this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2024
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[–] [email protected] 199 points 9 months ago (8 children)

Most high-quality LiPo-powered devices already do this at the hardware-level. The 100% level you see on the software is usually 80% actual charge on the battery.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 9 months ago (8 children)

Any way to tell? I just got a monster phone with a 22K mAh battery.

[–] [email protected] 69 points 9 months ago (2 children)

For Android, there are a multitude of apps, such as Wattz that will tell you the actual voltage of the battery. Full may be 4.2V or 4.35V depending on the chemistry used. ACCA (root required) will let you limit charge rates and stop charging at a certain percentage.

Staying under 4 volts (around 60% for most phone batteries) will vastly extend battery service life. 80% is a bit less extension, but still far better than charging to 100%.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

i was looking for something like acca since forever

foss discoverability needs some mad work

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

that doesn't answer the question of whether there's a way to tell that their battery is limited to 80% on hardware level, though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Unless it's lying about the voltage itself, you can be pretty sure it's not limited if it charges to 4.35V. 4.2 is a little more tricky if you don't know for sure whether 4.2 is the full voltage for the cell.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago (4 children)

That's one hell of a battery

What phone is that‽

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago

I don't know, it says "Heavy duty" on the side.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Apparently the name is Doogee V Max EDIT: or Unihertz Tank

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Late reply:

https://oukitel.com/pages/oukitel-wp33-pro

This replaces my old phone, Bluetooth speakers, battery banks, all that. Hella heavy, but so is all that other crap. I can drop it 5' deep in the swamp, go down and get it. Still testing!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

Jesus Christ that's a car battery

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

k = 10^3 and m = 10^-3 so they will cancel out. It’s just Ah without any prefixes at that point.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Charge it from a smart power supply from battery at 1 to 100% then it can show you the number of mah/h it took to charge it.

I have this power supply which also has USB-C https://a.aliexpress.com/_mrChiQ6

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

Not sure how accurate this would be as charging is not 100% efficient. Also the amount of power the phone uses while charging would have to be taken into account as well.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

My phone has a 10.8Ah battery and it's huge, no idea how big that must be.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

22Ah at 4.35V would be 96Wh, which iirc is just under the limit of 100Wh you can take on flights in the us, and thus the limit for basically all laptops.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

mAh are a terrible way to measure capacity, look for watt-hours instead. You need to know the voltage for it to be a relevant measurement

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It's a pity they don't offer the option to 'supercharge' to 100, so you get extended battery life when desired, when you know you will need it. Say, going camping, or plan to use the phone a lot for whatever reason.

[–] Reverendender 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

Yes, they could call it spinal batt.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

So can I charge my phone to 11?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago

It's one more than ten, so yeah, it's better.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

Yea that's what I've heard, and I personally keep stuff plugged in

It was a recent article by iFixit, so I thought I'd share it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

80% "software" should keep the battery even healthier...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Isn't the charge limit of the battery arbitrary? The manufacturer can set whatever target voltage they want , so it's meaningless to say they limit the battery to 80% when they decide what 100% is.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Do you have sources?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I don’t doubt the fact that they take some margin to extend the lifetime of the battery, but if we take iPhones as an example, they:

  • charge at a slower rate when nearing 100%
  • try to postpone charging the final 20% until the last moment before disconnecting from the wall outlet
  • can be software capped at 80% by the user (in newer models)

This makes me suspect that that the margin between what’s reported in software as 100% and the actual capacity of the battery is less than 20%. This also makes sense from the standpoint of the consumer expecting a long battery life on their expensive high-end device, putting pressure on the companies to make the margin smaller and the charging algorithms smarter. Just my observations, of course.