 200 mph, therefore I might as well always drive it as fast as it can go. Who cares if it breaks down.
Like you're infallible of course.
It's pretty idiotic to compare the capacity of a battery to the speed of the car instead of the capacity of the tank yes. (and it's not like leaving your phone plugged in is remotely like running your car constantly at redline in terms of wear and tear).
No you gave an analogy that was apples to oranges and didn't make a lick of senseI was paraphrasing with the car of course.
This is where you're wrong. Manufacturers don't in fact do this. We've have pointed out this many times already that they deliberately don't charge your batteries to the absolute maximum nor do they even maintain a charge at the level called "100%".Manufacturers designed batteries for maximum runtime, and therefore maximum saturation voltage.
No you gave an analogy that was apples to oranges and didn't make a lick of sense
This is where you're wrong. Manufacturers don't in fact do this. We've have pointed out this many times already that they deliberately don't charge your batteries to the absolute maximum nor do they even maintain a charge at the level called "100%".
In fact, they even have trickery going on to let your battery slowly discharge to around 90% while displaying 100% to the user BECAUSE it's a good balance between usability and reducing battery wear.
You've continuously made the assumption that the manufacturers and the folks in the this thread are all idiots when they've noted battery wear issues and balanced it so that for most users it gives BOTH good battery life and lower battery wear.
You've also been giving advice, that for most users (I don't say all because there are cases where it's applicable) is increasing inconvenience for no benefit. If you have to always watch your battery level to plug and unplug your phone, then why would you care if your battery capacity has reduced? You're already plugging it in and unplugging it all the time to maintain the battery levels within a narrower range anyway.
Wow. Yes it will.
A lithium battery will suffer from staying at high voltages for extended periods. Keeping the battery at 100% for extended periods after charging has ceased is BAD.
OP, try to keep your battery between 25-75% if you want to keep your battery healthy. With wireless charging this should be pretty easy to do. Don't leave your phone on it overnight.
while you are correct, it's $12.50 to replace mine, so I stopped worrying about it.
what seems to make a bigger difference in my opinion is frequently plugging it/unlugging it all the time...which, obviously happens when Qi charging
but it always happens to other people, not me so much. So I'm trying a new thing: just charge it if I'm at a location where I have one of my 4 Qi pads installed. Will report back in a couple years.
I have to say, it's still really annoying running out of battery. I don't want to have to be thinking all the time "should I top up?", and I don't want to have to go through the inconvenience of topping it up all the time. 3000mah is sufficient for my taste. Everything should have that.
Well yea, if it's easily user replaceable and it's cheap, then throw everything I'm saying out the window. Who cares at that point.
Honestly, if you want to make a definite classification of what kills batteries the fastest, it goes something like this:
1. Charging/discharging at too hot/cold temperatures
2. Keeping at too high/low voltages
3. Rate of charge/discharge over time (called C-rate)
Frequently topping off actually does absolutely nothing to it, and in fact if you could somehow maintain it within a 20% DoC/DoD somewhere under 80% maximum rated voltage (which would require very frequent top ups), your battery would have maximum service life. But that's not practical. I'm guilty of number 4 because I like to charge at the fastest rate allowed by the circuitry of the battery, simply because it's convenient. But I do my best to prevent 1, 2 and 3.
What is being discussed here (charging to 100% and leaving it there), is a little bit of number 1 (charging from 80% to 100% takes significantly longer any other voltage range so this is where peak temperature is reached) than and a lot of number 3 (keeping the battery at high voltage after charging ceased by running off AC power).
And I do agree with you that this obsession with thinness and therefore tiny batteries is stupid. I mean if the damn iPhone gets any thinner, there won't be any room for the headphone jack, it's silly. Make it a bit thicker and put in a battery that actually lasts more than 12 hours of usage and therefore will actually have reasonable service life (more than 2 years), even with the poor battery practices that most users subject their devices to.
Okay JAG, I read the links you provided info for, and based on the data you show, repeated cycling with a constant discharge (most likely the maximum rate of discharge, and probably maintaining highest average temperatures vs times ) for a phone.
These discharge conditions are probably not realistic of the loads a phone experiences in a true use case, where phone power demands vary throughout the day. I may use my phone for 15 minutes, and then put it down for an hour. I may check my phone every 5 minutes for facebook notifications, and that is it. The closest these curves come to explain, from a true use case, is someone probably playing a 3D game at maximum settings that pushes the phone to its peak...or someone running GPS at maximum volume with turn by turn audio turned on.
I don't see curves for batteries when they are topped off to 100% and undergo other typical phone loads (clearly the use case of 3D and GPS with turn by turn are valid and useful, but they aren't the only use cases, and they won't be as common as other ones) to see how many cycles it can last.
I don't see curves for battery life when a circuit performs a slow charge/discharge from 100% to 90%.
That said, I would still expect a partially discharged battery to perform better, but perhaps more common real world use cases show that the phone is often 'good enough'. Table 4 on 'how to prolong lithium...' is a good example. For the average person is there a practical difference between 1000-2000 (3-6 years) discharge cycles vs 2000-4000 (6-10 years)discharge cycles? FWIW, leaving a phone at 90% seems to be the way to go as it gaurantees a minimum of 2 years. It looks like they quote some research papers, and these are worth looking into to understand the conditions that create these curves, but the zeal that you display seems to be disjointedly tied to data that isn't referenced in the links you provided.
I agree with you, and there is very little you can do to control the rate of charge and discharge anyway. Unless you are willing to wait long periods to charge your device, and avoid all demanding usage... there is very little one can do.
But #1 and #2 are well under your control and have a massive effect on service life. And they mean the difference between a battery lasting 300 cycles vs 700 cycles, which by the charging habits of the average person (70-80% depth daily), means having a battery that is junk after 1 year vs one that is still in top shape after 2 years.