this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2025
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[–] Death_Equity@lemmy.world 25 points 2 days ago (2 children)

The battery has a capacity reading down to the milivolts and the phone knows how much power it is using, which changes dynamically to meet the usage. The remaining battery level is determined by the voltage available at the current consumption. There is some averaging involved based on your usage profile.

So your battery level is accurate at a given time, but changes based on what you are doing and what you have running. So your battery will drain faster if you are playing an intensive game, but will last far longer if you have nothing unessential running and the screen is in sleep mode.

Apps like Facebook, chew through battery in the background because of how often it has to use resources to check for notifications, when when you don't actually have the app open or in the recent apps list. So your battery will lose charge faster than you would expect when you haven't been on your phone.

so, naw lil bro.

[–] tetris11@feddit.uk 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The battery has a driver, which is written in software that indicates level based on an underlying profile of how the battery drains.

Hence why Pixel4a users were suddenly shocked by an upgrade that halved their battery life because Google made a whoopsie on the battery profile.

[–] Death_Equity@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

We are saying the same thing, I was oversimplifying though.

The profile is based on the voltage of the battery, the capacity, and the permissible amp draw. The actual voltage reading informs the device of the real remaining capacity because the device can't read capacity and can only infer it based on historic data compared against the profile. Battery temperature is also a throttling factor, but we don't need to get that far into the battery management weeds.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat -1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

The remaining battery level is determined by the voltage available at the current consumption

Gets all condescending about how it works

Isn’t aware of the difference between V and mAh or the extremely horizontal (for most of the range) curve defining the relationship between them for Li-ion batteries

I got irritated enough by people spouting off at me to look up how it actually works, it’s not at all how you are describing, although describing it as “bullshit” is probably a stretch

So naw big bro

[–] rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

But Phil, the difference between V and mAh is just current draw

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You misspelled “resistance and time,” but close. The “A” part is the current.

[–] ogler@lemmynsfw.com 3 points 2 days ago

the flat voltage curve is only really a problem for LFP which is not really used in smartphones due to low energy density