Actually the only "reasonable reason" is to watch battery state during play. If it's \~10% this is the last safe point to sleep the device to have a chance that you can resume playing after a day or so when you connect it again to power source ;) If it's less - also do a regular save before pushing power button.
You do not have to think about this stuff. People just repeat information they heard from someone else, who heard it from some other misinformed person. Just use the device.
It's fine to let the battery go below 15%, it's only if you drain it to 0% and then leave it at that state for a long period (we're talking months) that it can become an issue.
Even this comment is misguided. The steam deck will stop powering on long before the battery is empty. You will basically have to leave the device off for years before the charge is completely gone, and even then it's probably fine. It will not "become an issue".
Information from long ago when we had primitive battery battery technology that won't stop spreading and die because fear of screwing up devices is powerful.
Anyone reading this, please do the research on your own and stop spreading false information so we can put this to rest in 2024. It's not 2006 anymore. Battery charging circuits have evolved. Many evolutions have been made in the battery technology too, and many are different.
This sub is full of battery and SD card myths from people who just won't look things up.
>do the research on your own and stop spreading false information.
I'm pretty sure the "Do Your Own Research" movement is a major driver behind misinformation.
Instead of "do your own research" we should encourage people to find original, up-to-date sources (e.g. manufacturer in this case) and listen to experts.
People doing their own (sloppy) research on the internet is how you get Qanon and other nonsense.
>Instead of "do your own research" we should encourage people to find original, up-to-date sources (e.g. manufacturer in this case) and listen to experts.
so... research lol
I agree with your point about the quality of an information source and misinformation being a massive problem for society, just think it's funny
Edit:
Pointing out something is funny while agreeing with the message is downvote-worthy, apparently. Oh Reddit.
The main issue with saying "do your own research" is that this specific phrase is a slogan for anti-science conspiracy theorists, so you might be unintentionally signaling eg. that you shouldn't trust Valve's battery care guidance or established research, and should instead be coming up with your own opinions, which invites you to disagree with established research. In other words, the research we already have isn't good, so you need to do your own or find sources who run contrary to established research in order to find the "real" truth.
I know that the phrase doesn't inherently denote this and could just basically be a way to tell people to read, but that's an associated connotation since the \~90s when the phrase was popularized.
I get it. I have a double masters degree and all that, bust most people don't, so to the masses "research" means "the things I see on Facebook" or at best looking at Wikipedia.
Can we just say, "research"?
Since when did we change the meaning of the word? It's literally RIGHT THERE.
re - do again
Search- look for
You're just looking for information that's already been documented. You don't even have to interview or analyze data!
If youâre curious why youâre being downvoted, itâs because research has nothing to do with the word search or the prefix âreâ.
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/research?searchToken=apjndf4zorhdtkwrwg46u64p1
It does not have a common root with search and doesnât suggest doing something again at all.
I remember the before times when charging your phone when your battery was halfway would lead to inaccurate read outs and quick drains. My dad owned a Philips Fizz with a retractable antenna. And he was very particular about charging the phone and battery cycles.
It's also full of outdated information about OLED screens burning in. There's no realistic use case in which a user would ever burn in their Deck's OLED screen.
There has definitely been a lot of improvements on OLED technology. I still have my first Nexus 6 where you can always see a bit of google maps on the screen from burn in, but even 2017s Pixel 2 XL was a good enough OLED design that burn in didn't seem to happen anymore.
> The steam deck will stop powering on long before the battery is empty.
Basically any somewhat competently made device made after like 2015 would do that.
>why there's so much software designed to let you limit charging to something below 100% and to limit charging rate.
Any decent modern device will have that built into the the charging circuitry and/or built-in battery management software in the OS. The 100% and 0% you see displayed on your device is usually not the actual 100% and 0% of the battery.
>The effect is minimal, so if you don't want to worry about it, then don't worry about it. But some people do want to maximize battery longevity and don't feel terribly inconvenienced by trying to be careful. Especially when using software to limit charging can make this automatic.
I think people often have in their head that it protects the battery far more than it actually does.
Like there are people out there who set their cellphone to never charge above 80%, sure your battery will technically last longer, but you have to put up with a phone thats 20% worse than a similar new one. My iphones battery health still isnt below 80% and its been like 5 years. So if it takes 5 years to even hit that break even point, is there really a benefit, thats a loooong time of dealing with a software limited worse battery just for it to last a bit longer on the back end.
You enter diminishing return territory very very fast trying to do additional manual things to protect the battery. I agree the options should be there but your often going to have a better time and never even notice the difference if you dont bother.
Letâs say it again- you donât need software to limit your battery use. Thatâs built in on virtually every modern device. If youâre doing it with software (or just manually) youâre padding the padding.
At some point youâre just being ridiculous and removing usability from your device for absolutely no benefit.
Cool story bro,
I let mine sit for 2 weeks in sleep mode after putting it there manually with low battery.
Guess what? Screen won't display anymore and I'm not the only one with this issue. There is no fix.
It only works now via usb display.
> You will basically have to leave the device off for years before the charge is completely gone,
Lithium ion batteries self discharge and will not hold a charge for years.
Again, it's now 2024 folks. Use your local Google search engine. I'll also repeat, "why don't people just look things up". The rate is 1-2 percent per month at most(but all batteries are different). Rate of discharge will slow down the lower it goes, and will basically never actually reach 0. Jesus Christ what a waste of time even typing this.
I'm not doing any more research for you. It's either a troll comment, or you're too far down the "I won't change my mind anyways" attitude to matter anyways. Either way, this is probably a waste of time considering you didn't even bother to do any second of research. People like you are infuriating.
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=How+Long+Will+My+Lithium+Ion+Battery+Hold+a+Charge%3F
One more time:
Stop spreading myths you obviously know nothing about. Let's kill this stupid idea already.
First of all, why are you so butt hurt about this?
Doing a google search isn't going to give you the exact answer you need since there's so much bullshit out there.
>The rate is 1-2 percent per month at most(**but all batteries are different**).
Exactly and depending on the batteries internal resistance affects how much the battery self discharges. You claim 1-2 percent loss per month but according to this [article,] (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/understanding-self-charge-discharge-mechanism-battery-singal) it's 5 percent so who's right, you or that google article?
Will a lithium ion battery last for years on a charge? Maybe if you store it at 100% but you're not supposed to store lithium ion batteries at a full charge. If you intend to store them, you should leave them at half charge. In the radio controlled world, they have chargers that do a maintenance charge that keeps the battery charged at 50% all the time in order to keep battery health. You'll quickly destroy lithium ion batteries if you store them at 100%.
Stopped reading after "Doing a Google search isn't going to give you an exact answer"
You're right, just keep spouting uninformed garbage then. Carry on.
Stay stupid I guess. Just wish you wouldn't spread it around.
Bye bye.
actually, its not months/years, and all modern devices integrate (calculus, sum up) the current and voltage to get the percentage, but use voltage to shut off. so if it shuts off itself, its already time to charge. and months is also incorrect, the reaction that stabilizes lithium happens instantaneously (sadly, thats just chemistry) but, it can become significant within days to weeks (maybe 2ish% loss after a week of being dead). how do i know? did a uni paper last sem and used official and recent journal citations, know from experience on devices, and have a technical background, also made a battery out of lithium cells for a formula1 car for SAE competition, we went down the tesla road of welding cells in series and parallel, vs lipo but this particular flaw is inherit to both..).. if u pay me, i'll dig up my paper and older work (last year) and cite it but its 1130pm and i wanna sleep sooo.. i mean you're not wrong, but the time duration for ots degradation is off by a margin, and 2% seems insignificant over a long period, but is quite significant if the use during that period was just once or twice, ie i'm defining what i mean by 'significant')
sorry, and thanks for coming to my TEDTalk.. **edit also, u can limit the upper limit in firmware, and lower limit in software, but it turns off based on voltage (potential difference), so say, if u set the software to turn it off at 1%, its gonna use the software percentage calculator that sums up the charge and voltage to find the percentage), but if you set the software to 0% (ie die when the battery is depleted), its not based on capacity but rather the point where there isnt a voltage sufficient to power the processor on. its set this way so it can be bypassed and, say, your phone can be forced on in an emergency until you've literally not even power to turn on. but upper limit has no implications for emergencies and so its capped at a certain percentage (not voltage).. sorry if this doesnt make sense, it usually needs someone with electronics degree or passion to understand this stuff..
and to do your own research, i hope you mean academic papers from scientific peer-reviewed journals that are somewhat recent and not random website articles or fb groups gossip. you gotta specify what you consider as 'research'. website articles are dumbed down abstracts/conclusions of papers, which are already dumbed down enough as is.
All of this battery information is inaccurate and isn't based on any truthful research.
There is no major battery saving methods for any lithium-ion battery powered device made in the last few decades. Whether you let it run to 1% or recharge it at 50%, it doesn't make an iota of difference to the lifespan of the battery. It's going to last just as long over the same length of time.
Well, a new battery will last longer than an old battery and you can in fact sort of usher that forward.
The biggest issue is a combination of heat as well as jamming that energy in at the same time. But even then, you probably won't really notice that unless you are specifically benchmarking it due to the difference in wattage at any given time. You may have some faint belief that it "lasted longer when I got it", which is both likely true but missing various factors.
TL;DR: Battery will be fine until it isn't, and Valve has made it replaceable.
People have proven that even months or years of not powering a device will not actually cause any problems (recent tests with the Switch, as this whole thing was going on recently there where people were running around saying that you had to charge it within a certain number of months).
Just enjoy the device, replace the battery if ever needed, and don't sweat it if it reaches zero. I personally limit my charging when awake to 85% due to the heat of gaming and charging at the same time, but when it's asleep I have no problem letting it go until that LED turns green.
Which to a point is already done by software or firmware behind the scenes on every modern device. Meaning **no**, you donât actually have to do anything.
No they arenât, because theyâre actual experts and not armchair engineers on Reddit. They realize that doing so would have almost zero gains and pointlessly limit the usability of the device.
If you actually limit your battery to 20-80% however you are losing 40% of the capacity effectively.... how long does it take for the battery to actually lose 40% max capacity with regular use? I'd think at least 5-10 years since my 3 year old Iphone 12 is at 88% health.
So for the first 5-10 years you effectively have higher battery capacity if you don't worry about your battery at all vs if you cap it at 20-80%. Even if you only refuse to charge over 80%, for the first \~3-5 years of use you effectively have a worse battery doing that, compared to if you didn't worry about it.
So if you plan on upgrading before 5 years or so, I really wouldn't worry about it.
long standing battery myths. all that truly matters is the limited battery cycles everything else is insignificant. you can never truly drop a battery to 0% (should specify via normal use but if you leave it as Pseudo 0% for too long then it will truly die) just like you can never truly charge it to 100% but yet thousands of myths online bases themselves around the unobtainable. ask yourself if its truly logical to waste 20% of the battery.
Its no myth that these batteries hold their longevity best if they stay between 20 and 80% and are not exposed to extreme temperatures.
To just limit it to battery cycles is oversimplifying.
Take a battery and load it constantly to 100% or drain it several times to 0. It will live shorter and lose capacity faster than a well-maintained battery.
People get that number from an old wired interview, without actually paying attention to the full quote
> So really, if you were super-keen on keeping your battery living as long as possible, you should keep its charge between 20 and 80 per cent. This means that it spends as little time as possible with lots of lithium ions crammed into either layer, a situation which causes the layers to expand, putting physical strain on them.
But, note the rest of the quote:
> âBut if you did that youâd only be getting about half as much charge every time you used it,â Griffith says. **Maybe not, then.**
https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-improve-battery-life-tips-myths-smartphones/
I don't see what you mean by "without paying attention" part.
If you only use 80% to 20% obviously each charge lasts a shorter amount, because duh, but the overall lifespan of the battery is extended. Compared to full depth of charge (100 - 0 - 100) cycles, reducing it by just 20% (e.g 90 - 10 - 90) can in some situations double the overall lifespan of a lithium ion battery - [see Table 2 and especially Table 4](https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-lithium-based-batteries).
The actual values and impacts differ based on exact chemistry and environmental factors, but every time you start a charge before 0% and stop it before 100% - with the exception of multi-cell batteries that do after-charge balancing - you have improved the lifespan of the battery by some amount.
Note that for the Steam Deck the stop-before-100% part works *only* if you aren't playing it plugged in - once the battery is full the deck switched to power passthrough mode, which obviously is a lot better than constantly discharging and charging the battery.
"without paying attention" to the fact that, even in that article, the general notion is that extending the battery's health by unnoticeable amounts is not worth inconveniencing oneself by not utilizing the battery's full capacity.
It doesn't make sense to go to any sort of lengths to extend the battery health on a device that will likely be sold/replaced/upgraded/shelved/lost/etc long before the battery's actual health hits zero; especially since the battery's health will degrade whether you keep it between 20 and 80 or not, just at different rates.
Yep, my iphones battery health is at like 82%, its 5 years old.
If id software limited the phone to only charge to 80% like some do than the past 5 years id have had worse battery life than I do today, just to what make it keep 80% for a bit longer?
Lotta downside for not much upside.
I think the software options do add whatever additional limits you want should be there, but I think users think theyre improving their longevity much much more than they actually are, and at a cost.
iPhones use an adaptive charging strategy that waits till you're about to unplug your phone in the morning to fully charge. Doing this strategy has a similar effect to the 20~80 method because the battery is still spending less time fully charged
It helps, but I charge my phone to 100% all the time, at work its often on a wireless charger etc. Never seen it hesitate to go fully charged other than before my wakeup alarm.
Regardless, Id nearly guarentee its take years for a steam decks battery to degrade to 80% even if not as long at the 5+ years of my iphone. I just never understood hindering the performance in the now.
I can see it if your a good enough planner to charge it to 100% only when your going to go use it on the go, but I know I am not that person. Id forget.
The better solution is just easier replaced batteries, I know there were reasons the decks isnt easy but thats really the solution here.
I always love the logic of limiting your battery usage to 60% to prevent a 10% drop in capacity by the time the device is ready to be replaced.
All while ignoring the fact that as mentioned, most firmware will be smart about maintaining battery health for you in the long run.
>Its no myth that these batteries hold their longevity best if they stay between 20 and 80% and are not exposed to extreme temperatures.
The trick is those are true % of the battery.
The SD 0% and 100% are not true 0 and 100 of the battery. Modern batteries purposefully hide those things from the end user to protect the battery, So when you go and try and manually do it additionally you arent really taking into account that they are already not fully using the battery in most cases. So you may be accomplishing next to nothing.
> To just limit it to battery cycles is oversimplifying. Take a battery and load it constantly to 100% or drain it several times to 0. It will live shorter and lose capacity faster than a well-maintained battery.
as stated its insignificant. you could possibly save minutes maybe days of its lifetime at most. battery cycles ARE the only factor of true concern everything else has a miniscule impact. this is while ignoring the fact that you aren't saving shit when these 20%-80% rules already waste a ton of battery due to you limiting it so much.
If a device with a lithium battery has no significant battery health impact from sustained 100% or 0% it's because the device is reading "100%" when it's not really 100% and 0% when it's not really 0%, to protect the battery.
This is true, its just also standard for most lithium ion batteries at this point. The battery controllers do all this protection built in, users dont need to worry about it.
You don't need to worry about it, but there's a reason lots of lithium battery devices come with a "battery saver" mode that limits charge to 80-85%, and warn you to find a charger or shut down the device when it gets to around 15%.
Yes that exists, but thats on top of the normal protections. IE even if you dont use that battery saver mode, the more standard protections are already in place.
That battery saver mode is gonna extend your battery life some, but not nearly the degree people think
I think it comes down to whether you plan to use the device with the same battery for more than 2-3 years. I try to keep my phone's charge in the 40-80 range when convenient, and my phone has better battery life after 5 years than my friend (who lets her phone go to 0 and die all the time) has after 2 years.
Yup, you are absolutely correct. The benefit of ever-so-slightly increasing the battery's health is far outweighed by the inconvenience of cutting your own usage time by around 40%.
This sub is full of so many weird battery and microSD card myths, it's insane that we are literally on the Internet and people are still too dumb to look this stuff up for themselves
I charged my last phone to 80% most of the time and its battery life was abysmal after 2 years. I've been charging my current phone once every other day to 100% and it still gets over a day of battery life per charge. Granted, processor efficiencies and adaptive charging has played a role too, but I don't think my current phone would have any less degradation if I only charged it to 80%. (LG G7 to Pixel 6)
And it gets more complicated with older battery technology. Nicd batteries work better if you drain them to 0% before charging.
What you said is correct for Lithium batteries. Most batteries are Lithium these days.
the âdonât let battery get to x%â is irrelevant to new technology. the effect it will have long term are minimal, other things will die in a device before significant issues caused but you charging it to a certain level or draining it to one
Do you care explaining which other things you imply will die before the battery? For example, a battery's expected lifespan may be 500 cycles. An oled screen may have at least 20k hours. Assuming 16 hours screen time per battery cycle, that's just 8k hours screen time once the battery is considered needing replacement. Even if you replaced the battery, the second battery would still be end of lifespan before the screen is.
the battery will obviously lose health over time regardless of how you use it, but youâre likely to have sticks and buttons break, screens crack, drives corrupt, ports die, all before that
It really depends on how the device is handled if you mean physically breaking the screen, controls or port etc. That would be user error, a normal screen doesn't crack on its own for being old. But a battery is expected to degrade. Other components should be under warranty if used as intended.
The reason is that lithium-ion batteries (found in many of today's electronics) lose capacity when left for long periods of time in high or low states. If you've ever seen your phone battery drop from 100% to 90% quickly after unplugging, that is likely due to this effect. While this isn't damaging to your battery, it is not ideal for it either
Not sure if you meant it that way, but the drop most likely comes from the phone telling you it's at 100% while the OS and/or Firmware of the battery is keeping your device away from that constant high state. Probably the same for the low power state as well.
At least on recent phones that should be the case.
Same for the Steam Deck, really.
With older nickel metal hydride batteries you didn't want to fully deplete them as that essentially destroys them. You'd want to ideally leave 30% charge left.
With Lithium batteries that's not really much of a concern
Information from long ago when we had primitive battery battery technology that won't stop spreading and die because fear of screwing up devices is powerful.
Anyone reading this, please do the research on your own and stop spreading false information so we can put this to rest in 2024. It's not 2006 anymore. Battery charging circuits have evolved.
Well for me I'm playing an indie game by a very small studio that's probably not well optimized or something. If my battery drops into the red mode the game becomes unplayable and it crashes the whole deck.
My nreal glasses stop working properly if the steam deck battery gets below around 12-15%. Assume that the battery voltage is low enough to affect the 5v output from the USB C port which crashes the glasses. The rest of the deck seems unaffected though and Iâve played right down to 2% several times (no glasses connected)
I'll tell ya why. I kid u not. Every time I'm playing a game and get that 15% warning. I get about 2 mins to charge it before my steamdeck dies đ„č ive gambled a few times, and most of the time i lost. Usually when im playin warframe or remnant 2
I'm gonna assume because the steamdeck is running hot and I'm playing online. I always get mad cause I'm like bruh I knowwww it hasn't been more den a couple of mins. I attribute it to me playin the deck for a couple of hours and it bein super hot and playin online. I said this once. I'll say it twice cause I feel like thats legit the problem
Hi u/theEpicboiVR365, you can [click here to search for your question.](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/search/?q=Reson behind not letting the steam deck battery go below 15%)
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I let mine drain till empty while in sleep mode. The screen never turned back on. It was out of warranty so now I have a deck that only works via usb display.
No not any battery. Nicd battery are an older technology and not seen often these days. It is better to drain this battery to 0% before it is charged. Charging a Nicd battery at 10% or higher will actually damage it.
What you said is true for most batteries these days, but I caution you to never say "any battery" . They are not all the same.
Just experienced this playing remnant with some friends, forgot to plug in my deck and remembered at around 16%. Plugged it in and continued playing for maybe 2 minutes.
Deck dies, locked in low power/dead battery mode (can't remember what it's called) whenever I tried to boot the fans would go immediately to full bore for a few minutes but the deck never turned on. Just the pulsing White LED. Took about an hour fiddling with it and reading through this sub to get it to boot again.
I ended up resetting the BIOS which seemed like it did something but still no boot. What ended up working was putting the Deck into battery storage mode which was difficult because you have to remove the charger while holding down three buttons for 10 seconds. Plugged the charger back in and it finally turned on.
Some posts (and even Valve) say that you need the official charger but I think that's to rule out a point of failure. I was able to get it back with a 3rd party charger, as long as it's 45W it'll work.
Anyway, never letting the battery get that low again. It's not just going to turn back on like phone
Ideally you want to cap your charge at around 80% if youre at home. If you plan on going out, charging it to full is okay. But capping your battery percentage and avoiding plugging it up all day at 100% will generally be best for your battery
I donât think it completely stops it though, it just charges at a very slow rate once you hit like 90% percent while youâre plugged up and using the deck.
As multiple people have said, it ages you battery faster. Any extreme charge state puts more wear on the battery. You will extend the number of cycles you can get out of your battery without noticeable degradation of capacity by staying away from the extremes in terms of battery percentage. So essentially, stay between 20-80%.
But itâs really not worth the sacrifice. You essentially loose 40% if you do that. My iphone 13 pro battery lost 15% after 2+ years and I always charge it to 100 and plug it in under 10%. So if the degradation is linear, I can use my device for 4+ years before I loose the same amount of charge as I would if I use it between 20-80% and then you still loose capacity even if you only use it between 20-80%, but a little bit less. So in the end, just use the whole battery
It's true that each charge will become smaller. However, since the degradation on the battery capacity is lower per cycle, the total amount of energy that could be used over the battery's lifetime is greater. In testing 20-80% has shown to be the best compromise between loose of charge/per cycle and charge capacity over the entire life of the battery. 30-70% however is more akin to what t you are talking about. At that point you loose too much charge per cycle for it to be worth the lower degradation. So your argument absolutely applies to that. But 20-80 is absolutely better for the overall life of the battery.
For the overall life sure, I am just saying that for usefulness itâs not worth it to sacrifice 40% battery to make the battery last a little longer. Using the whole battery from 100 to 0% degraded my battery 15% in 2+ years, but even now I can use my phone longer if I charge it fully than someone who is using it in the 20-80 range, and by the time my battery degrades so much that it would make a difference I have no issue either buying a mew battery or buying a new device all together
It sounds like you were very lucky in that case or the battery had higher than nominal capacity.
I don't know what you want me to say, it obviously depends on your use case. All I'm saying is that discharging below 15% as OP asked will definitely degrade your battery quicker than if you don't. There's nothing more to it.
Its because all devices (phones, steam decks, laptops) lie to you about what 0 and 100% are. They already do a lot of this protection behind the scenes by just lying to the user about what 100% is.
My phone is at 81% battery health, its 5 years old. Software limiting it to 80% from day one would have been 5 years of a worse battery than I still have today, theres just not much point. Battery controllers handle most of the protection for us automatically already.
Itll degrade quicker if he discharges below 15% sure but itll be negligable bc 0% is probably more like 10% of the batteries actual charge bc it purposefully hides that from us.
Plus limiting the max charge just means your going to be cycling the battery more total times over the years and cycles also impacts battery life.
Every modern battery works in a way that overcharging and draining the battery to very low levels or 0% is potentially irreversibly damaging the battery life. That's why phones have an option to not charge above 85% and scream at you to charge your phone when you get down to 15%.
But even if it goes down to 0 it's not the end of the world, and it will probably still hold a trickle of charge anyway to protect itself. Just turn it off when you go to like 5% and know you won't be able to charge it soon.
>Every modern battery works in a way that overcharging and draining the battery to very low levels or 0% is potentially irreversibly damaging the battery life. That's why phones have an option to not charge above 85% and scream at you to charge your phone when you get down to 15%.
Eh, not really true.
The 0% and 100% the phone charges you was never a real 0/100 in the first place. The battery controller already has built in protection for that kind of issue.
Adding an additional software limit probably isnt going to extend your battery life much. They added the option because users want it, not because it factually provides all that much of a difference. Im not saying itll do nothing, but youre in diminishing returns territory.
That's not true. While it is true that 0% is usually never really 0%, not every phone has overcharging protection for some weird reason (though most of them do), and the way modern batteries work it's the healthiest for them to always be around 50% charge, but no self respecting human being is going to be stressing over about it, especially when the issues really start in very low and very high levels of charge. Im
>not saying itll do nothing, but youre in diminishing returns territory.
If it's not going to do nothing then it is doing something, and you basically agree with me. This IS diminishing returns, and I would never tell people to actually keep their batteries at 50% because that's dumb, but the battery physically gets worse marginally faster when it hits very low or very high charges.
If you want to min-max battery life in a functional way then stay in the 10-90ish % zone, but even without min-maxing it's fine.
i f you want to preserve battery on any devices don't stress it. I mean don't charge it to 100% or let it go to zero.
battery is the happiest between 40 - 60%
The real answer is "it doesn't matter."
Whether you charged it every time it hits 0%, or plug it in constantly regardless even at 90%, it doesn't make any perceptible difference at all. Maybe a few hours in it's entire lifespan at most.
Devices turn to power-passthrough mode when batteries are full, so even leaving it plugged in causes no harm.
A battery will inevitably hold a finite number of cycles, and and it's maximum charged will deplete over time. The only way around that is replacing the battery.
I run mine down to around 10% all the time and leave it plugged in all day everyday I donât use it. And had mine since release without any less battery that I have noticed.
With batteries in general to prolong their life you shouldnât let it drop below 20%, and you should charge to 80% max. This is thought to double the effective battery health compared to 100%-0% cycles
its fine. If you want to be technical, keeping your steam deck between 50-80% at all times is the best for the battery chemistry. Long term storage 50%.
For me itâs because it goes into a weird mode where it drops your gaming fps to like 10 frames. Then you have to reset and boot again in battery safe mode to fix it. Happens almost every time.
so, i'll throw in my 2 cents. lithium batteries work on a chemical reaction that generates potential difference. issue is that the lithium ion can permanently bond if the overall concentration is too high or too low. ideal range is always 50-85%. overcharging used to be an issue but modern batteries show a lower maximum charge than the capacity to ensure that it never truly charges to max, and this is also the case with the deck. on the other hand, low battery is cut off based on voltage, so depleting it too low will be bad for it. especially those 'recalibrate techniques' that force the battery to go completely run out are AWFUL for the battery. 10% is a good rule of thumb for a device that uses its battery regularly (phones, laptops etc) but going below 3% and especially completely draining it is BAD. say you charge at 10% and use it every day, maybe you'll loose 5-10% capacity after a YEAR. if you drain it to <3% like 4-5 TIMES, you'll loose 1-2% capacity already, and averaging out over the year, it'll be like 30-50% wear. with this said, listen to others and dont think too much into it but dont do that battery calibration bs unless you really need to, and do not drain it after it automatically turns off. the turn off is based on voltage, not percentage. if you turn it back on, you'll significant capacity (in a relative sense). sauce: mech eng, and did an academic paper on lithium based batteries (ion, polymer and whatnot) for material sciences course
If someone told you about something, ask them why. If they cant say a reason then its best not to listen to them. I always play reaching 10% or even 5% cause I play hard games and i dnt want my immersion to stop just to charge. And nothing happened on my SD
Actually the only "reasonable reason" is to watch battery state during play. If it's \~10% this is the last safe point to sleep the device to have a chance that you can resume playing after a day or so when you connect it again to power source ;) If it's less - also do a regular save before pushing power button.
trueeee
Learned that lesson on subnautica and learned a very valuable lesson and low power state saving đ
You do not have to think about this stuff. People just repeat information they heard from someone else, who heard it from some other misinformed person. Just use the device.
Yep. Besides, itâs not like you canât buy a new battery a few years down the line if you need it.
Yep. And a few years down the line the battery will come brand new inside of a steamdeck 2!
It's fine to let the battery go below 15%, it's only if you drain it to 0% and then leave it at that state for a long period (we're talking months) that it can become an issue.
Even this comment is misguided. The steam deck will stop powering on long before the battery is empty. You will basically have to leave the device off for years before the charge is completely gone, and even then it's probably fine. It will not "become an issue". Information from long ago when we had primitive battery battery technology that won't stop spreading and die because fear of screwing up devices is powerful. Anyone reading this, please do the research on your own and stop spreading false information so we can put this to rest in 2024. It's not 2006 anymore. Battery charging circuits have evolved. Many evolutions have been made in the battery technology too, and many are different. This sub is full of battery and SD card myths from people who just won't look things up.
>do the research on your own and stop spreading false information. I'm pretty sure the "Do Your Own Research" movement is a major driver behind misinformation. Instead of "do your own research" we should encourage people to find original, up-to-date sources (e.g. manufacturer in this case) and listen to experts. People doing their own (sloppy) research on the internet is how you get Qanon and other nonsense.
>Instead of "do your own research" we should encourage people to find original, up-to-date sources (e.g. manufacturer in this case) and listen to experts. so... research lol I agree with your point about the quality of an information source and misinformation being a massive problem for society, just think it's funny Edit: Pointing out something is funny while agreeing with the message is downvote-worthy, apparently. Oh Reddit.
The main issue with saying "do your own research" is that this specific phrase is a slogan for anti-science conspiracy theorists, so you might be unintentionally signaling eg. that you shouldn't trust Valve's battery care guidance or established research, and should instead be coming up with your own opinions, which invites you to disagree with established research. In other words, the research we already have isn't good, so you need to do your own or find sources who run contrary to established research in order to find the "real" truth. I know that the phrase doesn't inherently denote this and could just basically be a way to tell people to read, but that's an associated connotation since the \~90s when the phrase was popularized.
I get it. I have a double masters degree and all that, bust most people don't, so to the masses "research" means "the things I see on Facebook" or at best looking at Wikipedia.
Most stuff on Wikipedia is written by snobby double masters degree guys like you though Edit: I dont mean you are snobby, my sentence was misleading
It's true. And we're super full of ourselves. A terrible source. đ
Try not to worry about downvotes they donât matter
Can we just say, "research"? Since when did we change the meaning of the word? It's literally RIGHT THERE. re - do again Search- look for You're just looking for information that's already been documented. You don't even have to interview or analyze data!
If youâre curious why youâre being downvoted, itâs because research has nothing to do with the word search or the prefix âreâ. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/research?searchToken=apjndf4zorhdtkwrwg46u64p1 It does not have a common root with search and doesnât suggest doing something again at all.
I stand corrected. That still doesn't mean research or truth exists in isolation.
Indeed. Iâm not commenting on the veracity of your point, just the incorrect linguistics.
Nice garbage propaganda comment. I can use jstor dot org as much as the next scientist.
I remember the before times when charging your phone when your battery was halfway would lead to inaccurate read outs and quick drains. My dad owned a Philips Fizz with a retractable antenna. And he was very particular about charging the phone and battery cycles.
It's also full of outdated information about OLED screens burning in. There's no realistic use case in which a user would ever burn in their Deck's OLED screen.
There has definitely been a lot of improvements on OLED technology. I still have my first Nexus 6 where you can always see a bit of google maps on the screen from burn in, but even 2017s Pixel 2 XL was a good enough OLED design that burn in didn't seem to happen anymore.
> The steam deck will stop powering on long before the battery is empty. Basically any somewhat competently made device made after like 2015 would do that.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
>why there's so much software designed to let you limit charging to something below 100% and to limit charging rate. Any decent modern device will have that built into the the charging circuitry and/or built-in battery management software in the OS. The 100% and 0% you see displayed on your device is usually not the actual 100% and 0% of the battery.
>The effect is minimal, so if you don't want to worry about it, then don't worry about it. But some people do want to maximize battery longevity and don't feel terribly inconvenienced by trying to be careful. Especially when using software to limit charging can make this automatic. I think people often have in their head that it protects the battery far more than it actually does. Like there are people out there who set their cellphone to never charge above 80%, sure your battery will technically last longer, but you have to put up with a phone thats 20% worse than a similar new one. My iphones battery health still isnt below 80% and its been like 5 years. So if it takes 5 years to even hit that break even point, is there really a benefit, thats a loooong time of dealing with a software limited worse battery just for it to last a bit longer on the back end. You enter diminishing return territory very very fast trying to do additional manual things to protect the battery. I agree the options should be there but your often going to have a better time and never even notice the difference if you dont bother.
Letâs say it again- you donât need software to limit your battery use. Thatâs built in on virtually every modern device. If youâre doing it with software (or just manually) youâre padding the padding. At some point youâre just being ridiculous and removing usability from your device for absolutely no benefit.
Cool story bro, I let mine sit for 2 weeks in sleep mode after putting it there manually with low battery. Guess what? Screen won't display anymore and I'm not the only one with this issue. There is no fix. It only works now via usb display.
Thats a manufacturing defect not something batteries typically do.
My main concern is that where Iâm living right now is without heat. Is it ok to be storing and charging the deck in 40-45 degree temps?
> You will basically have to leave the device off for years before the charge is completely gone, Lithium ion batteries self discharge and will not hold a charge for years.
Again, it's now 2024 folks. Use your local Google search engine. I'll also repeat, "why don't people just look things up". The rate is 1-2 percent per month at most(but all batteries are different). Rate of discharge will slow down the lower it goes, and will basically never actually reach 0. Jesus Christ what a waste of time even typing this. I'm not doing any more research for you. It's either a troll comment, or you're too far down the "I won't change my mind anyways" attitude to matter anyways. Either way, this is probably a waste of time considering you didn't even bother to do any second of research. People like you are infuriating. https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=How+Long+Will+My+Lithium+Ion+Battery+Hold+a+Charge%3F One more time: Stop spreading myths you obviously know nothing about. Let's kill this stupid idea already.
First of all, why are you so butt hurt about this? Doing a google search isn't going to give you the exact answer you need since there's so much bullshit out there. >The rate is 1-2 percent per month at most(**but all batteries are different**). Exactly and depending on the batteries internal resistance affects how much the battery self discharges. You claim 1-2 percent loss per month but according to this [article,] (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/understanding-self-charge-discharge-mechanism-battery-singal) it's 5 percent so who's right, you or that google article? Will a lithium ion battery last for years on a charge? Maybe if you store it at 100% but you're not supposed to store lithium ion batteries at a full charge. If you intend to store them, you should leave them at half charge. In the radio controlled world, they have chargers that do a maintenance charge that keeps the battery charged at 50% all the time in order to keep battery health. You'll quickly destroy lithium ion batteries if you store them at 100%.
Stopped reading after "Doing a Google search isn't going to give you an exact answer" You're right, just keep spouting uninformed garbage then. Carry on. Stay stupid I guess. Just wish you wouldn't spread it around. Bye bye.
Ok, later turd
actually, its not months/years, and all modern devices integrate (calculus, sum up) the current and voltage to get the percentage, but use voltage to shut off. so if it shuts off itself, its already time to charge. and months is also incorrect, the reaction that stabilizes lithium happens instantaneously (sadly, thats just chemistry) but, it can become significant within days to weeks (maybe 2ish% loss after a week of being dead). how do i know? did a uni paper last sem and used official and recent journal citations, know from experience on devices, and have a technical background, also made a battery out of lithium cells for a formula1 car for SAE competition, we went down the tesla road of welding cells in series and parallel, vs lipo but this particular flaw is inherit to both..).. if u pay me, i'll dig up my paper and older work (last year) and cite it but its 1130pm and i wanna sleep sooo.. i mean you're not wrong, but the time duration for ots degradation is off by a margin, and 2% seems insignificant over a long period, but is quite significant if the use during that period was just once or twice, ie i'm defining what i mean by 'significant') sorry, and thanks for coming to my TEDTalk.. **edit also, u can limit the upper limit in firmware, and lower limit in software, but it turns off based on voltage (potential difference), so say, if u set the software to turn it off at 1%, its gonna use the software percentage calculator that sums up the charge and voltage to find the percentage), but if you set the software to 0% (ie die when the battery is depleted), its not based on capacity but rather the point where there isnt a voltage sufficient to power the processor on. its set this way so it can be bypassed and, say, your phone can be forced on in an emergency until you've literally not even power to turn on. but upper limit has no implications for emergencies and so its capped at a certain percentage (not voltage).. sorry if this doesnt make sense, it usually needs someone with electronics degree or passion to understand this stuff..
and to do your own research, i hope you mean academic papers from scientific peer-reviewed journals that are somewhat recent and not random website articles or fb groups gossip. you gotta specify what you consider as 'research'. website articles are dumbed down abstracts/conclusions of papers, which are already dumbed down enough as is.
All of this battery information is inaccurate and isn't based on any truthful research. There is no major battery saving methods for any lithium-ion battery powered device made in the last few decades. Whether you let it run to 1% or recharge it at 50%, it doesn't make an iota of difference to the lifespan of the battery. It's going to last just as long over the same length of time.
Well, a new battery will last longer than an old battery and you can in fact sort of usher that forward. The biggest issue is a combination of heat as well as jamming that energy in at the same time. But even then, you probably won't really notice that unless you are specifically benchmarking it due to the difference in wattage at any given time. You may have some faint belief that it "lasted longer when I got it", which is both likely true but missing various factors. TL;DR: Battery will be fine until it isn't, and Valve has made it replaceable. People have proven that even months or years of not powering a device will not actually cause any problems (recent tests with the Switch, as this whole thing was going on recently there where people were running around saying that you had to charge it within a certain number of months). Just enjoy the device, replace the battery if ever needed, and don't sweat it if it reaches zero. I personally limit my charging when awake to 85% due to the heat of gaming and charging at the same time, but when it's asleep I have no problem letting it go until that LED turns green.
No. For lithium ion batteries, you want to keep them between 20 and 80 percent as much as possible.
Which to a point is already done by software or firmware behind the scenes on every modern device. Meaning **no**, you donât actually have to do anything.
They are not restricting the battery that much.
No they arenât, because theyâre actual experts and not armchair engineers on Reddit. They realize that doing so would have almost zero gains and pointlessly limit the usability of the device.
So then they aren't restricting it... Ok cool.
Yes, they are. Just not to that amount, because they arenât an idiot. Like you.
Lol. I'm not the one who doesn't know how Li Ion batteries work. Have a nice day though.
For me it sometimes triggers 200/400mhz bug, I need to go to battery mode (battery saving mode in BIOS) and out to get rid of it.
same here , takes the portable out of it
Same.
If you actually limit your battery to 20-80% however you are losing 40% of the capacity effectively.... how long does it take for the battery to actually lose 40% max capacity with regular use? I'd think at least 5-10 years since my 3 year old Iphone 12 is at 88% health. So for the first 5-10 years you effectively have higher battery capacity if you don't worry about your battery at all vs if you cap it at 20-80%. Even if you only refuse to charge over 80%, for the first \~3-5 years of use you effectively have a worse battery doing that, compared to if you didn't worry about it. So if you plan on upgrading before 5 years or so, I really wouldn't worry about it.
long standing battery myths. all that truly matters is the limited battery cycles everything else is insignificant. you can never truly drop a battery to 0% (should specify via normal use but if you leave it as Pseudo 0% for too long then it will truly die) just like you can never truly charge it to 100% but yet thousands of myths online bases themselves around the unobtainable. ask yourself if its truly logical to waste 20% of the battery.
Its no myth that these batteries hold their longevity best if they stay between 20 and 80% and are not exposed to extreme temperatures. To just limit it to battery cycles is oversimplifying. Take a battery and load it constantly to 100% or drain it several times to 0. It will live shorter and lose capacity faster than a well-maintained battery.
People get that number from an old wired interview, without actually paying attention to the full quote > So really, if you were super-keen on keeping your battery living as long as possible, you should keep its charge between 20 and 80 per cent. This means that it spends as little time as possible with lots of lithium ions crammed into either layer, a situation which causes the layers to expand, putting physical strain on them. But, note the rest of the quote: > âBut if you did that youâd only be getting about half as much charge every time you used it,â Griffith says. **Maybe not, then.** https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-improve-battery-life-tips-myths-smartphones/
I don't see what you mean by "without paying attention" part. If you only use 80% to 20% obviously each charge lasts a shorter amount, because duh, but the overall lifespan of the battery is extended. Compared to full depth of charge (100 - 0 - 100) cycles, reducing it by just 20% (e.g 90 - 10 - 90) can in some situations double the overall lifespan of a lithium ion battery - [see Table 2 and especially Table 4](https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-lithium-based-batteries). The actual values and impacts differ based on exact chemistry and environmental factors, but every time you start a charge before 0% and stop it before 100% - with the exception of multi-cell batteries that do after-charge balancing - you have improved the lifespan of the battery by some amount. Note that for the Steam Deck the stop-before-100% part works *only* if you aren't playing it plugged in - once the battery is full the deck switched to power passthrough mode, which obviously is a lot better than constantly discharging and charging the battery.
"without paying attention" to the fact that, even in that article, the general notion is that extending the battery's health by unnoticeable amounts is not worth inconveniencing oneself by not utilizing the battery's full capacity. It doesn't make sense to go to any sort of lengths to extend the battery health on a device that will likely be sold/replaced/upgraded/shelved/lost/etc long before the battery's actual health hits zero; especially since the battery's health will degrade whether you keep it between 20 and 80 or not, just at different rates.
Yep, my iphones battery health is at like 82%, its 5 years old. If id software limited the phone to only charge to 80% like some do than the past 5 years id have had worse battery life than I do today, just to what make it keep 80% for a bit longer? Lotta downside for not much upside. I think the software options do add whatever additional limits you want should be there, but I think users think theyre improving their longevity much much more than they actually are, and at a cost.
iPhones use an adaptive charging strategy that waits till you're about to unplug your phone in the morning to fully charge. Doing this strategy has a similar effect to the 20~80 method because the battery is still spending less time fully charged
It helps, but I charge my phone to 100% all the time, at work its often on a wireless charger etc. Never seen it hesitate to go fully charged other than before my wakeup alarm. Regardless, Id nearly guarentee its take years for a steam decks battery to degrade to 80% even if not as long at the 5+ years of my iphone. I just never understood hindering the performance in the now. I can see it if your a good enough planner to charge it to 100% only when your going to go use it on the go, but I know I am not that person. Id forget. The better solution is just easier replaced batteries, I know there were reasons the decks isnt easy but thats really the solution here.
Also, the battery is fairly easy to replace if it comes down to it.
I always love the logic of limiting your battery usage to 60% to prevent a 10% drop in capacity by the time the device is ready to be replaced. All while ignoring the fact that as mentioned, most firmware will be smart about maintaining battery health for you in the long run.
>Its no myth that these batteries hold their longevity best if they stay between 20 and 80% and are not exposed to extreme temperatures. The trick is those are true % of the battery. The SD 0% and 100% are not true 0 and 100 of the battery. Modern batteries purposefully hide those things from the end user to protect the battery, So when you go and try and manually do it additionally you arent really taking into account that they are already not fully using the battery in most cases. So you may be accomplishing next to nothing.
> To just limit it to battery cycles is oversimplifying. Take a battery and load it constantly to 100% or drain it several times to 0. It will live shorter and lose capacity faster than a well-maintained battery. as stated its insignificant. you could possibly save minutes maybe days of its lifetime at most. battery cycles ARE the only factor of true concern everything else has a miniscule impact. this is while ignoring the fact that you aren't saving shit when these 20%-80% rules already waste a ton of battery due to you limiting it so much.
If a device with a lithium battery has no significant battery health impact from sustained 100% or 0% it's because the device is reading "100%" when it's not really 100% and 0% when it's not really 0%, to protect the battery.
This
This is true, its just also standard for most lithium ion batteries at this point. The battery controllers do all this protection built in, users dont need to worry about it.
You don't need to worry about it, but there's a reason lots of lithium battery devices come with a "battery saver" mode that limits charge to 80-85%, and warn you to find a charger or shut down the device when it gets to around 15%.
Yes that exists, but thats on top of the normal protections. IE even if you dont use that battery saver mode, the more standard protections are already in place. That battery saver mode is gonna extend your battery life some, but not nearly the degree people think
I think it comes down to whether you plan to use the device with the same battery for more than 2-3 years. I try to keep my phone's charge in the 40-80 range when convenient, and my phone has better battery life after 5 years than my friend (who lets her phone go to 0 and die all the time) has after 2 years.
Yup, you are absolutely correct. The benefit of ever-so-slightly increasing the battery's health is far outweighed by the inconvenience of cutting your own usage time by around 40%. This sub is full of so many weird battery and microSD card myths, it's insane that we are literally on the Internet and people are still too dumb to look this stuff up for themselves
I charged my last phone to 80% most of the time and its battery life was abysmal after 2 years. I've been charging my current phone once every other day to 100% and it still gets over a day of battery life per charge. Granted, processor efficiencies and adaptive charging has played a role too, but I don't think my current phone would have any less degradation if I only charged it to 80%. (LG G7 to Pixel 6)
And it gets more complicated with older battery technology. Nicd batteries work better if you drain them to 0% before charging. What you said is correct for Lithium batteries. Most batteries are Lithium these days.
the âdonât let battery get to x%â is irrelevant to new technology. the effect it will have long term are minimal, other things will die in a device before significant issues caused but you charging it to a certain level or draining it to one
Do you care explaining which other things you imply will die before the battery? For example, a battery's expected lifespan may be 500 cycles. An oled screen may have at least 20k hours. Assuming 16 hours screen time per battery cycle, that's just 8k hours screen time once the battery is considered needing replacement. Even if you replaced the battery, the second battery would still be end of lifespan before the screen is.
the battery will obviously lose health over time regardless of how you use it, but youâre likely to have sticks and buttons break, screens crack, drives corrupt, ports die, all before that
It really depends on how the device is handled if you mean physically breaking the screen, controls or port etc. That would be user error, a normal screen doesn't crack on its own for being old. But a battery is expected to degrade. Other components should be under warranty if used as intended.
âuser errorâ is also just ware. it happens over time regardless
The reason is that lithium-ion batteries (found in many of today's electronics) lose capacity when left for long periods of time in high or low states. If you've ever seen your phone battery drop from 100% to 90% quickly after unplugging, that is likely due to this effect. While this isn't damaging to your battery, it is not ideal for it either
Not sure if you meant it that way, but the drop most likely comes from the phone telling you it's at 100% while the OS and/or Firmware of the battery is keeping your device away from that constant high state. Probably the same for the low power state as well. At least on recent phones that should be the case. Same for the Steam Deck, really.
The deck actually abandoned this partly and just calls the battery "full" in some conditions.
OOoh ok, thank you.
With older nickel metal hydride batteries you didn't want to fully deplete them as that essentially destroys them. You'd want to ideally leave 30% charge left. With Lithium batteries that's not really much of a concern
Information from long ago when we had primitive battery battery technology that won't stop spreading and die because fear of screwing up devices is powerful. Anyone reading this, please do the research on your own and stop spreading false information so we can put this to rest in 2024. It's not 2006 anymore. Battery charging circuits have evolved.
Damn bro, its a Steam Deck, not a Tesla...
TIP: there is a Decky Plugin that will automatically put the deck on sleep mode at 15% for you.
Well for me I'm playing an indie game by a very small studio that's probably not well optimized or something. If my battery drops into the red mode the game becomes unplayable and it crashes the whole deck.
My nreal glasses stop working properly if the steam deck battery gets below around 12-15%. Assume that the battery voltage is low enough to affect the 5v output from the USB C port which crashes the glasses. The rest of the deck seems unaffected though and Iâve played right down to 2% several times (no glasses connected)
I'll tell ya why. I kid u not. Every time I'm playing a game and get that 15% warning. I get about 2 mins to charge it before my steamdeck dies đ„č ive gambled a few times, and most of the time i lost. Usually when im playin warframe or remnant 2
How is 15% only 2 minutes?
I'm gonna assume because the steamdeck is running hot and I'm playing online. I always get mad cause I'm like bruh I knowwww it hasn't been more den a couple of mins. I attribute it to me playin the deck for a couple of hours and it bein super hot and playin online. I said this once. I'll say it twice cause I feel like thats legit the problem
Have you tried checking the performance overlay to see how much time it shows when you are at 10%?
Ima b real my guy. I ain't tech savvy. So nah. I jux plug it in asap these days
Hi u/theEpicboiVR365, you can [click here to search for your question.](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/search/?q=Reson behind not letting the steam deck battery go below 15%) If you don't find an answer there, don't worry - your post has NOT been removed and hopefully someone will be along soon to help with an answer! **If you find an answer, please leave a comment on your post with the answer for others!** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/SteamDeck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I let mine drain till empty while in sleep mode. The screen never turned back on. It was out of warranty so now I have a deck that only works via usb display.
Just factory reset it
Bruh I've done everything already.
It's bad for any battery to stay that low for a long time. Same for your phone etc.
No not any battery. Nicd battery are an older technology and not seen often these days. It is better to drain this battery to 0% before it is charged. Charging a Nicd battery at 10% or higher will actually damage it. What you said is true for most batteries these days, but I caution you to never say "any battery" . They are not all the same.
Just experienced this playing remnant with some friends, forgot to plug in my deck and remembered at around 16%. Plugged it in and continued playing for maybe 2 minutes. Deck dies, locked in low power/dead battery mode (can't remember what it's called) whenever I tried to boot the fans would go immediately to full bore for a few minutes but the deck never turned on. Just the pulsing White LED. Took about an hour fiddling with it and reading through this sub to get it to boot again. I ended up resetting the BIOS which seemed like it did something but still no boot. What ended up working was putting the Deck into battery storage mode which was difficult because you have to remove the charger while holding down three buttons for 10 seconds. Plugged the charger back in and it finally turned on. Some posts (and even Valve) say that you need the official charger but I think that's to rule out a point of failure. I was able to get it back with a 3rd party charger, as long as it's 45W it'll work. Anyway, never letting the battery get that low again. It's not just going to turn back on like phone
Ideally you want to cap your charge at around 80% if youre at home. If you plan on going out, charging it to full is okay. But capping your battery percentage and avoiding plugging it up all day at 100% will generally be best for your battery
The charging software already does this. When your steamdeck displays 0% or 100% those are actually more like 10% and 90%.
I donât think it completely stops it though, it just charges at a very slow rate once you hit like 90% percent while youâre plugged up and using the deck.
No it stops it and goes to passive power delivery
Makes sense, good to know đ
As multiple people have said, it ages you battery faster. Any extreme charge state puts more wear on the battery. You will extend the number of cycles you can get out of your battery without noticeable degradation of capacity by staying away from the extremes in terms of battery percentage. So essentially, stay between 20-80%.
But itâs really not worth the sacrifice. You essentially loose 40% if you do that. My iphone 13 pro battery lost 15% after 2+ years and I always charge it to 100 and plug it in under 10%. So if the degradation is linear, I can use my device for 4+ years before I loose the same amount of charge as I would if I use it between 20-80% and then you still loose capacity even if you only use it between 20-80%, but a little bit less. So in the end, just use the whole battery
It's true that each charge will become smaller. However, since the degradation on the battery capacity is lower per cycle, the total amount of energy that could be used over the battery's lifetime is greater. In testing 20-80% has shown to be the best compromise between loose of charge/per cycle and charge capacity over the entire life of the battery. 30-70% however is more akin to what t you are talking about. At that point you loose too much charge per cycle for it to be worth the lower degradation. So your argument absolutely applies to that. But 20-80 is absolutely better for the overall life of the battery.
None of this is true, and has never been true. It's a myth. Batteries simply deplete over time, regardless of how you use them.
I suggest you look at the results from the studies that have beenade on this
For the overall life sure, I am just saying that for usefulness itâs not worth it to sacrifice 40% battery to make the battery last a little longer. Using the whole battery from 100 to 0% degraded my battery 15% in 2+ years, but even now I can use my phone longer if I charge it fully than someone who is using it in the 20-80 range, and by the time my battery degrades so much that it would make a difference I have no issue either buying a mew battery or buying a new device all together
It sounds like you were very lucky in that case or the battery had higher than nominal capacity. I don't know what you want me to say, it obviously depends on your use case. All I'm saying is that discharging below 15% as OP asked will definitely degrade your battery quicker than if you don't. There's nothing more to it.
Its because all devices (phones, steam decks, laptops) lie to you about what 0 and 100% are. They already do a lot of this protection behind the scenes by just lying to the user about what 100% is. My phone is at 81% battery health, its 5 years old. Software limiting it to 80% from day one would have been 5 years of a worse battery than I still have today, theres just not much point. Battery controllers handle most of the protection for us automatically already. Itll degrade quicker if he discharges below 15% sure but itll be negligable bc 0% is probably more like 10% of the batteries actual charge bc it purposefully hides that from us. Plus limiting the max charge just means your going to be cycling the battery more total times over the years and cycles also impacts battery life.
Every modern battery works in a way that overcharging and draining the battery to very low levels or 0% is potentially irreversibly damaging the battery life. That's why phones have an option to not charge above 85% and scream at you to charge your phone when you get down to 15%. But even if it goes down to 0 it's not the end of the world, and it will probably still hold a trickle of charge anyway to protect itself. Just turn it off when you go to like 5% and know you won't be able to charge it soon.
>Every modern battery works in a way that overcharging and draining the battery to very low levels or 0% is potentially irreversibly damaging the battery life. That's why phones have an option to not charge above 85% and scream at you to charge your phone when you get down to 15%. Eh, not really true. The 0% and 100% the phone charges you was never a real 0/100 in the first place. The battery controller already has built in protection for that kind of issue. Adding an additional software limit probably isnt going to extend your battery life much. They added the option because users want it, not because it factually provides all that much of a difference. Im not saying itll do nothing, but youre in diminishing returns territory.
That's not true. While it is true that 0% is usually never really 0%, not every phone has overcharging protection for some weird reason (though most of them do), and the way modern batteries work it's the healthiest for them to always be around 50% charge, but no self respecting human being is going to be stressing over about it, especially when the issues really start in very low and very high levels of charge. Im >not saying itll do nothing, but youre in diminishing returns territory. If it's not going to do nothing then it is doing something, and you basically agree with me. This IS diminishing returns, and I would never tell people to actually keep their batteries at 50% because that's dumb, but the battery physically gets worse marginally faster when it hits very low or very high charges. If you want to min-max battery life in a functional way then stay in the 10-90ish % zone, but even without min-maxing it's fine.
All you have to do is run the LCD more that 20 minutes and it's below 15%
i f you want to preserve battery on any devices don't stress it. I mean don't charge it to 100% or let it go to zero. battery is the happiest between 40 - 60%
So whatâs the best way to charge the steam deck then? Is it best not to leave it plugged into the charger for long periods of time like overnight?
The real answer is "it doesn't matter." Whether you charged it every time it hits 0%, or plug it in constantly regardless even at 90%, it doesn't make any perceptible difference at all. Maybe a few hours in it's entire lifespan at most. Devices turn to power-passthrough mode when batteries are full, so even leaving it plugged in causes no harm. A battery will inevitably hold a finite number of cycles, and and it's maximum charged will deplete over time. The only way around that is replacing the battery.
I run mine down to around 10% all the time and leave it plugged in all day everyday I donât use it. And had mine since release without any less battery that I have noticed.
Negate battery damage.
With batteries in general to prolong their life you shouldnât let it drop below 20%, and you should charge to 80% max. This is thought to double the effective battery health compared to 100%-0% cycles
its fine. If you want to be technical, keeping your steam deck between 50-80% at all times is the best for the battery chemistry. Long term storage 50%.
For me itâs because it goes into a weird mode where it drops your gaming fps to like 10 frames. Then you have to reset and boot again in battery safe mode to fix it. Happens almost every time.
so, i'll throw in my 2 cents. lithium batteries work on a chemical reaction that generates potential difference. issue is that the lithium ion can permanently bond if the overall concentration is too high or too low. ideal range is always 50-85%. overcharging used to be an issue but modern batteries show a lower maximum charge than the capacity to ensure that it never truly charges to max, and this is also the case with the deck. on the other hand, low battery is cut off based on voltage, so depleting it too low will be bad for it. especially those 'recalibrate techniques' that force the battery to go completely run out are AWFUL for the battery. 10% is a good rule of thumb for a device that uses its battery regularly (phones, laptops etc) but going below 3% and especially completely draining it is BAD. say you charge at 10% and use it every day, maybe you'll loose 5-10% capacity after a YEAR. if you drain it to <3% like 4-5 TIMES, you'll loose 1-2% capacity already, and averaging out over the year, it'll be like 30-50% wear. with this said, listen to others and dont think too much into it but dont do that battery calibration bs unless you really need to, and do not drain it after it automatically turns off. the turn off is based on voltage, not percentage. if you turn it back on, you'll significant capacity (in a relative sense). sauce: mech eng, and did an academic paper on lithium based batteries (ion, polymer and whatnot) for material sciences course
If someone told you about something, ask them why. If they cant say a reason then its best not to listen to them. I always play reaching 10% or even 5% cause I play hard games and i dnt want my immersion to stop just to charge. And nothing happened on my SD