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.
It’s as if engineers knew what they’re doing.
Granted, with all the planned obsolescence happening, you could also argue that engineers “knew” what they were doing.
Planned obsolescence happens but it’s not as common as most people think it is.
And probably not as intentional as most people think it is vs just laziness and maybe a lack of planning.
So not planned obsolescence, then?
It’s always bulbs or Apple. Bulbs industry switched into LED like 15 years ago, which has 20x lifespan than “durable” filaments; and iPhones average life is 6 years whereas competitors usually went into bin in 3 years.
With iPhones i think it’s less about durability (and especially in the software department they were always great in terms of longevity), but more about repairability in case something does happen.
As far as lightbulbs go the issue with potential planned obsolescence doesn’t go way just because of the swap to LEDs. First there are a type of bulb even today that use some form of filament and second the part that gets damaged is usually some kind of capacitor or other electronic part that gets run with too much voltage and too hot. Don’t have time to watch it again, but i remember finding this video from a few years ago interesting.
Back when people made a big deal about iPhone planned obsolescence, they were actually easier to repair than most competitors. Nowadays it’s about the same.
The planned obsolescence is most likely a deliberate trade off rather than actual planned obsolescence.
If fast charging did do significant damage to battery life and this was known at the time of implementation, the decision would have been “users want fast charging phones” Vs “users want devices that last a long time”.
In this instance, the convenience of fast charging absolutely would have won.“Users want a clear and easy to use device” Vs “users want a robust device”. Which is why we all have glass screens, and the glass technology had to catch up to further expectations.
“Users want easy wireless connectivity” Vs “users want fast and reliable network speeds”. WiFi wins, and has to catch up to further expectations.
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If engineers were the ones in control that would mean something.
As I see it, phone manufacturers have zero reasons to keep the battery degradation low, but many reasons to push advertised capacity and charging speed. If you were cynical, you could also assume that they’re trying to make sure the battery doesn’t last too long because they want to keep selling new phones.
I think we all know that if an engineer went to upper management and said “I can charge these batteries faster, but it degrades the battery life by 20% over a year.” they would have said “Do it! We won’t mention that last part.”
You say that like batteries don’t need replaced every few years or that they didn’t design the Samsung Note 8 phone that kept catching on fire.
Engineers get told to make the phone charge as quickly as possible, while still lasting 2 years. After that, the company with those engineers pretty much wants the battery to fail, so they can sell a new device.
The one thing I wanted to see from that video, was also just testing the batteries until they went below like 75% capacity. The initial degradation may start off similar for capacity, but that doesn’t mean it will stay that way.
Engineers have the best of intentions. The Bean counters have very different intentions and they’re the ones that corporate listens to.
Yep. I’m gonna miss real engineering with the coming Ai-driven Idiocracy.
Well, except for the engineers on the Samsung Galaxy Note 7. They put the battery terminals too close together, making it really easy for a short to occur.
Samsung notoriously fucks up something up in their phones - from shitty interface changes, to excessive battery drain. Just buy Pixel instead
“And with that, hopefully we can put this argument to rest.”
That’s not how the internet works, but nice try though ;-)
I disagree!
You fool! You fell into the classic blunder! All this time it was I, Dio!
You guys joke and all, but fast charge induces bigger heat and then translates in more harm for the batteries (which will affect more in hot places).
If we want to close this discussion forever I think all the anxiety that comes from this subject at all is due to the fact we can’t easily replace the batteries, if we could (with the normal-ish battery sizes we have today), I don’t think this test would be even worth doing.
While that seems obvious, I’ll disagree
- phones have a charging curve that takes into account heat, battery level and probably more factors specific to battery health. Most of the additional charging speed is likely minimal effect
- You can have a battery replaced on even the latest iPhone for $99 or less, and I expect most phones to be cheaper. Yeah it’s not really diy nor replacement cost only, but it’s just not that bad relative to the cost of the device. Sure I’d rather spend $20 and replace my own battery, but if I’m spending $1,000 on a new phone, then $99 every 3-4 years for batteries is just not that bad
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)
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.
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.
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”
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
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.
Source?
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
FYI: During this test it saved about 5% of SoH.
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.
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?“
Well. It could be worse than what everybody says
is the poupe deck really what i think it is
No.
Corollary:
How not following trends and drinking paint thinner boosted my B2B sales
Are we talking about water-based paint?
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.”
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.
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”
TL;DW: No
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.
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.
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
Non-magnetically-aligned wireless chargers are far worse than fast charging.
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.
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)
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 .
[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.
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
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.
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!?
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.
The Chinese have it right with the food too. Love me egg foo yung
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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!
This isn’t a fair like-to-like test though. They used iPhones, which use one battery and then for their 120W test they used iQOO 7, which has two batteries that charge in parallel. They aren’t testing the charge rate effects on a single battery, but just how different phones behave.
While it’s an okay test to see how certain models of phones hold up, it’s not a test for longevity of a single battery using fast and and not-as-fast charging.
So the title, as it often is these days on YouTube, is misleading.
No they did a fast and slow charging group for iPhone, and also did a fast and slow charging group for Androids. Did you not pay attention.
The video was pretty poorly structured to be honest, should have been longer with better information and they didn’t post their data anywhere to read. I mean they had ~30 seconds just growing plants…
But the point stands, they weren’t testing 1 to 1 on batteries (hard to do anyway). There’s good reasons for why manufacturers havent just cranked it all to 200W charging.
The video isn’t a sudden revelation, we already knew how batteries behave, they’ve been tested in labs under much more strenuous conditions too.
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?
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?
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”? 😁
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.
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.
Is this because it’s using two-cells though, or is it comparing charging one cell vs multiple.
