Here’s a Nokia 8.3 phone with its case popping off like an overfilled suitcase. The battery inside is looking like it’s ready to burst out. This particular phone comes straight from our friends over at Nokia Labs, the tech wizards who once were the #1 phone makers. Now phonemaking is not their #1 priority anymore, but they excel at other areas of mobile innovation, like 5G network development.
Read more “When Nokia Labs Met Chargie: A Tale of a Bulging Battery and an Unexpected Hero”How to Automatically and Immediately Start the Chargie app on iOS devices
For those of you who’ve been using the Chargie app on iOS, you know that there’s a 15-minute delay from the moment you plug it in to the moment the Chargie device actually starts managing the connection. Sometimes it’s shorter, sometimes it’s longer. But that’s the way it was until today.
Generally, this works out just fine – the phone is going to stay connected to the charger for more than that. And it generally works well if you don’t want the app to show up every time you plug your phone.
But today I received an email from Chargie user Dirk in Germany who found out another way of starting the Chargie app by using the automations present in iOS’s Shortcuts app.
I won’t embed any screenshots except for the Shortcuts app because they’d clutter the post a lot. The following guide is pretty straightforward (adapted from Dirk’s email):
– open the Shortcuts app
– go to Automation (in the middle at the bottom)
– click on “+” in the upper right corner
– select “Create Personal Automation”
– scroll down and tap on “Charger”
– “When charger is attached” (left side) should be selected
– press “Next” in the upper right corner
– select “Is Connected”, then Next
– select “Add Action”
– select “Scripting”
– select “Open App”
– tap on the word “App” in the “open app” text field
– select “Chargie – phone charge limiter”
– click on “Next” in the upper right
– deselect “Ask before running”
– click on “Done” in the upper right
This way, every time you plug your phone, the Chargie app gets brought up to the front and the connection is immediate.
Thank you, Dirk Drews (https://dirk-drews.de), for the tip, and hope you have a wonderful time with your Chargie device!
Chargie’s New Top Up Scheduler Could Save the Day (and the battery)
I’ve built the Chargie system from the ground up as a means to save battery lifespan by limiting the time your phone stays at high charge levels. It is working, and we have numerous reports of very satisfied customers whose phones did not go to rubble, but still continue to work great after a long time.
However, life is not ideal and there are circumstances when you really need that 100% for the next day. Up until now, you just had to set Chargie to go to 100%, and the app would cut it there and act upon the hysteresis you set (Allowed Charge Drop). It’s a pretty good method, but in the meantime, looking at real needs, I decided it’s not the very best, since you still keep the battery “up there” for the whole night (even if it’s discharging).
And, if you’re the unlucky person whose battery capacity has already been going south for a while, you’ll be emptying it well before you can plug in during the day, which would make using Chargie a nuisance, not an advantage. This would take it into a lower than 20% state of charge sometime in the afternoon, which creates heat and makes things even worse for it.
Apple has sniffed this realm since iOS13 and has done something good, in theory – keep the battery at 80% for the night and only top it up in the morning, before you wake up. It sometimes works. Because their algorithm attempts to “learn” your routine – if you have one. If you don’t, you’ll rely on their AI guesswork and you may wake up with only 80% in the morning or your phone may stay at 100% all night – and you won’t know, won’t you?
So here’s my proposal: I implemented a feature in Chargie that allows you to set up a time when you want your phone to start topping up. Essentially, you can keep the battery somewhere in the midrange – 50 or 60% – during the night, without any stress on it whatsoever, and if you wake up at 7am you can set the Top Up Scheduler for 6:15am (depending on your charger).
The Top Up Scheduler’s limit value is also configurable from Settings – so if you’d rather wake up with 90%, you can keep the phone at 50 for the night and only top it up to 90 before you wake up, very flexibly. This is way, way better than holding it up at 90% for the whole night, like it was so far possible.
For now, the time estimation is yours to make, but I’ll work on something more automatic in the following period. However, it will not resemble Apple’s, because it’s going to be something much better – no algorithm can predict your maybe hectic schedule more accurately than you. Charging times can be forecast, though. And so can your phone’s alarms be read and interpreted, if you use them. But it’s ultimately you who should be in control, not a “magic,” fully automated process.
The Top Up Scheduler is available right now in Beta version, under the Beta channel on Google Play – so if you want to experiment something new, go ahead and join the beta on the same Play page where you downloaded the app.
I would like to thank all of you who asked for this feature along the way and those who helped debug everything so far.
Go order a Chargie right now and join our community of resource-conscious people.
Happy New Year!
There we go.
It’s exactly a year since I’ve sketched the first Chargie schematic. I can’t believe it went so fast!
Today I’ve compiled version 1.18.06 of the app, the best so far. Now Chargie can do much more than it could back in May when version 1.0.0 came out.
I remember the first customer at Maker Faire Vienna in May – he was a very young dude, saying he’d dreamed about such a device for years – that’s what’s truly fulfilling about inventing and making stuff.
Knowing that your creation will enter people’s homes, will satisfy their needs, that some of them will be actively involved in the very core of your product’s development with their original ideas, is something few people experience in their lifetime.
It’s been an honor knowing you all from around the world. We’ve sold more than 1300 Chargies on every inhabited continent, in most of the countries where there’s a smartphone.
It’s been a good time – with real feedback, as deserved – good or bad.
Let 2020 be a year of progress for this project and let batteries live well for your entire phones’ lives.
Happy New Year!
Your Chargie’s creator,
Ovidiu Sandru