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submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by limerod@reddthat.com to c/android@lemdro.id

TLDW; No

Basically the video is testing phones with varying charging speeds and how much battery degrades after 500 charging cycles. Also, the affects on performance after battery degradation at 5:37

Timestamps of some tests:

  • Test results for different charging speeds at 3:06
  • Storing batteries at 1%, 50%, 100% at 3:43
  • Battery performance at 4:42

After 6 mins he talks about why the tests took 2yrs and how they did it 3 times.

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[-] limerod@reddthat.com 81 points 10 months ago

Summary:

  1. When your phone's battery health drops to about 85%, battery life shortens noticeably.

  2. When your phone's battery health falls to around 80%, a battery replacement is recommended.

  3. When your phone's battery health is above 80%, performance is basically unaffected.

[-] limerod@reddthat.com 26 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Not related to the video. But, this guy only has 37 videos yet somehow has 1.5Million subscribers. He also knows geekerwan. Wonder if there's anything sus..

[-] DaPorkchop_@lemmy.ml 21 points 10 months ago

Apparently this is a well-established channel in China, and they've just recently started translating their backlog of videos to English for YouTube.

[-] Fmstrat@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

The channel has great, well made content. I think it launched from Shorts and TikTok where there was also a large Chinese population following.

[-] vodka@feddit.org 4 points 10 months ago

If you hit it right with shorts that's not that weird, shorts are huge for driving up subscriber numbers.

Considering the views of some of that channels shorts, it's probably it.

[-] artyom@piefed.social 20 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Was there nothing about how fast charging impacted how quickly it reached 80% SoH?

[-] limerod@reddthat.com 9 points 10 months ago

He only checked battery health loss. Not the speed of capacity loss until 80%.

The end result, it does not matter. Use and charge your phone how you would like to. A few percentage for keeping the battery at 20-80% only to have a reduced capacity from the very start does not make sense.

[-] artyom@piefed.social 18 points 10 months ago

Well. I mean that's like THE most important thing. Charging at a higher C rate is going to cause increased wear on the battery and less life. That's why most phones are limited in that way.

[-] limerod@reddthat.com 5 points 10 months ago

He did test Iqoo phones charging at 120W. And the wear was less than slow charging. So, that should answer your question. But, he did ask to comment any other tests people wanted.

You can drop one on this video if you want to.

[-] artyom@piefed.social 7 points 10 months ago

I don't have a Google account, sorry

[-] socsa@piefed.social 2 points 10 months ago

That can't be right. Either the result is not statistically significant, the methodology is bad, or the brand has a reserve capacity algorithm which doesn't activate properly when slow charging.

[-] brb@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago

Could it be because the phone spends less time in the charging state?

[-] GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 12 points 10 months ago

It makes sense to me IF it actually works.

Having extra capacity when a device is brand-new isn't a huge boon, but having stable capacity over the long term would be. At least for me.

Of course this will depend on your habits. If you replace your phone every year, then it doesn't matter. If you're a light user and only go through a couple charge cycles per week, it'll matter less than if you go through 1-2 cycles per day.

Personally I'm at around 1 cycle per day on my current phone, and after nearly 3 years (over 1000 charge cycles now) the battery life is shit — much worse than just 80% of its original battery life. Performance also suffers. With my last phone, I replaced the battery after 3 years and I was amazed at how much faster it was. I didn't realize throttling was such a big problem.

I might replace my current battery, but it's such a pain, and it costs more than my phone is realistically worth.

[-] socsa@piefed.social 2 points 10 months ago

This is literally what a bunch of companies already do. In a Samsung flagship, if you measure the "full" unloaded battery voltage on day 1 vs day 1000 it will be about 0.2v higher after three years. This is a reserve capacity which they slowly give back over time to keep the perception of "day 1 capacity" through the first 5-10% of batter degradation.

[-] limerod@reddthat.com 1 points 10 months ago

Pixels do the opposite. They slowly reduce capacity and charging speeds as you go past 200 charge cycles.

[-] limerod@reddthat.com 4 points 10 months ago
[-] artyom@piefed.social 8 points 10 months ago

State of Health?

[-] DrDystopia@lemy.lol 4 points 10 months ago

Yes, it's a key metric for BMS.

[-] frongt@lemmy.zip 6 points 10 months ago
[-] DrDystopia@lemy.lol 5 points 10 months ago

State of Health for Battery Management Systems

[-] mysticpickle@lemmy.ca 6 points 10 months ago

Thank you for the summary!

[-] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 6 points 10 months ago

When your phone’s battery health falls to around 80%, a battery replacement is recommended.

Yeah, just get right on that, it's basically a trivial process.

[-] bluesheep@sh.itjust.works 4 points 10 months ago
[-] limerod@reddthat.com 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

75% is not bad. You can still use the phone with some performance loss. How old is the phone? If its been 2-4yrs. A battery replacement is not a bad option.

[-] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 10 months ago

Daaaamn I upgraded my iPhone XS Max last year, I had it for over five years and my battery health was like 87%. I used it all day every day, but never used any type of fast charging. It lasted about nine hours of use when I upgraded. I think I got lucky.

[-] bluesheep@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago

It's around 3-4 years now I think. Sad thing is that it's an iPhone mini, so the capacity wasn't that great to begin with so I go around a full day on a charge if I just have it laying next to me.

Also since it's an apple I guess that it's really hard to replace the battery. But I might look into it. It's better than buying a completely new one anyway.

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[-] Zak@lemmy.world 26 points 10 months ago

The amount of time the battery spends at higher voltage definitely affects its capacity over time. There's plenty of research on Li-ion battery service life characteristics done with greater scientific rigor than is possible with batteries installed in phones.

It can take longer than the few months these tests required to see the effect. A phone that's usually stored at 60% will eventually show a big capacity advantage over one that's stored at 100%. That's probably mostly true at 80% as well.

For some anecdata, my Pixel 4a has spent most of the past five years limited to 60%. It reports 1152 cycles and 91% capacity.

[-] rbn@sopuli.xyz 18 points 10 months ago

But is there an advantage on artificially limiting your battery to 60% rather than charging to 100% and having 40% degradation at the end of the lifetime? In the second scenario I start at 100% capacity that slowly gets lower and lower whereas in the first scenario I have only 60% from the start and still some (although much less) degradation.

[-] Zak@lemmy.world 19 points 10 months ago

The advantage is that I can occasionally charge it to 80% or 100% if the situation demands it.

[-] XiELEd@piefed.social 1 points 10 months ago

And if it can run a 6 hours with 60% then I would like to preserve its ability to hold on for an entire day at 90% if the situation demands it. I often deal with this at school. A half day of back-to-back classes? 40% is game. But a schedule that has more than a 6 hour gap that I'd likely fill with studying from PDFs and gaming? Then a good 90% is needed.

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[-] frongt@lemmy.zip 3 points 10 months ago

Yes, but given how the battery charge controllers already manage it, I don't think you'll see a meaningful difference. You'll probably replace it for other reasons before then.

[-] quick_snail@feddit.nl 2 points 10 months ago

Dude runs a 4a. Probably not.

[-] MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 20 points 10 months ago

What do people think of the chargie ?

The elephant in the room here is charging a battery when it is hot kills it fast. I live in a hot country and my (GrapheneOS) Pixel7 was spicy pillow in 18 months, happily charging away at 50+C at times (I leave it in a wireless charging stand 90+% of the time). Replaced the battery with a iFixit kit and got a chargie, which lets you set a cutoff charge temperature which I set to 33C (and 80% charge). Often in summer it charges only at night. Another year odd later gOS reports 100% health FWIW. Any phones out there that allow limiting charge by temperature natively? These devices all get developed in cool climates and aircon it seems...

[-] limerod@reddthat.com 3 points 10 months ago

You can use software to do what you use hardware and software.

I imagine a tasker or macrodroid profile to limit battery charging based on heat.

[-] MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 4 points 10 months ago

Tasker and gOS don't play very well together, you'll need to run (sandboxed) GPlay etc (Tasker is pretty overzealous with DRM, PowerAmp, MoonReader for example let you just authorize it once and then you can rip out GPlay and it's fine, I don't mind paying for good software, I just don't want google) which I don't on my main profile, but I suspect you're right. These days I don't program on my phone (save for a bit of python in Termux), I'd rather VPN to my home network and code on a real computer. If it gets me even two years extra battery life it'll pay for itself.

Does Tasker literally have charge control these days (I'll assume it has the sensor)? If so it'd make a good, more versatile solution for tinkerers (but probably at least 30% the cost or more give the module buying monetization craziness compared to a set and forget chargie).

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[-] mesamunefire@piefed.social 17 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Not that its a bad study or anything, but where are the data points? Did they happen to publish their numbers somewhere?

Quite a few components have extensive detail on their specs. IC chips/resisters/etc...etc...

Also android artificially reduces capacity as it gets older. Most of the pixel phones for example will use number of cycles + time to determine the "max" capacity. So it can be artificially worse depending on the model. No idea what iphone does.

[-] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Its not the best test imo. He only did 500 charge cycles which is more like 1.5 years worth of charge cycles. But even having data for 2 years isnt very useful. If you replace your phone after 2 years then there is no need to care about battery life at all. This whole thing of preserving battery life is something for people that want to use a phone for 5+ years without needing a new battery.

In the first place, people have already done professional studies to analyze all kinds of lithium battery capacity degradation over many cycles and thats where the 30-80% number comes from. The whole introduction to his video is "there is a saying", so all he had to do was actually look at the research where that "saying" came from. Then he could have still run his little experiment in an attempt to replicate parts of the study. Instead he basically told the viewers "if you throw away your phone after 2 years, then you dont need to care about charging limits" which is very useless information.

After 1500 cycles the difference between the 5-100% and 30-80% system would be so drastic that you wouldnt be able to really use the first one, while the other one would still work decently well.

[-] amorpheus@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

This whole thing of preserving battery life is something for people that want to use a phone for 5+ years without needing a new battery.

That's a narrow point of view. It's also reducing the ecological impact if a device's battery isn't trashed after two years, someone else would likely use it.

[-] JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl 2 points 10 months ago

I think they more mean that the testing is flawed in that they didn't test nearly enough cycles.

The type of person to get a new phone every 2 years probably doesn't care much about the ewaste either, sadly.

[-] XiELEd@piefed.social 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

But even having data for 2 years isnt very useful. If you replace your phone after 2 years then there is no need to care about battery life at all.

When I was younger my mother would scold me for needing a replacement phone every 2 or 3 years because of how much they cost. Aside from gaming I was also working on schoolwork or reading stuff on my phone because I had no computer, and I often charged my phone to 100% while doing those things causing it to overheat and charged it by 20% so that wasn't doing wonders for its lifespan. Man if only I knew. So it grinds my gears when I see someone dismiss battery lifespan concerns by assuming you'll want to buy a new phone in 2 years. My mother's phone has been with her for upwards of 5 years and she's perfectly content with it. And because I invest my time in only one game (the same one for years) there is no need for performance upgrades. So what's the point of buying a new phone every two years?

[-] quick_snail@feddit.nl 2 points 10 months ago

It's a bad study

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[-] LodeMike@lemmy.today 12 points 10 months ago

Charging the battery kills the battery yes

[-] violentfart@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago

The message is correct as modern phones are able to take care of their batteries.

The experiments themselves were very flawed.

[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)
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I want someone to make a slow charger with PPS to compare them. My phone on a "slow charger" gets about as hot as when I use a fast charger with PPS. But a fast charger without PPS and it gets extremely hot and slows down charging a lot. Especially when I leave it on my bed. That definitely is not good for it's health. They charged their phones in little stands which gets them plenty of airflow to keep them cool.

It looks like the iPhone 12 doesn't support PPS. Fast charging could be even better if they used a device that supports it.

[-] limerod@reddthat.com 1 points 10 months ago

The charging tech does make a difference on charge speeds and heat. But, PPS should not make much of a difference. especially against advanced chinese charging tech solutions.

My phone gets hot when I use a slow charging. But, Phones using SuperVooc charging tech do not have heating issues when charged with them. Because they have most of the charging logic in the charger and not the phone.

So, your phone can be pumped with 60-120w and you won't notice much heat at all.

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this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2025
254 points (95.4% liked)

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