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Sony To Boost Smartphone Batteries Because People Aren't Replacing Phones (theguardian.com)
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.
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.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
That also worked well, and didn't require some hopefully-accurate battery-watching algorithm.
I'm typing this on my 6 year old iPhone and the battery works just fi
So much so, they said it twice!
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.
"I'll go get the papers, get the papers."
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.
lol, i can't remember to charge my old flip-phone each WEEK much less twice a day like my cohort. Guess that means I don't over charge it at least...the battery is now 7 years old and almost down to 6 days between charges :)
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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
For a second I thought I was losing it, reading the same line over and over.
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.
[Insert pithy quote here]
... 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 supporting their phone OS's for longer than 2/3 years. Otherwise, it opens a niche for a competitor who will.
My iPod Touch (1st Gen) lasted eight years before the battery gave out. I replaced it with an iPhone 6s. I typically upgrade my cellphone every three years or so. I'm in no rush to upgrade any time soon. If the iPhone last eight years, I'll be very happy.
Sounds like a marketing statement to me. They want us to buy new stuff often; why would they put effort into increasing the life span? The only reason I can see is if the competition is better and they are afraid that customers will chose another brand next time.
If they want to support prolonged ownership of a device, then they should provide security and, preferably, os version upgrades for the same time. That I would pay for (Apple owners do, but I'm in the Android echosystem).
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.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I like this idea in general, but it has some problems. If people are getting up early for that transpacific flight and pull their phone off the charger only to discover that it is at 50% they are not going to be happy. There needs to be a button you can press that says "go ahead and full charge right now", but even that is something you'll have to remember to do the night before. I guess if it's really smart it would check your calendar or email to discover that you're about to head out on travel and fully charge, but that starts to get creepy. It's like thinking 'I could go for some Ice Cream", so you open up Google maps and type b and it autocompletes to Baskin Robins.
I read the internet for the articles.
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 more power or less.
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.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I'd rather charge to 100% in case I'm out and about and need my phone to stay alive.
I don't care if it impacts battery life. I'll the battery starts to die I'll just put in another one.
Of course this is only possible if your phone has a replaceable battery ...
I'm sick and tired of these hip, "ironic" sigs. This is an actual, honest-to-goodness no-nonsense sig!
I have a chunky little Samsung Brightside that's about 5 years old. It's got a replaceable battery, a memory card slot, and a slide-out keyboard. It's about the size of an Altoids box. It's been dropped dozens of times with no ill effects. When my younger friends see it (I am older than *everybody*) they're amazed: they see it as having the perfect form-factor. I've been waiting for someone to build a smart phone with a similar form factor, replaceable battery, memory slot, and keyboard but it looks like that isn't going to happen anytime soon.
Three years and original battery still charging fine.
And if I have to, I can change the battery.
There is an even simpler solution which does not put a limit on the lifetime at all: make the battery replaceable and sell replacements. You know, like everyone used to do 5+ years ago.
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.
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.
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.
| I don't have many games, but I never really did enjoy gaming on a touch screen anyway."
There you have it. I don't like games either and my el cheapo roboto lasts four days on a single charge. If you're not using your phone to play stuff like games or HEVC videos (unless the phone SoC has a built-in decoder for that). your phone is gong to last a long long time
Make the battery replaceable.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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 to gouge me out of money I don't have to throw at completely unnecessary "upgrades".
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
My Sony Xperia Z is 3 1/2 years old now. I recharge at night, and I have not noticed any degradation of the charge yet. and I usually have more than 50% left at the end of the day. So I don't see the problem.
At least on my generation of Prius hybrid (and probably others), the ScC (state of charge) is "inaccurately" reported on the user display. When it shows all bars, the traction battery is charged to 80% and when it shows "empty" it's really at 20%. By managing user's expectations they think the battery fully charged or fully empty.
By carefully managing the SoC, Toyota (and others) are able to guarantee the battery for 10 years. (Slightly different as the traction battery is not a LION battery, but same theory.)
And the battery is replaceable, but rather expensive (in absolute dollars, but not as a percent of the overall "device" cost.)
I'm fed up with the constant removal of useful features from cell phones.
-Fits in the palm of your hand! (screen size < 4.5" for one-handed use (in my case anyway, maybe I have Trump hands?))
-Supports SD cards for storage expansion!
-Easily replaceable battery! (both to get new batteries but also to carry more than one)
-Wireless charging - just set it down and it stays charged!
-Standard USB port so you can use USB accessories like keyboards, mice, game controllers, and thumbdrives! (OTG)
-Standard audio jack so it works with all audio accessories!
I've begrudgingly sacrificed most of these features, but I'm holding the line on the headphone jack. In fact, I recently installed Cyanogenmod to get Marshmallow on my wife's old Galaxy S2, a 5-year old phone. My Google Nexus 4 is still stuck on Lollipop. The S2 supports SD cards, and I can get a new battery on Amazon for 10USD (including same-day delivery).
I would pay full price in a heartbeat for a phone that had all the features from the above list, all of which I have made use of with various different devices. Now I find myself hacking and modding to keep old devices alive (I've replaced the screen on the Nexus4 twice) just for their superior features.
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