Do you baby your other batteries as well?

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TheMagster

Member
Joined
Sep 1, 2018
Messages
23
After learning how to get the most life out of the Leaf's Li-ION battery, I'm thinking about ways to prolong the life on the rest of the Li-ION batteries that I use, especially my phone and laptop which I use daily and rely upon for work.

I've only seen one laptop that has an 80% charge limit setting built in (Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon). My Surface Pro (2017) doesn't have this...anyone know of 3rd party software that will do this?

Likewise for an Android phone (Pixel XL)? I have at least stopped using quick charge on my phone for every charge, and now use it only when I need it. I try to trickle charge my phone overnight instead.

Granted the Leaf battery is far more expensive to replace than a phone or laptop, so maybe it isn't worth it for smaller devices...but still, the principles of battery management should be the same across the board.
 
I have so many EV batteries that I have to do it as a matter of policy. I'm not quite as good with my cell battery, but I do try to stop short of 100% usually.
 
TheMagster said:
I've only seen one laptop that has an 80% charge limit setting built in (Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon). My Surface Pro (2017) doesn't have this...anyone know of 3rd party software that will do this?
Lenovo's had this for ages on their Thinkpads. I've had Lenovo Thinkpad laptops since late 2007 and my T61p that I bought around Sep 2007 (still have it and it still works) had it. Ditto for the T460s that I bought in mid-2016 and a X100e I bought in late 2010.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070515004618/http://lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/?p=52 talks about their power manager (too bad all the images are broken). Now, it's all via their Lenovo Vantage app.

When I was shopping before, looked like Lenovo's consumer laptops had a dumbed down, much less flexible power manager with maybe 2 choices instead of letting you set specific percentages.

I made queries before like at http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/power-manager-on-non-thinkpads-similar-tool-on-other-brands.478664/ and http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/which-current-lenovo-lines-models-let-you-either-set-the-battery-charging-thresholds-or-have-a-best-battery-health-option.658824/.

So, I do limit how high my personal laptops (all Lenovos, in this case) charge up to. Unfortunately, the X100e has some power management bug where sometimes when the battery's in and the laptop's unplugged, I think it wakes up at some point(s), flattening the battery. Its capacity has been reduced quite a bit, as a result. The T460s stuff (Vantage and previously a different app) is a bit buggy. Sometimes, it loses its battery threshold settings and ends up charging both my batteries to 100%. :(
 
I stopped plugging in my phones to charge overnight years ago. Now I just charge it during the day, at my desk, and unplug it when it reaches 90%. My kids get the hand-me-down phones, and I used to have to replace batteries to make the phones usable again. "Babying" the batteries seems to really help make that not necessary.
 
Let's see:

- Yes to limiting the Lenovo ThinkPads to 80% (I would likely use a lower setting, but the batteries are old and don't have much capacity left).
- No to limiting the SOC on my other laptops that don't have this feature. They get plugged in and stay at 100% most of the time. Batteries seem to last between five and ten years that way.
- Cell phones basically just stay plugged in all the time, even when I go out in the car. My current phone (Samsung) is about four years old and still works fine.
- I charge the iPad to full and then unplug until it gets below about 50%. That means it gets charged every couple of days, on average. It's about five years old and still has a very long runtime.

I do make an effort to keep Li-ion batteries from sitting in cars or other places where they might get hot and stay that way for a while.

I probably do more to pamper my lead-acid batteries these days than the Li-ion ones. This because of the issues with the 12V charging system in the 2011 LEAF.
 
I minimize the time any of my batteries sit at 100%, and try to avoid going below 5%.
It was definitely EV batteries that educated me.
 
RegGuheert said:
- No to limiting the SOC on my other laptops that don't have this feature. They get plugged in and stay at 100% most of the time. Batteries seem to last between five and ten years that way.
One of my laptops prior to the aforementioned Lenovo Thinkpads was a Dell Inspiron 4000-series. It had dual removable batteries and they went bad within a few years. I bought two replacements and I think they also weren't so well after a few years. IIRC, at least one out of the four simply wouldn't charge. My memory's pretty foggy on this now.

For sure, there was no way to limit how the % the batteries would charge up to.
 
Most manufacturers (including Dell) allow you to set a charge limit. And there are Android options that allow charge limits if you really care.

Too much hassle for too little gain in my opinion.
 
2k1Toaster said:
Most manufacturers (including Dell) allow you to set a charge limit.
Apple doesn't, at least not with any UI enabled by default in OS X.

Have never seen any such options on the my work laptop, a 2017 era MacBook Pro 15-inch nor my previous work machine, a early 2013 MacBook Pro 15-inch. I've never heard of any one else's MacBook Pros (at least since 2013) have such options.

I also have this Chromebook (https://www.asus.com/us/Laptops/ASUS-Chromebook-C201PA/) and it provides no choices.
 
garsh said:
I stopped plugging in my phones to charge overnight years ago. Now I just charge it during the day, at my desk, and unplug it when it reaches 90%. My kids get the hand-me-down phones, and I used to have to replace batteries to make the phones usable again. "Babying" the batteries seems to really help make that not necessary.

^^^ THIS

I also REMOVE my laptop battery (usually for days at a time) when it is basically docked like a desktop. I have noticed that most peoples laptop batteries are "chewed up" due to constant charging.
 
cwerdna said:
2k1Toaster said:
Most manufacturers (including Dell) allow you to set a charge limit.
Apple doesn't, at least not with any UI enabled by default in OS X.

Have never seen any such options on the my work laptop, a 2017 era MacBook Pro 15-inch nor my previous work machine, a early 2013 MacBook Pro 15-inch. I've never heard of any one else's MacBook Pros (at least since 2013) have such options.

I also have this Chromebook (https://www.asus.com/us/Laptops/ASUS-Chromebook-C201PA/) and it provides no choices.

Judging by the excellent longevity of my wife's Macbook Air, I suspect Apple chose a decent compromise between run-time and battery life and must have chosen a conservative voltage cut-off.

Keep in mind that (as with LEAF), the concept of "100% charge" is fluid. There's the 100% as presented to the consumer, and 100% as defined by the battery manufacturer -- both of which are arbitrary values chosen as compromises between run-time, longevity, and safety. So Apple's "100%" may be entirely different than another product's "100%" even if they use the same cells.
 
Cool, thanks for the feedback everyone!

Nubo said:
Judging by the excellent longevity of my wife's Macbook Air, I suspect Apple chose a decent compromise between run-time and battery life and must have chosen a conservative voltage cut-off.

Keep in mind that (as with LEAF), the concept of "100% charge" is fluid. There's the 100% as presented to the consumer, and 100% as defined by the battery manufacturer -- both of which are arbitrary values chosen as compromises between run-time, longevity, and safety. So Apple's "100%" may be entirely different than another product's "100%" even if they use the same cells.

Good point. My wife's MacBook Air from 2013 is still going strong with plenty of battery capacity. I just replaced my Surface Pro 3 from 2014 due to a depleted battery (was getting about 2.5 hrs on a good day, it was a 9 hr battery when new). Both computers probably spent a similar amount of time plugged in, so I expect that you are right on this point, that Apple did a better job of preserving battery life than did Microsoft in this case. Of course there will always be other factors...such as my Surface Pro 3 spending a year in southeast asia with me while I attempted to edits photos and videos on it...those high temps and heavy use surely expedited the battery's decline.

I would like to start doing this with my new computer to get the most life out of it that I can. I guess my only option is to create my own charging timer system, similar to the Leaf. Wish Microsoft had something built-in like those lovely Lenovos!
 
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