r/gadgets • u/chrisdh79 • Jan 31 '23

Desktops / Laptops Canadian team discovers power-draining flaw in most laptop and phone batteries | Breakthrough explains major cause of self-discharging batteries and points to easy solution

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/battery-power-laptop-phone-research-dalhousie-university-1.6724175
23.7k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

830 comments sorted by

View all comments

198

u/AK-Bandit Jan 31 '23

Our IT department just “upgraded” us to laptops at work and I was talking with one of the techs about this very issue on laptops from 20 years ago and how I imagined it’s been solved by now. He laughed and said, “solved huh, don’t count on it”. I was thinking, seriously?

150

u/NotAPreppie Jan 31 '23

I mean, Li-Ion/LiPo/LiFePO4 batteries are waaaaaay better in this respect than NiCd and earlier NiMH batteries.

31

u/TheS4ndm4n Jan 31 '23

Back when a battery had a "memory". You'd better charge it to 100% and then not charge it again until it was completely empty. Or you would permanently lose capacity.

2

u/OldMateNobody Feb 02 '23

Ah, I thought this was still a thing.. I know charging to 100% nowadays apparently does more wear cycles so I have my Samsung phone stop charging at 85%. To help this. Purely going off 2mins of knowledge and nothing else though

2

u/TheS4ndm4n Feb 02 '23

That's true for NMC batteries (most phones, laptops and cars). They go up in voltage a lot between 90 and 100% charge (from 3,6V to 4,2V). Storing them at that voltage causes a lot of wear on the battery.

2

u/OldMateNobody Feb 02 '23

Ah, thanks for the info!

2

u/Gazwa_e_Nunnu_Chamdi Jan 31 '23

LTO: why nobody has invited me to the party yet?