Can you make the Switch's battery stop charging at 60%?

[captain_obvious]

To prolong the lifespan of the lithium battery.

 

[masagrator]

You have clearly wrong informations of how battery in Switch works. This would absolutely not help prolong battery life.

This is true for all lithium-ion batteries that meet certain standards. Battery is never charged to its hardware max. It's charged until it reaches certain point at which it cuts off charge. In Switch you can see that easily for example in Status Monitor by looking at Battery Age which reports how much % of designed capacity was charged before cutting off battery from charger.

 

[realbout]

Well, for example in an HP Elitebook you can set in the UEFI that the battery should only be charged up to about 80%. The reason for this is that the battery lives longer. However, I suspect that Nintendo does this on its own and only pretends 100% to the user, as @masagrator writes.

 

[jkyoho]

sys-clk-oc overlay has this feature in Miscellaneous setting

https://github.com/rashevskyv/sys-clk-OC

 

[captain_obvious]

You have clearly wrong informations of how battery in Switch works. This would absolutely not help prolong battery life.

This is true for all lithium-ion batteries that meet certain standards. Battery is never charged to its hardware max. It's charged until it reaches certain point at which it cuts off charge. In Switch you can see that easily for example in Status Monitor by looking at Battery Age which reports how much % of designed capacity was charged before cutting off battery from charger.

So that means that the battery charges to 94% of the maximum capacity before charging stops and the Switch battery gauge displays 100%. To my understanding you want to battery to remain between 60-80% to maximise its lifespan so 94% is still too high.

sys-clk-oc overlay has this feature in Miscellaneous setting

https://github.com/rashevskyv/sys-clk-OC

Found it. Given that it says "Long-term use may render the battery gauge inaccurate!" it looks like a lose-lose situation whether I set a charge limit or not.

 

[jkyoho]

So that means that the battery charges to 94% of the maximum capacity before charging stops and the Switch battery gauge displays 100%. To my understanding you want to battery to remain between 60-80% to maximise its lifespan so 94% is still too high.
View attachment 392240View attachment 392241

Found it. Given that it says "Long-term use may render the battery gauge inaccurate!" it looks like a lose-lose situation whether I set a charge limit or not.
View attachment 392242

I would rather having wrong battery gauge than replacing it in short period cycles especially when switch in dock mode for most of time.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

You have clearly wrong informations of how battery in Switch works. This would absolutely not help prolong battery life.

This is true for all lithium-ion batteries that meet certain standards. Battery is never charged to its hardware max. It's charged until it reaches certain point at which it cuts off charge. In Switch you can see that easily for example in Status Monitor by looking at Battery Age which reports how much % of designed capacity was charged before cutting off battery from charger.

That isn't how that works. That indicator is measuring the actual battery capacity, by measuring how much power goes into it to charge it to 100%. It still stops at 4.2V, which is a full charge (regardless of how old and worn the battery is, it still charges to 4.2V), and that is the hardware max, it's not safe to charge any standard lipo past 4.2V (mobile phones use some weird lipo cells that go up to 4.35V, not sure why that is the case as nothing else seems to use them, seems to be a different less common chemistry)

What OP is asking is a way to stop charging before the battery reaches 4.2V.
This absolutely does prolong battery lifetime, the battery heats up more when charged/discharged below about 20% and above about 80%, this is also why you might notice that your smartphone charges really fast up to 80% using a fast charger, but the last 20% takes much longer, at this point a fast charger is barely any faster than a standard charger, this is done to prevent excessive heat and prolong the battery lifetime, which is especially important with the insane fast charging smartphones support nowadays. More heat = more wear and tear on the battery.

Many devices that use lithium batteries now include options to try to keep the battery charge within the ideal range to prolong the battery lifetime. You especially see this in electric cars, which makes sense, because the batteries are huge and expensive to replace, not to mention their manufacturing is bad for the environment.

Keeping a battery between 20-80% charge makes a huge difference to battery lifetime. We're talking about extending the expected lifetime of a battery from 700-1000 charge cycles to thousands.

Also worth noting that keeping the Switch docked 24/7 is pretty much the worst thing for the battery, because it keeps it at 95%+ constantly, which wears out the battery faster than anything. So it would be really nice to have this feature on the Switch so that it could be safely kept docked.

 

[Perrito123]

I never used this to limit my battery on my mariko V2, although that seems my battery is not affected after 2 years use... should limit the batttery to 80 and minimum 20?

 

[Lamcza]

I never used this to limit my battery on my mariko V2, although that seems my battery is not affected after 2 years use... should limit the batttery to 80 and minimum 2

i have v1 unpatched for about a year and the previous owner never changed the battery Still, 100% capacity one thing that breaks for me was sd card reader so far. So i guess use it as it is and when the time comes just change the battery? I mean you can set it up from 20-80 it will expand you battery lifespan but man is it rlly worth it?

 

[DaLZy]

You have clearly wrong informations of how battery in Switch works. This would absolutely not help prolong battery life.

This is true for all lithium-ion batteries that meet certain standards. Battery is never charged to its hardware max. It's charged until it reaches certain point at which it cuts off charge. In Switch you can see that easily for example in Status Monitor by looking at Battery Age which reports how much % of designed capacity was charged before cutting off battery from charger.

Charging to a lower voltage absolutely prolongs the usable life of a battery. A normal charge to 4.2v will give you 500 cycles. A charge to 4.05v will give you 1000~ cycles and 80% of capacity at 4.2v. Thats 500 units of energy vs 800 units of energy used before your battery degrades to a given point.

Battery age is only used for battery status/percentage reporting. The battery in the switch is charged to a cut-off voltage(4.208v for v1/v2/oled and 4.36v for lite) and there is a software cut off at 3.2v in the switch OS and a hardware cut off at 3.0v where the switch will not boot. This behavior can be observed when you do a battery upgrade because the Switch will discharge far past 4667mAh to 3.2v and charge to 4.2v, not to whatever point where 4667mAh has been supplied to the battery.

To prolong the lifespan of the lithium battery.

To answer OP's original Question, it should be possible. According to the datasheet of the charging IC in the switch, the voltage to which the battery is charged can be configured via a I2C register from 3.5v to 4.4v. Now I have almost zero knowledge in this field, but I do know the BQ24193 is configured higher on the lite to 4.36v. It should be possible to configure the charging cut off voltage lower if some homebrew was written to do it, I think. Doing it this way would mean the battery% reading in software would still be accurate and go up to "100%"(where 100% is 4.05v).

I'm also interested if anyone with experience in coding can tell us whether it's actually possible, since I want to raise the voltage to 4.4v for the 4.4v smartphone cells in my Switch.

 

[Ondrashek06]

You have clearly wrong informations of how battery in Switch works. This would absolutely not help prolong battery life.

This is true for all lithium-ion batteries that meet certain standards. Battery is never charged to its hardware max. It's charged until it reaches certain point at which it cuts off charge. In Switch you can see that easily for example in Status Monitor by looking at Battery Age which reports how much % of designed capacity was charged before cutting off battery from charger.

Exactly this, OP. Corporations that make hardware (unless it's some cheap Chinese crap) aren't dumb. They know that pushing the limits of li-ion batteries damages them, so they intentionally prevent you from reaching them.

 

[Hayato213]

Ideally it is recommended to charge up to like 95%, not 100%, as charging up to 100% reduce the battery lifespan more.

 

[Perrito123]

I don't want a very long answer like dalzy, so in order to have the longest lifespan u guys recommend me between 20 and 80% for my switch V2?

Post automatically merged: Sep 6, 2023

This is my battery life on Hekate without limiting the battery to 80% used for 2 years playing dock most time and sometimes handled is it good health?

 

[Hayato213]

I don't want a very long answer like dalzy, so in order to have the longest lifespan u guys recommend me between 20 and 80% for my switch V2?

To get the most out of it obviously don't let completely drain dead, and reduce the amount of cycle you charge the switch. The more full charge cycles your switch experiences, the faster the battery will degrade.

 

[Perrito123]

To get the most out of it obviously don't let completely drain dead, and reduce the amount of cycle you charge the switch. The more full charge cycles your switch experiences, the faster the battery will degrade.

So should I limit with sys clk to 80% and low 20%? If yes how to install the sys clk?needs a menu overlay? Which one recommended? Thx

 

[Duo8]

That isn't how that works. That indicator is measuring the actual battery capacity, by measuring how much power goes into it to charge it to 100%. It still stops at 4.2V, which is a full charge (regardless of how old and worn the battery is, it still charges to 4.2V), and that is the hardware max, it's not safe to charge any standard lipo past 4.2V (mobile phones use some weird lipo cells that go up to 4.35V, not sure why that is the case as nothing else seems to use them, seems to be a different less common chemistry)

What OP is asking is a way to stop charging before the battery reaches 4.2V.
This absolutely does prolong battery lifetime, the battery heats up more when charged/discharged below about 20% and above about 80%, this is also why you might notice that your smartphone charges really fast up to 80% using a fast charger, but the last 20% takes much longer, at this point a fast charger is barely any faster than a standard charger, this is done to prevent excessive heat and prolong the battery lifetime, which is especially important with the insane fast charging smartphones support nowadays. More heat = more wear and tear on the battery.

Many devices that use lithium batteries now include options to try to keep the battery charge within the ideal range to prolong the battery lifetime. You especially see this in electric cars, which makes sense, because the batteries are huge and expensive to replace, not to mention their manufacturing is bad for the environment.

Keeping a battery between 20-80% charge makes a huge difference to battery lifetime. We're talking about extending the expected lifetime of a battery from 700-1000 charge cycles to thousands.

Also worth noting that keeping the Switch docked 24/7 is pretty much the worst thing for the battery, because it keeps it at 95%+ constantly, which wears out the battery faster than anything. So it would be really nice to have this feature on the Switch so that it could be safely kept docked.

My switch has been "safely docked " for almost 6 years now, without any noticeable battery degradation that could be attributed to docking.
Not sure how it does that either, my laptop battery shit the bed about a year after I started docking it.

 

[Perrito123]

My switch has been "safely docked " for almost 6 years now, without any noticeable battery degradation that could be attributed to docking.
Not sure how it does that either, my laptop battery shit the bed about a year after I started docking it.

So from what can understand no need to limit battery to 80%

 

[Hayato213]

I don't want a very long answer like dalzy, so in order to have the longest lifespan u guys recommend me between 20 and 80% for my switch V2?

Post automatically merged: Sep 6, 2023

This is my battery life on Hekate without limiting the battery to 80% used for 2 years playing dock most time and sometimes handled is it good health?

It health is good, if you want you can limit your charge limit to 95%, depending how much battery you would need.

 

[Perrito123]

It health is good, if you want you can limit your charge limit to 95%, depending how much battery you would need.

My health battery good? So if limit to 95% can be put on dock too and use handled? How to install the sys clk? I copy the files but don't do anything, btw u have that settings to 95?

 

[Hayato213]

My health battery good? So if limit to 95% can be put on dock too and use handled? How to install the sys clk? I copy the files but don't do anything, btw u have that settings to 95?

Do you docked it all the time?