Rockbox Development > Feature Ideas

Battery management while charging

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FaN:
Hello ROCKbox world,

I'm new on this forum, and a new user of this awesome FW, and I'm already loving it!
I've got a Iaudio M3 and a Sansa Clip +, both rockboxed, and both have the same king of usage which is probably not so frequent: I'm listening to MP3 at work, and thus, the player is continuously connected to USB to charge.
And thus, the battery is always fully charged...
On my M3, I've used 3 batteries: all dead with only a few charge/discharge cycles, because it stays always at 100% SOC (State Of Charge).

In order to maximize the battery life, it could be very great to have the opportunity to select a 'connected mode'.
1. normal mode, to charge the battery in order to use the player in a normal way.
2. desk mode, on which the SOC target could be set to @40%, in order to preserve the battery.

Is this something that could be done?

Thanks for all the job done so far,
/Vincent

saratoga:
I doubt its going to make much difference to keep the battery less charged.

bertrik:
At least on the Clip+, charging stops when the battery gets fully charged, even when connected to a PC. After that you have to replug it to start a new charge cycle.

Actually I can imagine having a battery life extension option, my netbook has one (Samsung N510). In battery extension mode, it charges only up to 80% instead of 100%. In the short term, I don't think we'll see any such option on rockbox yet.

pabouk:
It is a known fact that Li-ion and Li-Pol batteries age faster when they are more charged and/or when their temperature is higher. So option to stop charging at certain level and possibly to not start charging when the charge is above certain level would be useful.

Dependency of aging on the number of charge cycles is not clear but from my experience it seems that avoiding large number of partial charges makes the life of a battery longer.

torne:
It *is* true, however it doesn't matter very much. It's only a big deal when the battery is stored for a long time without being used. If you're actually using the player every couple of days then it's not going to spend long enough fully charged for it to make a lot of difference to the battery's lifetime.

In general, for real devices that users use every day, you can do anything you like when you charge it (charge it often or not, fully or not, leave it plugged in when charged or not) and the result will be absolutely no observable difference whatsoever. This really only matters for things that are infrequently used.

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