Sony To Boost Smartphone Batteries Because People Aren't Replacing Phones (theguardian.com) 210
Not too long ago, people would replace their phone every 18 months. But that isn't the case with most people now. According to new estimates, more people are now changing their phones after at least three years. The problem with this is that by the end of two-three years, the battery on the phone reaches a stage where it gets really annoying. Sony has a solution, or so it says. From The Guardian:Sony is trying to fix that, but not by fixing the battery. That's because the lithium ion cells within smartphones don't exactly need fixing -- they will continue to work for years -- but their ability to hold their original amount of charge rapidly diminishes with repeated recharging cycles. Everyone who finds themselves with a chunky battery pack for their new smartphone or desperately searching for a charger by mid-afternoon knows battery capacity is a never-ending headache that only gets worse as a smartphone, and its battery ages. Rather than fixing the battery, Sony wants to do something about the recharging. Jun Makino, Sony mobile's senior product marketing manager, said; "We've started learning your charging cycles so that our new Xperia X smartphones only complete charging to 100% when they estimate you're about to start using them, so that the damage caused by maintaining a battery at 100% is negated. This is important, a battery that's usually kept at a charge between 20% and 80% of its capacity is much healthier -- it's going to the extremes that wears it out at a faster rate. This is important, a battery that's usually kept at a charge between 20% and 80% of its capacity is much healthier - it's going to the extremes that wears it out at a faster rate. The Japanese electronics firm has partnered with Californian adaptive charging company Qnovo to put technology into its Xperia smartphones. This includes the new top-end Xperia XZ and Xperia X Compact, which Sony reckons will double the life of the battery to around four years.
Softare and wording problem (Score:5, Interesting)
The phones should be setup to charge to 80% and stop there.
Then offer a special "overcharge" feature that charges it to 100%.
But label the 80% charge "100" and the 100% level as 120 (no percentages)
People would like the 'new' feature. Everyone would instinctively understand that charging past "100" would be bad.
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The phones should be setup to charge to 80% and stop there.
Then offer a special "overcharge" feature that charges it to 100%.
But label the 80% charge "100" and the 100% level as 120 (no percentages)
People would like the 'new' feature. Everyone would instinctively understand that charging past "100" would be bad.
^ We have a winner!
Re:Softare and wording problem (Score:5, Insightful)
If the 80% level is labelled 100, then the 100% level should be labelled 125.
Re:Softare and wording problem (Score:5, Funny)
If the 80% level is labelled 100, then the 100% level should be labelled 125.
Nah, the 80% level should be labelled 10 and the 100% level 11. You see, most batteries, you know, will be charging to ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your battery. Where can you go from there? Where? What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do? Charge it up to eleven.
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Why don't you just make ten be the top number and make that a little more charged?
Simpler Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
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But that would add another two millimeters to the thickness! Unacceptable!
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Cell
vs
Battery wall + cell + battery wall.
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How would the phone have to be made thicker just to have a removable battery?
Not just thickness but a whole load of tradeoffs. With a fixed cell soldered on the motherboard you don't need a protective housing over the battery. This can take the form of either a thicker phone, or a reduced battery capacity.
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name one. so far, all the phones i've seen use a rectangular block even when the battery is non-removable. it is a conscious decision made by manufacturers to force people into upgrades after 2 years. apart from LG, nobody sells original replacement batteries. your only option is to buy a chinese insta-exploder from ebay.
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Yes, rectangular blocks without any protection. Put the cells side by side and you see that the rigid structure for a removable cell takes a significant amount of space, and also adds to the cost.
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Not Sony Xperia, which TFA is about. They are usually glued shut and often have a glass rear cover that tends to shatter if not unglued very carefully. Also after replacing the battery and sticking the rear cover back on the phone often stops being watertight. I repair Sony phones as a hobby, so I have plenty of experience.
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New battery costs about 25 of my local dollars.
Its a perfectly good phone and does everything I need it to.
Re:Softare and wording problem (Score:5, Funny)
But this battery goes to 11.
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It fits because the discussion isn't that batteries are getting better, merely that we're taking something that already exists and
Re:Softare and wording problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Or 125, because 100 is 25% more than 80.
It would also be good to have a "storage charge" feature which keeps it charged at 40-50% [batteryuniversity.com], for battery powered devices that you leave plugged in most of the time, like laptop workstations.
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It would also be good to have a "storage charge" feature which keeps it charged at 40-50% [batteryuniversity.com], for battery powered devices that you leave plugged in most of the time, like laptop workstations.
That's the point here. Law of diminishing returns doesn't give you that much extra life at 50 compare to 80% charge. But the point of a mobile device with a battery is that it is available when needed, so you can grab your phone or your laptop off your desk and go, not with 50% charge but with as much as possible without degrading the battery.
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I'd mod this up but it's already at 5. We have a winner.
Re:Softare and wording problem (Score:4, Interesting)
The phones should be setup to charge to 80% and stop there.
This is the way that Teslas work. By default, they charge to 80%. You can boost it to 100%, but they recommend you only do that just before you leave for a long trip. It is especially bad to fully charge the battery and then park it in the hot sun. Heat+overcharge=Battery abuse.
Re: Softare and wording problem (Score:2)
How does one overcharge a battery? I plug it in and ignore it for X amount of time usually 6 -8 hours as I am sleeping and unplug it before going to work. I can't control the charging other than plugging in a cable.
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I can't control the charging other than plugging in a cable.
Tesla's control panel lets you control the timing and the level of charging. I have mine programmed to start charging at 2:30am, when electricity prices are low, and to charge to 80% (a range of ~200 miles). If I am going on a longish trip, I will boost it to 100% about an hour before I leave. But I rarely do that. If you have a regular need to go on long trips, you shouldn't buy an electric car.
The delayed charging doesn't make sense for cellphones, but a default of charging to 80% would be a good feat
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Actually, I think their approach is about right. People tend to follow a reasonably consistent schedule. If you plug your phone in every night and more or less nothing happens until 7:00 next morning, then only change to 80% (which is pretty conservative) or 85% (still avoids the levels that cause most of the damage to the lithium mesh) until about 6:30 and then charge to 100% and does the same based on recorded battery use throughout multiple averaged days, you can have a greater capacity when it is neede
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Supporting special hardware like the tiny thing that tells the battery to charge or not based on a preference supplied by the user is something that likely needs some manpower, and physical access to all supported laptops for testing.
When I complained - on slahsdot, mind you - about linux not even supporting most temperature and all voltage sensors on desktops, I was told I was an idiot for not buying server hardware to run as a desktop.
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The first generation Xperia phones actually did something similar. They kept the battery at above 90%, by charging up to 100% then letting it fall to 90% again before recharging it again. Much better battery lifetime than keeping it at 100%.
But lots of people complained that Sony had a lousy battery charger system that couldn't even keep the battery topped up. So to avoid the bad press they changed it and kept it at 100% all the time, like the rest of the manufacturers.
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There are people too stupid to understand that "overcharging" to 120 is not good for the battery. (won't make the easy joke about them being supporters of X candidate).
But those people would be in the small minority. Almost everyone else would understand that overcharging is not a good idea, even if they didn't know the particulars.
We need to design products for the majority user and how they use their devices, not for a theoretical user. Yes, you need safeguards, but they should not be the default nor
My old phone had a replaceable battery (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My old phone had a replaceable battery (Score:4, Insightful)
People complained about the bulk and weight of having a removable cover and another layer of hard plastic around the battery. Reporters making comparison charts and designers decided that thin and light were more important than a replaceable battery. OEM upper managers approved when they realized people could be convinced to replace the whole phone instead of replacing just a battery.
Re:My old phone had a replaceable battery (Score:5, Interesting)
People complained about the bulk and weight of having a removable cover and another layer of hard plastic around the battery.
No, they didn't. I've never heard one actual person using a cell phone in the real world make that complaint. It's strictly an issue for the gadget review press. And besides, what are you talking about? Extra plastic? A non-removable battery is still covered by the phone case. There's no extra layer of hard plastic, just the small tabs or whatever mechanism keeps the cover attached.
Not too long ago, people would replace their phone every 18 months.
Again, who are these people? I've never met them. When phones were tied to mobile plan subsidies, most (all?) were tied to 2-year plans. I've never heard of subsidized replacements on a regular 18-month schedule. The hardcore gadget folks paying full price would upgrade more on 12-month rotations. If you've waited 18 months, you might as well wait 6 more and get it subsidized when you renew your contract.
So how about this...get off the thinner, less features treadmill that seems to impress the reviewers, but is being requested by no actual real person who uses a phone as a tool and not a profession. Instead of shaving off every last mm, just give us a bigger battery.
This is important, a battery that's usually kept at a charge between 20% and 80% of its capacity is much healthier -- it's going to the extremes that wears it out at a faster rate. This is important, a battery that's usually kept at a charge between 20% and 80% of its capacity is much healthier - it's going to the extremes that wears it out at a faster rate.
Okay, Jimmy Two-times. Just give us a bigger battery or the ability to easily replace the battery.
Re:My old phone had a replaceable battery (Score:5, Insightful)
People complained about the bulk and weight of having a removable cover and another layer of hard plastic around the battery.
No, they didn't. I've never heard one actual person using a cell phone in the real world make that complaint. It's strictly an issue for the gadget review press. And besides, what are you talking about? Extra plastic? A non-removable battery is still covered by the phone case. There's no extra layer of hard plastic, just the small tabs or whatever mechanism keeps the cover attached.
Mod parent up. And I'd like to add: A non-removable battery is an issue, or shall we say plan, for the manufacturers who want to ensure obsolescence.
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Are "the gadget review press" not people? I didn't say users complained, only that (very visible) people complained.
The guts of a Li-Ion battery need some hard container to protect them from puncture and leakage. This can be the phone's case or a battery case. If the battery is inside a battery case, that adds at least two thicknesses of plastic or other material to the phone's dimensions. (Technically, it could be reduced to a millimeter or two of hard plastic minus some number of microns for the kind
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I suspect not. They are aliens from a planet where they breathe methane and communicate at 11GHz.
Otherwise they would know that "slim, bendable, metal, trendy" are NOT an attractive features in phones, and "plastic, waterproof, long battery life and standards compliant" are.
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People complained about the bulk and weight of having a removable cover and another layer of hard plastic around the battery.
And besides, what are you talking about? Extra plastic? A non-removable battery is still covered by the phone case. There's no extra layer of hard plastic, just the small tabs or whatever mechanism keeps the cover attached.
I suspect Entrope is talking about the "hard plastic around the battery". A non-removable battery is covered by a thin, easily-punctured sheet of plastic, and that is then covered by the phone case. A removable battery is covered by a more substantial layer of plastic so it's more difficult to puncture or bend the actual battery inside--because that could be bad [youtube.com]. And that is then covered by the phone case.
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Extra plastic?
I think he means the hard cover on the battery instead of it being a soft battery contained within material like a thick plastic bag like they use for non-replacable batteries now.
Personally, I have no desire to chop onions with the edge of my phone and would prefer that it be thick enough to not stress the glass when I sneeze so I see no problem with a proper replaceable battery.
To me, replaceable battery is a must. I will keep my old phone (now on it's second battery) until it fails or the new phones offe
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Extra plastic? A non-removable battery is still covered by the phone case. There's no extra layer of hard plastic, just the small tabs or whatever mechanism keeps the cover attached.
My Nokia 6030 agrees with this 100%. The battery cover is so thin it would be called "flimsy" except it doesn't have to do anything except stay attached to the phone.
Not too long ago, people would replace their phone every 18 months.
Again, who are these people? I've never met them. When phones were tied to mobile plan subsidies, most (all?) were tied to 2-year plans. I've never heard of subsidized replacements on a regular 18-month schedule. The hardcore gadget folks paying full price would upgrade more on 12-month rotations. If you've waited 18 months, you might as well wait 6 more and get it subsidized when you renew your contract.
I suspect this figure is an average of some statistics. Take the two groups of people you describe (12-mo gadget freaks and 2-year contract renewal treadmill) -- now put them together.
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No, they didn't. I've never heard one actual person using a cell phone in the real world make that complaint.
Your real world is surrounded by techheads. My real world is surrounded by people who like pretty shiny things, people who often compared phones like the Galaxy S to the iPhone using words like "feels cheap", or asking when they will release an all metal phone.
Those same people who drop their phones into water asking for waterproof phones which is easier to do when you don't have a 20cm long seal around the battery housing that fails when you look at it funny (seriously if you value the waterproofness of yo
Re:My old phone had a replaceable battery (Score:5, Interesting)
People complained about the bulk and weight of having a removable cover and another layer of hard plastic around the battery. Reporters making comparison charts and designers decided that thin and light were more important than a replaceable battery. OEM upper managers approved when they realized people could be convinced to replace the whole phone instead of replacing just a battery.
The only people who complained were reviewers on tech sites. Everyone else added weight and bulk by wrapping "protective" shells around their phones.
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People complained about the bulk and weight of having a removable cover and another layer of hard plastic around the battery. Reporters making comparison charts and designers decided that thin and light were more important than a replaceable battery. OEM upper managers approved when they realized people could be convinced to replace the whole phone instead of replacing just a battery.
Sounds like marketing B.S. to me. The cover weighs about the same, regardless of whether it is removable or not. And even if it does require "another layer of hard plastic around the battery", the weight difference would be negligible.
This is just another example of marketing influencing the people by telling them "everyone is asking for this" when in reality only the product manufacturer "is asking for this."
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My LG G4 is quite slim despite having a replaceable battery and and SD slot.
Besides, don't all those people that swoon over having the thinnest phone ever made get it home and put it in an inch thick Otterbox?
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People complained about the bulk and weight of having a removable cover and another layer of hard plastic around the battery.
[citation needed]
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2007 called and wants its lame retort back.
But hey, if you've been under a rock since then, maybe you didn't notice that people really were complaining about that.
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Did you warn them about Fukushima and Donald Trump?
Look, perhaps you associate with different people than I do, but the only times I have ever heard or read of anyone complaining that their phone is too big and heavy was in the 1990s when they really were big and heavy, and more recently when people were trying to use 8 inch phablets as phones.
I have however heard many, many, people complaining about battery life, or that the phone bends too easily, or is too small to find in a bag, etc.
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People complained about the bulk and weight of having a removable cover and another layer of hard plastic around the battery.
Stop making shit up.
I've never heard anyone complain about this, not once. I've never seen it in print, and a quick google search doesn't return any indication that any users were ever found to be complaining about the bulk and weight of having a removable cover.
I doubt anyone has ever taken the time to voice this "complaint", because it's ridiculously silly and most users wouldn't have any idea whether their device has a removable battery or not. If they did, they'd probably be happy to learn that they cou
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The part that is difficult to grasp is that you're talking about dragging around two batteries anyway -- one inside your phone, one outside your phone. You only complain when the one outside your phone might work with something besides your phone.
It is not just my opinion that it's better to have a phone out of your hands for a day or two, once every few years, than to suffer with 10-20% less battery life every other day of those years. On top of the time considerations, a phone with a non-removable batte
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My current phone has a replaceable battery and I still think it is a good idea.
Yes, I can change my battery easily, in fact I already did, but why wear down batteries if there is no need to.
An option to limit the charge to ~80% would be great, most of the time I end the day with 40-50% left and have access to a charger anytime. 100% would be for the less common times I use my phone heavily or away from a power source.
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My current phone has a replaceable battery. It's a Samsung Galaxy S4. The newer S5 also has a replaceable battery.
If this feature is important to you, then buy a phone that has it. If your phone doesn't have it, then it must not be an important feature to you. Phones like this DO exist.
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Baloney (Score:5, Funny)
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I don't get it.
{end sarcasm}
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It could be worse. His iPhone could have encountered a *NO CARRIER* error.
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Wait, you have a Samsung phone, Windows 10, and an iPhone? What else? :P
This is important! (Score:5, Funny)
So much so, they said it twice!
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Batteries going to 11? (Score:5, Insightful)
a battery that's usually kept at a charge between 20% and 80% of its capacity is much healthier
If longevity is a higher priority, then why don't they build batteries with a higher actual capacity but only let them charge to 80% (calling that the new 100%)? People would be willing to pay more for a 'premium long-life' battery.
Of course building phones that let you replace the battery is a better and simpler option.
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Re:Batteries going to 11? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who are these people "clamoring" for thinner and lighter? The only people I've seen like that are Apple buyers.
This is like claiming that "the public is clamoring for bare-bones utilitarian off-road vehicles" just because there's a small but vocal crowd of Jeep fanatics.
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HEY! You insensitive enfeebled drive train clod.
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Isn't that the same thing? If Apple told them to clamor for spyware, they'd clamor for spyware. They're told to clamor for thinner and lighter according to you, so they clamor for thinner and lighter, which is exactly what I claimed. The root cause is interesting, but doesn't invalidate the premise.
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Who are these people "clamoring" for thinner and lighter? The only people I've seen like that are Apple buyers.
So like 20% of mobile users?, and if you remove mid-bottom tier phones closer to 50% of smartphone users?
The thing about the vocal crowd is that sometimes you underestimate their size or influence. This is especially relevant when the vocal crowd is talking about one of the kings of premium phones. Imagine what vendors do when they hear that the type of people who queue up for hours to get phones and will buy new ones just because they are new are asking for these types of designs and features.
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Well, the Apple followers seem to happily buy Apple stuff no matter what, so I have to assume they agree with Apple's design decisions. They sure do vocally back them up on online forums.
If they didn't agree, they'd buy Android phones or hang onto their Apple phones longer. Look what happened when Samsung decided their customers all wanted an iPhone clone that was thinner and had no removeable battery, SDcard, or waterproof case (the Galaxy S6): sales were pretty dismal. They brought back 2 of those 3 fe
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"but the public is still clamoring for Thinner and Lighter"
Phones have been thin enough and light enough for 6 or 7 years. I think most people would rather a better battery than a thinner phone. I can't imagine anyone still thinks phones should be thinner- it'll get to a point where it makes them harder to hold.
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"but the public is still clamoring for Thinner and Lighter"
Phones have been thin enough and light enough for 6 or 7 years. I think most people would rather a better battery than a thinner phone. I can't imagine anyone still thinks phones should be thinner- it'll get to a point where it makes them harder to hold.
"Get to"? As far as I'm concerned, we've been there for years now...especially with the apparent design hard-on for slippery-as-hell (but 'ooh shiny!') exteriors.
oblig. [dilbert.com]
Jimmy Two Times (Score:2)
"Removable batteries" (Score:4, Funny)
Here's a thought - instead of soldering batteries onto the phones circuit board, build in a battery holder and a door so that users can replace them. I call this idea "removable batteries" and may patent it.
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Sony doesn't do that, hasn't done it for "fucking years, absolutely years". The battery uses a clip on connector. Unfortunately the battery is behind the rear cover that is glued to the frame and often the battery is glued to the middle frame and has tu be unglued very carefully lest you want to damage the display ribbon cable that runs directly underneath the battery
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Yeah, like Samsung or most other manufacturers. But that was before Apple "innovated" their non-removable batteries and the other techno-lemmings (such as LG) followed them off the cliff.
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You mean that same Samsung that doesn't have a replaceable battery in the Galaxy S7?
It's a bold strategy Cotton, but how about... (Score:2)
... making phones with replaceable batteries? The 6 year old Evo 4G I gave to my mother has a replaceable battery, and is still in use (with a fresh install of Cyanogen Mod) today.
With Moore's Law rapidly dying, there is less need to upgrade for a "faster" phone, since CPU's aren't getting faster anymore. And I just want to make calls, texts, emails, and occasional FB with my phone. I'm not trying to play Crysis 3 on it.
But that's only half the problem. Apple and Google/Android need to start supporti
Batteries should last at least eight years... (Score:2)
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One thing to fix this (Score:3)
They need to do only a couple things to fix this. Firstly, they need to just design the phone so that it never charges above 80%. It would be easy to just report the battery as full when it's really not. As someone else suggested, you could have an overcharge mode warning the user of the problems.
The second thing is to make sure that the battery doesn't go below 20%. A lot of this has to do with operating system design, as well as the total battery capacity. A lot of phones, even new ones seem to be designed to not last more than the period between morning and night (7AM - 11PM) without absolutely needing to be charged. If the battery had sufficient capacity and the operating system and applications were power efficient enough, then there would be little chance of the battery dropping below that 20% mark. My current phone is very good, and can go a couple days without being changed. This means I'm in the 20%-80% zone very often. I've experienced very little battery degradation, even after 18 months using the phone. The battery is almost as good as the day I got it.
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If the battery had sufficient capacity and the operating system and applications were power efficient enough, then there would be little chance of the battery dropping below that 20% mark.
How are you supposed to do this with all the bloatware and adware and spyware on the phone?
Re:One thing to fix this (Score:5, Interesting)
I didn't really want to get into a phone OS war, so I didn't mention it before, but I have a Windows phone, and I have to say, the experience is so much better than what I've seen from iOS and Android. The battery just lasts so much longer. Before anybody chimes in about the phone not running any apps, I would have to say I disagree. This phone runs all the stuff in the background I used to run on my Android phone, including email fetching, reddit client, Facebook Messenger, Skype, and can do anything that I did with my Android phone. I don't have many games, but I never really did enjoy gaming on a touch screen anyway.
I'm not saying that everybody should get a Windows phone, it's definitely not for most people, but I think that my experience has mad me realize that Android and iOS are doing a terrible job in terms of making their phones efficient. Just about everybody I know complains that their phone doesn't last through the day, and many Android users have lots of problem with instability and crashes.
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I have one too, and while I always feel like I should apologize for having a Windows phone when somebody notices it and asks what it is, it's actually a great phone and the battery lasts several days under normal use (and is replaceable).
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My old android phone would go down to 50% by the end of the day just sitting there on my desk. It's definitely not anything to do with games.
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I agree with you except about the "never" part. The phone settings should allow charging to 80% or 100% (in case you need the extra 20% on rare occasions, like a long trip).
I bet the phone manufacturers already know this, but still charge to 100% knowing that a lot of users will upgrade to newer phones once the batteries in their current phone die prematurely due to 100% charging.
Clever idea, but could be annoying. (Score:2)
Yes, Sony does this in some of their laptops (Score:2)
I own a VPC-Z11 ultralight Sony Vaio back when Sony was still custom producing them in Japan and the US. They're awesome laptops (thou really expensive.) The laptop was manufactured back in 2010 and six years later I have almost no degradation in the battery despite leaving it plugged in all the time. The laptop has a charge only to 50% feature to help protect the battery and it seems to have worked. So doing something similar in a cellphone makes sense. The problem will be predicting when you need mor
Eh? (Score:5, Interesting)
This:
>This is important, a battery that's usually kept at a charge between 20% and 80% of its capacity is much healthier - it's going to the extremes that wears it out at a faster rate.
Is contradicted by the story a few weeks ago regarding the results of research showing it was the act of charging that degraded batteries not the level of charge of the battery.
So which is it? Given I'm not completely naive here (I spent a time developing Li-poly, NiMH and Li-Ion chargers and did a ton of testing) I saw nothing to support the 20-80 hypothesis. If anything can be improved it's probably avoiding unnecessary trickle charge current and minimizing the idle current of the phone to minimize the area under the charging current curve as phones are plugged in overnight.
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I HAVE been taught:
1. Li-Ion batteries can only handle a limited quantity of charge cycles. After that quantity is reached, they get much crappier quickly. This quantity is usually in the multi-hundreds.
2. A good charge controller needs to be able to manage the start and end of the cycles correctly. You don't just start pumping constant-current into the battery for 'X' time.
I would only suspect that the "80% rule" could be helpful
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The number of charge cycles that can be handled vary depending on how you use the battery. Deeply discharge them and you don't get many cycles out of it. Lightly discharge them and you don't either. There's also some ongoing reactions depending on the charge of a battery. The ideal capacity to store a Li-Ion battery is 3.8V/cell roughly the 58% of charge mark. The battery is most ... "neutral" here compared to the damage done by doing a full recharge.
I.e. discharge it more than that and you're killing your
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I saw nothing to support the 20-80 hypothesis.
The 20-80 hypothesis is a tradeoff. A few things affect battery life including depth of discharge, heat during charging (speed of charge), and the storage charge level. The higher the charge level (above 58%) the faster a buildup of solid electrolyte is on the anode. Over time this reduces the charge. There's also oxidation of the electrolyte that starts at around the 90% mark.
Most commercial chargers for lithium chemistry allow you to charge the battery for "storage". I.e. put a charge in for a battery tha
My Samsung Galaxy S4 still going strong (Score:2)
And if I have to, I can change the battery.
I blame this (Score:3)
Only a few years ago, most phone manufacturers (except Apple) wouldn't have dared to release a phone with a non-user-replaceable battery.
If only the dumb consumer sheeple that happily spent $600+ on a phone with a built-in battery (i.e. designed-in obsolescence) weren't in the majority, we wouldn't be having this problem at all.
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They are? Really? Or is it simply the supply-sided communism we have today, i.e. "We decide what you can buy and since everyone's offering the same crap you can't avoid it, so shut up and buy"?
Frankly, the "choice" we have today rivals that you could find back in the 1980s in East European countries.
The real reason (Score:3)
A sustainable smartphone is bad for sony, because people do not buy a new one. So they push a software, which only charges up to 80%, so people need a new one sooner than they've planned.
btw. the claim with 100% is bullshit for modern batteries, my latest nexus phone had an explicit hint, there is no need to discharge and recharge the battery, but most healthy is just to charge when needed.
If they really want sustainable phones, they should have batteries, which can be changed, again. Then people can buy a whole new battery for like 20 USD and keep their phone for up to 10 years, if they do not need to play the latest pokemon game.
The Reason (Score:2)
Battery life was the REASON I was buying a new phone.
I feel like they've become better recently, so now I don't need to replace my phone.
Here's the solution (Score:2)
Make the battery replaceable.
Forced obsolescence (Score:2)
I just replaced a 13 year old phone. Not because of the battery (which is the original and still lasts a WEEK on one charge), but because the carrier decided to drop 2.5G support and the SIM stopped working. I can't get a replacement SIM because nobody uses them or that level of network technology anymore. Do I REALLY need 4G to place a fucking call??
It's fucking infuriating that I have to replace perfectly functional technology that does EXACTLY WHAT I NEED IT TO DO simply because some monkey has the need
Re: (Score:2)
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I'm honestly waiting for such phones to show the same inverse price development that was usual for East Bloc cars: That used models cost MORE than new ones. Mostly 'cause you couldn't get new ones. For the same reason, actually: Production doesn't match demand.
Seriously, I cannot be the only person whose "wanted feature" list includes as top priorities a replaceable battery, a "real" keyboard, a USB connector and a micro-sd card reader, in exactly this order. I don't care about how flat it is (actually, why