It's actually very easy to have the number off and still get full functionality.
I just made a 100 page booklet that shows each battery level graphic alongside the percentage, so when I want to check my battery level, I just pull out the book and flip back and forth until I find the right icon, and bam! I know my exact battery level in less than 5 minutes.
Using enough power to run a house for a day (not the actual amount, don't care) to interpret a bad graphic sounds like something Sam Altman would be proud of.
I don’t care until it gets to about quarter full, that’s when I check to see what actual percentage it’s at. I’m rarely on my phone enough to drain the battery on a normal day.
Yeah, the only reason I would need the number always visible and not just visible on down-swipe would be if it ever ran out during the day. Probably would be necessary for people who stream videos a lot.
This is like when cars went from oil pressure and temperature gauges to "idiot" lights. One let's you see trends in situations and be prepared for maintenance, the other tells why your car broke down.
😀 yeah it made sense to me because I grew up in the changeover.
But here's the Wiki entry.
The "idiot light" terminology arises from popular frustration with automakers' use of lights for crucial functions which could previously be monitored by gauges, so a troublesome condition could be detected and corrected early. Such early detection of problems with, for example, engine temperature or oil pressure or charging system operation is not possible via an idiot light, which lights only when a fault has already occurred – thus providing no advance warnings or details of the malfunction's extent.
Your newer car will also tell you EXACTLY which sensors are showing bad data and whether it's an electrical fault in the sensor's circuit or implausible input, etc. Unfortunately you need a scan tool for it, but depending on the make you might find a decent free or cheap app to use a generic ELM327 or better, STNN1110 based OBD2 tool, that lets you scan all the modules rather than just OBD2 standard stuff.
So rather than playing parts darts or verifying every sensor by multimeter using known resistance ranges or putting up with bad fuel economy and low power... You just scan the thing and it'll tell you.
I've owned cars from the '90s, '00s and '10s (2019 being the latest) and while my cars from '10s didn't have sensor issues, I'll tell you that I'll take the complex and super hated '00s German cars over the early '90s one ANY day of the week. Super easy to diagnose.
My 2014 kangoo probably have like 3 sensors. I already changed an expensive turbo sensor and the one detecting if your seatbelt is making it beep for 3 minutes whatever you'd do before stopping every time I drive. I wonder if it's rational to fix it, costwise.
Oh it has significantly more sensors than that, trust me.
As for the seatbelt sensor, honestly depends on the cost and how long you plan on keeping it. Without knowing your car, I can't say for sure, but I suspect it's a simple switch. The issue may very well also be in the wiring, or the switch could've broken loose or something (in which case you'd likely need the belt buckle receptacle thingy).
Personally I'm so annoyed by things like that, I'd fix it. It probably annoys you, and if you do end up selling it rather than keeping it, it'll annoy the buyer.
The French know exactly how to make a car last 10 years and start breaking down after that unfortunately.
I honestly don't know what would be a good replacement if you do need to get rid of it though. That type of van is a market dominated by the French to the point that "Berlingo" is almost a universal term for them IMO.
Yeah, as a swede I'm not used to the shaky quality 😅
The Berlingo is the Citroen version, and also an old french candy used for getting the bad taste of hot spring water out of your mouth (it's supposedly good to bathe in and drink but often taste of sulfur)
Fun fact the gauges were also made to be idiot friendly. They report the average over a period (or similar) because if they reported the live reading users used to panic and think their car is breaking down seeing the gauge move.
Maybe my vehicles were old enough before that electronic averaging. 90s. The oil pressure and temperature would respond as the engine warmed, or as you revved it. Sitting in traffic on a hot day and you could watch the temp gauge climb, and then drop when you started moving.
You check the oil before starting your engine and you would see there is an issue before it starts….
Or are you gonna sit here and pretend you stare at an oil gauge while driving so you don’t do damage your car, but you don’t check to make sure there is oil and what state it is in before turning it over…? And maybe pay attention to the road instead of a useless gauge.
I drive a 10 year old Vauxhall and it definitely does not have it. I wanted to know my oil temp and had to resort to a Bluetooth obd plug paired to my phone.
How does that work…? That’s quite obviously not how you can get that information. The engine needs to be off and the vehicle in accessory for OBD2 ports to work, the oils not moving so there’s no pressure or temp involved.
How do you access your trip milegage information? The oils data is in that same menu.
OBD2 primarily works when the vehicle is running. It can be used to tune some vehicles while they are on. What car do you have that doesn't have the OBD port on while its running? It would be illegal in most states in the US.
How so? Are you one of those people who don’t check their dipstick before driving? And rely on a gauge that can fail? Do you not look under you vehicle for oil once in a while?
Because what does a gauge tell you that a once over doesn’t? How crappy is your car that you need to stare at an oil gauge instead of being able to tell something is up and pull over and find the information in your cluster? Maybe pay attention to the road instead of staring at superfluous gauges dude.
The "idiot light" terminology arises from popular frustration with automakers' use of lights for crucial functions which could previously be monitored by gauges, so a troublesome condition could be detected and corrected early. Such early detection of problems with, for example, engine temperature or oil pressure or charging system operation is not possible via an idiot light, which lights only when a fault has already occurred – thus providing no advance warnings or details of the malfunction's extent.
Oil pressure is different than oil level. And a temp gauge and battery gauge tell you what happening.
As you drive your car you get used to what the normal mode is, and when it starts to deviate you get clues to what might be going on in your engine.
I.e. I'd start my truck and as it warmed up before the first traffic light, then on the trip to work it had a normal range for summer and winter. When I started to see temp gauge climb higher than usual, and then stay there a long time then suddenly drop super low , it tells you your thermostat for coolant flow is starting to stick closed, and probably needs replacing.
For oil pressure you see a normal range , but if temp is up and oil pressure drops you are overheating the engine and losing lubrication. Or if pressure suddenly went down it could be blocked d oil filter, or if it suddenly is fine it can mean the bypass has opened and you are no longer filtering oil.
Idiot lights don't tell you any of this, only what has failed when it totally fails
All of that can told by looking at your oil, the gauges are just a lazy half measure lol.
The light is just so you know to check the gauges or your dipstick or whatever since they’re superfluous and always have been.
They put gauges in as the first idiot defence for people who can’t even check their vehicle before starting it. Since if you checked you oil, you would have noticed something was wrong before even starting it or needing the gauge.
And nothing is stopping you from checking the cluster when it’s safe to do so, the information is still there, it’s never needed to be there 24/7.
You also need to ignore the first part of wiki and cherry pick your information to get that take..
From the exact same wiki page, but further up….
A tell-tale, sometimes called an idiot light[1] or warning light, is an indicator of malfunction or operation of a system, indicated by a binary (on/off) illuminated light, symbol or text legend.
It’s telling you check your vehicle since you didn’t check the oil or something else before starting it, you know, like you should be.
People were ignoring the gauges until the light came on anyways, so why have it readily accessible when there other stuff?
Our 96 Sonoma that we just got in April, about a month later ended up having a massive oil leak. It first showed up on the oil pressure gauge.
One day, had to put 3 quarts in it! It wasn't burning the oil, nor would it leave a puddle under the truck. So where the fuck was it going?
There was only one way to find out. Inspect everything with the engine running. Turned out the oil filter was ancient, clogged with what looked almost like tar, and basically pouring oil out from around the seal.
One ~$8 oil filter fixed that right up 👍
Point is, we would have never known just by checking the engine before cranking it, as the oil doesn't pump unless the engine spinny spinny. Bonus points for having an actual oil pressure gauge, as we would have probably drove it bone dry until the engine locked up otherwise.
Oil level is not oil pressure, they are different issues.
You missed the whole part about trending changes and maintenance prediction.
Oil pressure shows you live, what is happening inside the engine. Its why Race cars , Drag Cars have giant gauges for oil pressure, etc.
Yourportion you clipped from wiki, further proves my point. Its for idiots that didn't watch their gauges.
Of course as a car guy you check oil level, coolant level, brake fluid level, but you want live data so you know what happening when engine is running. You can prevent failure before any warning light will.
Maybe you are a computer guy: do you want your PC shutting off to thermally protect itself without warning, or do you want to compare fan rpm and CPU temp trends to spot if you have thermal issues rising. Which could indicate thermal paste issue, or you have some other thing loading the system when you thought it was just your game.
People that can glean info from daily data trends know why gauges are important, even on industrialmachineas. Idiots just want a light to tell them something is already failing.
It's the difference between reactive maintenance and proactive maintennace.
Oil level is not oil pressure, they are different issues.
Oil pressure is directly related to the amount of oil in the system, too much oil, high pressure, not enough oil, too low. It’s slightly more complicated. But the gauges are there to tell you to check your oil anyways? So why skip not that unnecessary step and just check it…?
Idiots only need those gauges since they don’t check their oil or give their vehicle a visual once over. It starts with a visual inspection, if you’re too much of an idiot to do that, you need to rely on the gauges.
And again, the gauges aren’t just gone, they’re just moved off to the side since they aren’t needed all the time.
Using your race car analogy, you’re not driving a race car, or something where that’s needed immediately. You can dream and wish your car was that fancy I guess.
That live data is all a still available, you don’t need it 24/7 like a race driver. You’re conflating issues and points now. There’s nothing stoping you from viewing the cluster and getting your trends, is there? And those trends can all be found by doing a visual inspection anyways.
Speed is only relevant when there's a cop around, otherwise im driving safely with the flow of traffic, the speed in mph is irrelevant. The RPM are important but I can hear it, don't need the number really. But the oil, i need to know because i would have no idea if it was overheating until something already went wrong and requires an expensive repair.
Is your vehicle in state of constant disrepair where it’s leaking oil? You check the dipstick before you leave for your drive, and if it loses enough pressure during the drive to be an issue it will be noticeable. Either a lights gonna come on, it’s gonna make a smell, leave a drip under it, etc. There’s always physical evidence, the gauge does nothing that a petrip inspection won’t find.
And if you’re curious, spend 3 seconds finding the information in the cluster. It’s not something that’s ever had to be checked 24/7 while driving like you speed and rpms and other actual important information. It also prevents the dash from being clustered with superfluous data and have the constantly needed information Readily apparent. 3 gauges vs a dozen.
It’s not an issue for your owned car, but people lend cars out, rentals etc.
I get that, i just find that speed and rpm is even less relevant. Speed is just look where your driving that tells you what you need to know, and RPM is sound you can hear how hard your car is working.
I don't mind the one without the number, what i do mind is that SOME FUCKING ASSHOLE decided that no number is bettter and forces his FUCKING DUMBASS decision on everyone else.
SO FUCK OFF WIHT YOUR NUMBERLESS SHIT AND TAKE ALL OF FUCKING MATERIAL DESIGN WITH YOU!
Sorry. i have strong feelings about this topic, don't know if you noticed.
My personal rage at the moment is this square time format with the two digit hour over the two digit minute. Obviously designed for a smart watch but Android decided it needs to be on the phones as well. I keep turning it off but every few updates it comes back -- because the designers know better than me what I actually want.
Try needing Julian day. If you're coding then strftime() has supported it since 1989. All you need is "%j" and there it is, with leap year handling, etc.
The end goal isn't a good/flexible/powerful user experience for the person who bought the device; it's a larger user base that can be marketed to The Machine for more money out the back end.
For a while now, if you needed the time from your computer, and it was running UNIX or a variant, you'd use something like gettimeofday() (it's clock_gettime() now) which would hand you seconds since the epoch at midnight January 1, 1970 in UTC and microseconds/nanoseconds depending. You'd take the seconds, wash it through localtime_r to adjust for the local time zone, and you'd have a struct you could feed to strftime() for formatting.
So my beef with time formats, and what I presume ChickenLadyLovesLife's beef is, is that when the time format is "wrong" for whatever reason, given the similiarity between the backends of modern time systems, it's "wrong" for reasons other than technical limitations. You've got a count in seconds since the beginning of time, and a function that's been around for decades that can do whatever stupid stuff you want. Military time, month printed out, day of week printed out, two character years, four character years, seconds, julian day, Doing something silly like day of year, hour of day, and am/pm ("%j %I %p") is just as easy as something practical like a large fluffy timestamp, or a minimalist four characters military time ("%H%M"). The hard part was getting the time from the GPS or cell phone tower or wherever. The easy part is the time format. Windows also exists, and uses something similar. Modern programming with C++ or Python will have libraries ( and datetime, respectively) that work the same way, and both those examples use strftime() semantics.
So, if you're unhappy with the way your device prints out time, the reason behind it isn't the clock part of it, it's the display part. There was some rationale on Android's behalf for adopting the hour over minutes style, but it wasn't because their available horizontal character limit dropped from four (five if you count a colon) to two. Maybe they can get more data widgets displayed around the time in a little halo? I don't know, I don't use android stuff anywhere. If it was apple I'd assume they did UX testing about half height characters and readability.
So, now to the "end goal" part of what I wrote before. The hard part is done and a solved problem, and most time formats work fine for what they do. tmux is giving me ("%H:%M %d-%b-%y") which works fine, and my desktop environment (DE) is using ("%a, %b %d %H:%M") which is fine. The other DE is using ("%b %d %H:%M") which is fine. All perfectly usable, all used the three character representation of the month avoiding problems between dd/mm/yy or mm/dd/yy, and all of those are adjustable to an extent with two of the three kicking back to strftime() if I needed it. So what did android get when they paid developers to make the change to hours on top of minutes? Is there a study I missed that of a group of people who'd never seen a clock before and had no concept of time found the "%H\n%M" style more easy to read? If that's true, then was it worth irritating the subset of people who are going to care about the change to pick up the other group? I personally don't see a point in paying to make the change unless they're expecting to make more money from it, which at the core of a lot of things in the world these days. Here's something that worked fine, but now it's being changed to work differently but no better.
I did a quick google search, and there's a C++ boost library and a Windows API if you needed to do that. Might have a harder time finding english documentation about it, though.
Oh my god yes. Why the hell do I have to open the notification shade to see the number, especially when it gets low?
It shouldn't be that hard to say, automatically show the number under a certain percentage. If it's 10% I have around an hour left of medium usage. If it's under 5% I have anywhere from 30 minutes to 5.
Just show me the number motherfucker, at least when it's important!
I will pretend i didn't read this comment, or i would have to explain to my doctor why my blood pressure exceeded the rating of a nuclear pressurized water reactor.
The number of people that have it on surprises me.
I'm reminded of the 24 hour news channels who love to put ultra detailed timing. If there is a press conference at 9pm they don't just say it's at 9pm, at noon they'll start a 9 hour countdown.
So if you watch the news at any point that day you'll know it's 8:43:22 until the press conference. It's 6:12:43 until the press conference. It's 5:24:46 until the press conference.
Those numbers don't mean anything.
When I started writing this comment I had 92% battery left. Now I have 91% battery left. If I ramble for too long what if it goes to 90%? At the rate it's dropping am I going to have less than two hours of battery life left? Where is my charger?!?!
Or, I can just look at the list mostly full icon. I'm good.
Without numbers, 30 and 40 are indistinguishable. Is it time to go find a charger yet?
The difference between 21 vs 20, or 16 and 15, or 6 vs 5 is pretty big. Especially when people have battery saving features kick on at a specific percentage.
Brother, my phone is almost never charged higher than 70%. I need the number to differentiate between 6% and 2%. I don't even think about my battery until the battery saver mode prompt.
Or i can just peek at the first digit only if im not that concerned?? Idk that's probably something i do thousands of times a day, looking at data and only pulling the info you need, or even in school when i read prose more, scanning and skipping through unnecessary details to get to the relevant info quickly. I guess i never thought that some people struggle with that even when looking at two digit numbers.
That's interesting, I have never had anxiety about my phone battery. I have moderate annoyance if completely runs out and shuts off. Usually I try to keep it above 3% lol. I use the number like, "ok I have 40% so that's like 6 hours"; but if people stress out about it, I could see the number being triggering.
I used to worry if it were at X percent at Y time. But the truth is my phone lasts all day 99% of the time so what’s the point of worrying? So I have it off. All I need to know is roughly how much power it has, if it dips below 20% it warns me and I turn on low power and there’s still enough power for up to a few hours.
That's what im saying though, there's a difference between 21 and 29 then, if im about to go outside and chop wood im gonna wanna have a sense of that.
Number. If I glance twice just a couple minutes apart, I know there's an unusual drain going on and know to look for problem apps/processes I forgot to disable when done with them.
Also the number just feels like more direct communication to me than a graphic and is easier to make choices with. It's not quite the same thing, but when I look at a clock I don't want to see "5:30ish", I want to know if its 5:28 or later so I can start my end of workday process.
I stopped checking how much battery is left like 10 years ago. I charge every night and thats it. If it gets critically low it notifies my another way.
Too late for what, navigate home from the wilderness? I'm either at home, in the car, at someone's house, or between those places 99% of the time. There's going to be a usb-c charger and even if my phone dies it doesn't matter.
Mine doesnt warn at 20. Mine only "warns" when it envokes battery saving, which changes the behavior of many apps. So i like to know how close i am gettimg to that.
Ugh, I don't understand why it usually defaults to no number. Then I have to go and change the setting, show me numbers - I actually want to know how much battery I've got left... I don't understand why would anyone want it off, but to each their own.
I have out of because I don’t need to know exactly what my battery is on. I’m good with the graphics and if the indicator is amber or red, I really need to think about charging soon.
yeah, that's fair. I can't tell just by looking at the graphics and then I just feel anxious (especially in situations like when I need to be reachable or when navigating around a city). I understand everyone's brain is different
I have the number off because the number gets really distracting to me. If I need to know the number I'll pull down the control center or whatever it's called. It's rare that the actual number is required though. You'll know when it's under half, and when it hits 20.
Looking at the bar right now for example I can tell that it's gone past its 80% charging limit for whatever reason.
It depends on what kind of user you are. The ones that charge their phone whenever near a charger don't need a number. The ones who only charge when the phone threatens to shut down absolutely need the number.
I'm surprised it's this low. I used to run with percentage enabled. Then disabled. Then enabled it again for a while. But now I've had it disabled again for the past year or so and don't see the benefit of seeing numbers. It's an unnecessary minmax that's just giving me anxiety to track it too closely. All I need from the bar is to tell me the approximate charge level.
I remember when I switched from a Samsung phone to one of the first pixel phones years ago and being so angry that it did not have an option to add the number. I think the only way back then ended up being in the developer options. That phone somehow just ended up getting into a boot loop only like 4 months after getting it and they didnt respect the warranty. It was provided by work so I didnt care that much since no real loss to me, but ill never forget that impression it left on me and ill never get another pixel or google phone ever again.
It was the first one. It was first released in oct 2016 and i remember i just got the samsung note 7 and that was the craziest phone event I've ever seen since it wa an entire recall of that model. Because of that i waited the month till it dropped and ended up getting it swapped for the pixel. It was new and thought it would be better than the galaxy.
Lithium ion batteries cannot super accurately report their own charge so the percentage isn't necessarily digit accurate.
I am also usually just making sure it'll get me to a place I can charge it when I actually need to worry about charge. That doesn't usually require like the difference between say 33% and 26% for me.
I just need to be able to see if I've got like a fifth of battery left or less / more.
Admitedly also with the ADHD if there's a percentage I fixate on it for no reason so it's less annoying for me to have it off.
Same with the battery level in my e-bike. 👀 I know it'll get me to work and back as it always does but not constantly fixating on the remaining battery is impossible.
You can absolutely accurately calculate the percentage of a lithium battery. I do so every day with solar setup I live on. Even after months floating between 20% and 80% the batteries stop charging at 99.5% and would shut off if I hit 0-1%
Back in the good old days, the number was next to the battery, and it was bigger. Then they updated the software and shrunk the number down to fit it in the battery.
shame that OnePlus just left US market. We have no android phones here anymore other than Samsung, google which I hate and Motorola - but they don't see any flagship models.
Change your display scaling in the Developer Options in Android. "Minimum width" or "Smallest width" is the number you want to adjust. Decrease number to increase scaling, increase to decrease until you're happy and everything is legible.
I don’t want anything else bigger except that number. And when the percentage is on top of the battery symbol it’s really hard to see when the numbers and background are different colors. My brain finds it difficult to process.
I'd rather have the percentage on and with slightly larger digits, because at more than a feet away from the phone screen hard to tell how much battery charge is left without the percentage.
Estimating the state of charge on a lithium battery is extremely complicated and difficult. And they stopped showing the numbers earlier because they didn't want you to see how inaccurate they were.
Nowadays, the models are better and more sophisticated, but the tradition continues.
Nah, I'll take a fuel gauge that changes how full it says you are if you're going uphill or down hill and only starts going down once the tank is half empty over the "x miles left" where it tries to guess how much fuel you'll use, leaving you with no idea how much fuel you actually have.
For me, constantly knowing the exact percentage gives me anxiety. Seeing just a picture makes the battery look fuller and I feel less of a sense of urgency. I’m not a heavy phone user, so I very rarely have less than 40% at the end of my day.
This. I use the graphic only, because the tiny-ass number inside the graphic is impractical. If I could just get a bigger number without the fluff, I would.
I wish it did. Getting seconds is not even easy. Like pressing the clock on the lock screen sometimes works (for the few seconds it shows the screen) but absolutely not consistently...
Circle is much more accurate and easier to read. Having the percentage off avoids clutter, and with circle you can tell the percentage pretty closely anyways. Batteries are good enough these days that most people don't need to plan their charging throughout the day.
I use the number. I can see an argument for decreasing battery anxiety by not having an exact number displayed. It's either low, medium, or high basically using the graphic alone. I can also see how this could make the anxiety worse too though. Without seeing the number you might always think it's low. If you're worried about it anyway, this is probably more likely.
Because all I need to know is if my battery looks low enough to worry about, like the gas tank gauges on most cars. Nobody needs to see the exact number of gallons or liters of fuel they have left. "Close to F great, middle fine, close to E bad" has been doing the trick for well over a century. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with people who like seeing an exact battery percentage, but it really isn't necessary.
By seeing your battery percentage number displayed, you're able to tell if your battery suddenly starts to drain faster than usual. This would be harder without the battery percentage. This indicator helps you to know if an app or process is significantly draining battery life so you can fix it. Although I guess most phone users aren't bothered by this I'd imagine
I think the number gives a false sense of accuracy. Like using fifteen digits of pi to calculate an orbital path even though you system can't model every mass in the system and thus have way higher variance regardless.
I am numbers on, but only because I don't care enough to turn it off.
Nah. 66% may not accurately indicate that you have two thirds usage left, but if it was 70% a fee minutes ago then you know you're burning through battery real quick.
Leave it off to give myself some additional cognitive space. If my battery saver kicks on I start paying more attention, or if I see a chunk a missing I know I should probably set to charge later.
No number, but a long indicator bar that has good resolution to show it go down proportionally. Works well for the EV car. Works well for the phone. Works better for my monkey brain to appear like a fuel gauge without a number.
If it's going to be a tiny icon like this then just put a number on it.
Omg, I'm transferring 3 Tb right now from one external drive to another, and it's still going after I slept lol. Sucks too cause one of them is a regular sata, but it came in an enclosure that makes the partition exclusive. There's probably a way to bypass that, but I can be patient, I'll liberate it once I'm done getting the data off it
That only works if you use is highly predictable.
If you've barely touched your phone all day, your phone might think you have about 6 hours of battery left by the end of your working day, but that's only true if that little use continues.
If you pull a 180 on it's prediction and begin to catch some Pokémon that number plummets hard and becomes entirely irrelevant.
A battery percentage level between 0 and 100 is by far the most sensible metric.
Or have it dynamically update based on current usage, you running 4k video streams? 3 hours remaining, just doing some web browsing? 12 hours remaining. The will actually be useful, because if I'm using my phone heavily then the 80% won't last me as long as just being on standby, but a death-o-clock will tell me on current useage when the battery is going to die. The fun stuff, this is already present in your phone OS, just display it on the notification bar with an xH (and M when we are running out of time) instead of 69%.
Number on is completely pointless if you’re taking good care of your battery. You shouldn’t be plugging it in until it’s nearly drained. It pops warnings at 20% and 10% that all I need to know. I don’t look at it otherwise.
I had always heard that you’re supposed to drain it as much as possible before fully charging it. My phone is 7 years old and the battery still lasts a full day following that. I could be wrong though.
This is pretty outdated. The best care for a battery is try to keep it at 50%. The absolute best way to use a battery would be keep it between 49-51%, which is obviously impossible, so people say keep between 20-80, the closer you get to extremes, the more damage it does to the battery (with fully dead being by far the worse)
No yeah this was something I picked up during my group project in final year of my engineering degree, but also a quick google shows it holds true still. The first page of results has a lot of random sites that say the same thing. You should typically only discharge to 20% where possible, also it doesn't matter if you charge to 100%, 90% is fine, you should be aiming for as few cycles as possible so if your phone does 1.5 or 2 days between 90/100 and 20 then you should try and let it do that if you can. Over time the degeneration due to normal use will eventually be such that the discharge rate will likely increase to land on charging every night.
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Number off is utterly useless.
It's actually very easy to have the number off and still get full functionality.
I just made a 100 page booklet that shows each battery level graphic alongside the percentage, so when I want to check my battery level, I just pull out the book and flip back and forth until I find the right icon, and bam! I know my exact battery level in less than 5 minutes.
I just take a screenshot and upload it to Grok and ask it to tell me how much battery I have left.
Using enough power to run a house for a day (not the actual amount, don't care) to interpret a bad graphic sounds like something Sam Altman would be proud of.
ugh, fine make it a flip book and I'll commit
I don’t care until it gets to about quarter full, that’s when I check to see what actual percentage it’s at. I’m rarely on my phone enough to drain the battery on a normal day.
Hey get a load of this loser! Interacting with the real world! Ha! Everyone laugh! Hahahaha!
cries in terminally online
*everyone is crying and everyone alone because terminally online
Yeah, the only reason I would need the number always visible and not just visible on down-swipe would be if it ever ran out during the day. Probably would be necessary for people who stream videos a lot.
counterpoint: these numbers are guesswork anyway. why pretend, you just want to know that it's not red
I more want a guesstimate of when my phone will be red, so if anything a second timer next to my clock would be best.
...or a number that i can tune my own instincts to
I suggest wingding font
Counter counter point: I want to know whether it's at 90%, 75%, 60% or 45% without counting pixels
Can you not just glance and see approximately? Can't think visually, must convert to numerical?
Yes, I must have the exact number. I need some certainty in the chaos of this universe.
Yes, if I give the screen a lil' kiss with my eyelids I can probably see that the icon has 8 pixels in height instead of 11.
That is not what I would call a "glance" though; I can, however, just glance and see approximately, by looking at the first digit of the number.
Why glance and see approximately when you can glance and see exactly?
Okay, give me an actual voltage reading, why not?
Unironically yes please, I'd root my phone for this
Battery Monitor - Available on F-Droid does exactly that, without having to root the phone.
Right now my battery is 87%, 3.984V, and 99.3⁰F
Wow. This is such an elegant solution!
This is like when cars went from oil pressure and temperature gauges to "idiot" lights. One let's you see trends in situations and be prepared for maintenance, the other tells why your car broke down.
😀 yeah it made sense to me because I grew up in the changeover.
But here's the Wiki entry.
Yeah, my car doesn't have either of those and I was not happy when I realized it.
"A light will come on if there's an issue." 😡
I added some third party gages to my truck, just connects to the OBD interface.
No soft signals!!
If you have a newer car, it's worse.
Your car can say check engine and turn off a lot of features in your car if you're external thermometer in simply malfunctioning.
Your newer car will also tell you EXACTLY which sensors are showing bad data and whether it's an electrical fault in the sensor's circuit or implausible input, etc. Unfortunately you need a scan tool for it, but depending on the make you might find a decent free or cheap app to use a generic ELM327 or better, STNN1110 based OBD2 tool, that lets you scan all the modules rather than just OBD2 standard stuff.
So rather than playing parts darts or verifying every sensor by multimeter using known resistance ranges or putting up with bad fuel economy and low power... You just scan the thing and it'll tell you.
I've owned cars from the '90s, '00s and '10s (2019 being the latest) and while my cars from '10s didn't have sensor issues, I'll tell you that I'll take the complex and super hated '00s German cars over the early '90s one ANY day of the week. Super easy to diagnose.
My 2014 kangoo probably have like 3 sensors. I already changed an expensive turbo sensor and the one detecting if your seatbelt is making it beep for 3 minutes whatever you'd do before stopping every time I drive. I wonder if it's rational to fix it, costwise.
Oh it has significantly more sensors than that, trust me.
As for the seatbelt sensor, honestly depends on the cost and how long you plan on keeping it. Without knowing your car, I can't say for sure, but I suspect it's a simple switch. The issue may very well also be in the wiring, or the switch could've broken loose or something (in which case you'd likely need the belt buckle receptacle thingy).
Personally I'm so annoyed by things like that, I'd fix it. It probably annoys you, and if you do end up selling it rather than keeping it, it'll annoy the buyer.
Yeah I know, it's just very very not modern, which is good, but it also breaks down all the time which is less cool.
The French know exactly how to make a car last 10 years and start breaking down after that unfortunately.
I honestly don't know what would be a good replacement if you do need to get rid of it though. That type of van is a market dominated by the French to the point that "Berlingo" is almost a universal term for them IMO.
Yeah, as a swede I'm not used to the shaky quality 😅
The Berlingo is the Citroen version, and also an old french candy used for getting the bad taste of hot spring water out of your mouth (it's supposedly good to bathe in and drink but often taste of sulfur)
Fun fact the gauges were also made to be idiot friendly. They report the average over a period (or similar) because if they reported the live reading users used to panic and think their car is breaking down seeing the gauge move.
Maybe my vehicles were old enough before that electronic averaging. 90s. The oil pressure and temperature would respond as the engine warmed, or as you revved it. Sitting in traffic on a hot day and you could watch the temp gauge climb, and then drop when you started moving.
I could probably watch the gauges for 30 minutes
Like for fun, or you mean without change?
All that information is available in the cluster lmfao.
There’s far more information that needs to be readily apparent to a driver than the oil pressure.
Oil pressure tells you if the engine is dying or if the Oil is breaking down or overheating. I'd take it over an RPM gage.
A lot of vehicles dont have it in their cluster menus these days.
Depends if it has a manual or automatic transmission. In a manual, I really want a tachometer.
I never look at the RPM gauge in a manual, just drive by feel and sound. But no doubt it'd be useful if you're doing off-road driving?
And can’t do that with the oil…?
"knock, knock, knock, knock"... I suppose you can.
You check the oil before starting your engine and you would see there is an issue before it starts….
Or are you gonna sit here and pretend you stare at an oil gauge while driving so you don’t do damage your car, but you don’t check to make sure there is oil and what state it is in before turning it over…? And maybe pay attention to the road instead of a useless gauge.
You receive a fine, open the letter and it tells you that you were driving 20 km/h over the speed limit
"Oh shit, i thought i was goin at 50km/h, well under the limit!"
I'm a bit confused, we're talking about RPM not speedo?
Oh my bad, i mistranslated tachometer lmao
I drive a 10 year old Vauxhall and it definitely does not have it. I wanted to know my oil temp and had to resort to a Bluetooth obd plug paired to my phone.
How does that work…? That’s quite obviously not how you can get that information. The engine needs to be off and the vehicle in accessory for OBD2 ports to work, the oils not moving so there’s no pressure or temp involved.
How do you access your trip milegage information? The oils data is in that same menu.
OBD2 absolutely works while the engine is on, what are you smoking?
OBD2 primarily works when the vehicle is running. It can be used to tune some vehicles while they are on. What car do you have that doesn't have the OBD port on while its running? It would be illegal in most states in the US.
I rest my case.
How so? Are you one of those people who don’t check their dipstick before driving? And rely on a gauge that can fail? Do you not look under you vehicle for oil once in a while?
Because what does a gauge tell you that a once over doesn’t? How crappy is your car that you need to stare at an oil gauge instead of being able to tell something is up and pull over and find the information in your cluster? Maybe pay attention to the road instead of staring at superfluous gauges dude.
Per wiki.:
Oil pressure is different than oil level. And a temp gauge and battery gauge tell you what happening.
As you drive your car you get used to what the normal mode is, and when it starts to deviate you get clues to what might be going on in your engine.
I.e. I'd start my truck and as it warmed up before the first traffic light, then on the trip to work it had a normal range for summer and winter. When I started to see temp gauge climb higher than usual, and then stay there a long time then suddenly drop super low , it tells you your thermostat for coolant flow is starting to stick closed, and probably needs replacing.
For oil pressure you see a normal range , but if temp is up and oil pressure drops you are overheating the engine and losing lubrication. Or if pressure suddenly went down it could be blocked d oil filter, or if it suddenly is fine it can mean the bypass has opened and you are no longer filtering oil.
Idiot lights don't tell you any of this, only what has failed when it totally fails
All of that can told by looking at your oil, the gauges are just a lazy half measure lol.
The light is just so you know to check the gauges or your dipstick or whatever since they’re superfluous and always have been.
They put gauges in as the first idiot defence for people who can’t even check their vehicle before starting it. Since if you checked you oil, you would have noticed something was wrong before even starting it or needing the gauge.
And nothing is stopping you from checking the cluster when it’s safe to do so, the information is still there, it’s never needed to be there 24/7.
You also need to ignore the first part of wiki and cherry pick your information to get that take..
From the exact same wiki page, but further up….
It’s telling you check your vehicle since you didn’t check the oil or something else before starting it, you know, like you should be.
People were ignoring the gauges until the light came on anyways, so why have it readily accessible when there other stuff?
Our 96 Sonoma that we just got in April, about a month later ended up having a massive oil leak. It first showed up on the oil pressure gauge.
One day, had to put 3 quarts in it! It wasn't burning the oil, nor would it leave a puddle under the truck. So where the fuck was it going?
There was only one way to find out. Inspect everything with the engine running. Turned out the oil filter was ancient, clogged with what looked almost like tar, and basically pouring oil out from around the seal.
One ~$8 oil filter fixed that right up 👍
Point is, we would have never known just by checking the engine before cranking it, as the oil doesn't pump unless the engine spinny spinny. Bonus points for having an actual oil pressure gauge, as we would have probably drove it bone dry until the engine locked up otherwise.
Oil level is not oil pressure, they are different issues.
You missed the whole part about trending changes and maintenance prediction.
Oil pressure shows you live, what is happening inside the engine. Its why Race cars , Drag Cars have giant gauges for oil pressure, etc.
Yourportion you clipped from wiki, further proves my point. Its for idiots that didn't watch their gauges.
Of course as a car guy you check oil level, coolant level, brake fluid level, but you want live data so you know what happening when engine is running. You can prevent failure before any warning light will.
Maybe you are a computer guy: do you want your PC shutting off to thermally protect itself without warning, or do you want to compare fan rpm and CPU temp trends to spot if you have thermal issues rising. Which could indicate thermal paste issue, or you have some other thing loading the system when you thought it was just your game.
People that can glean info from daily data trends know why gauges are important, even on industrialmachineas. Idiots just want a light to tell them something is already failing. It's the difference between reactive maintenance and proactive maintennace.
Oil pressure is directly related to the amount of oil in the system, too much oil, high pressure, not enough oil, too low. It’s slightly more complicated. But the gauges are there to tell you to check your oil anyways? So why skip not that unnecessary step and just check it…?
Idiots only need those gauges since they don’t check their oil or give their vehicle a visual once over. It starts with a visual inspection, if you’re too much of an idiot to do that, you need to rely on the gauges.
And again, the gauges aren’t just gone, they’re just moved off to the side since they aren’t needed all the time.
Using your race car analogy, you’re not driving a race car, or something where that’s needed immediately. You can dream and wish your car was that fancy I guess.
That live data is all a still available, you don’t need it 24/7 like a race driver. You’re conflating issues and points now. There’s nothing stoping you from viewing the cluster and getting your trends, is there? And those trends can all be found by doing a visual inspection anyways.
What's more important than oil temp?
Speed is only relevant when there's a cop around, otherwise im driving safely with the flow of traffic, the speed in mph is irrelevant. The RPM are important but I can hear it, don't need the number really. But the oil, i need to know because i would have no idea if it was overheating until something already went wrong and requires an expensive repair.
Is your vehicle in state of constant disrepair where it’s leaking oil? You check the dipstick before you leave for your drive, and if it loses enough pressure during the drive to be an issue it will be noticeable. Either a lights gonna come on, it’s gonna make a smell, leave a drip under it, etc. There’s always physical evidence, the gauge does nothing that a petrip inspection won’t find.
And if you’re curious, spend 3 seconds finding the information in the cluster. It’s not something that’s ever had to be checked 24/7 while driving like you speed and rpms and other actual important information. It also prevents the dash from being clustered with superfluous data and have the constantly needed information Readily apparent. 3 gauges vs a dozen.
It’s not an issue for your owned car, but people lend cars out, rentals etc.
I get that, i just find that speed and rpm is even less relevant. Speed is just look where your driving that tells you what you need to know, and RPM is sound you can hear how hard your car is working.
On. Would prefer the bar not even be there and just have numbers only.
Its been a while but I think lineageOS used to have that option.
Used to? Still has!
"I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too."
– Mitch Hedberg
And it’s not “80% wireless?” Hm.
I mean if you set it up like that yourself surely you know what the indicators mean
Noice
It does
I don't mind the one without the number, what i do mind is that SOME FUCKING ASSHOLE decided that no number is bettter and forces his FUCKING DUMBASS decision on everyone else.
SO FUCK OFF WIHT YOUR NUMBERLESS SHIT AND TAKE ALL OF FUCKING MATERIAL DESIGN WITH YOU!
Sorry. i have strong feelings about this topic, don't know if you noticed.
My personal rage at the moment is this square time format with the two digit hour over the two digit minute. Obviously designed for a smart watch but Android decided it needs to be on the phones as well. I keep turning it off but every few updates it comes back -- because the designers know better than me what I actually want.
Try needing Julian day. If you're coding then strftime() has supported it since 1989. All you need is "%j" and there it is, with leap year handling, etc.
The end goal isn't a good/flexible/powerful user experience for the person who bought the device; it's a larger user base that can be marketed to The Machine for more money out the back end.
I don't get the connection, could you elaborate?
Sure.
For a while now, if you needed the time from your computer, and it was running UNIX or a variant, you'd use something like gettimeofday() (it's clock_gettime() now) which would hand you seconds since the epoch at midnight January 1, 1970 in UTC and microseconds/nanoseconds depending. You'd take the seconds, wash it through localtime_r to adjust for the local time zone, and you'd have a struct you could feed to strftime() for formatting.
So my beef with time formats, and what I presume ChickenLadyLovesLife's beef is, is that when the time format is "wrong" for whatever reason, given the similiarity between the backends of modern time systems, it's "wrong" for reasons other than technical limitations. You've got a count in seconds since the beginning of time, and a function that's been around for decades that can do whatever stupid stuff you want. Military time, month printed out, day of week printed out, two character years, four character years, seconds, julian day, Doing something silly like day of year, hour of day, and am/pm ("%j %I %p") is just as easy as something practical like a large fluffy timestamp, or a minimalist four characters military time ("%H%M"). The hard part was getting the time from the GPS or cell phone tower or wherever. The easy part is the time format. Windows also exists, and uses something similar. Modern programming with C++ or Python will have libraries ( and datetime, respectively) that work the same way, and both those examples use strftime() semantics.
So, if you're unhappy with the way your device prints out time, the reason behind it isn't the clock part of it, it's the display part. There was some rationale on Android's behalf for adopting the hour over minutes style, but it wasn't because their available horizontal character limit dropped from four (five if you count a colon) to two. Maybe they can get more data widgets displayed around the time in a little halo? I don't know, I don't use android stuff anywhere. If it was apple I'd assume they did UX testing about half height characters and readability.
So, now to the "end goal" part of what I wrote before. The hard part is done and a solved problem, and most time formats work fine for what they do. tmux is giving me ("%H:%M %d-%b-%y") which works fine, and my desktop environment (DE) is using ("%a, %b %d %H:%M") which is fine. The other DE is using ("%b %d %H:%M") which is fine. All perfectly usable, all used the three character representation of the month avoiding problems between dd/mm/yy or mm/dd/yy, and all of those are adjustable to an extent with two of the three kicking back to strftime() if I needed it. So what did android get when they paid developers to make the change to hours on top of minutes? Is there a study I missed that of a group of people who'd never seen a clock before and had no concept of time found the "%H\n%M" style more easy to read? If that's true, then was it worth irritating the subset of people who are going to care about the change to pick up the other group? I personally don't see a point in paying to make the change unless they're expecting to make more money from it, which at the core of a lot of things in the world these days. Here's something that worked fine, but now it's being changed to work differently but no better.
Oh ok I thought they were some sort of weird person who doesn't want to use the gregorian calendar…
I did a quick google search, and there's a C++ boost library and a Windows API if you needed to do that. Might have a harder time finding english documentation about it, though.
Oh my god yes. Why the hell do I have to open the notification shade to see the number, especially when it gets low?
It shouldn't be that hard to say, automatically show the number under a certain percentage. If it's 10% I have around an hour left of medium usage. If it's under 5% I have anywhere from 30 minutes to 5.
Just show me the number motherfucker, at least when it's important!
I could have sworn mine does that - show the number when under 20% but I don’t see a relevant setting
This is true and real righteous anger. I love it.
It's the one resource i have in abundance.
I should make a youtube channel.
Yeah it's BS that you have to find detailed instructions online to turn of developer mode just so you could have the number
You should try GNOME!
I will pretend i didn't read this comment, or i would have to explain to my doctor why my blood pressure exceeded the rating of a nuclear pressurized water reactor.
On. Always numbers on.
On, because I want information, not art.
Exactly.
Number ON. Otherwise I have to guess the number.
Always on.
Never turned it on after the last reset. I have less anxiety about it now.
I have ten times more anxiety without the number lmao
The number of people that have it on surprises me.
I'm reminded of the 24 hour news channels who love to put ultra detailed timing. If there is a press conference at 9pm they don't just say it's at 9pm, at noon they'll start a 9 hour countdown.
So if you watch the news at any point that day you'll know it's 8:43:22 until the press conference. It's 6:12:43 until the press conference. It's 5:24:46 until the press conference.
Those numbers don't mean anything.
When I started writing this comment I had 92% battery left. Now I have 91% battery left. If I ramble for too long what if it goes to 90%? At the rate it's dropping am I going to have less than two hours of battery life left? Where is my charger?!?!
Or, I can just look at the list mostly full icon. I'm good.
Wow look at you mr 90+ lol
Without numbers, 30 and 40 are indistinguishable. Is it time to go find a charger yet?
The difference between 21 vs 20, or 16 and 15, or 6 vs 5 is pretty big. Especially when people have battery saving features kick on at a specific percentage.
Brother, my phone is almost never charged higher than 70%. I need the number to differentiate between 6% and 2%. I don't even think about my battery until the battery saver mode prompt.
Or i can just peek at the first digit only if im not that concerned?? Idk that's probably something i do thousands of times a day, looking at data and only pulling the info you need, or even in school when i read prose more, scanning and skipping through unnecessary details to get to the relevant info quickly. I guess i never thought that some people struggle with that even when looking at two digit numbers.
That's interesting, I have never had anxiety about my phone battery. I have moderate annoyance if completely runs out and shuts off. Usually I try to keep it above 3% lol. I use the number like, "ok I have 40% so that's like 6 hours"; but if people stress out about it, I could see the number being triggering.
same, the number is inaccurate when it really matters anyway. worst update Samsung made recently was to remove the option to hide the number... smh
I used to worry if it were at X percent at Y time. But the truth is my phone lasts all day 99% of the time so what’s the point of worrying? So I have it off. All I need to know is roughly how much power it has, if it dips below 20% it warns me and I turn on low power and there’s still enough power for up to a few hours.
That's what im saying though, there's a difference between 21 and 29 then, if im about to go outside and chop wood im gonna wanna have a sense of that.
Number. If I glance twice just a couple minutes apart, I know there's an unusual drain going on and know to look for problem apps/processes I forgot to disable when done with them.
Also the number just feels like more direct communication to me than a graphic and is easier to make choices with. It's not quite the same thing, but when I look at a clock I don't want to see "5:30ish", I want to know if its 5:28 or later so I can start my end of workday process.
So, number because spectrum.
Both, although I probably dont need the icon
I need an icon to show what the percentage refers to, i dont need an icon to visualize what that percentage means.
number, that icon can be anything from %60 to %90
I must know precisely how anxious to be.
I literally have just the number
This
The only advantage of "number off" is it comes with extra anxiety for free.
Agreeeeeee
Number on
I stopped checking how much battery is left like 10 years ago. I charge every night and thats it. If it gets critically low it notifies my another way.
Isn't it too late then?
Too late for what, navigate home from the wilderness? I'm either at home, in the car, at someone's house, or between those places 99% of the time. There's going to be a usb-c charger and even if my phone dies it doesn't matter.
It warns at 20%, then 10%. Which is still a few hours. How is that too late?
Mine doesnt warn at 20. Mine only "warns" when it envokes battery saving, which changes the behavior of many apps. So i like to know how close i am gettimg to that.
On. I don't understand why it always seems to be off by default.
Probably some bullshit legacy design choice from steve jobs
Low power mode all the time, damn phone doesn't need to be doing fishy stuff in the background anyway.
Number on and icon completely off.
I had no idea you could turn the number off nor that anyone would want to
Ugh, I don't understand why it usually defaults to no number. Then I have to go and change the setting, show me numbers - I actually want to know how much battery I've got left... I don't understand why would anyone want it off, but to each their own.
I have out of because I don’t need to know exactly what my battery is on. I’m good with the graphics and if the indicator is amber or red, I really need to think about charging soon.
yeah, that's fair. I can't tell just by looking at the graphics and then I just feel anxious (especially in situations like when I need to be reachable or when navigating around a city). I understand everyone's brain is different
It’s been a while since I ran out of battery, so that probably makes it more relaxing for me. Also, I like that the screen is as simple as possible.
I make sure my phone has enough charge for whatever I’m doing or on rare/special occasions have a power bank with me.
I have the number off because the number gets really distracting to me. If I need to know the number I'll pull down the control center or whatever it's called. It's rare that the actual number is required though. You'll know when it's under half, and when it hits 20.
Looking at the bar right now for example I can tell that it's gone past its 80% charging limit for whatever reason.
Same here.
I do actually like data, often. I'm a data person. But how much data I need depends on what I'm doing with it.
For my battery level, all I need is sufficient granularity to tell me:
Those are the things which will drive my decision-making and anything more is a distraction and subtle stress I don't need.
How is the number distracting though??
Personally it feels like having a countdown until time of death
Which i would find extremely helpful lmao -- personally number off feels like being on death row with no clue when they're dragging me to the chair.
The black mirror is when other people can see your number! On a(n even) darker note, I think that’s exactly what they do on death row tbf
Couldn’t tell you. It’s just how my brain works.
I’m never surprised by low battery though. The indicator does a good job at conveying how much you have approximately.
Me neither i get surprised when my phone is already dead XD
We have the number, it’s very beneficial
I am big number guy. I like the number.
Real, big number got us x)
It depends on what kind of user you are. The ones that charge their phone whenever near a charger don't need a number. The ones who only charge when the phone threatens to shut down absolutely need the number.
But what's the cost of the number??
Nunber gang. That said it doesn't change a lot for me. If I had a bar and it looked half full I'd be charging same as if the nunber read 55%
That's Numberwang
Takes too much space but is otherwise alright
I'm gonna make a thread asking, "what is a food you know?" so everyone can reply "homt dog" and I can get lots of notifications
I like to eat homt dogs on my skamtebord.
“homt dog”
Let's have a vote. I'll make two replies, please DOWNVOTE the one you agree with. The option with the most downvotes wins.
(I'm using downvotes instead of upvotes to make it obvious there's no karma manipulation involved)
Your poll may have backfired - people are downvoting your actual comment instead:-P.
Tbf there's no karma on lemmy so no worries
Downvote this if you have the number hidden
I'm surprised it's this low. I used to run with percentage enabled. Then disabled. Then enabled it again for a while. But now I've had it disabled again for the past year or so and don't see the benefit of seeing numbers. It's an unnecessary minmax that's just giving me anxiety to track it too closely. All I need from the bar is to tell me the approximate charge level.
Downvote this if you have the number shown
Number on
Number only, get out of here with superfluous symbols. I don't need The Status Bar: Illustrated Edition.
I remember when I switched from a Samsung phone to one of the first pixel phones years ago and being so angry that it did not have an option to add the number. I think the only way back then ended up being in the developer options. That phone somehow just ended up getting into a boot loop only like 4 months after getting it and they didnt respect the warranty. It was provided by work so I didnt care that much since no real loss to me, but ill never forget that impression it left on me and ill never get another pixel or google phone ever again.
Uh pretty sure I've had my number for like 5 years over multiple pixel phones
It was the first one. It was first released in oct 2016 and i remember i just got the samsung note 7 and that was the craziest phone event I've ever seen since it wa an entire recall of that model. Because of that i waited the month till it dropped and ended up getting it swapped for the pixel. It was new and thought it would be better than the galaxy.
What are you talking about big dog?!? Do you work for Apple? Everything you're saying is wrong, but why?
They're talking about the battery percentage, not porting their phone number.
Lithium ion batteries cannot super accurately report their own charge so the percentage isn't necessarily digit accurate.
I am also usually just making sure it'll get me to a place I can charge it when I actually need to worry about charge. That doesn't usually require like the difference between say 33% and 26% for me.
I just need to be able to see if I've got like a fifth of battery left or less / more.
Admitedly also with the ADHD if there's a percentage I fixate on it for no reason so it's less annoying for me to have it off.
Same with the battery level in my e-bike. 👀 I know it'll get me to work and back as it always does but not constantly fixating on the remaining battery is impossible.
You can absolutely accurately calculate the percentage of a lithium battery. I do so every day with solar setup I live on. Even after months floating between 20% and 80% the batteries stop charging at 99.5% and would shut off if I hit 0-1%
You just need to use a well calibrated shunt.
Knowing fully charged and completely dead is easy. Knowing when the battery is 52% charged vs 53% charged is just an estimate.
Without the number on, i keep letting my phone die because i dont realize its on 1% and i should really charge it
my bar turns yellow at like 20% and red at less than 10%... I panic when it's less than 50% though.
I have battery saver turn on at 50%, which overrides the color
Back in the good old days, the number was next to the battery, and it was bigger. Then they updated the software and shrunk the number down to fit it in the battery.
I definitely still have that. Battery sitting upright and the number next to it. This is stock Android 15 I believe.
I'm on Android 16. They changed it in update 16.QPR1, released September 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history#Android_16
That's AOSP, I'm on 16 and it's beside it
My OnePlus has all the options available. Just battery, number on the side just number , number inside the battery and vertical battery.
shame that OnePlus just left US market. We have no android phones here anymore other than Samsung, google which I hate and Motorola - but they don't see any flagship models.
Number off, it's peaceful.
Funny how they're like "we all" about something that is probably 50/50 or not even that.
Well 50 / indeterminate amount
A lot of people like to do extra work to ignore hard realities.
I wish the number was clearly visible. That’s all I want. The numbers are usually too hard to see for me.
Change your display scaling in the Developer Options in Android. "Minimum width" or "Smallest width" is the number you want to adjust. Decrease number to increase scaling, increase to decrease until you're happy and everything is legible.
I don’t want anything else bigger except that number. And when the percentage is on top of the battery symbol it’s really hard to see when the numbers and background are different colors. My brain finds it difficult to process.
I didn't even know there was a number off setting
I'd rather have the percentage on and with slightly larger digits, because at more than a feet away from the phone screen hard to tell how much battery charge is left without the percentage.
Estimating the state of charge on a lithium battery is extremely complicated and difficult. And they stopped showing the numbers earlier because they didn't want you to see how inaccurate they were.
Nowadays, the models are better and more sophisticated, but the tradition continues.
Default is the best
Nah, I'll take a fuel gauge that changes how full it says you are if you're going uphill or down hill and only starts going down once the tank is half empty over the "x miles left" where it tries to guess how much fuel you'll use, leaving you with no idea how much fuel you actually have.
As someone who used to be a fully crowded status bar (clock with seconds, network traffic indicator and all) guy…
No numbers. It's chill, I don't need to know if it's at 60% or 62% every time I look at it.
I don't use my phone as much now anyway and it's more like a household item to me.
Wow, I actually can’t stand the number. It gives me anxiety.
Please explain how?
see number go down -> body goes oh no! panic!
But what about seeing an image of a battery go down and not know what percentage is left, that seems even more stressful to me
it's a good thing that we can all choose the option that works for us then
Numbers go down all the time. No need to panic, but it may be a reason to plan...
For me, constantly knowing the exact percentage gives me anxiety. Seeing just a picture makes the battery look fuller and I feel less of a sense of urgency. I’m not a heavy phone user, so I very rarely have less than 40% at the end of my day.
Number off. My battery lasts all day and I can easily check in the notification shade.
No number. Clean aesthetics 🤩
I don't care what the # is. Even floating on tubes down the Saco River, it's irrelevant. Full at start and can go back on charge when we finish.
What about floating down the Kennebunk?
I've only done Saco & Pemi.(NH).
Well I only really need to know if I'm near dead or fully charged
I don't even want the graphic, I just want the number. the graphic introduces overlays that are confusing at a glance
This. I use the graphic only, because the tiny-ass number inside the graphic is impractical. If I could just get a bigger number without the fluff, I would.
On because of accuracy and its the default
Then why doesn't the phone time display seconds by default if we're all so number anxious?
I wish it did. Getting seconds is not even easy. Like pressing the clock on the lock screen sometimes works (for the few seconds it shows the screen) but absolutely not consistently...
It's mind-boggling the complexity we toss at our non-essential stuff but the simplest thing a dollar store wristwatch can manage is just too much.
Am a numbers guy, I know you like da number
If the number weren't a fudge I would be more interested.
Circle.
Had to scroll too far to see this.
Circle is much more accurate and easier to read. Having the percentage off avoids clutter, and with circle you can tell the percentage pretty closely anyways. Batteries are good enough these days that most people don't need to plan their charging throughout the day.
How is a circle more accurate and easier to read than two digits which represent the exact value and take zero mental power to process?
I would imagine it's some kind of pie chart maybe. That would make it easy to estimate the percentage but I would also prefer digits.
* than the battery icon, obviously.
I use the number. I can see an argument for decreasing battery anxiety by not having an exact number displayed. It's either low, medium, or high basically using the graphic alone. I can also see how this could make the anxiety worse too though. Without seeing the number you might always think it's low. If you're worried about it anyway, this is probably more likely.
Number on.
Number and icon
Because all I need to know is if my battery looks low enough to worry about, like the gas tank gauges on most cars. Nobody needs to see the exact number of gallons or liters of fuel they have left. "Close to F great, middle fine, close to E bad" has been doing the trick for well over a century. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with people who like seeing an exact battery percentage, but it really isn't necessary.
By seeing your battery percentage number displayed, you're able to tell if your battery suddenly starts to drain faster than usual. This would be harder without the battery percentage. This indicator helps you to know if an app or process is significantly draining battery life so you can fix it. Although I guess most phone users aren't bothered by this I'd imagine
Bingpot!
The icon is kinda ugly with the numbers. But I’d rather the info over not.
I think the number gives a false sense of accuracy. Like using fifteen digits of pi to calculate an orbital path even though you system can't model every mass in the system and thus have way higher variance regardless.
I am numbers on, but only because I don't care enough to turn it off.
Nah. 66% may not accurately indicate that you have two thirds usage left, but if it was 70% a fee minutes ago then you know you're burning through battery real quick.
I can't stand looking at either but I prefer to have it with no number 😳
On iOS if you swipe down, the “full status bar” has the percentage either way
What?!?! So you have to do an action to read the battery life %?!?!
Either way. The OP is iOS afaict
Calm down lol that’s not what he’s saying. You anti-Apple people are insane.
I genuinely don't know. It would be crazy if that was true, thus the outrage.
Then maybe just ask a question like a normal person?
What they are saying is whether you decide to show battery % all the time or not, you can still see the number if you swipe down.
my number only shows when i swipe down on the top menu
So, you’re number off
Leave it off to give myself some additional cognitive space. If my battery saver kicks on I start paying more attention, or if I see a chunk a missing I know I should probably set to charge later.
You don't have to bother yourself with pesky numbers. It's one step away from having to do math.
No number, but a long indicator bar that has good resolution to show it go down proportionally. Works well for the EV car. Works well for the phone. Works better for my monkey brain to appear like a fuel gauge without a number.
If it's going to be a tiny icon like this then just put a number on it.
Everyone's so concerned about the percentage, why not have the numbers be how much time it has left on the charge if we're so information pilled.
Give my phone a death clock
Edit, guys its a joke, no need to freak out on details lol
It would jump all over the place willy nilly. Time left is a non-trivial issue in software development.
This dude has never copied a large file in Windows.
Omg, I'm transferring 3 Tb right now from one external drive to another, and it's still going after I slept lol. Sucks too cause one of them is a regular sata, but it came in an enclosure that makes the partition exclusive. There's probably a way to bypass that, but I can be patient, I'll liberate it once I'm done getting the data off it
Because that number would be an inaccurate guess at best.
That only works if you use is highly predictable. If you've barely touched your phone all day, your phone might think you have about 6 hours of battery left by the end of your working day, but that's only true if that little use continues. If you pull a 180 on it's prediction and begin to catch some Pokémon that number plummets hard and becomes entirely irrelevant.
A battery percentage level between 0 and 100 is by far the most sensible metric.
Or have it dynamically update based on current usage, you running 4k video streams? 3 hours remaining, just doing some web browsing? 12 hours remaining. The will actually be useful, because if I'm using my phone heavily then the 80% won't last me as long as just being on standby, but a death-o-clock will tell me on current useage when the battery is going to die. The fun stuff, this is already present in your phone OS, just display it on the notification bar with an xH (and M when we are running out of time) instead of 69%.
At least someone here gets it lol
Number on is completely pointless if you’re taking good care of your battery. You shouldn’t be plugging it in until it’s nearly drained. It pops warnings at 20% and 10% that all I need to know. I don’t look at it otherwise.
Err pretty sure stressing a lithium battery below 20% lowers battery life
I had always heard that you’re supposed to drain it as much as possible before fully charging it. My phone is 7 years old and the battery still lasts a full day following that. I could be wrong though.
Depends on the battery, different tech has different best practices.
This is pretty outdated. The best care for a battery is try to keep it at 50%. The absolute best way to use a battery would be keep it between 49-51%, which is obviously impossible, so people say keep between 20-80, the closer you get to extremes, the more damage it does to the battery (with fully dead being by far the worse)
No yeah this was something I picked up during my group project in final year of my engineering degree, but also a quick google shows it holds true still. The first page of results has a lot of random sites that say the same thing. You should typically only discharge to 20% where possible, also it doesn't matter if you charge to 100%, 90% is fine, you should be aiming for as few cycles as possible so if your phone does 1.5 or 2 days between 90/100 and 20 then you should try and let it do that if you can. Over time the degeneration due to normal use will eventually be such that the discharge rate will likely increase to land on charging every night.