Chargie promises to prolong the quality of your phone’s battery life.
Never heard of the tool, but by the sound of it, it extends your battery life by letting you not charge to 100% (e.g. only charge to 80%).
That’s real. Doing that will prolong the life of your battery.
Should you pay $25 for a tool that will do that? Well, if you’re on Android 12 (edit: and your device manufacturer has implemented it), there may be an option in the battery settings to limit charging to 85% which gives you most of the benefit.
If you’re not on Android 12 but have a rooted phone, you can get a free app that does the same thing.
If protecting the battery is important to you, you don’t have a rooted phone (and don’t want to root it), and don’t have Android 12, then as far as I can tell from reviews, Chargie does do what it says.
Are you sure AOSP 12 built this feature in? I’m on GrapheneOS on Pixel 7 and there is no such option in battery settings.
Sorry, I read this during an internet search but it turns out it’s not in AOSP but something that various device manufacturers have implemented.
While searching I found GrapheneOS say they will not add this feature as it’s not privacy related, and that the OS is not rootable, so you might be a good use case for Chargie.
If I recall this was in reference to LineageOS’ charging control feature. Perhaps this is what you are referring to?
Doing that will prolong the life of your battery.
Why? What is the difference between charging just upto 80% and 100%?
To be honest I don’t know why. Manufacturers from Samsung to Apple to Microsoft say is the case, but I haven’t managed to find an answer with a better source than itself.
I get the impression that it’s about staying at high levels of charge.
For example, this page: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/caring-for-your-surface-battery-9ccdfa7b-d074-f629-425c-1c090ac66bed
So when I go to bed I put my phone on the charger. After about 1.5 hours it is at 100%, then it spends the rest of the night on the charger at 100%. It spends 1/4of its life on the charger at 100%. From what I read of this, if it was taken off the charger and allowed to discharge, it would be less of an issue than having it at 100% then every time it drops to 99% the charger tops it up to 100% again.
But TBH I have not found anything that backs up the idea of charging to 80% only vs charge to 100% and taking it off the charger (you can get apps that give you a notification when it gets to a certain charge level). Lot’s of people and articles talking about it as a known fact, but not so much in the way of sources.
I use Advanced charging controller to set charge rate and capacity thresholds. Limiting both (but especially capacity) will absolutely extend the service life of the battery. I limit it to 60% in normal use, which extends service life greatly and also have presets for 80% and 100%.
ACC requires root access. This device accomplishes the same goal without it using external hardware.
Hard to say. I thought most modern Android phones have charge management in software now.
I’m very reluctant to plug my phone into random USB-C devices though, you just don’t know what’s on these things.
If your phone can’t do charge control on it’s own, Chargie is totally legit: I have 8 of them - As and Cs - and they work great.
Got one when I got my Samsung Fold 3. I liked smart charging on my old OnePlus but Samsung doesn’t have that… Only way is to limit it to 85% or charge to full 100%. And I rather use full 100% of my battery because I use it a lot.
Last time I checked my battery health was still “good” after 2 years of use (via Samsung diagnostic tool).
I’ve set my chargie charge to 85% and then recharge only when battery drops 10% or more. And at 5:00 it charges once to 100% so I have my full battery at morning
Couple of times in last two years it hasn’t charged up to 100% (stopped to 85%). Don’t know why, but it hasn’t been huge issue.
Don’t know if charge helps with battery, but at least it doesn’t make it worse 🤷
Samsung does have the ability to stop charging at 85%
