Google confirms they're throttling your Pixel 10's battery

[thewayne]

And there's nothing you can do about it.

Their Battery Health Assistance "feature" was optional in models 9 and below, but is now mandatory in the 10 and possibly subsequent models. And it will also throttle your charge rate. So shorter battery life, and longer charge times. YAY!

Google rates their batteries at 1,000 charge cycles before the battery drops to 80% capacity. Samsung, on the other hand, rates their batteries at 2,000 before the 80% level. Hmmm...

Apple got into trouble a few years back by introducing a silent throttle on some of their phones and had to offer free battery replacements, something that I took advantage of when I happened to be in Albuquerque for a day-long medical seminar that was literally across the street from an Apple Store. Now iPhones have a charge limiter - adjustable and can be deactivated - that by default limits your charge to 80%. When I got an iPhone 16 a year ago (my 13 Mini had strange problems that defied diagnosis), I set mine to 90%, and it reports that my maximum capacity is still 100% after 125 cycles. Sometimes the charge limiter forgets and my phone is at 100% when I take it off the charger in the morning.

Personally, I like to get 4-5 years out of my phones if I can and the only time I replaced a battery, that I remember, is when Apple throttled it and it did hit my battery life pretty badly. Normally I have no problem getting good battery life over the full life of my phone, but I don't spend all day texting or flipping through TikTok or other SM on it.

https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-10-battery-health-assistance-3585863/

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/08/24/038259/will-googles-battery-health-assistant-throttle-your-pixel-10s-battery

Comments

[white_aster]

Hrm. Ok, I'll admit I'm confused about these sorts of shenanigans, as I'm not a hardware person.

I bought a new phone a bit ago (the cheap moto g1 that was on offer), and saw that it had a battery throttling feature on it that you could turn on/off. The way it advertised itself was that it would HELP with battery health, by only allowing charging to 80%, which would keep you from...harming the battery (??) by leaving it plugged in to charge an already %100 charged battery? So, is that just not a problem actually and the throttler is for a different purpose?

The comments on the articles seem to be like "this is something Google's doing because they use crap batteries so on the off chance that ~overcharging~ will kill your battery, they'll basically plan to degrade your battery life for you". Is that it?

[thewayne]

The concept is that by leaving it on the charger that it can cook the battery by it overheating.  They're continually making smarter circuitry, and now turn off the ability for the battery to charge when it hits a programmed threshold.  Theoretically.  So now the idea is that if you back down from 100%, to 80-90%, you can make the battery last longer by not taking the battery to its limit.  But we're not far from getting some new advances in battery tech that may replace our current lithium ion and this idea might become not needed.

[white_aster]

......this just amazes me. Like, I've had devices with Li-ion batteries forever, and yeah, they seem to lose capacity/discharge faster over time, but the idea of HARMING it by leaving it plugged in has never occurred to me. That seems like behavior that is extremely common and that there'd be...some kind of automatic shutoff? "cup is full, shut off water" kind of thing. I thought that was what my devices were doing? were they NOT? o_O I'm not having an existential crisis over how I charge my devices.....

[thewayne]

I don't think Li-ion batteries are harmed by leaving them plugged in.  The big damage is if the battery is physically damaged and develops crystals that can puncture the layers inside the battery, that's when you risk the battery swelling and bursting into flames.  I wonder how much of this is leftover from NiCad days when the battery was problematic if left on dumb chargers.  Modern phones with brand-name chargers should not have a problem.

[white_aster]

OK GOOD and thanks! And yeah, i remember being told "let it discharge completely or it'll lose capacity!", which IIRC isn't really as much of a deal nowadays, yet it still is wisdom that's out there.... Google and them all just kind of bring all of this up every time they mess with things like this and I ask, "ok, is that a REAL everyday problem or just like a one in a million CYA problem?"

[thewayne]

I think it's more of a CYA problem when we had all of those Samsungs and Androids bursting into flame.

[white_aster]

...gotcha. I see now why folks in the comments were like, "welp maybe don't use batteries that are likely to burst into flames, then? :\"

[ranunculus]

My understanding is that Li-ion is not harmed at all by being left plugged in. Older, especially lead-acid batteries were harmed because they get a "memory" if they are never discharged properly. This is much worse in batteries that are only discharged a set amount repeatedly, such as only down to 85% before being charged again. Eventually Those batteries wouldn't discharge *below* the 85% level.* As far as I know Li-ion do not form memories.

* The solution to the lead-acid memory issue is to let the battery discharge to various levels, including an occasional going pretty flat before recharging AND overcharging the battery a little bit sometimes. That is where smart chargers come in handy.

[thewayne]

NiCads also had memory-effect problems.  The new 'salt' batteries will be interesting, whenever they get to market.

[ranunculus]

I hadn't read anything about the salt battery until now. Interesting.
One of the reasons I've been dragging my feet about solar power is that we are so hot here I'd need to build and air condition battery storage for Li-ion. Basically we are out of its "good" working temperatures for the vast majority of the year. At times we are in the "do not attempt to use" range. So the salt formula would be really interesting to me. I'm still using lead acid for my fence chargers as they are far more dependable.

[thewayne]

Sodium Ion batteries are cool tech: much less expensive to make because of the availability of sodium vs lithium, and they can be shipped at zero volt charge.  But they're lower energy density, which makes them problematic for some applications.  Solid state batteries are also very cool, and that tech is rapidly evolving.  Amongst the problems with LIon batteries is the cost and water requirements to produce and also to recycle.  It's not that great of tech, except that it packs such great energy density.  This BBC article from last year talks about some of the alternatives: We rely heavily on lithium batteries – but there's a growing array of alternatives

[disneydream06]

Again I don't have a clue about this.
Should you not charge your phone up to 100%?
Hugs, Jon

[thewayne]

Apparently it's best if you charge it to 80-90% of its max capacity.  The new phones, say from the last 2-3 years, have software/hardware that can turn off charging when they hit that level but it can be overridden.  Part of this is from the problem we had a few years back with the Samsung phones and tablets bursting into flames, but that also had multiple causes.

[disneydream06]

I wonder if I can remember to stop charging at that level? LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[thewayne]

If you can't program your phone to stop charging at 80-90%, don't worry about it.

[disneydream06]

You know me and electronics. :o

[thewayne]

Yes indeed I do!  I wouldn't worry too much about it.

[disneydream06]

LOL.............

[silveradept]

This seems like the kind of thing where someone has found a hammer for a situation that has nails, screws, bolts, lock nuts, and the occasional metal bracket as the potential problems, and despite being told about all of those things, intends to treat each and every one of them as nails.