You should continue this experiment maybe a about 300 or 600 or why not 1000 charge cycles, because most people keep their phones around 2-3 years. Then we could see the drop in real life
@@elpolaco7654 this is just a gut feeling and also what I see around me. I could be completely wrong. At least many of my friends exhange the phone to a newer model when the battery degrades and the refurb company changes the battery anyway. In other situations the phones are just put into the droor and become backup phones. Also what I have come across a lot in my workplace and through my friends is that the main reason people change their phone after 2-3 years is because the battery has degraded so much, that "might as well buy a new one".
Would've been nice to see how limiting the max charge to 85% would've affected it since that is adviced for lithium batteries to increase the life span
I can tell you that. I charge my phone to 80% most of the time and never let it drop below 20%. Based on AccuBattery log after over 600 charge cycles, my battery is now at 87% health. My wife, however, never care about this stuffs. She would let the phone die then plug-in to charge over night. After the same use time (we bought our phones together in 2020), her phone got under 50% health and have to replace it last month because it was puffing up (it bend the back cover upward, that's how we know).
@@mrdzin1209 I left my battery die then charge overnight and had no issues, then again I turn off data, location, bluetooth, auto sync everything I can so most phones last 7-10 on days on average that I have owned, times I have had issues were when I say charged when a phone was over 30% full regardless if I left it charge to full or 80% the battery often was lucky to last 1 or 2 days despite what the percentage said.
Same here. My phone isn't quite sure, but it still has 85-90% capacity after a few years charging to 85% (it is still good to do a 100% charge every few cycles so the battery management system knows how much capacity it has)
As an electrical engineer at the start of my career, I can imagine some of the pains you had to go through for this video. Thanks for doing all this for the sake of free education!
@@ChristakyMe Research and Development in Electronics design. We design PCBs for customers and also do testing for them. Similar to what Scott did in this video. One of our most exciting (but also most painfull) projects is a capacitive touch controlled part for a automotive customer. I know that we have to go through a lot to get our diploma, but if you have fun seeing complex projects come alive and finally work as planned, it is worth it. You are on a way to learn things that most people use daily but do not know that they even exist. And it's a great feeling to be able to fix stuff that most people do not even know how to open. I'm from central Germany, in my area the field is booming like crazy. I basically applied to my dream job like "what could go wrong" (not even had my diploma) and got it right out of university. Can recommend it for sure to everyone seeing some fun in the work and the constant learning process.
you don't have to be a electrical engineer to know that designing a circuit then remaking it 5 times, then waiting 3 months then having to make only one TH-cam video is painful
Interesting study! Only one thing that had to be considered is that the fast charging current is in most cases reduced towards high state of charge. For example charging usually would start with 5A, then maybe 4A at 50% SoC, 3A at 70% and so on. Taking this into account should change a lot. If you additionally limit charging at let’s say 80-90% SoC, I would assume that you measure only minor lifetime difference vs 1A continuous 👍
that's likely to be the battery self-regulating more than it is active reduction by any limiting circuitry in the phone. batteries are like a sponge.. it's going to soak up most of the current right at the beginning but toward the end it will only sip current, regardless of how much you give it.
@@reanimationxp Actually, this comparison is to easy. If voltage is limited at e.g. 4.2V, current is automatically reduced when the sum of internal open circuit voltage and overvoltage (resistance times current) reaches the voltage limit. Nothing to to with a sponge. Before that, the battery draws just the set charge current. High current at high SoC still pushes the Anode potential towards 0V vs. Li/Li+, which is the onset of lithium plating resulting in heavy degradation. More details on google scholar -> lithium plating. This is why EVs charge slower (controlled) at high SoCs and so do recent Smartphones.
Whaty's great? If I understand right, he is charging the battery using constant current comletely ignoring built-in controllers that should prevent battery degradation and interpolates his results on this degradation. It seems completely incorrect and useless. Am I wrong?
For the inevitable longer experiment, check heat levels too. I’ve heard (and it feels true) that most of the battery damage comes from the heat caused by faster charging
Apparently most batteries hate heat. Good UPS batteries even have documentation on how temperature affects battery life and one in particular we had set in extreme environments mentioned that as temp got past 70ºC, lifespan approached zero. Since there were sensors in the battery compartment, a failure resulting in it cooking at 74-76C for a day and half corroborates the vendor documentation.
I charge on 67watts and a cooler into the back of the phone, had it for 2 years and I also did a battery drain and charge test on when I bought it vs yesterday. Bearly any difference only falls short of 24 minutes than when it was new. It just depends on how you take care of your things. If you know heat destroys battery lifespan then do something about it instead of complaining.
@@phillipbanes5484 Probably an OPPO with SuperVOOC or Xiaomi with 'HyperCharge' which is on retail phones at up to 120W and has been demonstrated at up to 290W at MWC23 back in Feb this year - it was able to fill a 4100mAh in just 5 minutes
Would be nice to use this circuit to also simulate leaving batteries at 100% charge versus 80-90% charge, as some phones now have the option to set a charging capacity limit.
th-cam.com/video/iMn2yVoEqPs/w-d-xo.html There's "Battery protect". Most likely charging between 20-80% would not have affected the battery at all (even with 5A).
Two extremely important aspects you forgot to consider is that most of these high wattage fast charging phones actually use 2 cell batteries with the power getting split between the 2, thereby increasing the charging speed as well improving the battery life. Secondly, towards the end of the charging cycle(around over 80%) the phone gradually reduces the current being sent to the battery and the last few percent is usually charged at a mere 1amp again to improve battery life. Also the battery is never fully charged or discharged either, a certain amount is kept as reserve to prevent deep discharge/overcharge. Hope you consider these in your future observations.
Splitting it into two cells can help however, the capacity of each cell is also lower (Half), so you can’t just push 2x as much current for example the C rating would be half for each cell. but I’m unsure as to the exact relation for those cells.
The battery would still have to accept the power. So I don't see how that would change anything. You just save the convert 12V to 3V step, or lower the ratio, making less losses in the eletronics.
@@erlendse You can place them in parallel instead of series, reducing the current on each cell. I am more interested on how muc hthe heat builtup causes damage as thats also a major aspect when charging.
Interesting video and results! However, I wanna add a thought from my usage pattern. Because fast-charging has significantly changed how I charge my phone. I think we all remember the early smartphone days where you had to charge your phone overnight. That also meant in probably spent a significant amount of time at 100%. For me, that meant I usually significantly drained my battery over the day (near 0%) and then charged it to 100% overnight. Nowadays with fast charging, at least for me, I don't charge overnight any more. I just plug in for half an hour here and half an hour there whenever I go below 20%/30%. And that means that my phone battery (most of the time) stays between 20% and 80% charge, basically never sitting at 100% or being drained to 0%. And from my understanding, modern Li-ion batteries really enjoy being in that 20-80% range instead of being pegged at 100% for hours on end. Maybe that would be something to also consider!
That's why I hugely support more phones starting to allow for charging limits and some apps that alert you when the battery percentage reaches a certain point so you can unplug it
also remember that 90% of iPhone users change phone every 2 years - so even with fast charge every day you lose about 20% of battery for this time... not that much
Depends on the person's routine still. I for instance, cant unplug the phone, cause I only have time to go immediately to sleep. But on the other hand, I use the native charge cap to 85% (android, and yes, most ppl dont know about it).
Good points. Personally I still mostly charge overnight but limited to 85% in software, so I have it ready on the next day where I can't always recharge.
I work in a battery lab. And i do these measurements. The real information comes from trendlines while charging and discharging. Meaning you have to log all the voltage readings ( 1sec interval). The degredation shows in how the voltage behaves during charge /discharge cycle. To really know the batterys internal stage we measure something called EIS (Elecrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy). That gives good knowlense about the chemichals inside the battery. A EIS measure system would actually be a good electronics project noe that I think of it :)
Wow, great job mate, finally someone did exactly that. I see your testing method is straightforward, but here are some notes: 1- Heat - > yours is exposed to air, cooling faster, while in real life scenarios, phone batteries are enclosed and heat faster for longer. 2- Usage while charging -> People use their phones while charging, adding cycles and stress as charging happen while discharging. More heat as well (as you are probably well aware). Just for the next time you might think to repeat the test :) Thanks again for the time and effort. Great work
I've always heard that the best way to preserve the battery is to keep the charge between 20-80%. I've often wondered if fast charging when you wake up is better than slow charging overnight. I would be interested to see another test done where you maybe compare fast charging between 20-80% cycles to slow charging cycles where the battery spends 7 hours at 100% per cycle.
@@lemon9.9 samsung phones have a feature called "protect battery" that hard limits the charge to 85% when enabled, and you can use this thing called "Bixby routines"(has nothing to do with the voice assistant) or "modes and routines" to enable or disable it automatically. you can also choose the charging speed and automate it which this method too.
@@lemon9.9 I wish phones allowed us to just permanently stop at 80% Phones nowadays have so much battery capacity that I'm not even using 50% over a day. I really do not need it charged to 100% unless I know I'm going on a trip or something.
@@TotoGeenen My Samsung A52 5G does exactly that (when the option is enabled), stops charging at 80% and will never go above unless you manually turn off that feature. All Samsung devices running Android 12+ (and the full version of OneUI not the "lite" version) should have that, don't know about IOS or stock Android on other devices. However it is not enabled by default and you have to go digging through the settings menus to find it.
It would be very interesting to see this experiment over the long-term (~12 months or so) with included data for the increased internal resistance measurements over this period (which is probably largest contributing factor to increased capacity degradation over time which increases with respect to higher charge and discharge rates).
Very interesting video. Hopefully you let it run for an additional 250 cycles to simulate a year en see if it behavior is linear, exponentially or other. Thanks for sharing!
@@greatscottlab It would also be interesting to charge the battery even faster, I've seen some android phones that can do a ridiculous 150w charging lol, which I would never do but would be interesting to see how quickly it kills the battery.
@@yotoprules9361 they may do 100+ W for a short period but mobile batteries have a C-rate so battery charger automatically sends controlled amount of current into the battery depending on the feedback from the cell protection circuit. one of my ex colleagues had a gaming mobile, that came with a 67 W charger. the battery capacity was totally damaged after 3-4 years, and i demonstrated that charging using my slow 10 W charger (or any slower 15 - 30 Watt charger) that his battery would last longer....he had no idea till then.....
Awesome! Some of the manufacturers know that fast charging only one cell is a problem, so they charge two cells with split current (Instead of 5A going directly to one battery, they split it so only 2.5A go to each), i think it is a nice way to overcome this and make the battery life least a bit longer. I would love to see a video about that, i love your channel
that does not make any sense at all... that's not the reason why some products have 2 cells... the space that 2 smaller cells would physically take up is equivalent to a single cell with twice the capacity... charging a 2.5Ah cell at 2.5A or charging a 5Ah cell at 5A is the same...
I think it's what most of us expected. I would be interested to see the results comparing the slow and fast charging over many more cycles to show a more realistic phone ownership duration of 3 years.
This guy's test is completely flawed. Quick chargers don't just increase the amperage as he did here, and they dynamically change the charging rate. His understanding of quick charging is wrong as his test results should be ignored.
Hi! Really nice content as always! I would just like to point out that the ageing behaviour of lithium batteries is linear only after a first period of "chemical balancing" inside the cells (which induces a streep drop in capacity). This means that in the first hundred of cycles, the capacity could degrade by even 5%, but then it would stabilize to a much lower (constant) degradation per cycle value.
@@isaacamante4633 that’s just part of the charging method, you charge it with constant current until you reach the voltage limit which is when the charging voltage reaches the max battery voltage, then you just charge it with constant voltage, the maximum battery voltage and as the battery fills up the current decreases.
@@conorstewart2214yep, the time needed to charge the battery to 80% to 100% could take more than 0% to 80% due to the huge drop on current flow! Some car manufacturers suggest charging batteries only to 80% if you are in a hurry or to preserve the battery lifespan!
@@MyNotSoHumbleOpinionMy phone, a OnePlus 7 Pro, learns your sleep schedule and then will charge to only 80% at the start of the night, finishing it up to 100% an hour or 2 before I get up.
Hearing that 3.55V is considered 0% makes me feel a lot better about all the times I let my phone discharge to stone dead flat - even with the slightly higher chemistry that shouldn't be *too* bad for the battery, and explains why my battery isn't completely dead lol
Not exactly that they just consider that voltage 0 just so it has some energy, its just any lower and there just isnt enough voltage to power the rest of the phone, so effectively for the purpose of using your phone, that voltage needs to be higher than 3.55 or it just wont work, hence 0%
@@OrwellianHellhole192 Thats just a side effect. Going any lower voltage will hurt the battery cell and degrade the chemistry inside. Phones will cut off slightly before that true 0% so they can still keep the date and time or be used as a car/door key using NFC. Unless there is an internal short or the discharge protection of the cell is faulty, it shouldnt happen
@@OrwellianHellhole192 What I'm getting at is that lithium ion batteries are generally considered to be safe to discharge to around 3V (or even less sometimes), which means that I don't need to be worried as much as people keep saying about damaging my battery by accidentally discharging to 0% semi regularly. Obviously 0% represents fully discharged as far as the phone is concerned but it's still within safe limits for battery longevity
@@CookieCraftMedia lipo batteries can discharge down to 3 V, so it is giving quite a large margin to make sure you don’t accidentally damage your battery. The minimum voltage could also be due to the required voltage of the electronics inside the phone. Like when powering 3.3 V minimum microcontrollers or sensors you can’t fully discharge a lipo or li-ion battery because the voltage goes too low.
Thank you very much for doing this. The only thing I’d suggest (other than continuing the experiment to reach 500 cycles at least) is you’re missing the heat aspect, faster charging produces more heat in the phone, which heats the battery, which I believe increases the rate of degradation
Love the option on lots of mobile phones to use your sleep schedule and slow charge at night time. Should be a standard feature, or at least optionally offer it to prompt for fast charge. More battery wear means more sales though..
Thanks for running these tests. I'd be very interested in seeing the results at 200, 500, 1000 cycles since the degradation is unlikely to be linear. I'd be even more interested in seeing the results of a similar test except comparing charging to 80% vs 100% rather than 1A vs 5A. My belief from personal experience is that keeping the battery between 20% & 80% SOC has a larger positive impact on battery longevity than anything else it is reasonable for an end-user to do, but I've never done any experimental testing.
8 layer PCB! Very cool! I remember using a dual layer copper plated boards that were mechanically etched with a lathe bit for my circuit boards! Kicking it very old school there.
11:27 great vid, love your project !! Two remarks: the capacity of _new_ li-ion batteries will degrade in the first few charges until the chemistry inside settles (something like that). So it can be very well that fast charging, this initial degradation is more than the slow charge, but over time the degradation of both fast and slow will be the same. Would be interesting to see your results in 1000 times or so. Second: at least my Sony Xperia phone has a battery management system that can control charging power depending on how full the battery is, and pauses at 80%, until it thinks you will use the phone in the morning based on previous use, and at the last moment finish the charge till 100%. These measurements will keep the battery in very good condition for a long time. Same as a Tesla car, it has very good battery management system, pre heat or pre cool the battery before charging, charge at high speed the first 30% or so, and slow down until the end, change til 80%, unless you need a long trip. Compare Tesla battery life time with that of a Nissan leave, you will be shocked! LiFePo batteries like to be fully discharged and fully charged, they are a bit less energy dense tho. To conclude, let us know the test results of a 1000 charges.. I'm curious 😊 Thumbs up from me here in the Netherlands 👍🏽
The Netherlands are a good adress if you want to replace a battery from the leaf or let it upgrade. I thought in Delft there is a company who offers this service. Here in Germany most repair garages dream in petrol yet. Anyway as a leaf owner I can confirm it, but Nissan hadn't learned from their experiences and built the successor also without battery cooling. Where you can run into issues on long trips with fast charging. At least we didn't decide to buy a new leaf for this reason and get a Hyundai EV.
@@matneu27 somebody, (I thought a guy from Finland?), "jail-broke" the Nissan Leave board computer, and recently made it open source. With that everybody can replace a Nissan leave battery... You need to search on it, but worth while if you own a leave. Tesla batteries are superior, the battery management is excellent, so these batteries last for a very very long time (don't count the few exceptions).. If you can get your hands on such car, you're golden 😉
I like your design for charging and discharging circuit. Although I would recommend using a single atmega328p to achieve 6 charge CV (4.35v) and 6 discharge (1A) using PWM and PFM techniques. The 6 analog pins can be multiplexed for additional 6 analog pins. The voltage and current(need op-amps) sensing can used to detect current and voltage for 6 separate batteries. This can make a single device that can charge and discharge individual cells. This would make the design simpler but it could come at a cost of extensive programing, and manual testing, instead of the purpose built IC. But awesome content and great info on testing batteries. Oh yeah, one more thing, the battery quality and chemistry might be different in commercial phones. Need to test broken phones and test against them.
I've not seen a video of yours for years and I'm surprised to see you in front of the camera, and also almost 2 million subscribers! Awesome progress, very proud of you 😊
Very interesting Video. I think in the phone the batteries only get charged with 5 amps for a short duration and the current gets lowered at around 80%. I think that makes quite a difference in the longevity. Also in Samsung phones the charging voltage gets lowered after a 1000 Charge cycles. That would be an interesting topic for an other video.
Yup, most OEMs put in various rules of when to start ‘fast charging’ and when to cut it off. From experience with iPhones it will only start if the charge state is below 50% and cuts off at 80%. As for charging cycles I’m fairly sure that most people aren’t doing a full 0 to 100 cycle each day. So partial charges have less impact on degradation. Having said that they still degrade, it’s just slower than what it used to be.
Wow. Amazing work. Please continue documenting charges over time (every 100 charge cycles) to track that sliding scale... would be really interesting to see how bad it gets over time. You have build something that is very practical! Great job! Love your videos!
This video couldn't have come at a better time. I mean it came right on time for when I've been reading up and researching about fast charging on phones and its effects on batteries for the past week. I must commend your effort, Great Scott. You've done amazingly well to have gone ahead to actually test what most of us have only theorized and speculated. I'm quite surprised at the results, though it wouldn't bring me to the same conclusion as you because I feel the time savings from fast charging is a whole lot more valuable than the ~11% battery capacity loss after ~2yrs. Especially since smartphone batteries can actually be replaced if and when it loses too much of its capacity. Thanks once again for this experiment, I hope you can continue with it to maybe present longer-term results of fast and slow charging.
Fast charge can be a good thing but if the amp is to high it can damage the battery, what most people dont know is that battery has maxinum charge rate that can fast charge a battery without damaging it, if you have a 12v battery you can fast charge it with a third 1/3 of the rated voltage, 1/3 of 12 is 4 so you add that 4 volt 12 and you get 16, a 5v battery would be 1.6v so you add 1.6 and you get 6.6v at about 1 or 2 amp.
This is so misleading most common fast chargers charge your phone 5v,9v,12 with only 1-3amps than those 5amps also those 3-5amps pretty sure they dont charge the whole battery for 3-5amps its smart to gradually lower its amp tru the whole charging. Also ive read that those battery that being charged with 5amps are like two batteries in one package so meaning 2.5amps per battery and its fast charging because you basically charging two batteries at the same time
I appreciate the amount of time you have put in this project and just wrapped it in 12 min video. You could have easily made in part and gained some money but you haven't. Thank you!!
Some comments probably already pointed that out but the results of this test won't really translate to smartphones' battery wear in real life. Most smartphones have different battery strain protection features that Scott didn't account for in the test *and didn't even mention.* Smartphones do not fast charge to 100%, they tend to switch to slow or regular at around 80% capacity. Also thw charging slows down if the battery temperature goes too high.
I agree, on my Samsung phones I always turn on charging limit to 85% (its part of user settings) and always try to charge before reaching very low values of battery.
Nice video. The difference is really visible. I would really like to see some more testing although it might be really difficult to build as I can see now. Maybe more real life scenarios like charging in the 20%-80% range or how charging voltage affects the battery life (some phones use 9V charging). And more cycles to check whether it's linear trend or it gets worse over time.
Yeah I would second this as well. As Samsung and other manufacturers are aware of this battery degradation and have take some steps to mitigate this. One of them is that by toggling a switch in battery options, it limits the max battery percentage to 85%, thus sparing your battery from the most damaging top part of the charging cycle.
The actual charge voltage will be around 3.5-4.3 volts like shown in the video, not 5 or 9 volts, that's the power supply voltage before it gets regulated for the battery
Thank you! I’ve been really waiting for someone to make a video on this! But just wanted to let you know, the most phones don’t fast charge at 5A. they instead charge at a lower amperage at a higher voltage.
Awesome experiment! But I have a question in mind: Modern smartphones makes use of means to reduce this effect, have you considered anything on those charging device, like "Trickle Charging", Battery Temperature control (Since the batteries will probably get warmer from each cicle from the constant 1A use), and Adaptive charging? If not, these are a few points you could explore in future videos for this experiment, cheers!
Really cool info. You should continue this experiment and also introduce new factors. There has been research that charging to only 80% will preserve battery life. If you limit the charging to 80% how would that affect battery capacity? Also was it the fast charging that hurt the battery capacity the most? How do batteries degrade if just using regular charging?
I think it just doesnt wear the battery. Most phones slow down charging after 60% or something because after a certain capacity the battery may be overloaded if charged too fast.
@@LKonstantina915 there's definitely still battery wear but not as much. Battery wear is apparently not linear. It hurts the battery significantly more when charging past 80%.
I do have some experience with charging and maintaining batteries and yes, fast charging hurts them. Its not such a big deal when you keep them cool but as the temperature rises, its a significant factor for longevity. Also keeping the battery in 70/30 or 80/20 SOC helps. If you dont aim for full capacity - eg you know you are not going to need every mWh from it, its a very good idea stick to such charging plan. Unfortunately mobile phone is to be kept at maximum, to be ready to go. Yes there are exceptions...
I charge on 67watts and a cooler into the back of the phone, had it for 2 years and I also did a battery drain and charge test on when I bought it vs yesterday. Bearly any difference only falls short of 24 minutes than when it was new. It just depends on how you take care of your things. If you know heat destroys battery lifespan then do something about it instead of complaining. Fast charging creats more heat yeah but at a short period of time. Again if we know heat was the problem then provide a cooler to stop that
I assume it's some Chinese phone with that charging speed, the fast charging they use is completely different from this set up and goes to much greater lengths to keep the battery cool while charging
Awesome that you actually did these tests. I love this video. Agree with some others asking for greater cycle counts, to maybe even see that degradation curve. More importantly for the readers, what he did was tiny compared to what damage some of y'all will inflict. Using your phone while charging(simultaneous charge/discharge), "topping" it off when at 80%, not fully charging before pulling it, etc..
Great video! I do think I would like to see this test with the charging curve that phones use these days. Many of them will charge at 5 amps until about 50% then lower to say 4 amp, then at 75% or 80% lower to 2-3 amp and for the last 5% charge at 1 amp. I think this does a LOT for the cell health. There is also the newer voltages offered by USB-C PD like 9v, etc. Additionally. My research in college on cells of this type showed that heat was the main factor in degradation in almost all scenarios. This is why I put my phone on a metal desk when fast charging if possible and after monitoring the battery temperature while charging, it now stays at the same temperature as if I was charging my phone at 1amp. There is also the new features that allow you to stop charging at 80-85% because the second biggest factor is taking a lithium cell up to 100% (and inversely down to 0%). This is more pronounced during long periods at a high state of charge so I think your test probably won't see the effect of that as much because you quickly start to discharge after charge reaches maximum. As others have mentioned, there is also a chemical break in or balancing period where there will be a slight upwards trend for the first few charges (if they weren't conditioned from the factory) then a steady and higher than average reduction in capacity until it levels out over 50-100 cycles. Lithium tech is complicated there's a LOT more tech going into charging your phone and laptop these days then "Just throw 5 amps at it".
I have been using 120W supercharging for a month now and I am using a program Accubattery From the first day the phone was opened out of the boxes It gives me data that the health of the battery is 95 percent, knowing that I do not let it drop below 10 percent, but charging is always 100 by 100
The 9v at the USB isn't fed straight to the battery. It's still charged at 3.5-4v for most of the charge cycle. The higher voltage on the USB port is to overcome the crappy think wires in a lot of USB charging cables and push more power at least current.
@@tin2001 Higher voltages are to get more Watts. Higher the voltage, lower the amps for same Watts. Not because of crappy wires, but in order to keep wires and connectors small. The connectors can only handle so much current, but much more voltage. In order to get 40W at typical 5V it would be 8A. So they bump the voltages up to lower the amps for the same Watts. 40W at 9V is only 5A, 40W at 20V is 2A etc.... And yes, of course there is a charge controller to limit what goes to the battery. Look up the PD specs for standardized voltages and currents, then of course some manufactures have their own as well.
I use the "Protect Battery" setting in my phone to only charge to 85%, I easily make it through a whole day anyway. I have however wondered if that actually does any difference. It would be interesting to see if that actually does anything to save the battery. Maybe a test you could do in the future? I saw you had the option on your phone at 11:52.
just look at this like that. you are using 85% of your battery thru your whole life so you get your 85% of your battery now and let say after 3 years. or you can use 100% of your battery when its new and it slowly degrade to 85% after 3 years. you are giving up this extra battery life for nothing. even if you won't sell it after 3 years and get a new phone, new battery for samsung cost (at samsung store) like what? 30-40USD? that's like $0.04 per day.
Max charging does degrade the battery faster. Tesla would only charge to 90% most of the time unless you say to charge to 100% for a trip. If you plan on keeping the phone for a long time this will help keep the battery going for longer. Everything is a trade off.
It would be interesting to know more about this. Some people mentioned a follow up video after more cycles, and I agree. How long does it take to cycle the cells? At around 4Ah, I am guessing that discharge is 4h and charge is either 4h or 48m, give or take. So around 800 hours for the 1A test (32 days), is that about right? I’m someone who keeps their phone for as long as possible (only upgrading when it break and repair is more than replacement) so I try to treat my batteries gently (charging my phone on an outright slow chargers overnight, like 0.25C rate or less.
I would love for you to call in more help and do much more extensive testing. Lets find out exactly what the best behavior is and how best to charge you phone, and how much each factor contributes to battery health.
Thank you so much for this great video. The 5A capacity drop isn't so bad over a year, and to be honest, who keeps their phone for more than a year these days!
Many thanks for video and the effort you was taking for that tests. It's always good to have things quantified. Yes, with fast charging batteries are aging quite a bit faster. However, I think through overheating or charging batteries in the cold would deteriorate the batteries faster. Maybe you could extend your test on that using your epic arrangement.
Good analysis! But my advice is just use your phone like it was designed and not worry about it. I think people worry too much over perfectly handling their device's batteries. I had a One Plus 7 Pro with 30W Warp charging and charged it almost daily with only about 18% loss over 4+ years. My new One Plus 11 Pro has 100W & 125W charging. The significant charging speed (25min) is a tradeoff I'm happy with. Will swap out the battery if it starts to have problems down the line.
Results like these feel really frustrating because so much effort goes in to seeing only a small difference. We all like to see large efdect sizes when we run experiments 😅 But thats also what makes this test so worthwhile, seeing that the effect size is not all that huge is a very useful bit of data! Thank you for spending the time and effort to put this together 🙏
I am always amazed at how much effort and work you invest. Thank you for the test, I've been interested in it for a long time but unfortunately don't have the hardware to test it myself.
Some manufactures use Adaptive Charging. When you charge your phone after 9 PM, with an active alarm set for 5-10 AM, your phone uses Adaptive charging, charging slowly to save your battery. Otherwise, your phone charges normally. The last two Pixel Phones I have had did this.
I have 4 years old phone that I always charged with 30W fast charging, a high current low voltage one from OnePlus. It's definitely doing pretty well still, 5-7 hours of screen on time is normal and the drop hasn't been massive from when the device was new, approximately 20% at max.
Very good, as always ! It would be interesting to see if the pattern persists after 100, 200, 300, 400 cycles. This would confirm the result (2% is not very much of a differrence, besides, do you know what is the uncertainty associated with capacity measure ?) Also, it would be nice to see if the original capacity can be "restored" by some slow charging cycles of the fast-charged batteries. This may seem a lot of questions but you've already made the hardest part of the work 🙂
Would be interesting to do the same test but with different levels of "discharged" state, I personally never let the battery go below around 50% and have yet to find a difference in my phones ability to retain charge, even if the fast charge's rated for 6A@120w
Liked this video. The battery will drop their capacity retention more than 30%, over period of time. There are many variables that too needs to be considered. Charging speed and discharging speed (current) is never constant when phone is in use. Charging beyond 80% and dis-charging beyond 5% is another variable. There are recommendations to charge phone such as turn off, not to use, etc which is practically very difficult in real world life. Also suggestion is not charge to its full capacity beyond 80% to retain capacity. But in actual if you see, the phone's battery operating voltage is 4.4v - max(100%) and min - 3.6v (2%). It is all due to dendrites that build during charging/discharging processes. Dendrites is one of the major root cause. I loved the video and admit amount of effort applied but good that attempted in this space. "See you next time...!!"
I'm not an expert here, but how would a two-battery system like my oneplus has be affected? Since fast charging is 6.5A and charging is done in parallel, would that mean 3.25A per battery and therefore less impact on the lifespan?
Batteries aging is influenced by a couple of factors: - Charging/Discarging speed: Calculated in relation to the capacity: A 5000mAh battery charging with 5A is a charging rate of 1C. Halving the battery size and halving the charging speed keeps the same relative speed, so the same aging. This is what is happening in the OnePlus phones. Yes, each individual battery is charged at half the absolute current, but at the same relative current as if you had one big battery. - Temperature: this is where using the dual battery system can help, as the charging speed is limited by the maximum aperage over the usb connector. Thus to get more speed you need to up the voltage. Then you would need to DC/DC convert it back down in the phones charging circuit to the charging voltage of one cell, or use two cells in series to have to do less conversion. This moves the losses out of the phone, resulting in less heat. OnePlus (Oppo) goes one step further und moves all voltage conversion to the power adapter, making it a real charger and not just a voltage supply like normal usb "chargers". It supplies the charging voltage for both batteries in series. - Battery cycles: keeping the battery between 80%-20% greatly extends the battery life - Age
Do you plan to extend the experiment beyond 100 charge cycles? I would like to see the long-term data and see if the trend really is linear. I am also interested in the temperatures of the battery and the potential effect of cooling them under fast charging conditions.
Great work. I can imagine how much work you put into this. I have wondered about the effect of fast charging and you did a great job of showing the effects. Thank you.
Working in a pc/mobile repair shop, I can tell you that most batteries hit 85% capacity between 2-3 years. Under 85%, people start complaining about short battery life. Below 80%, the battery is mostly unusable and will likely start swelling. If we resold a phone, it had to be above 85% or we’d replace the battery. People should get in the habit of replacing their batteries at two years, instead of replacing it. This info is good-for me it reiterates battery replacement after a few years.
Hi Scott! I've seen many of your videos cause I enjoy them very much! Thanks for putting all that effort into this one. Encourages me to achieve the projects I've got in mind. Regards, A Colombian living in Australia.
Observed 9v during fast charge with a samsung note 10. So not only an increase in current but with voltage as well. Burnt out a portable battery charger that did not support fast charging. Grabbed a quick circuit from aliexpress and recycled the li-po battery. It works!
I usually dont give likes but you deserve it. Lota of effort and a useful result. I can't imagine the pain thay it was to make all those circuits and debug everything
Should make the discharge amount random as well, not fully discharge. Since most don't fully discharge their phone before charging. This would get you a lot more cycles which probably matters most. Could have some temper on the randomness to make it still overall discharge the same amount over a certain number of cycles if you wanted, in case you think the random discharge amount could cause some cells to be unlucky and always have short discharge times. Neat video and topic, very interesting.
little tip for next battery test -high temperature damage the battery more than amount of charging procedures... older battery could have higher internal resistance , so there will be higher temperature during a charging time and speed of degradation will increase
I have a Samsung Galaxy S20+ 5G that I got in March 2020. Still lasts a day and a half on the original battery. 95% of charging has been done with Wireless charger that came bundled with the phone, as well as wireless charging in the Tesla Model 3.. Nice video, and great circuit design. I think 100 cycles is not enough. I usually do 500, or more, cycles when stressing my stuff that require some longevity to try to spot bad trends.
Great video that..... it's interesting to me, as I have always assumed that fast charging would shorten the lifespan of any rechargeable cell, therefore I always use a regular charger, over night, and also on a timer to simply charge the phone (typically) in 2-3 hours. In the morning it's always at 98-99% 3 years after purchase. I use a 4 port charger so I can also feed my partners phone, tablet and a smart watch :) Thanks for all the videos, inspirational.
I admire you for the hours you must have put in to deduce that a battery's performance deminishes over time. I see that many of the comments refer to a 20%-80% rule. I guess if we read/hear/repeat something often enough, especially on the internet, it a fact, right?
I have a Redmi Note 11 Pro with fast charging, I game with it so it dries faster, then charged up in less than 30 mins. Sometimes, I charge while gaming too, it heats up for sure but I've never came across to bloating or exploding and this is more than a year old in my possession. Never changed the charger too, still the same that came with the box.
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Great video! It's nice to see someone actually test this! IIRC, My phone fast charges to 80% and then "slow charges" to 100%. Maybe that would mitigate the issue. I'd be nice if you could try it one day!
What a great work you did amazing experiment But i should add some thing First of all the actual 5amp doesn't damage the battery its the heat that damages the battery Second is that charging to 100 and discharging to 0 with a normal charger is worse than charging to 80 and discharging to 20 with a fast charger
I agree with commenters saying this test ran too short. Lithium batteries from experience lose their first 10% faster and then gradually the SoH loss speed degreases. Not linear, and definitely not trending upwards. This does not mean I think fast charging does not hurt - I just think this test ran 1/3 of half a mile and extrapolated too much from it.
Also you forgott to incase the batterys to keep em warm, like in a actual phone. Then you see a bigger difference between 1A and 5A since heat is the biggest killer for batteries!
Great job, thank you! I believe many phones/computers now go to slower charging when at 80+%, some even when below 20% it slow charges first. Another thing to note/test, if you keep your phone cooler during fast charge, should have less negative effects on the battery.
I personally always use my older "slow" charger and use fast charger only when I forgot to charge or I have to leave my house in a hurry (I don't want to bother with power bank). As someone who prefer using phone to 3-5 years it helps to maintain phone battery until it is hitting 3-4 years mark. Also I try to keep my phone in 30-85% range if possible, especially at the beginning. Older it gets I the more I need all that power 😂 Also when phone is supercharging it heats up way more and if we add hot, weather, active use or high brightness (sometimes all 3 combined). I have to manage heat of my phone as it could hit 40C (100F) and knowing how nasty battery fires are I prefer to avoid it. I don't use wireless charging if possible as it wastes extra power into heat. It is nice experiment and video you made. Very well done.
You man are a god of electronics! I don't know if you are just you or a whole studio of people like other youtubers, but you give the impression that you could build anything! Big respect! And regarding this conclusion, I have one also, the best way to save battery life is to get rid of all Meta's apps (Instagram, messenger, facebook, even whatsap if possible). They are the ones silently killing our phones batteries. My Phone battery lasts twice after uninstalling their crapware.
Excellent video! Fast charging in Samsung uses 9v, not 5v. Samsung's Adaptive Fast Charging has a theoretical peak of 9V/2A (18W), while Super Fast Charging has a peak of 10V/4.5A (45W) with a travel adapter and 25W when plugged into a normal charger.
Which is exactly why Apple uses charge profiling so that the fast charge stops at a lower charge and falls back depending on your projected requirements. It would be interesting to test various profiles but that of course would be far more complex. None the less the results are interesting.
I'm on the third phone that comes with a fast charger and I'm still using my old Nokia 700mah charger with the new usb cables that came with said phones. No amount of marketing would ever convince me that more current wouldn't degrade the batteries faster, unless lipo/li-ion technology had changed drastically in recent years, which it didn't.
Lovely video. Fast charging and discharging build dendrites between anode and cathode inside the battery. Once they form degradation REALLY speeds up so i believe you are correct when you say battery degradation is not linear.
I've been fast charging my phone every night for a total of around 18 months now and I've only noticed a slight drop of battery efficiency after like 3 months of use, after that it's stayed pretty much the same. And still very good. (Samsung S22)
I have a LG G8 I bought 3 full years ago, I've fast charged it maybe 3-4 times then switched to a standard 2.4A 5V charger when I saw the battery in this phone was glued with a very strong, very hard to remove adhesive. The battery health indicator says it's at 100% to this day!
Most of the phone, tablet and small electronic device batteries are LCO (Lithium-Cobalt-Oxide). They are used for their high specific power and (until recently) availability and low cost. An LCO battery should ideally be charged with no more than 1C. Which means that a 3,000 mAh battery should be charged with no more than 3,000 mAh (if 5V is used, than 0.6A is max). C-rate of 0.8C is recommended for longevity. Unfortunately planned obsolescence is a thing... And keeping the costumes satisfied with fast charging at the expense of the battery life is more important to the manufacturer. Typical cycle life for LCO is 500-1000 depending on temperature, charging rate and depth of discharge. Newer batteries include nickel, manganese and/or aluminum that improves longevity, keeps the cost low and cobalt to a minimum or even non at all with LFP and LTO batteries. LCO have 60% Cobalt in the cathode... but no one cared that billions of electronic devices are thrown in the trash and never collected to be recycled. Many change their phone every year or use disposable electronic cigarettes. At the same time everyone looses their mind when EVs with 0-3% cobalt are mentioned. People are weird creatures... easily manipulated by a few fabricated articles and information taken out of context. EVs use NCA, NMC and LFP batteries that have much longer life and safety. (LFP can be punctured without going to dangerous thermal runaway.) Dirty hybrids use outdated NiMH and NiCd batteries that can discharge wiht high specific power but have extremely short cycle life and specific energy. - To be fair, a battery's degradation is most present in the first dozen of charging cycles or the first year of usage, than it levels off and degradation is slower. - Charge controllers use higher current when the state of charge (SOC) is low and limit the current when the SOC is higher. - Wireless chargers are convenient and charge relatively slowly but generate lots of excess heat. Tips for long battery life: - Keep your phone cool. - Avoid discharging to 0%. - If possible, avoid charging to 100% and keeping it plunged in for long periods of time. - Avoid fast charging if it's not needed. (At the end of the day, it's only a device that is meant to make out lives easier. You can always disregard those rules if it's necessary. But you should keep it to a minimum.)
I have a 7-8 year old phone (Galaxy S7) that has been my sole phone and source of internet for 4 years, and lighter phone usage before that. For the last 4 years, it's been cycled numerous times each day, but I don't let it go above 80% or below 20%. I do not just leave it on the charger until full ever. I do not let it get hot. I also intentionally charge it slowly, wirelessly, under a small fan. The battery is no doubt worn, but 7-8 years and thousands of cycles and it still holds a charge all day.
I have setup an automation routine on my Samsung phone that disables fast charging during night hours. The logic is simple. If I put my phone on the charger overnight, it has plenty of time to charge until morning. On the other hand, if I connect it during daytime, I'm likely in a hurry and want it charged quickly. I think this a good balance between care and convenience.
thank you for proving my theory and my charging habit was actually the best way to have healthier battery. Its great that Samsung phones does allow to turn off fast charging.
You kind of proved (with a lot of assumptions and too little test data) what we already knew from past real life observations and usage - if you want to maximize a battery's life expectancy, don't use it too aggressively. 😁 Pretty normal stuff. Now the way you tested and conducted that experiment is out of this world complicated and beautiful. 👌 Respect for all the hard work you've put in just to make an entertaining video for us! 👏🙏🙇♂
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You should continue this experiment maybe a about 300 or 600 or why not 1000 charge cycles, because most people keep their phones around 2-3 years. Then we could see the drop in real life
I will hopefully get to that :-)
@@greatscottlab do it! I am so interested
@@elpolaco7654 this is just a gut feeling and also what I see around me. I could be completely wrong. At least many of my friends exhange the phone to a newer model when the battery degrades and the refurb company changes the battery anyway. In other situations the phones are just put into the droor and become backup phones. Also what I have come across a lot in my workplace and through my friends is that the main reason people change their phone after 2-3 years is because the battery has degraded so much, that "might as well buy a new one".
@@elpolaco7654In Finland they throw it from a precipice into the ocean below...
If he would do that the bench would probably catch fire...
Would've been nice to see how limiting the max charge to 85% would've affected it since that is adviced for lithium batteries to increase the life span
I can tell you that. I charge my phone to 80% most of the time and never let it drop below 20%. Based on AccuBattery log after over 600 charge cycles, my battery is now at 87% health. My wife, however, never care about this stuffs. She would let the phone die then plug-in to charge over night. After the same use time (we bought our phones together in 2020), her phone got under 50% health and have to replace it last month because it was puffing up (it bend the back cover upward, that's how we know).
@@mrdzin1209 So a sample size of 1 per condition? Cool.
@@mrdzin1209 I left my battery die then charge overnight and had no issues, then again I turn off data, location, bluetooth, auto sync everything I can so most phones last 7-10 on days on average that I have owned, times I have had issues were when I say charged when a phone was over 30% full regardless if I left it charge to full or 80% the battery often was lucky to last 1 or 2 days despite what the percentage said.
my phone battery health is 85% after 6 years from only charging to 80%
Same here. My phone isn't quite sure, but it still has 85-90% capacity after a few years charging to 85% (it is still good to do a 100% charge every few cycles so the battery management system knows how much capacity it has)
As an electrical engineer at the start of my career, I can imagine some of the pains you had to go through for this video. Thanks for doing all this for the sake of free education!
I'm studying to become an electrical engineer. What kind of job did you get?
@@ChristakyMe Research and Development in Electronics design.
We design PCBs for customers and also do testing for them. Similar to what Scott did in this video.
One of our most exciting (but also most painfull) projects is a capacitive touch controlled part for a automotive customer.
I know that we have to go through a lot to get our diploma, but if you have fun seeing complex projects come alive and finally work as planned, it is worth it. You are on a way to learn things that most people use daily but do not know that they even exist. And it's a great feeling to be able to fix stuff that most people do not even know how to open.
I'm from central Germany, in my area the field is booming like crazy.
I basically applied to my dream job like "what could go wrong" (not even had my diploma) and got it right out of university.
Can recommend it for sure to everyone seeing some fun in the work and the constant learning process.
you don't have to be a electrical engineer to know that designing a circuit then remaking it 5 times, then waiting 3 months then having to make only one TH-cam video is painful
@@themastereal8345You do need some knowledge or you'll end up burning your house. By the way it's electronics.
@@ColdFireYTno, you won't burn your house with a 5 amp battery.
Interesting study! Only one thing that had to be considered is that the fast charging current is in most cases reduced towards high state of charge. For example charging usually would start with 5A, then maybe 4A at 50% SoC, 3A at 70% and so on. Taking this into account should change a lot. If you additionally limit charging at let’s say 80-90% SoC, I would assume that you measure only minor lifetime difference vs 1A continuous 👍
that's likely to be the battery self-regulating more than it is active reduction by any limiting circuitry in the phone. batteries are like a sponge.. it's going to soak up most of the current right at the beginning but toward the end it will only sip current, regardless of how much you give it.
@@reanimationxp Actually, this comparison is to easy. If voltage is limited at e.g. 4.2V, current is automatically reduced when the sum of internal open circuit voltage and overvoltage (resistance times current) reaches the voltage limit. Nothing to to with a sponge. Before that, the battery draws just the set charge current. High current at high SoC still pushes the Anode potential towards 0V vs. Li/Li+, which is the onset of lithium plating resulting in heavy degradation. More details on google scholar -> lithium plating. This is why EVs charge slower (controlled) at high SoCs and so do recent Smartphones.
use realme GT 3
Whaty's great? If I understand right, he is charging the battery using constant current comletely ignoring built-in controllers that should prevent battery degradation and interpolates his results on this degradation. It seems completely incorrect and useless. Am I wrong?
@@QwDragon You’re absolutely right.
For the inevitable longer experiment, check heat levels too.
I’ve heard (and it feels true) that most of the battery damage comes from the heat caused by faster charging
Apparently most batteries hate heat. Good UPS batteries even have documentation on how temperature affects battery life and one in particular we had set in extreme environments mentioned that as temp got past 70ºC, lifespan approached zero.
Since there were sensors in the battery compartment, a failure resulting in it cooking at 74-76C for a day and half corroborates the vendor documentation.
It feels true since it is true. It's been pretty well studied and proven that heat causes lithium ion batteries to degrade at a much faster rate.
I charge on 67watts and a cooler into the back of the phone, had it for 2 years and I also did a battery drain and charge test on when I bought it vs yesterday. Bearly any difference only falls short of 24 minutes than when it was new. It just depends on how you take care of your things. If you know heat destroys battery lifespan then do something about it instead of complaining.
@@phillipbanes5484 The Poco f3 GT
Been using it for a while
@@phillipbanes5484 Probably an OPPO with SuperVOOC or Xiaomi with 'HyperCharge' which is on retail phones at up to 120W and has been demonstrated at up to 290W at MWC23 back in Feb this year - it was able to fill a 4100mAh in just 5 minutes
Would be nice to use this circuit to also simulate leaving batteries at 100% charge versus 80-90% charge, as some phones now have the option to set a charging capacity limit.
Most phones only fast charge to I want to say 80% then do regular charging for the remainder
I would also be very interested in testing around this (and perhaps verifying at what charge levels fast charging reduces its amperage, if at all)
th-cam.com/video/iMn2yVoEqPs/w-d-xo.html There's "Battery protect". Most likely charging between 20-80% would not have affected the battery at all (even with 5A).
@@mrkukov I'd say at all may be an exaggeration but certainly greatly reduces any effects
My laptop stays at 70% charge with a setting and I disabled fast charge because it always stays plugged in anyway
Two extremely important aspects you forgot to consider is that most of these high wattage fast charging phones actually use 2 cell batteries with the power getting split between the 2, thereby increasing the charging speed as well improving the battery life. Secondly, towards the end of the charging cycle(around over 80%) the phone gradually reduces the current being sent to the battery and the last few percent is usually charged at a mere 1amp again to improve battery life. Also the battery is never fully charged or discharged either, a certain amount is kept as reserve to prevent deep discharge/overcharge. Hope you consider these in your future observations.
thats part of the charging curve of the battery ce;
thank you saw this on my feed and seemed a like a shit ton of click bait thanks for telling me what he didn't so I don't have to watch this
Splitting it into two cells can help however, the capacity of each cell is also lower (Half), so you can’t just push 2x as much current for example the C rating would be half for each cell. but I’m unsure as to the exact relation for those cells.
The battery would still have to accept the power. So I don't see how that would change anything.
You just save the convert 12V to 3V step, or lower the ratio, making less losses in the eletronics.
@@erlendse You can place them in parallel instead of series, reducing the current on each cell.
I am more interested on how muc hthe heat builtup causes damage as thats also a major aspect when charging.
Interesting video and results! However, I wanna add a thought from my usage pattern. Because fast-charging has significantly changed how I charge my phone. I think we all remember the early smartphone days where you had to charge your phone overnight. That also meant in probably spent a significant amount of time at 100%. For me, that meant I usually significantly drained my battery over the day (near 0%) and then charged it to 100% overnight. Nowadays with fast charging, at least for me, I don't charge overnight any more. I just plug in for half an hour here and half an hour there whenever I go below 20%/30%. And that means that my phone battery (most of the time) stays between 20% and 80% charge, basically never sitting at 100% or being drained to 0%. And from my understanding, modern Li-ion batteries really enjoy being in that 20-80% range instead of being pegged at 100% for hours on end. Maybe that would be something to also consider!
That's why I hugely support more phones starting to allow for charging limits and some apps that alert you when the battery percentage reaches a certain point so you can unplug it
also remember that 90% of iPhone users change phone every 2 years - so even with fast charge every day you lose about 20% of battery for this time... not that much
Depends on the person's routine still. I for instance, cant unplug the phone, cause I only have time to go immediately to sleep. But on the other hand, I use the native charge cap to 85% (android, and yes, most ppl dont know about it).
Good points. Personally I still mostly charge overnight but limited to 85% in software, so I have it ready on the next day where I can't always recharge.
I couldn't agree more! This would be awesome to see!!
I work in a battery lab. And i do these measurements. The real information comes from trendlines while charging and discharging. Meaning you have to log all the voltage readings ( 1sec interval). The degredation shows in how the voltage behaves during charge /discharge cycle. To really know the batterys internal stage we measure something called EIS (Elecrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy). That gives good knowlense about the chemichals inside the battery. A EIS measure system would actually be a good electronics project noe that I think of it :)
Wow, great job mate, finally someone did exactly that. I see your testing method is straightforward, but here are some notes:
1- Heat - > yours is exposed to air, cooling faster, while in real life scenarios, phone batteries are enclosed and heat faster for longer.
2- Usage while charging -> People use their phones while charging, adding cycles and stress as charging happen while discharging. More heat as well (as you are probably well aware).
Just for the next time you might think to repeat the test :)
Thanks again for the time and effort. Great work
I've always heard that the best way to preserve the battery is to keep the charge between 20-80%. I've often wondered if fast charging when you wake up is better than slow charging overnight. I would be interested to see another test done where you maybe compare fast charging between 20-80% cycles to slow charging cycles where the battery spends 7 hours at 100% per cycle.
Nowadays smartphone can charge up to 80% and stop automatically , then charge it up to full near the time you wake up at
@@lemon9.9 samsung phones have a feature called "protect battery" that hard limits the charge to 85% when enabled, and you can use this thing called "Bixby routines"(has nothing to do with the voice assistant) or "modes and routines" to enable or disable it automatically.
you can also choose the charging speed and automate it which this method too.
@@lemon9.9 I wish phones allowed us to just permanently stop at 80%
Phones nowadays have so much battery capacity that I'm not even using 50% over a day.
I really do not need it charged to 100% unless I know I'm going on a trip or something.
@@TotoGeenen thinkphone probably can do that
@@TotoGeenen My Samsung A52 5G does exactly that (when the option is enabled), stops charging at 80% and will never go above unless you manually turn off that feature. All Samsung devices running Android 12+ (and the full version of OneUI not the "lite" version) should have that, don't know about IOS or stock Android on other devices.
However it is not enabled by default and you have to go digging through the settings menus to find it.
It would be very interesting to see this experiment over the long-term (~12 months or so) with included data for the increased internal resistance measurements over this period (which is probably largest contributing factor to increased capacity degradation over time which increases with respect to higher charge and discharge rates).
Very interesting video. Hopefully you let it run for an additional 250 cycles to simulate a year en see if it behavior is linear, exponentially or other. Thanks for sharing!
I will try to do that :-)
@@greatscottlab It would also be interesting to charge the battery even faster, I've seen some android phones that can do a ridiculous 150w charging lol, which I would never do but would be interesting to see how quickly it kills the battery.
@@yotoprules9361 they may do 100+ W for a short period but mobile batteries have a C-rate so battery charger automatically sends controlled amount of current into the battery depending on the feedback from the cell protection circuit. one of my ex colleagues had a gaming mobile, that came with a 67 W charger. the battery capacity was totally damaged after 3-4 years, and i demonstrated that charging using my slow 10 W charger (or any slower 15 - 30 Watt charger) that his battery would last longer....he had no idea till then.....
Awesome! Some of the manufacturers know that fast charging only one cell is a problem, so they charge two cells with split current (Instead of 5A going directly to one battery, they split it so only 2.5A go to each), i think it is a nice way to overcome this and make the battery life least a bit longer.
I would love to see a video about that, i love your channel
that does not make any sense at all... that's not the reason why some products have 2 cells... the space that 2 smaller cells would physically take up is equivalent to a single cell with twice the capacity... charging a 2.5Ah cell at 2.5A or charging a 5Ah cell at 5A is the same...
I think it's what most of us expected. I would be interested to see the results comparing the slow and fast charging over many more cycles to show a more realistic phone ownership duration of 3 years.
This guy's test is completely flawed. Quick chargers don't just increase the amperage as he did here, and they dynamically change the charging rate. His understanding of quick charging is wrong as his test results should be ignored.
Hi! Really nice content as always!
I would just like to point out that the ageing behaviour of lithium batteries is linear only after a first period of "chemical balancing" inside the cells (which induces a streep drop in capacity). This means that in the first hundred of cycles, the capacity could degrade by even 5%, but then it would stabilize to a much lower (constant) degradation per cycle value.
Also, the charging is slowed when the charge is high or the battery is hot.
Good info would love for Great Scott to test this.
@@isaacamante4633 that’s just part of the charging method, you charge it with constant current until you reach the voltage limit which is when the charging voltage reaches the max battery voltage, then you just charge it with constant voltage, the maximum battery voltage and as the battery fills up the current decreases.
@@conorstewart2214yep, the time needed to charge the battery to 80% to 100% could take more than 0% to 80% due to the huge drop on current flow! Some car manufacturers suggest charging batteries only to 80% if you are in a hurry or to preserve the battery lifespan!
@@MyNotSoHumbleOpinionMy phone, a OnePlus 7 Pro, learns your sleep schedule and then will charge to only 80% at the start of the night, finishing it up to 100% an hour or 2 before I get up.
Hearing that 3.55V is considered 0% makes me feel a lot better about all the times I let my phone discharge to stone dead flat - even with the slightly higher chemistry that shouldn't be *too* bad for the battery, and explains why my battery isn't completely dead lol
The more you know :-)
Not exactly that they just consider that voltage 0 just so it has some energy, its just any lower and there just isnt enough voltage to power the rest of the phone, so effectively for the purpose of using your phone, that voltage needs to be higher than 3.55 or it just wont work, hence 0%
@@OrwellianHellhole192 Thats just a side effect. Going any lower voltage will hurt the battery cell and degrade the chemistry inside. Phones will cut off slightly before that true 0% so they can still keep the date and time or be used as a car/door key using NFC. Unless there is an internal short or the discharge protection of the cell is faulty, it shouldnt happen
@@OrwellianHellhole192 What I'm getting at is that lithium ion batteries are generally considered to be safe to discharge to around 3V (or even less sometimes), which means that I don't need to be worried as much as people keep saying about damaging my battery by accidentally discharging to 0% semi regularly. Obviously 0% represents fully discharged as far as the phone is concerned but it's still within safe limits for battery longevity
@@CookieCraftMedia lipo batteries can discharge down to 3 V, so it is giving quite a large margin to make sure you don’t accidentally damage your battery. The minimum voltage could also be due to the required voltage of the electronics inside the phone. Like when powering 3.3 V minimum microcontrollers or sensors you can’t fully discharge a lipo or li-ion battery because the voltage goes too low.
Thank you very much for doing this. The only thing I’d suggest (other than continuing the experiment to reach 500 cycles at least) is you’re missing the heat aspect, faster charging produces more heat in the phone, which heats the battery, which I believe increases the rate of degradation
No because the internal temperature sensors don’t allow the batteries to go over 70C.
This video is click bait for the stupid people 😂
BEEN FAST CHARGING MY SAME IPHONE for 4 1/2 years and the battery is fine and still hold a good charge.
Love the option on lots of mobile phones to use your sleep schedule and slow charge at night time. Should be a standard feature, or at least optionally offer it to prompt for fast charge. More battery wear means more sales though..
🎉use realme GT 3
Thanks for running these tests. I'd be very interested in seeing the results at 200, 500, 1000 cycles since the degradation is unlikely to be linear. I'd be even more interested in seeing the results of a similar test except comparing charging to 80% vs 100% rather than 1A vs 5A. My belief from personal experience is that keeping the battery between 20% & 80% SOC has a larger positive impact on battery longevity than anything else it is reasonable for an end-user to do, but I've never done any experimental testing.
Use use realme GT 3😊
8 layer PCB! Very cool! I remember using a dual layer copper plated boards that were mechanically etched with a lathe bit for my circuit boards! Kicking it very old school there.
Used to use ferric chloride back in the day to etch PCB.. 😊
It's a simple 4 layer board construction
11:27 great vid, love your project !!
Two remarks: the capacity of _new_ li-ion batteries will degrade in the first few charges until the chemistry inside settles (something like that). So it can be very well that fast charging, this initial degradation is more than the slow charge, but over time the degradation of both fast and slow will be the same. Would be interesting to see your results in 1000 times or so.
Second: at least my Sony Xperia phone has a battery management system that can control charging power depending on how full the battery is, and pauses at 80%, until it thinks you will use the phone in the morning based on previous use, and at the last moment finish the charge till 100%. These measurements will keep the battery in very good condition for a long time. Same as a Tesla car, it has very good battery management system, pre heat or pre cool the battery before charging, charge at high speed the first 30% or so, and slow down until the end, change til 80%, unless you need a long trip. Compare Tesla battery life time with that of a Nissan leave, you will be shocked! LiFePo batteries like to be fully discharged and fully charged, they are a bit less energy dense tho.
To conclude, let us know the test results of a 1000 charges.. I'm curious 😊
Thumbs up from me here in the Netherlands 👍🏽
Yes, Samsung does that too, also phones never fast charge to 100%, they charge slower after ~80% to avoid strain on battery.
The Netherlands are a good adress if you want to replace a battery from the leaf or let it upgrade. I thought in Delft there is a company who offers this service. Here in Germany most repair garages dream in petrol yet. Anyway as a leaf owner I can confirm it, but Nissan hadn't learned from their experiences and built the successor also without battery cooling. Where you can run into issues on long trips with fast charging. At least we didn't decide to buy a new leaf for this reason and get a Hyundai EV.
@@matneu27 somebody, (I thought a guy from Finland?), "jail-broke" the Nissan Leave board computer, and recently made it open source. With that everybody can replace a Nissan leave battery... You need to search on it, but worth while if you own a leave.
Tesla batteries are superior, the battery management is excellent, so these batteries last for a very very long time (don't count the few exceptions).. If you can get your hands on such car, you're golden 😉
I like your design for charging and discharging circuit. Although I would recommend using a single atmega328p to achieve 6 charge CV (4.35v) and 6 discharge (1A) using PWM and PFM techniques. The 6 analog pins can be multiplexed for additional 6 analog pins. The voltage and current(need op-amps) sensing can used to detect current and voltage for 6 separate batteries. This can make a single device that can charge and discharge individual cells. This would make the design simpler but it could come at a cost of extensive programing, and manual testing, instead of the purpose built IC. But awesome content and great info on testing batteries. Oh yeah, one more thing, the battery quality and chemistry might be different in commercial phones. Need to test broken phones and test against them.
I've not seen a video of yours for years and I'm surprised to see you in front of the camera, and also almost 2 million subscribers! Awesome progress, very proud of you 😊
Very interesting Video. I think in the phone the batteries only get charged with 5 amps for a short duration and the current gets lowered at around 80%. I think that makes quite a difference in the longevity. Also in Samsung phones the charging voltage gets lowered after a 1000 Charge cycles. That would be an interesting topic for an other video.
Yup, most OEMs put in various rules of when to start ‘fast charging’ and when to cut it off. From experience with iPhones it will only start if the charge state is below 50% and cuts off at 80%.
As for charging cycles I’m fairly sure that most people aren’t doing a full 0 to 100 cycle each day. So partial charges have less impact on degradation. Having said that they still degrade, it’s just slower than what it used to be.
Wow. Amazing work. Please continue documenting charges over time (every 100 charge cycles) to track that sliding scale... would be really interesting to see how bad it gets over time. You have build something that is very practical! Great job! Love your videos!
This video couldn't have come at a better time.
I mean it came right on time for when I've been reading up and researching about fast charging on phones and its effects on batteries for the past week.
I must commend your effort, Great Scott. You've done amazingly well to have gone ahead to actually test what most of us have only theorized and speculated. I'm quite surprised at the results, though it wouldn't bring me to the same conclusion as you because I feel the time savings from fast charging is a whole lot more valuable than the ~11% battery capacity loss after ~2yrs. Especially since smartphone batteries can actually be replaced if and when it loses too much of its capacity.
Thanks once again for this experiment, I hope you can continue with it to maybe present longer-term results of fast and slow charging.
Fast charge can be a good thing but if the amp is to high it can damage the battery, what most people dont know is that battery has maxinum charge rate that can fast charge a battery without damaging it, if you have a 12v battery you can fast charge it with a third 1/3 of the rated voltage, 1/3 of 12 is 4 so you add that 4 volt 12 and you get 16, a 5v battery would be 1.6v so you add 1.6 and you get 6.6v at about 1 or 2 amp.
This is so misleading most common fast chargers charge your phone 5v,9v,12 with only 1-3amps than those 5amps also those 3-5amps pretty sure they dont charge the whole battery for 3-5amps its smart to gradually lower its amp tru the whole charging. Also ive read that those battery that being charged with 5amps are like two batteries in one package so meaning 2.5amps per battery and its fast charging because you basically charging two batteries at the same time
That expired solder paste joke was pretty funny. I'm going to steal it; thanks!
I appreciate the amount of time you have put in this project and just wrapped it in 12 min video. You could have easily made in part and gained some money but you haven't. Thank you!!
Some comments probably already pointed that out but the results of this test won't really translate to smartphones' battery wear in real life. Most smartphones have different battery strain protection features that Scott didn't account for in the test *and didn't even mention.*
Smartphones do not fast charge to 100%, they tend to switch to slow or regular at around 80% capacity. Also thw charging slows down if the battery temperature goes too high.
Now do the same with only charging up to 80% and discharging to 20%, like manufacturers recommend.
Oh boy. Maybe one day....
I agree, on my Samsung phones I always turn on charging limit to 85% (its part of user settings) and always try to charge before reaching very low values of battery.
Nice video. The difference is really visible. I would really like to see some more testing although it might be really difficult to build as I can see now. Maybe more real life scenarios like charging in the 20%-80% range or how charging voltage affects the battery life (some phones use 9V charging). And more cycles to check whether it's linear trend or it gets worse over time.
Yeah I would second this as well. As Samsung and other manufacturers are aware of this battery degradation and have take some steps to mitigate this. One of them is that by toggling a switch in battery options, it limits the max battery percentage to 85%, thus sparing your battery from the most damaging top part of the charging cycle.
The actual charge voltage will be around 3.5-4.3 volts like shown in the video, not 5 or 9 volts, that's the power supply voltage before it gets regulated for the battery
I really appreciate these four months you took to make one video of 10 minutes. This is valuable information.
Thank you! I’ve been really waiting for someone to make a video on this! But just wanted to let you know, the most phones don’t fast charge at 5A. they instead charge at a lower amperage at a higher voltage.
It would be interesting to see what the outcome would be while keeping the battery between 20% - 80%
Awesome experiment! But I have a question in mind: Modern smartphones makes use of means to reduce this effect, have you considered anything on those charging device, like "Trickle Charging", Battery Temperature control (Since the batteries will probably get warmer from each cicle from the constant 1A use), and Adaptive charging? If not, these are a few points you could explore in future videos for this experiment, cheers!
Really cool info. You should continue this experiment and also introduce new factors. There has been research that charging to only 80% will preserve battery life. If you limit the charging to 80% how would that affect battery capacity? Also was it the fast charging that hurt the battery capacity the most? How do batteries degrade if just using regular charging?
I think it just doesnt wear the battery. Most phones slow down charging after 60% or something because after a certain capacity the battery may be overloaded if charged too fast.
@@LKonstantina915 there's definitely still battery wear but not as much. Battery wear is apparently not linear. It hurts the battery significantly more when charging past 80%.
I do have some experience with charging and maintaining batteries and yes, fast charging hurts them. Its not such a big deal when you keep them cool but as the temperature rises, its a significant factor for longevity. Also keeping the battery in 70/30 or 80/20 SOC helps. If you dont aim for full capacity - eg you know you are not going to need every mWh from it, its a very good idea stick to such charging plan. Unfortunately mobile phone is to be kept at maximum, to be ready to go. Yes there are exceptions...
I charge on 67watts and a cooler into the back of the phone, had it for 2 years and I also did a battery drain and charge test on when I bought it vs yesterday. Bearly any difference only falls short of 24 minutes than when it was new. It just depends on how you take care of your things. If you know heat destroys battery lifespan then do something about it instead of complaining. Fast charging creats more heat yeah but at a short period of time. Again if we know heat was the problem then provide a cooler to stop that
I assume it's some Chinese phone with that charging speed, the fast charging they use is completely different from this set up and goes to much greater lengths to keep the battery cool while charging
Awesome that you actually did these tests. I love this video.
Agree with some others asking for greater cycle counts, to maybe even see that degradation curve.
More importantly for the readers, what he did was tiny compared to what damage some of y'all will inflict.
Using your phone while charging(simultaneous charge/discharge), "topping" it off when at 80%, not fully charging before pulling it, etc..
Great video! I do think I would like to see this test with the charging curve that phones use these days. Many of them will charge at 5 amps until about 50% then lower to say 4 amp, then at 75% or 80% lower to 2-3 amp and for the last 5% charge at 1 amp. I think this does a LOT for the cell health. There is also the newer voltages offered by USB-C PD like 9v, etc. Additionally. My research in college on cells of this type showed that heat was the main factor in degradation in almost all scenarios. This is why I put my phone on a metal desk when fast charging if possible and after monitoring the battery temperature while charging, it now stays at the same temperature as if I was charging my phone at 1amp. There is also the new features that allow you to stop charging at 80-85% because the second biggest factor is taking a lithium cell up to 100% (and inversely down to 0%). This is more pronounced during long periods at a high state of charge so I think your test probably won't see the effect of that as much because you quickly start to discharge after charge reaches maximum. As others have mentioned, there is also a chemical break in or balancing period where there will be a slight upwards trend for the first few charges (if they weren't conditioned from the factory) then a steady and higher than average reduction in capacity until it levels out over 50-100 cycles. Lithium tech is complicated there's a LOT more tech going into charging your phone and laptop these days then "Just throw 5 amps at it".
Yeah, there was so much wrong with his method here.
I have been using 120W supercharging for a month now and I am using a program Accubattery From the first day the phone was opened out of the boxes It gives me data that the health of the battery is 95 percent, knowing that I do not let it drop below 10 percent, but charging is always 100 by 100
also you can limit the charging to 80-85% on some phones. I wonder how much it helps.
The 9v at the USB isn't fed straight to the battery. It's still charged at 3.5-4v for most of the charge cycle. The higher voltage on the USB port is to overcome the crappy think wires in a lot of USB charging cables and push more power at least current.
@@tin2001 Higher voltages are to get more Watts. Higher the voltage, lower the amps for same Watts. Not because of crappy wires, but in order to keep wires and connectors small. The connectors can only handle so much current, but much more voltage. In order to get 40W at typical 5V it would be 8A. So they bump the voltages up to lower the amps for the same Watts. 40W at 9V is only 5A, 40W at 20V is 2A etc.... And yes, of course there is a charge controller to limit what goes to the battery. Look up the PD specs for standardized voltages and currents, then of course some manufactures have their own as well.
I use the "Protect Battery" setting in my phone to only charge to 85%, I easily make it through a whole day anyway. I have however wondered if that actually does any difference. It would be interesting to see if that actually does anything to save the battery. Maybe a test you could do in the future? I saw you had the option on your phone at 11:52.
just look at this like that. you are using 85% of your battery thru your whole life so you get your 85% of your battery now and let say after 3 years. or you can use 100% of your battery when its new and it slowly degrade to 85% after 3 years. you are giving up this extra battery life for nothing. even if you won't sell it after 3 years and get a new phone, new battery for samsung cost (at samsung store) like what? 30-40USD? that's like $0.04 per day.
Max charging does degrade the battery faster. Tesla would only charge to 90% most of the time unless you say to charge to 100% for a trip. If you plan on keeping the phone for a long time this will help keep the battery going for longer. Everything is a trade off.
It would be interesting to know more about this. Some people mentioned a follow up video after more cycles, and I agree. How long does it take to cycle the cells? At around 4Ah, I am guessing that discharge is 4h and charge is either 4h or 48m, give or take. So around 800 hours for the 1A test (32 days), is that about right?
I’m someone who keeps their phone for as long as possible (only upgrading when it break and repair is more than replacement) so I try to treat my batteries gently (charging my phone on an outright slow chargers overnight, like 0.25C rate or less.
I would love for you to call in more help and do much more extensive testing. Lets find out exactly what the best behavior is and how best to charge you phone, and how much each factor contributes to battery health.
Thank you so much for this great video. The 5A capacity drop isn't so bad over a year, and to be honest, who keeps their phone for more than a year these days!
Thanks for the work you put into your videos
My pleasure!
Many thanks for video and the effort you was taking for that tests. It's always good to have things quantified. Yes, with fast charging batteries are aging quite a bit faster. However, I think through overheating or charging batteries in the cold would deteriorate the batteries faster. Maybe you could extend your test on that using your epic arrangement.
Great project. It would have been interesting to see the change in internal resistance over time.
use realme GT 3
Good analysis! But my advice is just use your phone like it was designed and not worry about it. I think people worry too much over perfectly handling their device's batteries. I had a One Plus 7 Pro with 30W Warp charging and charged it almost daily with only about 18% loss over 4+ years. My new One Plus 11 Pro has 100W & 125W charging. The significant charging speed (25min) is a tradeoff I'm happy with. Will swap out the battery if it starts to have problems down the line.
@5:06
I love development boards. 🤓
I have a small collection of them. Some are older than the part which is now obsolete.
Bruh, my old phone used to switch off with 5% battery remaining😂
Haha.....maybe don't fast charge though ;-)
5% is good i had my old iphone 6 crash with 60 to 80% remaining and then rebooting with 10% left
And that happened daily
Results like these feel really frustrating because so much effort goes in to seeing only a small difference. We all like to see large efdect sizes when we run experiments 😅
But thats also what makes this test so worthwhile, seeing that the effect size is not all that huge is a very useful bit of data!
Thank you for spending the time and effort to put this together 🙏
I am always amazed at how much effort and work you invest. Thank you for the test, I've been interested in it for a long time but unfortunately don't have the hardware to test it myself.
Some manufactures use Adaptive Charging. When you charge your phone after 9 PM, with an active alarm set for 5-10 AM, your phone uses Adaptive charging, charging slowly to save your battery. Otherwise, your phone charges normally. The last two Pixel Phones I have had did this.
I have 4 years old phone that I always charged with 30W fast charging, a high current low voltage one from OnePlus.
It's definitely doing pretty well still, 5-7 hours of screen on time is normal and the drop hasn't been massive from when the device was new, approximately 20% at max.
Same with me
please test 20-80% as well !
Oh boy. That would be another long test series as well.....
@@greatscottlab 3 videos, 3 views and comments from me, does that sound like a good deal?
Very good, as always ! It would be interesting to see if the pattern persists after 100, 200, 300, 400 cycles. This would confirm the result (2% is not very much of a differrence, besides, do you know what is the uncertainty associated with capacity measure ?)
Also, it would be nice to see if the original capacity can be "restored" by some slow charging cycles of the fast-charged batteries.
This may seem a lot of questions but you've already made the hardest part of the work 🙂
Would be interesting to do the same test but with different levels of "discharged" state, I personally never let the battery go below around 50% and have yet to find a difference in my phones ability to retain charge, even if the fast charge's rated for 6A@120w
Holding the capacity between 30 and 80% would be better
Sounds interesting; but also like a ton of extra work....
@@greatscottlab can't you just change the charge/discharge triggers in the arduino code ?
@@wojtek-33I use that feature all the time and I occasionally superfast charge it up to that 85% in 45 min from almost dead
@@wojtek-33 I am assuming on newer phones? My S9 doesn't have this option.
Liked this video. The battery will drop their capacity retention more than 30%, over period of time. There are many variables that too needs to be considered. Charging speed and discharging speed (current) is never constant when phone is in use. Charging beyond 80% and dis-charging beyond 5% is another variable. There are recommendations to charge phone such as turn off, not to use, etc which is practically very difficult in real world life. Also suggestion is not charge to its full capacity beyond 80% to retain capacity. But in actual if you see, the phone's battery operating voltage is 4.4v - max(100%) and min - 3.6v (2%). It is all due to dendrites that build during charging/discharging processes. Dendrites is one of the major root cause.
I loved the video and admit amount of effort applied but good that attempted in this space. "See you next time...!!"
Now its time for the 20% - 85% charge cycle tests of battery life to comparing full battery drain vs regulated
I'm not an expert here, but how would a two-battery system like my oneplus has be affected? Since fast charging is 6.5A and charging is done in parallel, would that mean 3.25A per battery and therefore less impact on the lifespan?
Batteries aging is influenced by a couple of factors:
- Charging/Discarging speed: Calculated in relation to the capacity: A 5000mAh battery charging with 5A is a charging rate of 1C. Halving the battery size and halving the charging speed keeps the same relative speed, so the same aging. This is what is happening in the OnePlus phones. Yes, each individual battery is charged at half the absolute current, but at the same relative current as if you had one big battery.
- Temperature: this is where using the dual battery system can help, as the charging speed is limited by the maximum aperage over the usb connector. Thus to get more speed you need to up the voltage. Then you would need to DC/DC convert it back down in the phones charging circuit to the charging voltage of one cell, or use two cells in series to have to do less conversion. This moves the losses out of the phone, resulting in less heat. OnePlus (Oppo) goes one step further und moves all voltage conversion to the power adapter, making it a real charger and not just a voltage supply like normal usb "chargers". It supplies the charging voltage for both batteries in series.
- Battery cycles: keeping the battery between 80%-20% greatly extends the battery life
- Age
Two battery phones are usually in series My current phone is like that
Like right now it says 7.870volt on my battery
Do you plan to extend the experiment beyond 100 charge cycles? I would like to see the long-term data and see if the trend really is linear.
I am also interested in the temperatures of the battery and the potential effect of cooling them under fast charging conditions.
Spoiler, the 5a batteries were hotter, and likely heating the 1a batteries would’ve degraded them too. Battery University has a lot of information.
Great work. I can imagine how much work you put into this. I have wondered about the effect of fast charging and you did a great job of showing the effects. Thank you.
Working in a pc/mobile repair shop, I can tell you that most batteries hit 85% capacity between 2-3 years. Under 85%, people start complaining about short battery life. Below 80%, the battery is mostly unusable and will likely start swelling. If we resold a phone, it had to be above 85% or we’d replace the battery.
People should get in the habit of replacing their batteries at two years, instead of replacing it. This info is good-for me it reiterates battery replacement after a few years.
Hi Scott! I've seen many of your videos cause I enjoy them very much! Thanks for putting all that effort into this one. Encourages me to achieve the projects I've got in mind.
Regards,
A Colombian living in Australia.
Observed 9v during fast charge with a samsung note 10. So not only an increase in current but with voltage as well. Burnt out a portable battery charger that did not support fast charging. Grabbed a quick circuit from aliexpress and recycled the li-po battery. It works!
There are lots of video about about fast charging, but this one is with soome solid experiments. Great job man
I usually dont give likes but you deserve it. Lota of effort and a useful result.
I can't imagine the pain thay it was to make all those circuits and debug everything
Should make the discharge amount random as well, not fully discharge. Since most don't fully discharge their phone before charging. This would get you a lot more cycles which probably matters most.
Could have some temper on the randomness to make it still overall discharge the same amount over a certain number of cycles if you wanted, in case you think the random discharge amount could cause some cells to be unlucky and always have short discharge times.
Neat video and topic, very interesting.
little tip for next battery test -high temperature damage the battery more than amount of charging procedures... older battery could have higher internal resistance , so there will be higher temperature during a charging time and speed of degradation will increase
I have a Samsung Galaxy S20+ 5G that I got in March 2020. Still lasts a day and a half on the original battery. 95% of charging has been done with Wireless charger that came bundled with the phone, as well as wireless charging in the Tesla Model 3.. Nice video, and great circuit design. I think 100 cycles is not enough. I usually do 500, or more, cycles when stressing my stuff that require some longevity to try to spot bad trends.
Great video that..... it's interesting to me, as I have always assumed that fast charging would shorten the lifespan of any rechargeable cell, therefore I always use a regular charger, over night, and also on a timer to simply charge the phone (typically) in 2-3 hours. In the morning it's always at 98-99% 3 years after purchase. I use a 4 port charger so I can also feed my partners phone, tablet and a smart watch :) Thanks for all the videos, inspirational.
I admire you for the hours you must have put in to deduce that a battery's performance deminishes over time. I see that many of the comments refer to a 20%-80% rule. I guess if we read/hear/repeat something often enough, especially on the internet, it a fact, right?
Evidently a LOT of work went into making this very educational and well designed experiment / video.
Thank you for your work ethic and hard work!
I have a Redmi Note 11 Pro with fast charging, I game with it so it dries faster, then charged up in less than 30 mins.
Sometimes, I charge while gaming too, it heats up for sure but I've never came across to bloating or exploding and this is more than a year old in my possession.
Never changed the charger too, still the same that came with the box.
Great video! It's nice to see someone actually test this!
IIRC, My phone fast charges to 80% and then "slow charges" to 100%. Maybe that would mitigate the issue. I'd be nice if you could try it one day!
What a great work you did amazing experiment
But i should add some thing
First of all the actual 5amp doesn't damage the battery its the heat that damages the battery
Second is that charging to 100 and discharging to 0 with a normal charger is worse than charging to 80 and discharging to 20 with a fast charger
I agree with commenters saying this test ran too short. Lithium batteries from experience lose their first 10% faster and then gradually the SoH loss speed degreases. Not linear, and definitely not trending upwards. This does not mean I think fast charging does not hurt - I just think this test ran 1/3 of half a mile and extrapolated too much from it.
Thanks for the exciting experiment! Will continue fast charging my phone in the morning, as my average use is 2-3 years.
Also you forgott to incase the batterys to keep em warm, like in a actual phone. Then you see a bigger difference between 1A and 5A since heat is the biggest killer for batteries!
Great job, thank you! I believe many phones/computers now go to slower charging when at 80+%, some even when below 20% it slow charges first.
Another thing to note/test, if you keep your phone cooler during fast charge, should have less negative effects on the battery.
I personally always use my older "slow" charger and use fast charger only when I forgot to charge or I have to leave my house in a hurry (I don't want to bother with power bank).
As someone who prefer using phone to 3-5 years it helps to maintain phone battery until it is hitting 3-4 years mark.
Also I try to keep my phone in 30-85% range if possible, especially at the beginning.
Older it gets I the more I need all that power 😂
Also when phone is supercharging it heats up way more and if we add hot, weather, active use or high brightness (sometimes all 3 combined).
I have to manage heat of my phone as it could hit 40C (100F) and knowing how nasty battery fires are I prefer to avoid it.
I don't use wireless charging if possible as it wastes extra power into heat.
It is nice experiment and video you made. Very well done.
You man are a god of electronics! I don't know if you are just you or a whole studio of people like other youtubers, but you give the impression that you could build anything! Big respect!
And regarding this conclusion, I have one also, the best way to save battery life is to get rid of all Meta's apps (Instagram, messenger, facebook, even whatsap if possible). They are the ones silently killing our phones batteries. My Phone battery lasts twice after uninstalling their crapware.
Excellent video! Fast charging in Samsung uses 9v, not 5v.
Samsung's Adaptive Fast Charging has a theoretical peak of 9V/2A (18W), while Super Fast Charging has a peak of 10V/4.5A (45W) with a travel adapter and 25W when plugged into a normal charger.
Which is exactly why Apple uses charge profiling so that the fast charge stops at a lower charge and falls back depending on your projected requirements. It would be interesting to test various profiles but that of course would be far more complex. None the less the results are interesting.
I'm on the third phone that comes with a fast charger and I'm still using my old Nokia 700mah charger with the new usb cables that came with said phones. No amount of marketing would ever convince me that more current wouldn't degrade the batteries faster, unless lipo/li-ion technology had changed drastically in recent years, which it didn't.
Lovely video. Fast charging and discharging build dendrites between anode and cathode inside the battery. Once they form degradation REALLY speeds up so i believe you are correct when you say battery degradation is not linear.
I've been fast charging my phone every night for a total of around 18 months now and I've only noticed a slight drop of battery efficiency after like 3 months of use, after that it's stayed pretty much the same. And still very good. (Samsung S22)
Shhh don’t let people know his videos are clickbait for the stupid people 😂
I have a LG G8 I bought 3 full years ago, I've fast charged it maybe 3-4 times then switched to a standard 2.4A 5V charger when I saw the battery in this phone was glued with a very strong, very hard to remove adhesive.
The battery health indicator says it's at 100% to this day!
Degradation in EV's Li-ion batteries is well examined and it is not linear. Most as new and then the curve flattens and becomes almost horizontal.
Most of the phone, tablet and small electronic device batteries are LCO (Lithium-Cobalt-Oxide). They are used for their high specific power and (until recently) availability and low cost.
An LCO battery should ideally be charged with no more than 1C. Which means that a 3,000 mAh battery should be charged with no more than 3,000 mAh (if 5V is used, than 0.6A is max). C-rate of 0.8C is recommended for longevity. Unfortunately planned obsolescence is a thing... And keeping the costumes satisfied with fast charging at the expense of the battery life is more important to the manufacturer.
Typical cycle life for LCO is 500-1000 depending on temperature, charging rate and depth of discharge.
Newer batteries include nickel, manganese and/or aluminum that improves longevity, keeps the cost low and cobalt to a minimum or even non at all with LFP and LTO batteries.
LCO have 60% Cobalt in the cathode... but no one cared that billions of electronic devices are thrown in the trash and never collected to be recycled. Many change their phone every year or use disposable electronic cigarettes. At the same time everyone looses their mind when EVs with 0-3% cobalt are mentioned. People are weird creatures... easily manipulated by a few fabricated articles and information taken out of context. EVs use NCA, NMC and LFP batteries that have much longer life and safety. (LFP can be punctured without going to dangerous thermal runaway.)
Dirty hybrids use outdated NiMH and NiCd batteries that can discharge wiht high specific power but have extremely short cycle life and specific energy.
- To be fair, a battery's degradation is most present in the first dozen of charging cycles or the first year of usage, than it levels off and degradation is slower.
- Charge controllers use higher current when the state of charge (SOC) is low and limit the current when the SOC is higher.
- Wireless chargers are convenient and charge relatively slowly but generate lots of excess heat.
Tips for long battery life:
- Keep your phone cool.
- Avoid discharging to 0%.
- If possible, avoid charging to 100% and keeping it plunged in for long periods of time.
- Avoid fast charging if it's not needed.
(At the end of the day, it's only a device that is meant to make out lives easier. You can always disregard those rules if it's necessary. But you should keep it to a minimum.)
I can't believe u did all that work.!!
Man u ar a genius...
I have a 7-8 year old phone (Galaxy S7) that has been my sole phone and source of internet for 4 years, and lighter phone usage before that. For the last 4 years, it's been cycled numerous times each day, but I don't let it go above 80% or below 20%. I do not just leave it on the charger until full ever. I do not let it get hot.
I also intentionally charge it slowly, wirelessly, under a small fan. The battery is no doubt worn, but 7-8 years and thousands of cycles and it still holds a charge all day.
Your tiny experiment here definitely showed those thousands of hours phone manufacturers put into testing their devices!
Really proved them wrong.
I have setup an automation routine on my Samsung phone that disables fast charging during night hours. The logic is simple. If I put my phone on the charger overnight, it has plenty of time to charge until morning. On the other hand, if I connect it during daytime, I'm likely in a hurry and want it charged quickly. I think this a good balance between care and convenience.
thank you for proving my theory and my charging habit was actually the best way to have healthier battery. Its great that Samsung phones does allow to turn off fast charging.
You kind of proved (with a lot of assumptions and too little test data) what we already knew from past real life observations and usage - if you want to maximize a battery's life expectancy, don't use it too aggressively. 😁 Pretty normal stuff. Now the way you tested and conducted that experiment is out of this world complicated and beautiful. 👌 Respect for all the hard work you've put in just to make an entertaining video for us! 👏🙏🙇♂
Finally, someone does this ❤. Stop overpraising supafast charging!
Finally someone did it and it was a legitimate electronics channel.
Great video as always! Anytime you post a video, I make sure to watch the whole thing through. One of the best on YT for sure.