battery calibration

[Mac Man 2007]

Looked for a battery thread and could not find it.
Backed my big butt into a lamp which hit a glass of water which fell on a seat and had some water hit the key board on early 2015 MacPro. I grabbed the computer and force quit it and immediately pull the back off and disconnected the battery which had some water in the left side battery case. Then I saw the swollen battery. Good news is I had a new OWC battery I bought a few months ago and hadn't installed it yet. So I took the old battery out and put laptop on its side, opened the clamshell and let let a fan blow the key board all night I installed the new battery and good news is everything is good.
Question: (I did calibrate the battery, 100% then discharge until is shuts itself off and wait 5 hours.)
Is calibration still a "thing" to do with new batteries or even older batteries to try and extend their life cycle? Apple stopped recommending this 10 years ago but OWC and others still say calibrate.

 

[pm-r]

Is calibration still a "thing" to do with new batteries or even older batteries to try and extend their life cycle? Apple stopped recommending this 10 years ago but OWC and others still say calibrate.

That's a very good question and a mix of conflicting answers it looks like:

Doing a quick Google search, the first two hits or rather interesting:

Google Search

If you got one of the Newer Tech batteries that OWC often cells, I would be inclined to go with what they say:

How To Calibrate a Mac Laptop's Power System - NewerTech

It's essential to calibrate your power management system to give your battery its fullest charge and lifespan. Our easy step-by-step guide shows you how.

www.newertech.com

If you got a later model Mac, it seems that Apple may have changed how their Power Management System actually works and that seems to bring up a dilemma for some, such as this:

SOLVED: Correct battery clibration after replacement - MacBook Pro 15" Retina Display Mid 2012

So the solution for me was setting the hibernation mode to 25 instead of 3 by executing following command: `sudo pmset -b hibernatemode 25` Now the macbook goes into hibernation every time it reaches 5% and my work gets saved. This hibernation mode is "deep" and it saves al the RAM content as...

www.ifixit.com

I'm sorry but I do not have a definitive answer.

What brand of battery was the replacement you got and are now using???

Maybe that makes a difference.




- Patrick
=======

 

[Mac Man 2007]

That's a very good question and a mix of conflicting answers it looks like:

Doing a quick Google search, the first two hits or rather interesting:

Google Search

If you got one of the Newer Tech batteries that OWC often cells, I would be inclined to go with what they say:

How To Calibrate a Mac Laptop's Power System - NewerTech

It's essential to calibrate your power management system to give your battery its fullest charge and lifespan. Our easy step-by-step guide shows you how.

www.newertech.com

If you got a later model Mac, it seems that Apple may have changed how their Power Management System actually works and that seems to bring up a dilemma for some, such as this:

SOLVED: Correct battery clibration after replacement - MacBook Pro 15" Retina Display Mid 2012

So the solution for me was setting the hibernation mode to 25 instead of 3 by executing following command: `sudo pmset -b hibernatemode 25` Now the macbook goes into hibernation every time it reaches 5% and my work gets saved. This hibernation mode is "deep" and it saves al the RAM content as...

www.ifixit.com

I'm sorry but I do not have a definitive answer.

What brand of battery was the replacement you got and are now using???

Maybe that makes a difference.




- Patrick
=======

I replaced it with an OWC (Newer Tech) battery. They recommend calibration. But the calibration is the "same as it always was" (apologizes to Talking Heads) since way back when it was the thing to do. It has never changed.
I am real pleased with the OWC (Newer Tech) I am running in this 2013 Mac Air. The battery is 2 years old with 210 cycles and is at 92%. capacity and I get excellent battery life when off the charger.
Yes I did that goole search and ended up with conflicting information.

 

[pm-r]

I am real pleased with the OWC (Newer Tech) I am running in this 2013 Mac Air. The battery is 2 years old with 210 cycles and is at 92%. capacity and I get excellent battery life when off the charger.
Yes I did that goole search and ended up with conflicting information.

From the performance you say you were getting I would say you are doing the right thing, and Newer Tech made some very good, excellent replacement batteries.

I guess if you have any other questions about it and want to calm down some of the conflicting information, maybe drop OWC line and ask them what their advice is, and go by that for that battery and your Mac model and the MacOS version you are using which might make a difference.

I didn't check and see how old their webpage of advice was from but conditions do and can change.




- Patrick
=======

 

[MacInWin]

Calibrating the battery is hard on it. But if you only do it once, the torture won't have a lot of impact. The ONLY reason to calibrate a lithium battery is to allow the Mac to be able to have a more accurate estimate of power remaining. It does nothing FOR the battery itself, and is, in fact, hard on it because lithium batteries do not "like" being driven all the way down. Try to keep it in the 50-80% range and it should last a long time.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Is calibration still a "thing" to do with new batteries or even older batteries to try and extend their life cycle? Apple stopped recommending this 10 years ago but OWC and others still say calibrate.

I once was going to write an article on this at one time. To keep things short, let me save the citations until the end....

Lithium ion batteries themselves have never needed to be calibrated. Calibration was something that the previous generation batteries, nickel-cadmium batteries, needed. BUT...when Apple first started to use Lithium ion batteries, the *protection circuits* (the smart circuits used to, among other things, keep the batteries from running wild and possibly catching fire) DID need to be calibrated. That didn't last long though. Apple very quickly improved their protection circuitry, and as a result, Apple pulled any recommendation for calibration, because it absolutely was not needed.

Ideally what a Lithium ion battery likes best is to be kept between roughly an 80% charge and a 30% charge. The more that you can keep things there, the longer the battery will last. But you don't have to be obsessive about this as Apple provides a very (actually shockingly) smart charger (apparently, Apple's smart charger has as much processing power as the original Mac Plus!), and it will do its best to keep the battery from being over-charged and it will condition the battery while charging.

Lithium ion batteries also like to be used, rather than to sit on the charger. So if you have a choice between using your laptop on the charger all the time, or using it disconnected from the charger, doing the latter is the better choice. (Apple used to explain this by saying that Lithium ion batteries "like to have the electrons in them kept moving.")

Citations:

How Apple Works Around Battery Chemistry Limits With Fast Charge And Optimized Battery Charging
https://tidbits.com/2022/05/06/how-...h-fast-charge-and-optimized-battery-charging/

From Apple:
https://www.apple.com/batteries/maximizing-performance/
"Store it half-charged when you store it long term...
• If you plan to store your device for longer than six months, charge it to 50% every six months."

From Apple in 2013-2014:
http://web.archive.org/web/20130425025000/http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html
"For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time."

https://lifehacker.com/5875162/how-often-should-i-charge-my-gadgets-battery-to-prolong-its-lifespan
"...lithium-ion batteries do best when you discharge them for a little bit, then charge them for a little bit."
"Similarly, lithium-ion batteries don't need to be charged all the way to 100%. In fact, they'd prefer not to be—so the 40%-80% rule... is a good guideline. When possible, keep it in that range to prolong its life as long as you can. And, if you do charge it to 100%, don't leave it plugged in."

https://www.popsci.com/charge-batteries-right
"Shallow discharges and recharges are better than full ones, because they put less stress on the battery, so it lasts longer. When your battery is discharging, Battery University recommends that you only let it reach 50 percent before topping it up again. While you're charging it back up, you should also avoid pushing a lithium-ion battery all the way to 100 percent."

How To Care For Your Laptops Battery So It Lasts Longer
https://www.ifixit.com/News/31716/how-to-care-for-your-laptops-battery-so-it-lasts-longer

Macbook charger teardown: The surprising complexity inside Apple's power adapter
http://www.righto.com/2015/11/macbook-charger-teardown-surprising.html

 

[MacInWin]

In addition, Randy, the charging logic is now that if you leave a MBP on the charger, the charging circuits will, after a while, lower the charge on the battery to 80% and hold it there. The charger light will shift to orange and if you look at the charge, it will say something to the effect that it has detected that the battery is seldom used and has lowered the charge level to 80%. There is a menu item to push it back to 100%.

In practice, if I take my MBP off charge, which I did last week for travel, it will go back to 100% for a few days until the circuitry senses that I'm back to "seldom" using the battery.

 

[Mac Man 2007]

Well I had posted in this thread last year how satisfied I was with the OWC Newer Tech battery. Now I am withdrawing that support.

 

[Mac Man 2007]

Well I had posted in this thread last year how satisfied I was with the OWC Newer Tech battery. Now I am withdrawing that support. Just 3 days ago I was having trouble with the battery recharging fully my 2013 MacAir/Mojave First thing I did was check my power block of which I have 4. I then checked my MacPro and it was charing fine on 4 power blocks. So then I finally got the Mac Air fully charged after 3 hours after it hit 90%. I then attempted a "recalibration" slowly discharging the battery. When it got to 45% it dropped immediately to 25% and then it crashed and the Mac Air 2013, Mojave, went into sleep mode. It showed a low battery with a flashing red battery light on the screen if I hit the power button quickly. I waited 7 hours and then connected power source. It went into a reboot(without me pressing the power button) and said it would take the battery 3 hours to recharge. Then at 80% it said it would take 5 hours to finish the recharge. I lived with that and kept the power source on. It never got to 100% after that. I pulled the cover off and found 1 cell swollen. So this 3 year old battery with just 273 cycles is toast.
I wrote OWC an email on Sat. complaining that this is unacceptable. I asked them if there new stock is any better made. I do not expect a positive reply come Monday Oct 2nd when they open for business. Unless they are going to give me at least a partial refund I will look elsewhere for a battery. Which leads me to this question.
Are there any recommendations out there for a good source of batteries? I have bought all my new parts for upgrades, failed HDs and other parts from from OWC and have been very satisfied with their products over the years. But this battery was bad and I am not inclined to buy the same product unless I read here that there batteries perform well and maybe I got an outlier.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

>>>Mac Man 2007 said:

Are there any recommendations out there for a good source of batteries? <<<

This subject came up on the Macintosh consultant's discussion list a while back.

It's likely that there are in reality only a couple of Chinese manufacturers of laptop batteries, and that everyone else just puts their label on them, including OWC.

It was noted that some batteries have 18 month warranties and others only 12.

Another observation is that you can get seemingly identical laptop batteries from different sources and some are only $25 to $40, and others, like OWC, can be well over $100. One consultant stated that at less than $40, if a battery *only* lasts for a year (and they usually last longer than that), that's pretty inexpensive on a yearly basis. So it might be worth just going for the cheapest battery you can find from known manufacturers. So, some consultants simply purchase the cheapest battery among: Egoway, Swealeer, Puredick, and Bytec on Amazon. Most indicate that these cheap batteries all tend to be reasonably reliable.

However, several consultants recommended this source for laptop batteries. Their quality is excellent, their prices very competitive, and the service swift and helpful. They offer Xtend battery packs that have genuine Samsung lithium cells in them.

Laptop Battery Express
tps://www.laptopbatteryexpress.om/Apple-laptop-batteries-s/10.htm (outdated link removed)

 

[Mac Man 2007]

>>>Mac Man 2007 said:

Are there any recommendations out there for a good source of batteries? <<<

This subject came up on the Macintosh consultant's discussion list a while back.

It's likely that there are in reality only a couple of Chinese manufacturers of laptop batteries, and that everyone else just puts their label on them, including OWC.

It was noted that some batteries have 18 month warranties and others only 12.

Another observation is that you can get seemingly identical laptop batteries from different sources and some are only $25 to $40, and others, like OWC, can be well over $100. One consultant stated that at less than $40, if a battery *only* lasts for a year (and they usually last longer than that), that's pretty inexpensive on a yearly basis. So it might be worth just going for the cheapest battery you can find from known manufacturers. So, some consultants simply purchase the cheapest battery among: Egoway, Swealeer, Puredick, and Bytec on Amazon. Most indicate that these cheap batteries all tend to be reasonably reliable.

However, several consultants recommended this source for laptop batteries. Their quality is excellent, their prices very competitive, and the service swift and helpful. They offer Xtend battery packs that have genuine Samsung lithium cells in them.

Laptop Battery Express
Apple MacBook Batteries and Power Adapters | Laptop Battery Express (outdated link removed)

So I bought a battery from laptop battery express. Interestingly the manufacturer is SMP which is a supplier of Apple batteries. I was a bit disappointed the manufacturer date a June 2022 which was 16 months ago. They do NOT recommend recalibrating this battery. They suggest that within the first week you should discharge the battery between 30-50% 3 times. They recommend never completely discharging this battery. I noticed the directions were written for a PC and not a Mac. But that was include in the package. It came with an 83% charge.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

...They do NOT recommend recalibrating this battery. They suggest that within the first week you should discharge the battery between 30-50% 3 times. They recommend never completely discharging this battery. I noticed the directions were written for a PC and not a Mac. But that was include in the package. It came with an 83% charge.

Lithium batteries really, really don't like being fully discharged, or 100% charged. Both tend to effect their total lifespan negatively. What they like is to always have their charge kept within the range of 30% to 80%. They also like to be used, rather than held charged on the charger all the time.

It's quite a bit different than the best practices for lead/acid or nickel-cadmium rechargeable batteries.