Microsoft reveals improved Windows 11 battery icons and percentage toggle settings

Damn I dumped Windows over the data mining and the Recall but wow new battery icons SMH.

emike09 said:

What I'd like to see most is the ability to limit charge to 80% or 90%. This would require collaboration between the manufacturer, particularly between the firmware and the OS. After three years on my XPS 13 9310, the battery only has about 60% capacity. Fortunately, it's not too hard to replace the battery.

My old Dell XPS 15 from 2016 allows you to set % limits for when battery will start charging and stop charging. Mine won't charge until it's depleted to 50% and stops at 90%

Alvar Miles Udell said:

Typical Microsoft, do something that's probably #9000 on the list of requested features.

Actually, lots of people (implicitly) requested this - shareholders.

emike09 said:

What I'd like to see most is the ability to limit charge to 80% or 90%. This would require collaboration between the manufacturer, particularly between the firmware and the OS. After three years on my XPS 13 9310, the battery only has about 60% capacity. Fortunately, it's not too hard to replace the battery.

It's quite strange to hear something like this from the owner of the top Dell series, when even their gaming G series have long ago implemented full software control of charging directly from the BIOS and OS.

I own an old Dell G laptop and from the moment of purchase I simply set the mode to 100%->60%->100%. Battery wear (the laptop runs from the power supply 99.9% of the time) is 6% in 6+ years. Although it was of poor quality from the moment of purchase - it could spontaneously turn off the laptop under a load of 15-20% even with a charge of 70%. But I didn't even change it, because I didn't even think of using it from the battery.

The Thinkpad also has a programmable charging controller (and even auto-discharge with a shunt). But as my empirical experience has shown, the 80-55-80 mode is worse than 100-60-100, the wear in the first is much faster.

On the other hand, one of my oldest laptops - a "gaming" MSI from 2008 - came with a 9-cell battery, and this battery even after 16 years kept the laptop running for more than 45 minutes. At the same time, this laptop was always running from the power supply in the most hellish mode of 100%>95%>100%, since there was no way to reprogram the levels. And nevertheless, the battery survived 16 years, which means the cells there were of very high quality. For example, in the Thinkpad, the battery failed after 6.5 years, also in the 99% mode from the power supply, but with the levels specified above. I also noticed that in new laptop models, there is a gradual deterioration in the quality of batteries from the factory, precisely in the long term usage...

OldAnalogWorld said:

It's quite strange to hear something like this from the owner of the top Dell series, when even their gaming G series have long ago implemented full software control of charging directly from the BIOS and OS.

I own an old Dell G laptop and from the moment of purchase I simply set the mode to 100%->60%->100%. Battery wear (the laptop runs from the power supply 99.9% of the time) is 6% in 6+ years. Although it was of poor quality from the moment of purchase - it could spontaneously turn off the laptop under a load of 15-20% even with a charge of 70%. But I didn't even change it, because I didn't even think of using it from the battery.

The Thinkpad also has a programmable charging controller (and even auto-discharge with a shunt). But as my empirical experience has shown, the 80-55-80 mode is worse than 100-60-100, the wear in the first is much faster.

On the other hand, one of my oldest laptops - a "gaming" MSI from 2008 - came with a 9-cell battery, and this battery even after 16 years kept the laptop running for more than 45 minutes. At the same time, this laptop was always running from the power supply in the most hellish mode of 100%>95%>100%, since there was no way to reprogram the levels. And nevertheless, the battery survived 16 years, which means the cells there were of very high quality. For example, in the Thinkpad, the battery failed after 6.5 years, also in the 99% mode from the power supply, but with the levels specified above. I also noticed that in new laptop models, there is a gradual deterioration in the quality of batteries from the factory, precisely in the long term usage...

Thanks for the reply, I learned a little more after digging around. On my XPS and Latitude systems, there isn't any BIOS option to set percentages for the battery. There is, however, options to specify how you use it, such as "Primarily AC". My understanding was that's how aggressive the system is charged. While that's true, it turns out it also caps the max charge to ~80% and modifies when charging starts again.

emike09 said:

While that's true, it turns out it also caps the max charge to ~80% and modifies when charging starts again.

What is important in your case is not the limitation threshold, but the self-discharge range, while the laptop is constantly running from the power supply. For example, Lenovo sets a 5% self-discharge range in its cheap series, after which charging begins, so there is no point in the (60%-55%-60%) scheme - the battery is still killed just as quickly as with the 100-95-100% scheme. And even worse, as I showed above. It is important that the self-discharge of the battery when running from the power supply is at least 20%. That is, if your upper threshold is 80%, then the lower one should not be higher than 60%. If it starts charging in the 80-75-80 scheme, it still kills the battery quite quickly and is even worse than 100-95-100.