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Comment by metadat | Hacker News Reader

I have an iPhone 13 mini as my "work phone "and it's indisputably a fantastic, efficient, small phone. However, I am kind of OCD about keeping it between 40-80% charged, which is a lot of manual toil.

Conversely, I also have an Android Galaxy S22+ for my personal phone. The "Battery Protect" feature limits charging to 85%. Life is easy with this device and it causes me a lot less anxiety.

Really now, why can't Apple enable this for older phones? I don't believe there's any good reason to force batteries to excessively damage themselves. I had a previous iPhone 13 mini I was less careful with on the over-charging front, and the battery performance was markedly worse. Hence the OCD. I acknowledge my neuroticism, but try to curb it within the realm of evidence.

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For a while I had my phone charger plugged into a smart power outlet and a shortcut to turn that smart power outlet off when the phone's battery hit 80%. It would then turn the power outlet back on at 2pm the next day for it to be ready.

Are we not spose to fully charge our 13 minis? I ask cuz i used to run to like ~5% and then charge but not unplug till it was back at 100% this worked well of my last SE even tho people said i was "doing it wrong". Why cant the phone itself know the best defaults, or is it planned obsolescence? Serious question.

I am mostly speaking from experience with EV batteries. The most wear happens in the top and bottom of the battery state. The battery will last the longest if it sits around 50%.

This is true of Li-ion batteries in general.

It is not planned obsolescence, just that in the case of a phone, having it at 100% when you are out and about might be worth a shorter life for the battery.

I also use the shortcuts app, but since I dont have a smart outlet it just send me a notification (on my apple watch) when battery charge is above 80%. I also have another shortcut to notify when battery is bellow 20%.

Many people charge overnight while sleeping, so that would be really inconvenient.

Fellow OCD-ish charge watcher here. Has worked great for my aging iPhone.

What grinds my gears though is the AirPods. I have AirPods Pro that I want to last a long time, but out of the case the earbuds are always 'on' and drain battery relatively quickly (much faster than a phone left idle); put them in their case and they're almost always* charged to 100%. I want to be able to leave them out, off, and disconnected. I almost never need 100% battery in my day-to-day use and there's no replacing the batteries in them once they're worn out.

An 80% max charge limit would be great.

*They do offer 80% overnight charge protection, but that's irrelevant as I don't keep them plugged in overnight

I just use my phone. The battery can be replaced.

Sure, as long as you don't mind messing up / sacrificing the IP69 waterproof seal integrity.

Ask me how I know *cries softly*.

I actually don't terribly mind that, mainly because in almost 15 years of owning a smartphone I've never dropped one in the water. I feel pretty comfortable not having waterproofing as a result.

Well, I really like a nice bath at the end of the day. Different strokes and all that, more power to you bigstrat.

I guess I'm genuinely surprised someone would even want to bring their phone into the bath. I do enjoy a bath rather than a shower on occasion, but I'm just enjoying the soak all by itself. But hey, like you said, different strokes for different folks. I certainly understand why the waterproofing is a concern for you if you're regularly using your phone over water.

Why does it mess up the seal?

Are you saying Apple doesn’t re-seal it properly?

Battery charging is often controlled in "hardware" and OS don't have full control(else a software crash could easily cause fire). Some hardware implementations can be instructed to stop charging immediately or stop this time at specific voltage, but implementation varies and the feature is often ignored.

We know the older hardware has that, because the software already controls it on a schedule.

> I am kind of OCD about keeping it between 40-80% charged

Why?

Having the majority of your usage / charge cycles being based on a 50 to 80% total charged will increase the total cycles (and the battery’s total life).

I realize this is true, and sometimes I will charge sooner or stop charging earlier to keep my phone in this range. But most of the time, I just use my phone. After all, what's the point of optimizing the total battery life if you aren't ever going to actually use the battery to its capacity?

If you don't ever use the full capacity of the battery, why wouldn't you want to optimize it?

Because it's one more thing to think about?

85% for daily, 100% for long trip

Artificially limiting yourself to 40% of your battery’s capacity to extend its life seems like an enormous waste of effort

My last phone spent like 8-10 hours a day on and off a wireless charger and had 88% battery health when I sold it over two years after I bought it

I'm pretty sure 88% health means like 80% original capacity since iPhones actually shut off at 20% real capacity to protect the cell.

Assuming that’s correct, by me not janitoring my battery for over 2 years I still have double the capacity of the guy who I originally replied to

I really do not understand how that’s worth “a lot of manual toil”

Apple's "battery health" measure is not the percentage of original capacity remaining. My old iPhone X claims 81% battery health, but the actual capacity is more like 60-70% of original.

I can't imagine caring about my phone's battery health enough to pay attention to not let it charge to 100 overnight.

It's something that should be automated. And even then, I'm not sure I would use it, I usually need 100% of my battery to go through the day.

A 10-80% load cycle will be almost as good as 50-80%, and much more practical.

> "I am kind of OCD about keeping it between 40-80% charged, which is a lot of manual toil."

You shouldn't worry too much about going below 40%. Regularly draining it to zero might shorten battery life, but going down to 10-20% won't.

> " I don't believe there's any good reason to force batteries to excessively damage themselves."

From Apple's perspective there is. Selling replacement batteries is very profitable.

10-20% will definitely reduce cycle life. you would almost double your cycle count by keeping your battery above 40% vs 20%

This has far less effect than limiting charging to 80%. If only because you usually spend a short time down at 10% before noticing it's low and finding a charger. Where as phones regularly spend long hours charged to 100% because we tend to put them on chargers and then leave them overnight.

Cycle count is virtually meaningless. I have a MacBook Pro with almost 1000 charge cycles and it’s got ~93% battery health after 8 years.

Lithium batteries are happiest around 40% state of charge. The closer you can keep them to that magic number the longer they’ll last. But leave them fully charged, or even worse, fully dead and that’s the quickest way to kill them with “normal” use.

That's very impressive! My Macs are usually down in the 80-85% range after 500 cycles. Do you use any tools to limit charge state other than "optimized battery charging"?

My Pixel 6 doesn't seem to have this option.. I never looked into third-party apps for it though.

I highly recommend AccuBattery for Android. I have been using it for a few years now and I saw a noticeable difference on my Pixel 3a XL compared to use on previous smart phones. I now have a Pixel 6 and its nearly 2-years old and the battery lasts well beyond 30-hrs with combined use.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.digibites....

My previous phone was an iPhone XS and its battery was also completely fine for 2 years. Year 5, I definitely noticed a drop in battery life. If you're planning on keeping your phone for 5+ years, definitely do the 80% thing. If you're on a 2 year upgrade cycle, it probably doesn't matter.

> This app may collect these data types Location, Personal info and 3 others

I don't think there's a way to manually limit it to 80% within Pixel's settings. If you turn on Adaptive Charging, it'll charge it to 80% overnight and bump it to 100% just before you unplug your phone in the morning.

https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/7106961

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