Steam Deck gets a Battery Charge Limit control in the latest Beta

You know what would have made this a non-issue?
Easily user replaceable batteries.
On top of that we should have standard sizes and mandate that manufacturers use them.
- IDK about non issue. I have a framework laptop, and even though the battery is very easily replaceable, I still set the charge limit to 80%.
  I don't require the extra charge the majority of the time, and now I don't have to worry about replacing my battery for a much longer period of time.
  Though I agree, for as serviceable as the steam deck is, a little more attention could've been paid to the battery situation.

...i just assumed they knew how to keep the battery safe already... My deck has stayed plugged in and docked since i got my projector to use with it..fuuuuuck
- There’s a big difference between “safe” and “ideal”
  All lithium ion batteries degrade quicker at 100% vs 80 or even 60%. But it’s not going to explode and kill you.
  
  Well unless you bought one of those electric bike conversion kits from Temu. Those might.
  
  Actually thanks, now trust you mention it i should not have used safe. I was not meaning danger, just that i might have damaged the battery life or at least put it at risk at the least. Just assumed that it came optimised to be as ideal as valve usually goes a bit overboard on their hardware from what i remember reading
- I think since the beginning if plugged in for some time it decharges to 95% so you are probably fine. You can check the battery health in desktop mode.

This has been possible via the BIOS for a while now, but it's long overdue at the OS level. I love that Value keeps adding little QoL improvements to the steam deck, it's turned out to be one of the best pieces of tech I've ever bought.
- It’s so weird that it doesn’t have it because both my kubuntu and endeavorOS installs have it by default. Like that’s a basic feature
  
  It was already an option in desktop mode afaik, just wasn't part of game mode.
- I do hope they focus a bit on the UI going forward - we've noticed a lot of silly little bugs while either using the Steam Deck controls or a controller.
  A little hard to close a window without focus when using a controller....
  
  Also I literally can't get it to use a plugged controller when docked. Sure, it will charge it and I can pair it with Bluetooth and it works, but it's a little silly that I can't just use it as "pure" USB controller (even though it works flawlessly in that way on multiple PCs, including a Linux desktop, and through weird peripherals like my monitor's USB hub).
  Streaming games on the home wifi is also basically non-functional in the OS, even though it works pretty damn well when I do it through Moonlight. I'm assuming the steam version doesn't do enough compression (and yes I have tried tweaking the settings)

Finally!!
Still can’t believe some phones don’t have this
- The logic is deeply flawed though.
  Keep your battery at 80% to preserve it's health, because Lithium batteries prefer that. Sure. But here's what it effectively means:
  Keep your battery forever stuck at 80%... to avoid losing battery capacity... so to avoid having less battery runtime you limit your battery runtime... Thus suffering today the consequences you feared in the future.
  
  No, I'm not suffering the consequences I'm fearing now. Having 80% capacity is enough to last me through the day, what I'm fearing is when the capacity drops below 60%, 50% or even less which I can greatly delay by only charging to 80%.
  Additionally, I'm not forever stuck at 80%. If I know I will need more capacity, I can always disable the restriction for the next charge.
  
  That's less of an issue with devices you use in battery mode all day, but the Deck sits on the docking Station most of the time and constantly getting held at 100%
  
  The logic isn't flawed, your priors are. You're assuming that people are constantly on a cycle of charging their battery to the limit, running it down low, and then charging it again. If you mostly play docked or with a charger plugged in then capping the battery at around 80% prolongs the battery runtime for when you do turn the limit off and want to use the full battery.
  If you mostly play fully charged and stationary, then lowering the charge limit means you have more future opportunities to experience the fully battery runtime when you disable the setting.
  
  I mean, I was just gonna unplug it at 80 and plug it back it at 40.
  Beforehand I couldn’t just leave it cause it would go to 100%.
  If your referring to always keeping it plugged in, can’t I cap it at 60% then?
- I think it comes down to driver support. It’s not that the hardware can’t do this, but rather it’s that you need to pass the option to control it all the way up from the lowest levels of the system eventually into user space where you can select an option in settings.
  That, and it’s just not the first priority on devices that are generally low-margin.

Got my hopes up there might be some sleep limit too. Would much prefer if it shuts down/hibernated after being asleep for more than 26 hours (or past a certain battery level)
- The problem is that the Steam Deck APU doesn't support amd_p_state and you need to rely on auto_cpufreq. This explains why the power consumption in sleep is so high.
  
  Interesting. I have always felt that the Steam deck loses quite a bit of battery percentage during sleep. I agree that it would be a fantastic quality of life update to enable to shut down or enter some form of lower power consumption hibernation state after a period of time at a certain battery level.
  
  It's a custom chip though isn't it? Seems a strange choice
- I personally wouldn't want that, at least not if it's on a game.
  
  Hibernate would be great as it's a slightly longer restore, but should work the same (if you are willing g to sacrifice the disk space)
  Being able to pick up the deck and know it will have battery left would be really nice. It drains pretty fast in sleep mode.
  
  It can’t dump a save state to disk? I guess that would be difficult on a normal OS.

I really appreciate this one. Have done this on my other devices too, and while it does cut battery life by a little, your battery health will remain high for considerably longer

I implemented the same on my laptop with tlp. It is actually pretty easy to do so.

What do people set it to?
- Plugged in 24/7? I’d set it to 60%. If I have a mix of use 80%.
- On my devices where it’s available I usually set it to 80-85%.
- Default limit when toggled on is 80%, which generally seems like a good middle ground between usability and battery life. You can also raise the limit higher if you want more battery, or lower if you want to preserve the battery life better.
  
  I thought the steam deck already had this. Admittedly, I’ve only had mine for about a month, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it charge to 100%. I think 95% was the highest I’ve seen. It seemed like it had something similar to smart charge like Windows has.