Hacker News Reader

Comment by LeifCarrotson | Hacker News Reader

> Maybe all the complexity around this is too much and people just want to plug it in and quick 100% as quick as possible and will change their phone regularly

It's this, 100%. The nerds that care about charge temperature and battery degradation and proliferation of incompatible charging standards are a rounding error, most people just want to know it can charge fast in case they forget and need to leave soon.

I am happy with my Chargie [1], an interposing dongle which provides a Bluetooth receiver and app that lets you set arbitrary preferences on your phone and fast charge, slow charge, or turn off the charger at configurable state of charge setpoints or times.

[1] https://chargie.org/product/chargie-c-basic/

View on HN

I had never thought such thing existed commercially. Mainly because I had looked for it myself in addition to asking about it without results.

It needs an app but doesn't mention interoperability. There, I said it. It is not perfect.

At least they allow you to set-up-in-app-and-use-without-app which is more than many products.

There is a built-in charge limiting feature in Android now, so that doesn't need any apps, but the only options are limit to 80% or 100%. But for something like this, how else are you going to get your phone to tell a charger when to turn off? Apparently, making an API that allows devs to reliably stop charging in software is too risky, so IoT devices with companion apps are the solution, of course. Not to mention the device manufacturers are probably quite happy to have batteries degrade significantly after warranty ends.

>needs an app

Now imagine the same product but with different physical toggles or buttons on it for all the different charging modes. No apps. That'd be great.

Or even a way to communicate this to the charger from the phone using the vendor extension to PD protocol negotiations…

Switching between 500 mA, 2.1A, and USB-PD or QC is technically simple, but again you're making consumer electronics for a very, very small group of people.

How would it determine when the attached device reaches 80% state of charge? Or what the time of day is? How could you program a schedule for weekdays and weekends?

There are good reasons for Chargie to have an app, it's not just there to siphon up analytics.

I'm thinking something like a switch on the side to switch between slow, fast, and using the app.

> How would it determine when the attached device reaches 80% state of charge?

The same way it determines that the battery is fully charged. It is a solved problem.

This information is not available on the USB-C connection. The 'charger' is simply a power supply, it does not actually manage the regulation of current into the battery.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com