Lithium-Ion Batteries: Charging Techniques for Maximum Endurance

[Redaktion]

When taken good care of devices such as smartphones, tablets, and notebooks will most likely easily outlive their respective batteries, which these days more often than not aren't user replaceable anymore. With this in mind it is more important than ever to improve both endurance and capacity through the right charging techniques. We're going to give you a few tips and point out the most common mistakes.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Lithium-Ion-Batteries-Charging-Techniques-for-Maximum-Endurance.214714.0.html

[Sam Medley]

Awesome to see some solid info on Li-Ion batteries, especially with the prevalence of Quick Charge-capable smartphones out there. Tech like Quick Charge is great if you're in a hurry, but if you're charging over night, plugging your phone into a low-powered charger (5V/1A) will make the battery last so much longer.

[MrGoose]

There are two seemingly contradictory statments here:
1. "An empty battery should be charged to 30 % or even better 70 % as quickly as possible."
2. "Charging slowly will usually increase life expectancy."

If the wording of the first statement were changed to "An empty battery should be charged .... as soon as possible." it would maintain consistency.

[Astar]

"Thus, wireless charging to top up regularly during the day won't have any detrimental effect on your battery."

- This is fundamentally wrong. Recent research has confirmed what has been known for a while. This article needs to be updated.

Wireless charging uses the principle of induction, that's all. Induction always causes electrical eddy currents in metals that generate heat in the metals. That is how an induction cooker works - you just have to put a metal pot/kettle/wok/pan on the induction cooker's surface.

Heat is the enemy of all electronics. In the case of batteries which form a component in the electronics, this is especially so.

Wireless charging producs extra heat in several forms.

(1) The charging pad which the phone typically rests on top of or leans against, becomes a warm surface transferring heat to the phone. This is due to the charging coils (which TRANSMIT the EM radiation) heating up due to the current flowing through it. On the other hand, wired charging typically sees the phone resting against a cool surface like a table.

The charging coil INSIDE the phone which RECEIVES and converts the EM radiation to electrical energy, also heats up. This heat occurs in addition to the heat generated in the battery. In wired charging, only the battery heats up during the chemical reaction process.

Furthermore, since alignment of the phone's (internal) charging coils and that of the pad's charging coils is seldom ever perfect, the latter may often have to increase the power output to compensate and ensure that the phone charges adequately. This means that the charging pad may warm up even more.

It is arguable, in principle, that the induction EM radiation transmitted by the charging pad may also cause electrical eddy currents to be induced in the phone's internal circuit boards copper/silver/gold wires, causing yet another source of heat.

A lot of manufacturers simply do not mention all these drawbacks which often mean that your phone heats up considerably more by wireless charging. Afterall, the sooner your batteries fail, the more money they can make by selling you a new phone or replacement battery (with service charge) when you visit the service centre.

[Lawrence Richards]

This article is potentially very useful and informative, but lacks credence. What would help is references to the sources of the presented information.

[STEVE COBB]

THANK YOU, I FOUND THIS INFORMATION VERY VALUABLE, I RECENTLY PURCHASED AN EASY GO 48V 4 SEAT GOLF CART AND REALL DIDN'T UNDERSTAND ALL THE LITHIUM BATTERY INSTRUCTIONS I RECEIVED BECAUSE THE THE GUY WENT THRU EVERYTHING SO FAST I DIDN'T HAVE TIME TO WRITE ANYTHING DOWN, THANKS AGAIN, I FEEL MUCH BETTER KNOWING WHAT I LEARNED ON YOUR SITE.

[NikoB]

My personal long-term experience shows that phone batteries need to be charged with a current of no more than 0.4-0.5A, then the capacity (after charging) and the number of cycles will be maximum.

Second - never buy smartphones in which, during even an average load (normal intensive surfing, etc.), it heats up above 36-37C. You will definitely have problems.

Third and key - the main problem with all smartphones (and other mobile gadgets, BUT not laptops) is that without exception, all smartphone manufacturers INTENTIONALLY use the worst form of smartphone recharging when the battery is fully charged and starts discharging, including self-discharge, when the smartphone is connected to charging. Unlike laptops, where recharging never starts before 95% of the charge threshold, and most often there is now direct control of thresholds (minimum and maximum) in many models, in smartphones, even a 0.3% charge drop automatically leads to recharging, which is natural and guaranteed kills any battery many times faster. This is an intentional CONSPIRACY of all smartphone manufacturers, because the charging start thresholds in reality can be programmed in the phone's firmware by issuing such commands to the charge controller, but this is not done intentionally so that you would rather come for a new smartphone or battery - and the latter (original, i.e. quality and with a guarantee) are most often not available in retail under the pretext that this service operation is no longer available to the consumer, which is also done intentionally in order not to sell spare batteries at retail and thereby make the average consumer dependent on the expensive prices of service centers or more often just force a replacement for a new smartphone model.

There are some alternative firmware that allow you to set the thresholds yourself, but there are few of them and, alas, they are generally buggy, because enthusiasts write them most often for themselves, without caring about testing all the functions.

The only way to clean up this mess and force manufacturers to make smart chargers like laptops that don't charge the battery until a certain threshold is reached is to make it legal. About the same as EU legislators forced Apple to switch to usb-c.

Only the active political and civil position of millions of smartphone users in the EU and the US will force all manufacturers, without exception, to make charging thresholds programmable.

With this kind of charging, you do NOT have to worry about turning off charging as soon as possible after reaching a full charge - the smartphone simply will not allow you to charge the battery until the charge drops to 95% (as in laptops) or to the threshold you set (for example, 85%). And thanks to this, you can easily keep your smartphone on charge at home for days on end without worrying about recharge cycles at all - you will always have the maximum performance of your smartphone and it will be at least 95% charged, without deliberately killing the battery by collusion of manufacturers.

[NikoB]

Another important point:
Even in laptops, some manufacturers have begun to meanly use batteries when using a laptop from a power supply. When, due to a deliberately weak power supply included in the kit, there is not enough power in the full load on the processor or processor + discrete video chip. In this case, part of the required power is taken from the battery and, naturally, even with smart thresholds, it is very quickly discharged below these thresholds and automatically starts charging again. If you play long enough in this mode, the battery will completely discharge completely or the manufacturer, so that too many consumers do not discover intentional fraud - it simply stops the process of taking power from an already too discharged battery and at that moment the speed of the processor or the processor + video chip bundle will suddenly drop, which immediately you can see the fps drop. Many stupid consumers don't even understand why this is happening.

Duck, the same thing has been done a long time ago, as a vile norm, in almost all smartphone models - if the smartphone circuits suddenly lack power from charging, they also begin to receive part of the energy from the battery, i.e. it still starts forcibly discharging to ensure maximum performance of the SoC of the smartphone, of course, until the SoC overheats and slows down the speed and consumption, which happens quite quickly.

Therefore, when buying laptops, always clearly find out if there is such a vile fraudulent scheme from the manufacturer at full load on the laptop hardware. Only models without this never-switchable scheme, i.e. with powerful power supplies that exceed the maximum requirements of the laptop hardware with a margin, will allow you to play safely or load the hardware with calculations without worrying about the safety of the battery, it will never be used when connecting the laptop to the power supply. Approximately also it is necessary to think and choosing a new smartphone model. You can only check this by testing a laptop or smartphone with a full load on all the hardware and checking if the battery is discharged at the moment when it is 100% charged and the power supply is connected (smartphone charging).

[NikoB]

Final conclusions that ensure maximum battery life and comfortable use of smartphones and laptops from the power supply all day long:

1. For maximum battery safety, if you do not need it too often, it is best to charge it forcibly with low currents, i.e. smartphone firmware or BIOS firmware (plus OS drivers) of a laptop should, at a minimum, provide flexible charging mode settings, when the user himself, depending on the usage scenario, sets the charging current limit (and the battery charging speed depends on it). If you work 100% of the time from the PSU for maximum performance, then in this case it is more profitable to set a low charging current if the battery self-discharges from time to time. And you can set a higher current if you need to get a 100% charged battery on the road as soon as possible.

2. All smartphones and laptops MUST (and this should also be done by law, i.e. mandatory for all manufacturers of smart gadgets) have programmable thresholds - the beginning of the charge and the end, so that the user himself can flexibly decide at what level of self-discharge it is necessary start charging and to what level, if he uses the gadget more often from the power supply, and not autonomously.

3. Do not allow, again by law, to sell chargers to laptop (or smartphone) manufacturers that cannot provide power to these groups of devices at maximum load, which leads to the secret use of the power supply circuit from the power supply (charging) and from the battery at the same time. Because this mode deliberately kills the battery many times faster, which again is beneficial to manufacturers, but not to the consumer, and most often they are silent in the specifications about such an incorrect consumer operation mode. Those. they keep silent about the fact that the power supply is not enough to ensure the operation of hardware at full load.

4. And of course, you need to blame in every possible way those manufacturers who allow the battery to overheat more than 37C in an average load, and preferably in full. This indicates an improper, conscientious design of a smartphone or laptop case (and this also happens there) in order to evenly and correctly remove heat from the battery, as the most temperature-dependent element of a smartphone, with a sharp drop in its lifespan.

[lynn]

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