[proee]

This could be "fixed" right now by a software update that limits the maximum charge level to 80% of capacity. However, this comes at the cost of how many minutes of runtime your phone can operate.

So manufactures might just responds to this by making your phone heavier with a bigger battery that is being under utilized.

[Shacklz]

Honestly we should define 80% as the new "100%" on such batteries and label "charging to full" as "overcharging".

Psychologically, people understand charging a battery to "125%" (or whatever) a lot better: Do it when you really need to but if you do it all the time it wears down the battery a lot faster.

[kolinko]

Nice idea. I think the reason it's not communicated as such is that then companies would be expected to advertise time on battery when charged to 100%, not 125%.

[ssl-3]

The Samsung phone I use these days has a "Protect Battery" mode that can be toggled (both manually and with automatic user-defined routines). It limits maximum charge to 85%. For those who want it: That's the ~same thing, without the psychological trick.

It also has some other settings that relate to smart charging that I don't fully understand (mostly because it's kind of inscrutable).

But the idea, AFAICT, is that it works with a person who charges their phone on a fairly regular schedule (they sleep at about the same time every night with plugged in all night).

The battery meanders up to 85% or something and holds there. Shortly before the person normally wakes up, it starts coming the rest of the way up to 100%. And then they wake up, unplug the phone, and it begins to discharge.

This helps to minimize the duration of being at a high state-of-charge, which is also a big factor in long-term battery longevity.

It's a tidy set of tradeoffs, I think.

[bananamogul]

Yes and yes.

I recently investigated large portable power banks (Jackery, etc.) and like that there are options to charge faster with a battery life tradeoff. Let people make their own informed choices.

[zbrozek]

This sounds great. I would've loved to have set my phone to charge up to only 60% or 80% of its design capacity to reduce wear. I do this on my laptop.

[spockz]

It has been on iPhones for quite some while, but on androids even longer. Before that it was in the form of some smart charging scheme that it would only finish charging until the moment it thought you would unplug it.

[layer8]

It makes a bit of a difference, but not dramatically: https://youtu.be/kLS5Cg_yNdM?t=3m26

In that experiment, it’s also unclear if the 30% lower limit or the 80% upper limit is more important. I suspect the former.

[lxgr]

Anecdata, but I did this on my iPhone, and it did absolutely nothing for battery longevity compared to charging to 100% with "optimized charging" (which keeps it at 80% for as long as possible when charging overnight).

[stanac]

I charge my s25 to 80%. Previous phone (pixel) was also limited to 80%, but radio stopped working after 2 years so I had to buy a new phone.

[zormino]

Same for my s24, 80% battery limit and slow charging at night (most of my charging). It's been over 2 years and the battery seems to last just as long as day one

[fulafel]

Battery capacity of smartphones seems to double every ~8 years. The design space is adding more battery capacity, reducing battery life, or using less power.

[UltraSane]

Samsung phones let you limit them to 80% charge. I've had this enabled since I got my current phone.

[rootusrootus]

As do iPhones. I expect all flagship phones these days have the same ability.

[jhasse]

On Pixels too.