When charging a phone wirelessly, there is sometimes significant heat generated. That combined with higher charging rates that are now coming out with the Qi 2 standard make me wonder what the ideal charge for the battery would be.

Most of the time I just toss my phone onto a wireless charger before bed, and don’t really care how quickly it charges. Would it be better to use a 5W brick with a charging pad? Should wireless be avoided and usb used instead?

  • xep@fedia.io
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    11 days ago

    It’s about usage patterns. If you know you only need 60% of the battery, charging it to 100% will degrade it more, for little utility. The newer Google phones get 7 years of updates, but without due care the battery will reach 80% of its capacity before that. On an aside, a battery is considered to have reached its end of life at a capacity reduction of 20%, and not 40%.

    If you 100-0 the battery every day, then there’s not much you can do. But if you’re a lighter user, then using the 20-80% (or 40-60) part instead of the 40-100% part of the battery makes it last longer. And that’s good in terms of environmental sustainability, reduction of e-waste, and you can use the phone for longer, too.

    • narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee
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      11 days ago

      The main thing (by far) degrading a battery is charging cycles. After 7 years with say 1,500 cycles most batteries will have degraded far beyond “80%” (which is always just an estimate from the electronics anyway). Yes, you can help it a bit by limiting charging rate, heat and limit the min/max %, but it’s not going to be a night and day difference. After 7 years with daily use, you’re going to want to swap the battery, if not for capacity reduction then for safety issues.