On 11/07/2022 22.16, gumb wrote:
I've heard and read many a time over recent years that the way batteries should be charged has changed. I've always been someone who lets devices run right down as low as I can before charging them back up to 100%.
Well, battery chemistry has changed. That strategy was recommended for Ni-Cd ones, to avoid the "memory" effect they had.
With one or two exceptions, this strategy still seems to work remarkably well for me, regardless of what others say. My previous Nokia phone would run for days under each charge, my current Android one goes five days or more between charges (I'm a light phone user), but conscious of this continual hounding from random people who may or may not be tech-inclined, and having both a laptop and a phone that offer flexi-charging options, I decided maybe I should change that strategy.
I charged my last 3 phones by leaving them connected the whole night on a slow charger: works perfect, no adverse effects, they all live long lives and still do. Only the oldest, maybe 8 year old, is suffering of old age. My later phone controls charging, and uses slow charging itself. It adjusts the charge to finish by the time of the wake up alarm. So, in modern laptops, continuously connected but limiting the charge to, say, 90%, should be perfect. ...
to unplug it and use it on battery to let the battery drain and refill. When I do that, the laptop invariably throws a fit and suddenly warns about critical battery level even though it's still at about 45%, and switches off within a few seconds. I get these weird messages in my notifications:
Message from syslogd@linux at Jul 3 15:34:04 ... kernel:[ 87.166486][ C0] Uhhuh. NMI received for unknown reason 20 on CPU 0. Message from syslogd@linux at Jul 3 15:34:04 ... kernel:[ 87.166498][ C0] Do you have a strange power saving mode enabled? Message from syslogd@linux at Jul 3 15:34:04 ... kernel:[ 87.166500][ C0] Dazed and confused, but trying to continue
Unrelated.
I don't think there's anything strange about my power-saving settings, it seems more likely the continual charging fools something in the subsystem as regards the actual charge level. Using flexi-charging is supposed to make battery reporting LESS accurate, but it's clearly already problematic. And usually, once I plug the laptop back in, the charge level shows back at 45%.
So now having changed the BIOS setting, I see in Plasma (5.24) that the battery icon shows permanently in the system tray, because it's being constantly topped up... to 90%. I thought maybe what would happen is that it would decharge to 50% and then the charging would kick in and bring it back to 90%.
If this happens, you would see it in the display. Better then to keep at 100. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from openSUSE 15.3 (Legolas))