Spontaneous Death

[tp4tissue]

......of Laptop Battery

Stock oem battery, came with dell laptop, brand new.

Tp4 set the bios to charge stop to 55% capacity as it spends most of the time plugged in.

The battery has less than 60 total cycles on it.

Died in 4 years.  Just says battery communication error. not swelling or nothing.

New battery goes in, charging, board seems to be fine.

What happened ?

Should Tp4 set the charge stop to a higher percentage ? Always assumed lower is better (internal pressure)

[Leslieann]

These prefer to stay around 50%, which is why that's used to hibernate them.
Generally try to stay between 30% and 80%, with those being about equal in terms of wear. 30% may sound better (and could be), except that you have a smaller margin of error if you lose power or forget to plug it in and is useless if you actually need the battery. So from a human standpoint, 80 is actually better than 30 all other things being equal. I think 60-80 is what IBM and Sony used to recommend.

As to why this one died, it probably had nothing to do with how you treated it (other than heat) and more to do with how it was made and treated prior to you getting it (i.e. luck).

[tp4tissue]

The minimum bios setting is 55%, so that's probably their margin of safety.

Have read that lithium at low voltages causes crystallization growth which may puncture the jelly roll.

Maybe I'm overthinking this, but is it possible there's a logic controller internally that says, oh hey this battery hasn't gone past 55 in 4 years, it must be faulty,  then hardbricks ?

[Leslieann]

Maybe I'm overthinking this, but is it possible there's a logic controller internally that says, oh hey this battery hasn't gone past 55 in 4 years, it must be faulty,  then hardbricks ?

Or maybe it's just crappy Chinese manufacturing.

[tp4tissue]

checked the cells, 12.8v  so all cells are good.

must be the charge controller.