[girishso]

1. It’s ok to keep laptop plugged in, even at 100% battery

2. Keep temperature as low as possible, maintain airflow

3. Avoid fast chargers

[gruez]

>1. It’s ok to keep laptop plugged in, even at 100% battery

It might be "ok" to keep it plugged in at 100%, but if your laptop has a "battery conservation" mode that limits the charge to 80% (or similar), that's even better.

[crazygringo]

If you're on a Mac, you can install the free version of AlDente:

https://github.com/AppHouseKitchen/AlDente-Charge-Limiter

I keep my MBA at 60% since it basically never goes for more than a couple hours within being plugged in.

[ianschmitz]

I wish more devices offered a way to enable a “slow charge” mode.

When I’m plugging my laptop into my dock to work for the next 8 hours it doesn’t need fast charging.

When I’m plugging my phone in before bed to charge for the next 8 hours it doesn’t need fast charging.

[dsp_person]

On my laptop I have a script to set

    /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_control_end_threshold

I could imagine automating this to set the threshold to the current battery level, and incrementing the threshold by 1% every N minutes to control charge speed.

Right now I try to keep it at 50% max charge like this while plugged in at home.

[zimpenfish]

> When I’m plugging my phone in before bed to charge for the next 8 hours it doesn’t need fast charging.

iPhones do this with "Optimised Battery Charging" turned on (which I believe is the default setting) - "allow iPhone to wait to finish charging past 80% until the time you need to use it" (which it learns over time.)

[kube-system]

As others have mentioned, many phones do this in software, but I find the easiest solution is simply to use a charger incapable of fast charging.

[zuppy]

i have 2 chargers near my bed, one has 3 amps, the other one has 1. i use one on another depending on how fast i need it charged. not the best solution, but it works.

[mtlmtlmtlmtl]

At least on Android it's possible to disable fast charging. It's in the battery settings on my phone.

[user_7832]

> 3. Avoid fast chargers

Isn't this primarily due to heat produced? Aka cool fast charging is better than warm slow charging.

I seem to remember a tweet I think by Mishaal Rahman (or another android journalist) on this.

[kccqzy]

Yes that's absolutely the case. So it just depends on how good the cooling system is. For a phone, it has no active cooling system. For an electric vehicle, almost all manufacturers (except Nissan Leaf) have adopted active cooling and you can expect them to do a good job activating adequate cooling for the battery.

[VygmraMGVl]

It's due to heat produced, gas generated from overvolting the battery, and stress gradients from different levels of charge across the battery.

[sopchi]

I disagree with your point #2 as it is written. You want to keep you battery close to the temperature at which it is rated. Cycling below that also harms batteries and shortens their life. If you really want to geek out about that, I can recommend for example a talk [1] that was given last week (you can jump to slide 15). The presentation has nice electron microscopy images of the cracking this type of abuse causes in batteries.

[1] https://academy.covalentmetrology.com/wp-content/uploads/Bat...