80% battery charge limit, unless conditions are met

Viewpoint0232

As you may know, GrapheneOS has recently introduced a feature to limit the charge to 80%, which is supposed to extend the lifetime of the battery. But of course it has the downside that you "lose" 20% of the capacity immediately. (And at least in my experience, the battery life of the Pixel 8 is very bad on a mobile connection and even a full battery is not enough to last a whole day without Wifi. This seems to be a hardware issue.)

I have an iPhone for work and it has this feature where it does slow charging and anticipates when I will unplug the phone and it will charge to 100% just before that. I think Samsung and maybe stock Pixel phones also have a feature where they will limit the charge to 80% and just add the last 20% in the morning before you wake up. Of course this might be difficult to implement for GrapheneOS because it would require some kind of "AI" (probably not the right term) to analyze your usage and know when to charge to 100% and when not.

But would it not be a good enough alternative to have an option like "limit to 80% charge, unless the phone has been charging for x hours" or "limit to 80% charge, except for between 6 and 7 in the morning"? That way you could still leave the house in the morning with a fully charged battery but you avoid overcharging if you need to top up the battery during the day.

Hat

Viewpoint0232 the downside that you "lose" 20% of the capacity immediately.

I think the worst thing is to end the day at 0%. That's what happens in my case with the 80% charge limit when I'm not at home with my phone plugged into the charger half of the day.

So I only use the 80% limit when I am at home. A schedule would help a bit to apply the limit depending on the day of the week.

DeletedUser64

After reading countless articles on line and speaking with a Battery manufacturer face to face I am skeptical of the claim that a Li Ion battery is better off only being charged to 80%.

Just search online, How to charge a Li ion battery correctly, read the countless articles the search produces...

How the battery is charged is crucial to its longevity, how it is discharged also.
I never regularly deep discharge the battery to below 20%
I charge it anytime its convenient, 10 minutes here, 30 minutes there.
I will fully charge the battery until it reaches saturation point and its charging protection kicks in. Then remove it from the charger.
I don’t charge overnight, I'm not going to leave a device charging for eight hours unsupervised and unattended.
I make sure my battery is fully charged at the end of the day, and put aside, when I get up its charged briefly to top it up in readiness for the day ahead.
Once in a while I discharge the battery until its empty, to allow the battery system to re calculate its capacity.
My P6a a second hand device is a June 2022 build so 2.5 years old, I have owned it for most of that time.
My battery and device work as they should, no issues.
I wont be using the new charging optimisation, I firmly believe it unnecessary.
But then that's the beauty of Graphene-OS, the user can decide either way...

MicroHDMIsucks

Doesn't Android have this built in like IOS? That would be surprising if it doesn't.

Oggyo

MicroHDMIsucks
What exactly are you referring to? And how it is built-in in iOS? I'm not familiar with iOS.

Plobberfroth

MicroHDMIsucks

Stock Android has charge to 80%, find it here Settings > Battery > Charging optimisation > select Limit to 80%
Can only assume GOS has it, if not hassle developers to include it

de0u

Plobberfroth Can only assume GOS has it, if not hassle developers to include it

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/18927-on-open-source-and-complaining-to-the-manager

Snibby

I was once like you worrying about battery charge. But then I realized I'm putting way too much weight and thought into this. The most important thing is that a device does switch to using USB power directly after full charge has been reached and Pixels (or Android?) have this implemented both for 80% and 100% charge. Meaning you actually WANT to keep it plugged in after it's fully charged since this will mean that the device is not using the battery but the power from USB directly.

So my personal conclusion is, just charge, use your device and don't worry too much about battery. Ultimately you can't really evade your device having pretty bad battery life in 6 years unless you change the battery for a new one.
Implementing too many features and switches would just bloat GOS and make it harder to maintain...

Bhunter

I am on the same page as @DeletedUser64 . Heat is the demise of any battery, any electrical component really. That being said, the slower you can charge the better because less current = less heat. I will only charge with a small 5 watt cubes.
Also the shorter duration you charge also the better because again heat builds in your battery the longer you charge. Just feel your phone after it has been charging for a while. In addition, with the release of "fast charge" cubes, it almost seems that they are trying to shorten the life of your battery. To charge faster requires more current, and remember more current = more heat. I charge 20-30% at a time. Never leaving my device plugged in more than 20 or so minutes.

Snibby

Bhunter Did you try your 5W (non-PPS?) charger versus a normal 20W/30W PPS charger? As in how hot your phone gets while charging?
For me a simple 5V/2A USB-A charger made my phone hotter than a 30W PPS charger (maybe since the PPS one is smarter?)

GrouchyGrape

Snibby I haven't fully gotten into the weeds on this but I've had similar experiences. Not sure exactly why and haven't spent time troubleshooting what the variable is.