Manually control charging level of battery

Dear users,

Recently I bought a Acer Aspire V5-573G-74508G50aii (same chassis as this review Review Acer Aspire V5-573G-54208G50aii Notebook - NotebookCheck.net Reviews [good review BTW! I bought the laptop after reading this review]).

The only big disadvantage in terms of battery life is that the battery is integrated. There are many new laptops with integrated batteries (thin and light like the Macbook Air) and their battery life will be very short. You are forced to have your battery charged up to 100% if you want to have AC power on the laptop.

Lifespan of a lithion-ion or li-polymer (same technoledgy, only li-po has more flexibility in terms of small size) charged most of the time at 100 % is very low. Having your battery charged at 100% for about a year will decrease it’s charge rate about 25 %! See the battery university website: Battery Information Table of Contents, Basic to Advanced

Up till now my other laptop (HP elitebook 8530w) I have my battery unplugged and charged always between 30 and 50 % (this is the most optimal for li-ion batteries) to remain its long lifespan. After 4 years of usage and my careful handling ensured that now only 9% of the battery capacity is lost! Most people tell me their laptop battery is almost completely ruined after about 3 or more years of usage.

With an integrated battery this is no more possible. Contacting Acer about it they told me they don’t have a solution up till now. I am looking for a software utility that will let me determine the max charge rate of the battery. Lets say I want it charged at 50% continuously when I am on AC power, that would be ideal. Some program like this will have lots of market potential because users around the world, even letting their removable in will keep it charged at 100%.

Please if someone knows a program or could even create one!

Thanks in advance,

Anton

 

My MacBook Pro, which has an integrated battery, has remained on AC power/100% charge the vast majority of the 13+ months I've owned it. I've been using it a lot more on battery lately, and it charges no more slowly than it did when it was new.

 

I surely believe it charges at the same rate, only in practice the amount of energy the battery can take keeps declining by about 25% years (kept mostly at 100% charge).

 

This is not possible via pure software. You need hardware support for it as your OS has no way to change the battery control chip's behavior unless a special interface is available.

The Lenovo IdeaPad/ThinkPad line can set charging thresholds via a utility (available for Windows/Linux) on the fly. Some Samsung models can limit charging level in BIOS settings. There might be some other notebooks with similar features that I'm not aware of.

 

My Mac's battery health is currently at about 96%. If what you said is true, it would be closer to 75%.

 

This, you need the battery controller to be able to take custom charge settings to set different charge thresholds. As Mr. Koala said, the Thinkpads allow this via either software or BIOS (most models), some Dell Latitude/Precisions with the right battery also allow this (my M6700 does) and I'm pretty sure my elitebok also has the option to set custom charge thresholds in the BIOS.

some notebooks while not letting you set charge thresholds manually still have some, Asus notebooks for example will not charge the battery until it hits 95% when plugged in.

 

Sony-VAIO also let charge up to 50% or 80%.
Why MSI doesn't is a mystery

 

Most manufacturers don't let you set charge thresholds.

 

An unfortunate backward limitation instituted by Apple (and its imitators) with its never ending race towards thinner/lighter laptop at the expense of all else.

That's not an unexpected useful life span. And a trade-off for all the extra care it took to eek out the extra bit of time.

Unfortunately battery life is determined by more than one thing OP. Not the least of which is frequency of use and environment. Which will likely take the greatest tool on battery life regardless of any other measures. Not that your suggestions aren't valid, they are.

But few laptop owners will hold there computers in stasis so that the maximum amount of battery life could be attained. Remember, laptop are portable devices by design. So battery life is secondary to their convenience and use.

 

How did you confirm battery %? Did you do a full discharge and recharge? If you don't do a full discharge and recharge occasionally (like a couple times a year) battery life % can be off significantly because it needs to calibrate.

 

I indeed recalibrate my battery once a year. It is told by AIDA64 that monitors battery wear level, even after a full calibration.

Unfortunately it isn't possible it for Acer laptops to do this. It would be very good if Acer would release a BIOS update to do this.