06-19-2020, 08:24 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-19-2020, 01:02 PM by Vinay.
Edit Reason: charged to 100%
)
Yeah, received my PBP this weekend and overall quite happy with it. Battery was completely full when I received it and life seemed quite good actually even when using it. It would easily make it through the day though when it had about 30% left I decided to charge it using the USB to barrel cable. Not sure what current my USB socket is able to deliver, it is one of these that delivers both the regular 220V (euro socket) as well as two USB outlets. Initially it charged nicely but near 80% it starts to level off. When I started Redshift (an open source kind of f.lux, something to tone down the blue from the screen for evening work) the charge actually dropped. Even with the lid closed, not doing anything at all. Stopping Redshift helped. Though it still doesn't charge beyond 88% or so using that cable. I made a screenshot with gnome-power-statistics of the charge state, for those interested. If so, please tell how to upload that picture. I'll try using a separate USB charger someday which I know that is able to deliver the 3A current and see how that works out. For now I'll quit charging with that cable through my USB socket and use the supplied charger instead, I'll report back how it works out.
Either way, of course I think it is still nice to be able to just carry that cable when going somewhere and be able to charge beyond 80%.
Quick question as we're here, what bash command returns the charging state. I'm used to using acpi -V (when using SuSE) but for now I'll stick with the supplied Manjaro and acpi does returrn something, but doesn't seem to read the charge state (instead it tells me I have a 0% charge). Is there an other command I should use? acpi wasn't installed by default so I get that Manjaro or Pine64 may prefer to use something else.
Thanks!
Update 1: Had it charging using the supplied charger since my original post. There was a (relatively) quick rise from 88% upwards but it now seems to have settled at 92%. I don't expect it to charge up to the full 100%. Question I now have, is this an issue for the battery health to not ever be charged fully? I think even with this battery charged up to 92% I'd probably be happy with the mileage it goes but I don't want it to cause excessive wear. I'm no expert in electronics (or anything computer related, probably) but I've read somewhere that it is actually the stages near full discharge and fully charged (where it constantly stops and starts charging) which cause most wear. But yeah, I would appreciate some expert views on this.
Update 2: With the lid closed and connected to the supplied charger, my PBP eventually charged to 100%
! We could probably still consider charging relatively slow but at least it does charge to the full 100%. Question remains, how much of an issue for the hardware is it to never/rarely charge to the full 100% (but stop between 80% and 90%)? Would this damage/wear the batter in any way or is it fine (or even better)? The practical adantage I can see is that I can use the much more portable USB to barrel cable and plug it into these (nowadays quite common) USB power outlets or powerbanks.
Either way, of course I think it is still nice to be able to just carry that cable when going somewhere and be able to charge beyond 80%.
Quick question as we're here, what bash command returns the charging state. I'm used to using acpi -V (when using SuSE) but for now I'll stick with the supplied Manjaro and acpi does returrn something, but doesn't seem to read the charge state (instead it tells me I have a 0% charge). Is there an other command I should use? acpi wasn't installed by default so I get that Manjaro or Pine64 may prefer to use something else.
Thanks!
Update 1: Had it charging using the supplied charger since my original post. There was a (relatively) quick rise from 88% upwards but it now seems to have settled at 92%. I don't expect it to charge up to the full 100%. Question I now have, is this an issue for the battery health to not ever be charged fully? I think even with this battery charged up to 92% I'd probably be happy with the mileage it goes but I don't want it to cause excessive wear. I'm no expert in electronics (or anything computer related, probably) but I've read somewhere that it is actually the stages near full discharge and fully charged (where it constantly stops and starts charging) which cause most wear. But yeah, I would appreciate some expert views on this.
Update 2: With the lid closed and connected to the supplied charger, my PBP eventually charged to 100%
! We could probably still consider charging relatively slow but at least it does charge to the full 100%. Question remains, how much of an issue for the hardware is it to never/rarely charge to the full 100% (but stop between 80% and 90%)? Would this damage/wear the batter in any way or is it fine (or even better)? The practical adantage I can see is that I can use the much more portable USB to barrel cable and plug it into these (nowadays quite common) USB power outlets or powerbanks.
