Option to limit charging to maximum 80%

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61

Up to 20% means it could be zero.

Lighten up!

62

I guess you are referring to this statement:

A regular smartphone battery loses up to 20% of its capacity per year due to overnight full charging.

That, of course, is a misleading statement. But again: How does this rather aggressive advertising influence the functionality of the advertised product?

The answer is: Neither you nor I know the truth, someone has to test and find out. Can you accept this statement of mine, or do you need some extra oil and vinegar to swallow it finally?

Steve Jobs advertised the first iPhone generation in a live presentation with all full signal bars displayed on the screen, connoting excellent reception at any time. If I recall correctly, some years later, an engineer at Apple who worked on that project revealed in an interview that the modem of the device did not work that well, but the date of Jobs’ presentation was just around the corner, and so they had the idea to always display full fake bars. When released, they never sold an iPhone with an unfinished reception unit, of course…

63

I heard about this too, but would be interesting to learn ifactually anyone ever measured anything that charging to 80% makes a difference

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64

You mean empirical data? Because anecdotal there is enough. It helps, but not much. I doubt its enough to bother. I mean, you have to offset that you spend 40 EUR on getting (and transporting) the device. If I order a new FP3 battery, its send from near Eindhoven and its cheaper than 40 EUR.

If you assume a battery loses 5% every year it is 5% of 100% (full capacity), then 5% of 95% about 90%. If its 8% it is going to be 84% remaining. But the curves go slow at start and then quicker. So realistically it is more like 4%, 6%, 8% etc. A device like this would prolong the deterioration because it would deteriorate later, but its no magic cure for the disease. It just deteriorates slower. So if you replace at 80% which normally occurs after say 3 years, it now occurs after 4 years. During this time you are not allowing yourself to use your device from 100% charge. What is eventually going to happen is you cannot use a charge from 80% till 20% anymore so you will happen to be more around deep discharge and deep charge, and then the same deterioration process will resume. Because at that point you abuse your battery like before.

I also wonder if you can use it with more than 1 device with splitter or is one charger now tied to one device? Which raises the question where is data memorized, is it lost after OS (re)install or is it in ‘the cloud’, do the apps profile/spy on you and how much?

All in all, if you buy a new device with a new battery and you can use this to not jailbreak/root/backdoor and you can avoid the deep charge/discharge its going to add quality time to longevity. Especially if its a device where replacing the battery is a PITA.

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65

Good question.
Answer: yes, they have, but it’s important not to take information (of whatever form, textual, tabular or graphical) out of context. If you are citing some publication then it’s important to give references. Here are two.
The first is (already cited by @derekguenther) a page from the Battery University website which is not as far as I know a reliably independent academic institution. However it clearly indicates its sponsor, and from what I have seen on this site the information seems quite reliable, and they do cite peer-reviewed sources. The graph shown earlier in this thread is from this page, but this graph is not very helpful, it just shows that the capacity of a battery will decrease with the growing number of full cycles (charging each time to 100%), and that after 250 cycles, the capacity had decreased to about 80% of the original capacity in all cases tested (between 73% and 84%). This we can take to represent “standard use” if charging regularly to 100%.

What is more interesting on this page, is the graph of variation of capacity loss with charge voltage: batteries charged to 4.35 V (the green line) were reduced to very low capacity after less than 200 cycles, whereas batteries charged to only 4.2 V (the black line) still retained 80% of original capacity after 400 cycles. That’s nearly double the battery’s “normal” lifespan.

image

Effects on cycle life at elevated charge voltages. Higher charge voltage boosts capacity but lowers cycle life and compromises safety.

Source: Choi et al. (2002)


A little further down, this graph
image

illustrates how a battery’s capacity can be maintained through very large numbers of cycles by keeping the charge to within a certain bracket. Of course, it is not practical to maintain a battery between 65% and 75%! On the other hand the range 25% to 75% (light blue) is perfectly feasible for many people and represents a good compromise (87% capacity remaining after more than 5000 cycles, so we’re talking 20 times the “normal” lifespan here 1).

The second page I would cite is from a leading American university, some of whose researchers “have ploughed through scores of academic papers and manufacturers’ manuals”. The aim of the article is to provide some simple and reliable advice on extending the lifetime of Li-ion batteries. While keeping to a 20-80% bracket is not among their top 9 tips, it is nonetheless recommended in the accompanying text. Note that they counsel against fast charging when that is not necessary.

[Edit} 1 - This is a different experiment, using often asymmetric “dynamic stress test” cycles, so it’s not directly comparable to the “standard use”. However, what all these tests show, is that lower charge voltages and avoiding deep discharge (i.e. keeping to between 20% and 80% charge) prolongs the battery’s life. A user who doesn’t need 100% of the battery’s capacity from each cycle would do well to keep within this bracket. As the BU article states, EV charging takes this into account and this allows car batteries to last longer.

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66

Something I was trying to avoid, but here we go :slight_smile:

  • This graph is from different type of battery most likely and hence not very relevant.

  • The FP3 battery has a recommended max charge voltage of 4.4, which is what I get when I charge to 100%

  • If you were to use the graph and extrapolate it would look like you get only 160 cycle maybe. Given I charge my phone every day at Faiphone’s default rate of 4.4V my battery should last 6 months. One year later it is fine and the warranty is for two years. (approx 700 cycles)

  • Summary: The use of the graph in this topic is more than misleading it is obscene.

  • I have been warned about making the following statement.

“I do not want to go into more detail”

This is not a tease to provoke argument, just my thoughts and opinions.

  • I won’t go to the next graph
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67

UPDATE on charge:

Charging to 100%

Previously I had noted that in aeroplane mode the battery dropped 2% over along night 12 hours

Last night, from a full 100% charge I left the wifi on, with What’sApp, Signal, Threema and Fairmail checking whenever they chose.
I was also woken by a text message at 8am, with my full volume music and had to get out of bed, down the stairs to find the phoen blasting and fully lit.

But still only 2% of battery usage.

Here are a number of points

  • 100% one day is not the same as 100% another
  • In the past I have noted that if the battery is not fully charged the loss is greater ~ I will try and confirm that.

Regarding battery cycles.
It is accepted that a battery will go from 100% to 0% charge as shown on the screen, this does not mean the battery is empty at 0% just protected from very low discharge.

The battery voltage is 4.4V when 100% and 3.65V when ??? very low

If I was to go by the battery monitor, which I don’t, then an 80 to 30 discharge is half of the 100 to zero, so yes I would expect to get twice as many cycles doing the later, but then each cycles is only half the power.

My Samsung phone battery is 7 years old and is charged 100 to zero most days. It will stay alive for a few days with minimal use and a couple of hours when doing full volume audio wired or bluetooth transfer

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This is an old source (2002), which does not take into account that batteries have become better quality, nor that they have overcharge and undercharge protection. It also uses unrealistically low mAh (back then perhaps common, but nowadays we are in the 3k-4k range).

This graph unrealistically assumes the SoC is at 20C. It also does not take into account any overcharge or undercharge protection. However it seems more realistic in its numbers.

With regards to the Chargie, how can we test the product? We would have to analyze the APK, trying to log whatever it connects to. But my main problem is, we’d have only 1 data point and it would not be a valid comparison because how would you compare it with real usage? If you want to test something like this, you’d need a test lab.

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69

Guys, get a life.

SCNR

Best wishes,
Thomas

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70

I checked the technical specs of Chargie and noticed it requires LoS of 1-10 meters, and uses Bluetooth LE for communication. I wonder how much electricity a Chargie uses :wink:

71

Hi Just wondering whom you were referring to, all of the authors of the topic in general, and do you really think/feel that this issue is wasting your time?

SCNR I had to look that up ‘Sorry Could Not Resist’ that’s a little odd > joining in something which is wasting your life with can only at best be off topic and not very funny.

But at least we have your best wishes, which is the real support, so I can go on wasting your time :rofl:

There is an obvious concern about sustainability, which Fairphone touts, and the batteries longevity is a relevant issue.

There are the obvious references made which bring up debate and contrary ideas. Each idea is a contribution to supporting the OPs initial query, and some will be at odds with other ideas.

But it is this ability to have a view and be criticised that gives the forum it’s engine. As far as the temporal machinations go this is a part of ‘life’ and that can only be used not wasted.

One person’s garbage is another’s garden.

72

Don’t feed the trolls.

73

FWIW, I’ve been able to order a Chargie from laptop. It set me back about 39 EUR, don’t know if I gotta pay additional costs (shouldn’t but we’ll see).

I can test a few things on it, but not a comparison because I don’t have multiple times the same smartphone with the same quality of battery and such.

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74

Oooh! But they’re starving and it’s fun to have friends on a rainy day, sometimes.

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75

Very nice to see you as a security expert checking it out!

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So, I received “the item”. I bought 1x Chargie Gold Edition USB-A with resin upgrade (case upgrade) with S&H it was nearly 40 EUR. I received 4x the item (4 colors) in a small envelop package from Romania :woman_shrugging: not sure what happened…

78

Hi all,

I wonder if the Fairphone has or planned to get any tools to support the user in holding the battery in healthy charging status between 30 and 80 % and/or to load the battery more healthy like the Adaptive Charging from the Google Pixel Phones.

To have the possibility of changing the battery easy is nice, but for a sustainable Phone I would wish battery management that expand the lifetime of the battery high as possible.

Even Companies like Google or Microsoft already dedicate to the topic and for laptop it is a old thing to stop loading when its full and I wonder why this is not established for smartphones.

I would appreciate feedback

With kind regards
Steffen

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79

Hi and welcome to the Forum - of the Fairphone community that is.
If you would like to have feedback from the Fairphone company, you should address them.

The issue also figures (among other things …) in the topic Option to limit charging to maximum 80% [which is the current topic, where the posts have been moved to]

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80

While there isn’t anything built into the phone settings, on my FP3 I use the “Battery charge limit” app from F-Droid and it works fine.

I keep my phone between 30-91% and it lasts ~28h with ~6h screen time. 91% is actually pretty high I think - but i’m not too concerned as my carrier will replace my FP3 battery when it degrades (free of charge).

App-based solutions like this require root though so aren’t an option for everyone. However it proves that the phone on a hardware level does support halting battery charging.

We may never know if Fairphone has already accounted for maximum battery SoC. Seeing as the FP3 battery chemistry allows for an unusual charge voltage of 4.4v (instead of the more common 4.2v), it’s not an unlikely possibility - but I’d like to make it clear I’m not a battery expert

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81

Thanks for the replies!

I searched for similar topics but couldn’t find the topic in the link.

From other forums of companies I used to get also in the forum a answer from employees.

But tips from other forum members are of course also welcome.

From the reply of @qrdnyce and the other post in this topic I guess that there is until now nothing communicated from Fairphone about the measures of battery longevity and the forum members try to guess what is good to do.
Which I really wonder for a Company is called Fairphone that has sustainability as major topic.

So I will try my luck to contact them directly and will let you now about news.

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