LiPo Battery Lifespan

lukeiamyourfather · August 11, 2019, 8:01am

I recently encountered trouble with my cell phone battery after roughly 2 years of usage and figured anyone thinking of integrating LiPo batteries into a project might benefit from the data I’ve gathered (or anyone just curious).

After 345 wear cycles the battery capacity is around 62% and it has trouble supplying enough power to keep the phone stable when it gets below 20%. The functionality of the battery seemed to drop off pretty quickly after a certain point. I looked up data on the life expectancy of LiPo batteries and found 300 to 500 wear cycles is typical. Based on this data I would say 500 wear cycles is very optimistic but 300 is definitely obtainable. If you’re interested in gathering this kind of data on your phone, I used AccuBattery to do it. If you root your phone first then you can later directly scrape the SQLite database used by the application. I didn’t do that (this time…) so I’m working with whatever the application wants to show me.

Smcc2 · August 13, 2019, 4:07am

Do you have any data about your usage and charging habits?
When you charged were you using fast charge? Do you leave it on the charger overnight? When you discharged the battery did you routinely let it get below 20%ish? Etc

Josh_Melnick · August 13, 2019, 4:36am

great work thanks luke!

lukeiamyourfather · August 13, 2019, 4:38am

I would characterize the usage as heavy. Several hours of screen time per day. The chart below shows charge sessions by depth of charge. It got below 20% maybe once a month and below 10% almost never.

I used typical 1 amp chargers most of the time. I used the factory 3 amp charger a couple times a week. I left it on the charger overnight pretty much every night.