I am charging my laptop with one of the “quick charging” phone chargers right now, currently it says 5 hours until full charge. Does this wear out the battery faster or something? Or does it make no difference apart from taking a little bit longer?

  • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
    7·
    4 days ago

    Some of it is the cord, but usually the limiter is the AC DC adapter. “The brick” some would call it. The battery should be fine as far as my limited knowledge goes. Stay at 80% and below and you should keep the life of a lithium ion battery long

    • Thorry@feddit.org
      21·
      3 days ago

      Good advice about the 80%! But just to add: Check if this is really needed, I’ve seen a bunch of devices where 100% indicated actually means 80% of the physical cells. The BMS won’t allow charging over 80%, so that’s where it caps out.

      Also, even if the BMS doesn’t self limit, check how you use the laptop. If it’s plugging in 99% of the time, just keep it plugged in and let it sit at 100%. The laptop will run directly off the wall power and the BMS will trickle charge the cells to keep them topped up. This prevents discharge-charge cycles, which is usually better for the battery in the long run.

      I’ve seen people say to always fully discharge the battery before charging it, absolutely do not do that. Deep discharge cycles are terrible for modern batteries. Just use it as needed and as soon as there is the convenient option to charge, just charge it right away regardless of the level.

      • Petter1@discuss.tchncs.de
        21·
        3 days ago
        1. Li-ion and LiPo batteries don’t have the mini cycle problem as much as the NiMH batteries have
        2. Keeping always plugged in is terrible advice for Li-ion/LiPo batteries (except if your device is smart enough to support reducing tear on battery with intelligent charging behaviour, like not charging above 80%)
        3. Li-ion absolutely dislike being fully charged and will suffer extreme tear, if you let them always be charged to 100% -> reduces max capacity and increases risk of swelling
        4. this 80% labeled as 100% is mostly present on bigger batteries like car batteries, which have guarantees with min cap decrease over 5 to 10 years. Phones with guarantees of 1 or 2 years generally have near100% as 100%, as it is marketing relevant to have bigger numbers than competitors without need to offer long battery guarantees.
        5. fully discharging is recommended at least some times in order to recalibrate the percentage calculation (if a charging event is without interruption from lower than x%, the battery controller is counting the watthours pumped into the battery until it reaches the point where less than x ampere charging are required to hold the desired voltage. With this counting, you can then adjust the graph used to calculate percentage of capacity still available based on the corrected (compensated for drop of voltage due to current usage) Voltage of the battery)
      • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
        1·
        3 days ago

        It was better for NiCad batteries to drain them completely, but now that everything is Lithium, there’s no need to drain them.

        • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
          1·
          3 days ago

          You think that, but every iPhone and Android phone says otherwise that has a lithium ion battery. It’s built in their OS as a feature to ensure longer battery duration long term. Unless Apple, Samsung, Google are all doing it for a myth… I have my doubts. They essentially set it to go to 80% then slow charge to 100 the last bit before you wake so it won’t sit trying to restart charging from 99% to 100% for hours.

          (And yes it is orchestrated around your alarm going off time)

    • Holytimes@sh.itjust.works
      12·
      3 days ago

      The 80% rule is rather out of date and doesn’t apply to modern batteries. Lithium doesn’t care, and most batteries naturally report 100% at 80%. So it’s already accounted for when needed.