People are suggesting to root a device in order to gain a feature. My response to that is that such action has serious side effects. For example, Widevine might no longer work, and it requires you to trust the application running as root more than normally. An average user is unable to gauge such trust.
It akin to giving your 5 year old root to your fridge. Bad things happen when you do that.
Letâs try again, shall we? If you typically use half of your batteryâs capacity in a day, going from 100% in the morning to 50% when you plug it in at night, the number of cycles (longevity before the battery needs to be replaced because it can no longer hold a charge) will double if you were instead able to limit the phone to 70% maximum charge when you wanted to, and youâd still have 20% left in case you needed it. Why always end the day with half your battery left? If that battery would last two years before it needs replacement, it will now serve your phone for four years instead.
The only down side is that on atypical days, where you do need more than a 70% charge, you would need to instruct the phone to go back to 100% before charging. Slight annoyance, but worth it (for me and the OP, at least) to double battery longevity.
You might want to consider that not everyone is native speaker as you are. What it says is, keeping charge between 70-20% instead of charging over night to 100% will double the batteries life.
@yvmuell Thanks for the simplifictaion but
a) I understand it a little different, in that your explanation should have added that this is the projection only if it is discharged from 100% to 50% (you having missed the level of discharge) Any other elevl of discharge would not be how I understood the original post to mean.
@DerekGuenther Thanks for clarifying I thought thatâs what you were trying to infer.
However I do not think your assertions are correct.
One of the issues is that a battery that capacity as recorded by the phone is not the same as real capacity.
The battery monitor reads the voltage as a state of charge, it doesnât actually measure the charge left, although it can approximate it by recoding the use and averaging out the current over time.
When the battery is at 100% (4.4V) and not 70% (4V) for example the power output is less So going from 70% to 20% is far less than 100% to 50%
I wonât go on, well not now and here.
For example if my battery is 100% is uses 3% for 24 hours when hardly being used. If it is at 80% just overnight it will use 3%
âFar lessâ is an exaggeration. Power consumption is voltage times current, comparing 4.4V to 4.0V is only a 10% difference. While 10% is noticeable, it is not âfar lessâ in my opinion. Also, I do not believe that phone manufacturers are unaware of this difference. Can you prove that they do not take this into account when giving you the percentage of battery life remaining? My phone does record current usage, are you certain it does not use that value to help inform its battery life percentage? I believe it does at least one of those two things, but I cannot prove it - but still, even if they do not, it is no more than a 10% difference in power supplied in your example.
Your image didnât come through correctly, but I think youâre looking at the âNumber of DST cyclesâ vs. â1C Capacity Retentionâ graph, correct? I think you may have misread the graph, or perhaps your explanation of what you saw wasnât clear. The latter case, 75-25%, is the less stressful - hence the better capacity retention over time (higher on the graph).
Also, looking at this graph, the blips in the light blue and orange lines make me think that they did not run the test with e.g. 10 batteries and average it out; it looks like they tested one battery for each type of run. So, upon closer inspection of this graph, Iâm not sure how much I trust it even though I referred to it earlier.
Optimal in terms of the number of cycles you can get from it, and only on the items they tested, absolutely. However, had they tested from 60%-50% Iâm reasonably certain from the other information in that article that the results would have been even better. Itâs also important to note that you are using only 10% of the batteryâs capacity, which isnât exactly a great real-world scenario.
Lastly, it is clear from that graph that the biggest driving factor is the number of charge/discharge cycles. I would like an option to not charge the battery when the phone is plugged in. That is, it should just run the phone from the charger as much as possible and the only interaction with the battery should be to pull from it during peak current draws (e.g. cell radio transmits). That way I can keep the phone plugged in at work, and it maybe discharges 5% during the work day instead of 30%, allowing me to choose an even lower overnight âfullâ charge (say, 60% instead of 75%) and still have plenty of capacity remaining at the end of the day without feeling like Iâm burning out my battery.
To summarize, what I would like to see is:
The ability to limit the maximum charge on my phone, if I know what my anticipated usage for the next day will look like I should be allowed to manage it.
Since the number of battery charge cycles is the biggest factor, Iâd like a âhold steadyâ option where the phone does not charge the battery when plugged in, just uses the battery as a supplemental supply if the power from the cable cannot keep up.
Yes, this would be the ideal solution. Itâs exactly what I do have with my laptop which has software for managing battery charge. I can restrict the charging level to 60, 80 or 100%; usually held at 60%. The app presumably controls some hardware-specific code and circuits, since it will hold the charge at 60% even when the device is completely switched off but still plugged in to mains supply.
For all my other Li-ion devices I simply use a timer switch that cuts off after 40â or whatever. When away from home I sometimes set the clock timer of the phone to go off after the required time to remind me to stop charging. Not very sophisticated but effective
@AlbertHall
There are other topics where this issue has been addressed, the only viable option is to root the phone and download an app.
Because this topic mentions 80% it may appear a different issue, it isnât, maybe this topic can be merged with
Another issue is that Fairphone have, no doubt, taken advice from the battery manufactures, and the charge rate is set for optimal user experience ??. The battery is guaranteed for a year.
If you root the phone and mess with the settings Fairphone have no way of knowing what you may do and the warranty would be void.
The only option that is viable in the current phone, sure. But there is absolutely no reason it couldnât be built into the phone. As @OldRoutard mentions, his laptop has this, we shouldnât be required to root the phone to achieve what weâre looking to do. If a rooted app can do it, then the OS could do it natively if a manufacturer such as Fairphone cared to do so.
Donât forget that the manufacturers recommend full charge, and that full charge wears the battery out faster. What happens when the battery wears out? You buy another one, and the battery manufacturer gets your money.
Taking a less cynical approach, it does make sense for the phone manufacturer to have the default be a full charge for most users - it would be frustrating for most users if their phone didnât make it through a whole day without charging unless they changed a setting. But those of us who care about battery waste and reducing the cost of ownership of our devices should be allowed to choose differently.
Thereâs a debate about what a full charge is. The 100% may only be 90% and when then phone cuts out there may be 20% left.
Fairphone have their business to look after so they must come to a compromise.
As for accessing the charge rate it is an Android issue not a Fairphone issue. To be able to sell a phone with Android via Google Fairphone have to comply with 500,000 tests.
You want to manage the battery outside warranty thatâs fine, but not otherwise.
I see this as irrelevant. The percentages technically donât matter, itâs the battery voltage that is important, and thatâs hidden from me. However, if Iâm picking the lowest maximum charge I can, while finishing the day at the lowest remaining percentage Iâm comfortable with, it doesnât matter what the battery voltage is in the background - I did my best and will see improved battery longevity.
Iâm not an expert in this area. But, considering the number of manufacturers out there who load a custom Android version on their devices because Android is open source, I donât understand your assertion that Fairphone cannot solve this if they cared to. However, considering that they didnât realize FPOOS for FP3 it is unlikely that they will integrate a feature like this. But my point is that they could, I shouldnât have to root and void the warranty for something that increases the phoneâs ecological sustainability since thatâs what FP is all about.
The battery voltage is shown by dialling *#*#66#*#* then Service tests > Test single > Battery status test
Once you have established the percentage show for the voltage you want you can then use the notification bar to show the percentage.
You can then set an alarm for that percentage if you like.
By the way, there is no indication of what voltage the battery would be at when it is âfullyâ charged.
There is no definition of full and no relative voltage.
The battery manufactures state 4.4V on the battery but unless you ask them, in Chinaâ what that refers to there is no indication if that is 90% or 100%.
Why did Fairphone choose to allow you to repair your device without voiding the warranty? I know of no other manufacturer who does that, they want you to buy a new phone every 2 years.
Fairphone did so because keeping your phone longer is more sustainable for the environment. It makes sense to me that they would also want you to keep your battery longer, as that is also more sustainable for the environment.
Well ask them! Maybe they have what they consider to be the best charging algorithm for the avarage user, they canât tweak an OS for each customer and get Google certification and keep the warranty.
You really could to better by asking them than by using the forum to gather just more user ideas ??