[ohazi]

No, this is bad advice. Yes, battery management software has gotten better, but you still can't get around physics. Keeping lithium polymer cells at close to 4.2V per cell for prolonged periods of time will degrade them quickly, regardless of any clever "maintenance mode" hacks that make the cell dance around the top 5% of it's capacity. But also, never charging past 80% will confuse the charge controller and start giving you incorrect percentages if it's not expecting you to do that.

Charge to 80% most days, charge to 100% occasionally, avoid discharging beyond 10 or 15%.

[Terr_]

Maybe I'm just on a nostalgia kick today, but it's funny to think of when I was first introduced to that caution in the form of cyborg video- game dialogue.

> JAIME REYES: What kind of pain?

> WALTON SIMONS: Behind the eyes. A sharp burning. Almost electrical.

> JAIME REYES: How's your bioelectric level?

> WALTON SIMONS: It's always at a hundred percent. I like to stay prepared.

> JAIME REYES: That's probably it right there. Free radicals. You should charge your systems only when they've been significantly drained.

> WALTON SIMONS: I wasn't informed of that.

> JAIME REYES: It's a lot like an electric razor. If you leave it plugged in all the time, the battery loses its zero point. Just watch your levels.

> WALTON SIMONS: Interesting. Thanks, Doctor.

-- Deus Ex (2000)

[ploxiln]

> the GrapheneOS golden rule applies: don’t try to be a ‘power user.’ The devices GrapheneOS supports are thoroughly modern and will manage their own battery health automatically, far better than you ever could manually

So this advise is distorted by an apparent hate for "power users".

It's strange to suggest that modern embedded hardware is perfect. But more importantly, there's a conflict between the longest battery life your product can offer in initial reviews, and longevity years later. And while it's true that "fast" charging isn't necessarily bad at all, there is similarly a conflict between offering the fastest charging for reviews/comparisons, and keeping the temperature optimal for longevity.

So for their "power users bad" philosophy they should have just said "plug it in whenever you want, it'll be perfectly fine". To say you could get the best possible battery longevity by keeping the phone plugged in at all times (with the original charger?!) is absurd, especially combined with the fact that apparently grapheneOS doesn't have the usage-pattern-learning feature to keep charge at 80% until just before you unplug each day ...

[KennyBlanken]

I do all the things Peter Easton, the original author, says not to - running my phone between 20 and 80%, with an occasional full charge, and it's usually charged off a 1A charger, despite being capable of charging at 3x that.

It's a six year old iPhone 8, with the original factory battery, an estimated 76% of its original capacity, and its internal resistance is still low enough that it's running in 'peak performance' mode.

Easton knows nothing about electronics or batteries and has a terminal case of Dunning-Kruger.

"It's not 2005 anymore" really? Then why does the iPhone 15 offer the option to cap the max battery charge at 80%? https://support.apple.com/en-us/108055

Your phone is not going to explode in flames because of a malfunctioning power supply and it's beyond absurd to suggest it might.

USB is a POWER SUPPLY to the phone's mainboard - it powers the charger, it isn't the battery charger itself and the two are not directly connected. If the USB plug supplies the wrong voltage or negotiation doesn't happen, the phone simply won't charge. Furthermore, many cell phone batteries have an internal BMS that will disconnect the battery if it goes overtemperature, overvoltage, or overcurrent - charge or discharge. I've changed the battery in several android phones and each had a small battery protection board on it.

Charge rate absolutely impacts battery lifetime. If Easton opened a single datasheet from any lithium-ion battery manufacturer he could verify that himself. Manufacturers prioritize charging time, not battery lifetime. It's well known among iPhone users that if you constantly use fast-charge power adapters you'll wear down the battery much more quickly than if you use a low-power 5W adapter, say every evening when you go to bed and the phone has 6-10 hours to charge.

As long as the cable meets USB specs, it doesn't fucking matter who makes it.

"Back in 2005, gadgets with built-in lithium batteries, did not have their own onboard battery management which necessitated manual battery management."

He's talking about coulomb counters, aka 'battery gas gauges' and they've been in iPhones and Android phones for nearly a decade and a half.

[tzs]

That 80% option on iPhone 15, which Apple describes thuly:

> With iPhone 15 models, you can choose between Optimized Battery Charging, 80% Limit, and None.

> When you choose 80% Limit, your iPhone will charge up to about 80 percent and then stop charging. If the battery charge level gets down to 75 percent, charging will resume until your battery charge level reaches about 80 percent again.

> With 80% Limit enabled, your iPhone will occasionally charge to 100 percent to maintain accurate battery state-of-charge estimates.

is fairly easy to achieve on other iPhones and on iPads. Plug your charger into a smart plug that can be controlled from Apple Shortcuts. Shortcuts lets you make automations that trigger on battery level.

Make an automation that triggers on battery level goes about 80% that turns off the smart plug. Make another that triggers on battery level goes below 75% that turns on the smart plug.

I've been doing this for a while (just the 80% part) and it works great. It wasn't my idea. I saw someone here a few weeks ago mention it, and they got it from some blog.

I'm using TP-Link Tapo Mini Smart Wi-Fi Plugs [1]. I don't have a Matter hub so had to install the Tapo app to use them, but the Tapo app is controllable from Shortcuts.

I even get the "occasionally charge to 100% behavior", because sometimes Shortcuts seems to lose the ability to talk to the Tapo app. :-) Opening Tapo and turning something on or off seems to fix it.

If you don't want the "charge to 100%" behavior make a Shortcut to turn on the plug. When you are about to put the device on the charger use that shortcut to turn on the plug. It that works you know Shortcuts and Tapo are still working together.

If you buy smart plugs, I recommend getting ones with the same current and power rating as your outlets, which would be 15 A and 1875 W for a typical US home. There are smart plugs with much lower power limits meant just for lights. Those would be fine for a phone or tablet charger but then you've got remember that you can't use them for higher loads.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-Tapo-Compatible-Certified-P12...