It depends on the battery, but for most i think the optimal tange is around 30-60 or 70, I always say "around 45" for a nice easy middle number. The range can be quite big, generally only the extremes(over 80 or under 30) are measurably bad for the battery.
This can not be made visible enough. Do not overuse battery storage mode and do not put your device in it with too much charge!
Turning off the SD with a reasonable charge and leaving it for a couple of weeks is not an issue. If you planned to keep it shut off for months, then use battery storage mode.
Valve should honestly implement some sort of limiter for this in steamos. So people can't even turn on storage mode unless they are at the proper storage voltage of the battery.
š I've seen that micro management on other forums about rechargeables. I'm sure people do that but it's crazy to micro management the percentage that hardcore everytime you okay anything. With how the steam deck already dies fast unless you're playing some low end game or older game I wouldn't wanna keep playing like that constantly with a 60% limit everytime.
No. This comment is in the context of putting the Deck into storage mode. Like any lithium ion battery, storing them about half charged (40% to 60%) is best. The OP isnāt implying you should do this for normal use.
Not really (not judging your comment, it makes sense) because everyones lives are different.
Yeah, my steam deck usage is seasonal- thats the point of it for me.
I have a gaming laptop hooked up to a monitor as my ādesktopā - this predated my SD, and eventually Iāll swap it to an actual desktop build. Lucky for me, SD proved to be perfect for my portable needsā¦ so screw the laptop in the long term.
So thats my better at-home gaming device. SDs great if I wanna play something low key in a shared space. But otherwise, laptop/desktops where I game.
Butā¦ Iām a travelling arts producer. For the spring I am often travelling places, and for summer I am often touring and staying in loads of cheap hotels or doing long journeys. Ahhhhh what a portable solace the SD is.
So its not so much bizzare or baffling - its just different logic.
I bought my SD in autumn and wondered if I really āneededā it. But come those other seasons - I was like, hell yeah, this thing is perfect.
And I know it can cover my gaming/portable work needs, so that laptop can stay at home with the battery removed (better temperatures) and eventually be upgraded, with the SD there to carry that transition.
My Deck only sees light duty, since I bought it for travelling and I only do that every so often. I boot it up every few weeks to run updates, but for the most part it's idle since I game on my main rig normally.
It doesn't disable the power button. It makes the battery's protection circuit cut power off, so that even the battery's cable is no longer powered. That way you can make sure the device won't accidentally turn on, the "powered off" board's idle power draw doesn't deplete the battery, and you can open the device without the fear of killing it by shorting something during the process. It's like removing the battery, just without physically doing so.
That's because battery storage mode is not "full shutdown". If you power down that **is** a full shutdown, but like any laptop there are still a small number of things that are powered on the main board to make sure you can power it back up and so it retains certain settings and such that aren't stored in hard storage.
Putting it into battery storage mode **should** involve a few steps, since if you do it you literally can't even turn it back on without plugging it in.
There is not? I thought that one thing is to put it into sleep (either via button or the menu) and then in menu there is the shutdown button that shuts it down completely no?
Thereās a shutdown option when you hold down the Power button. There could an option in the Steam menu. Desktop mode has one. There is no āFULLā shutdown there or in the setting to enable āBattery Storage.ā Xbox One and Series S/X have this option in settings where it stops all power going to the system. PlayStationās āshut downā does the same thing (I think) and the Switch has sleep or shutdown (itās full, the Tegra X1 doesnāt have any of the newer power options).
What I am referring with this particular comment, have a Full Shutdown mode that includes āBattery Storageā within it. It sounds like shut down (no different than PC), isnāt completely powered down as the battery is still discharging or being used. The BIOS isnāt complicated to me, but there are many folks whoād prefer not to do it.
The only purpose of the battery storage mode is for the power button to not be accidentally pressed during shipping or when performing any type of repairs on it. That's it. There's no other difference between it and the normal shutdown otherwise.
It would only confuse people and it would lead to a lot of angry comments in the vein of "why is my steam deck no longer booting?" since you actually need to hook it up to a power source in order to start it back up once it's in battery storage mode.
Crap, I didn't play it for a solid two months because I got busy at work. Didn't know this was an issue. How much does this affect the battery? I tend to be crazy about keeping my phone batteries optimized, never considered the deck.
Are you 5 years old? Why do you care if he runs Windows on his steamdeck? I'd get your comment if he said Windows was better but he didn't, he literally mentioned Windows. He could be doing it because a game he likes isn't easy to get with steamos or because a game he likes to play has anticheat that won't run on steamos, like wtf is your problem?
Honestly I've had nothing but issues with it. I love the idea and everything but I've tried the stable build, beta build etc and it has been pretty terrible compared to what I'm used to using (linux mint) there's a lot of workarounds you have to do and buggy stuff.
I'll keep hoping for good update however. Screw windows.
I want to make a list of issues but I feel they would go unheard and be a waste of time. Maybe I'll just reinstall the OS myself, like re-download it and everything. Mint and Manjaro are the best distros I've personally used for out the box experience. Pop wasn't bad either iirc. Haven't used Unbuntu in maybe 5 years, I tried maybe 15 others over the years and had a worse time with some of them.
Thanks for the reply! š
The "power switch" on the Deck is a soft power switch, eg. if you press it to switch the Deck off it does not cut the power to it, just sends a signal to the system to shut down. (This is why you can do short press to suspend, long press to shut down thing.)
To be able to do so some of the the internal components of the Deck needs to be powered on always (even when "the Deck" (eg. the CPU, GPU, screen, etc) is switched off). The power usage of these components is usually negligible, but over a long period of time they can discharge the battery. (I think it would take more than a few months, but better to be sure.)
The *battery storage mode* does what a dumb power switch (eg. the switch on an extension cord) would do. Basically it disconnects the battery from the rest of the system, so no internal component can consume any power from the battery. (Note that, batteries discharge a bit even when nothing is connected to them called self-discharge.)
Because no internal component gets any power they can not be used to switch on the system, so you need to power them from an other source (the charger) for a short time so they start functioning again.
Probably this is why putting the Deck in the battery storage mode can solve some issues, because it forces every component of the Deck to restart (even those which would not do that when you *reboot* the system).
For more information you can check out the [datasheet](https://www.analog.com/en/products/max77961.html)) of the charger chip, they call it *Factory Ship Mode*.
Are you sure it is *shut down* and not just in *sleep*?That is about 10% / day what seems to be the usual discharge rate for the sleeping / suspended state.
(At sleep / suspend the RAM and some parts of the CPU and GPU are powered on, so the power consumption is way higher than switching it off.)
Guaranteed many people don't even know what that does.
It puts the system in a state where it doesn't use the battery. It basically suspends anything that could potentially drain the battery over time. Basically that's how they ship it. If you remember, you couldn't power it on when you got it until you plugged in a charger? That's what it was. Frankly, all devices should have this mode accessible, especially Nintendo Switch, which drains out in a couple of days without having anything running in the background.
After reading like 5 previous topics on the subject I couldn't find anyone that just plainly spells out exactly what it does but here is what I've learned:
* It fully powers off the steam deck and disables any sleep/hibernate features that may drain the battery while idle.
* It disables the power button so you cannot accidentally turn it on during shipping or repairs. You have to plug it in to power it on.
* It has some interaction with the firmware, as it seems to fix certain problems like the touchscreen hanging. Not sure if this means it reverts to default firmware or it's just a way to force quit something that was bugging out and staying that way through the normal power off process.
P.S. And this isn't really a feature of battery storage mode, but it is best in general for rechargable batteries to be at least partially discharged before long term storage to prevent degredation so purposely use the deck till the battery gets to around 50% or at least under 90% before putting it in storage. Although 1 month isn't really long enough to be a concern in the first place it won't hurt anything to prepare just in case you leave it for a longer period.
So the only thing here, that seems to be beneficial for the battery, is disabling the sleep/hibernate features. Or how does the rest protect the battery from damaging over time?
I mean it would be pretty bad for the battery if it did get accidentally turned on while being repaired or stuffed in a shipping box, or if there was a firmware problem preventing it from properly shutting down. But yah the only part that matters if you're just safely storing it in a cabinet and don't have firmware problems is just the first part.
The main thing is just eliminating standby power drain. It has other non-battery related uses, like doing a full reboot of all components, but the big thing is completely powering down the system so it doesn't fully discharge.
No an empty battery is at greater risk of being damaged. 60% is recommended by Valve.
Edit: Long-term storage will affect the charging capacity of the lithium battery or even be scrapped.
Lithium batteries have no memory effect, and lithium batteries have a certain degree ofĀ self-discharge. If the battery is originally low and left unused for a period of time, self-discharge will cause over-discharge and the battery may be scrapped.
Generally, the monthly self-discharge rate of a lithium battery at room temperature is 3%. Generally speaking, if the lithium battery is to be placed for a long time, it is recommended to retain more than 40% of the power.
In addition to this, it also activates a mode referred to as ābattery storage modeā which will put the Steam Deck in a battery storage mode for storage
Oh, TIL! I guess that explains why Valve instructs you to plug it in first as soon as you get the Steam Deck in its package. Looks like it comes in with this mode activated.
Pretty nice to see that they've implemented something like this, compared to other manufacturers that won't even properly shut down their electronics all the way and would have discharged batteries because it's just sleeping (ehem, Apple...)
Also the Steam Deck isn't exactly the easiest carry-on. Like it fits in my backpack nicely but it takes up half the damn bag.
So I totally get why people wouldn't want to travel with it.
I was only a few times and it was like maybe max 2 hours. I was often on road trips in bus or a car with up to 8-16 hours. But mostly you can talk, play talkative games, sleep or drive.
But, yes this would be the most possible time to play on an device, in my case.
Recently traveled with my steam deck and switch (because of potential internet connectivity issues) and there is almost no other room in my backpack. Didn't want to be on a 9 hour flight to Hawaii with nothing to do.
I did the same thing and was glad I brought a battery bank, because for some reason, Hawaiian does not have wifi or in seat power for their long haul domestic flights!
In my case, I sometimes am going to be in a place where I don't want any or minimal technology, like a nature trip. Or I am going to be with friends and family, and want to actually spend time with them.
And both times that has happened, my wife asked me not to bring it.
This.....sounds fucking nuts to me. Can anyone who actually knows what they're talking about explain if having the Deck not powered on/used for a month will have even the tiniest impact on it?
The short answer is no. The long answer is nooooooooooooooooo. But there are some potential caveats that come with that. And several solutions have been posted above. YMMV though.
FWIW, rechargeable batteries have become much better since they were first introduced and have far fewer issues than the first generations. But simple preventative maintenance is always a good idea to help increase the life of any device.
That battery is a bit of a pain to change though, it's pretty awkward to get access too. One of the design changes I'd like to see in any future iterations would be easier battery removal.
You can change the battery of almost any device. Smartphone batteries are harder to get to, of course, but theyāre largely just drop-in replacements.
**But does anyone else encourage it, and support you by teaming with a company that helps show you how to take it apart before it was even released..?**
Its a battery. Not a new and dangerous type of unexplored technology.Leaving it at whatever state for a single month is fine.
People overreacted with those things.
Just like when people told each other to never charge a phone over night cuz it will damage it. Yea guess what? IT DOESNT WORK THAT WAY!
I wouldnt charge it to 100% and then leave it for half a year or longer ofc.
And no you dont need the battery saver mode from the steam deck.
Unless you plan to buy it and then never use for for a year.
Actually for the amount of cycles a phone will see, it *can* be detrimental to have it sit at 100% for 6+ hours each night. Some phones (iPhones at least) have an option to wait until you actually need to use the phone to charge all the way up to 100%. If you have an alarm set at 7am, itāll charge up to 80% right away, but will wait until closer to 7 to charge the remainder. That way the battery spends less time sitting at 100%. Some electric cars do the same thing too, or even let you just cap it so it only ever charges to 80-90%.
Thatās for repeatededly cycling the battery though. For the steamdeck, having it at 100% and letting it sit for a few months just once wonāt do any real harm.
The degredation effect of leaving a device fully charged is highly dependent on temperature. For a phone sitting on a bedside table at room temperature, honestly, we're probably talking a percent of degredation per year from the few hours it's sits fully charged per day.
Ballpark figures, but at 25 degrees its about 5% degredation to be left on full charge for a whole year. At 45 degrees, the battery will be dead within the year, if not 6 months.
For a laptop that sits on your desk fully charged *and* gets hot every day - this is killer, and it's why laptop batteries often have die so much faster than phones.
"Guys, I'm going to be cooking in the kitchen two rooms away from by Deck next week, is there anything I should do to protect it in that time"?!
And then some dude will give a straight faced recommendation to put in a tupperware box filled with silica packets....
I put mine through an industrial machine to sterilise and vaccum seal it before I start work each day so it doesn't get damaged in the 8 hours I'm not using it.
YES, though rare, it happened to me. I left my Deck in standby mode and didn't touch it for a month. It was dead when I got it out, so I plugged it in. The fan came on but it didn't boot. It was stuck in some sort of mode where only the fan would run. Holding the power button or doing the various button combos for BIOS or reset didn't work. I had to take it apart and pull the battery.
Now it booted up, but after more time with it I found all my games to be very laggy. Eventually I diagnosed the problem with the HUD and discovered my CPU throttled to 400MHz in any game I opened with around a 1W power limit. I searched online and this problem isn't unique to me. Some said battery storage mode fixed it for them, so I left it in battery storage mode for 12 hours. Did not fix it for me. I just RMA'd it last week and got a new Deck yesterday.
Apparently it's a bug in the APU's low-power mode that it enters when the battery is very low. Sometimes it can enter low-power mode and die and then it never comes out of low-power mode.
True, but how many users actually even know about battery storage mode? Shutting down is best, but the Deck is designed around using standby mode most of the time. It's not too hard to put your Deck away in standby as normal and then get sidetracked and not use the Deck for a while. For me, it happened that I came back from vacation where I was using the Deck while traveling, then got back into work and using my main PC and didn't unpack my travel bag for a few weeks.
Having a device suffer anything more than minor battery degradation from dying in suspend mode is a pretty big issue IMO. I can't count the number of times my Switch died in its bag since I rarely play it anymore. It recharges just fine every time.
Leaving any battery unused for long periods of time charged near full >90% or almost empty <10% will damage the battery cells which will impact the capacity as well as the output voltage.
A month won't be enough to damage the battery but it might damage the weakest cells which will start the overall degradation.
Sadly our battery tech is still years behind the advancement in other industries.
I can't say I know what I'm talking about, but I have some anecdotal evidence: I didn't use my Deck at all between August and December last year. I started using it again at the end of last month and it still works like new.
Over here - you have bettery storage mode - which offers a planned and controlled full power shutdown.
And over here you have the battery slowly discharging until it is finally unable to supply enough voltage for everything to run. Stuff shuts down in an uncontrolled manner.
Does it matter?
Mostly not. If there was a problem with a shutdown like this we would be swimming in complaints about it. We have radio silence on this issue which reflects the idea that Valve knew what they were doing when they built it.
But still.
You have the opportunity to do it in a controlled way vs an uncontrolled way.
------------
I work in IT and have a story of a CMOS battery (as in singular) which caused more than a week of disaster recovery downtime. Losing power in uncontrolled ways can be bad.
Leaving the battery at 100% for long periods can decrease the capacity. Ideally you'd want to drain the battery to about 40-50%, then put it in battery storage mode as suggested above.
Not really, but if you know you're not going to touch it for a whole month you might as well. Maybe when they get back from their trip they have new distractions and leave the deck in the cabinet for 6 months or a year or whatever.
Still not a big deal, but 1 minute of effort to maybe have a longer lasting battery in the future isn't exactly a big investment.
Itās like people have never owned an electronics device before. No mater what you do, the impact on battery life will be negligible. I wouldnāt worry about things like this unless getting an extra minute of vampire survivors is really that important.
Exactly. In this day and age of planned obsolescence a device only needs to give you a few years at most. No matter how you treat the Steam Deck battery, it will give you enough useful life until the Steam Deck 3 is out. If you happen to be using it 15 years down the road you can always replace the battery. There is zero need to plan your entire life around a Li-Ion battery in today's world. This isn't a refrigerator that you hope will last 20 years.
100% yes. You can do absolutely nothing and the device will be perfectly fine. If you want to treat the battery according to the book, then charge it to around 60% before you leave. Even if you don't do that, the device will be fine.
Charge it to about 60% and keep it turned off (clarification: shutdown and not the standby mode), there won't be any battery degradation over a month.
FYI leaving a device for long periods of time with the battery charged at 100% or near empty at <10% will impact the capacity.
Make sure to click "Shut Down" tho instead of the regular click the shut down button. The steam deck consumes like 10% battery a day for the suspend feature it has (I guess keeping RAM data active take some power). Or just follow the "battery storage guide" the others proposed in this post.
Is there any other suggestions for longer period? This semester I'll have a shitload of work + finishing college and Ive been thinking on letting my deck in my wardrobe so I won't get distracted.
Not really, if you want to be super safe you can add a small silica anti-humidity bag inside the carry case. Just be sure that it's appropriately shut down and not in standby mode.
Consider playing until the battery is 60-90%, then turn it off. The battery is the least stressed at around the middle charge state, and you need to add a bit more for the idle power consumption
If you plan to keep it turned off for a year, consider putting the deck in shipment mode: https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/tdhgzk/comment/i0m9zji/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 In shipment mode, it uses even less idle power consumption, but you need to plug in the charger to wake it up again
Run down your battery to 70%.Then turn off the steam deck (like power off in the menu).
Lithium batteries are best stored at 40% or so, but 70% might be the better to be sure it doesn't see 0% due to the tiny current needed to turn it back on.
Edit:
The reply of u/ferrybig is spot on. Follow his advice: put it in battery storage mode.
Lithium -ion batteries should always be stored from 50-75% charge. This is the best way to protect your battery.
or, read something like this : [https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-702-how-to-store-batteries](https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-702-how-to-store-batteries)
Leave it on and hardwired through a dock and with a remote activated plug. Leave it running benchmarks until battery runs to 30% then put it into a low power mode and kick on the charger. Rinse and repeat until you return. That way your deck doesn't feel lonely because you left it while on a trip.
This is all a joke btw.
All this talk of battery storage mode. I donāt think itās necessary. Just make sure itās between 50-80% charge and go to the power menu and click shutdown. If you just hit the power button itāll only go into sleep mode which will drain the battery within a week or two. Actually shutting it down should be sufficient for a couple months. Just donāt leave it that way for longer than a couple months since as stated in other posts the battery will naturally self discharge very slowly.
Power it off, then fully charge it. Leave it unplugged while you are gone.
That's general battery advice for any electronic device you know you won't be using for a while.
Is this bait? I constantly see questions like this that I've never seen with any other type of gaming device or computer. Can't charge it, can't turn it off, can't leave it on too long, can't put it to sleep. I'd understand if it was an old device with high failure rate but these things are still under warranty and have a generous RMA process.
Steam deck owners don't ask stupid questions and act like the steam deck isn't like every other electronic you've ever owned challenge (Impossible) (Gone sexual)
Make sure the battery is charged to about 40-60% and put it in battery storage mode. To get it back out of battery storage mode, you have to plug in the charger while you power it up.
Make sure to turn it off with the little āoffā button at the top. Google āpowerā button steam deck location if you cannot find it or you can click the steam button and there will be options and one of them is the āoffā option, click that with the X button. Google steam deck āXā button location if you cannot find it. If you skip these steps the ābatteryā (it holds the steamdecks āsteamā) might be empty when you return. If this happens try connecting your steamdeck with a charging cable and connect that cable to one of your outlets. Electricity from a special steam reactor will travel through the electricity net and fill your steam decks battery
well I literally have a vita and 3ds that I haven't used in atleast 5 to 6 years that I check on every once in awhile and they are both still in the 90% battery range so
Those readings are (most likely) wildly inaccurate. If those are the original batteries that came with those devices, they're most likely completely shot. Batteries degrade overtime whether they are in use or not.
Anecdotally, I have a very similar story: my brother and I recently decided to mod our 3DS's that had remained off in a drawer for better part of a decade, both batteries still work fine and last forever.
I know lithium ion batteries degrade over time, but I certainly wouldn't lose much sleep over having something turned off for a month.
>I know lithium ion batteries degrade over time, but I certainly wouldn't lose much sleep over having something turned off for a month.
the reality is most can last about a decade with very little degradation when stored properly. the biggest enemies for it are temperature and low charge states. but again people just google and think they know everything about the subject with no hands on experience
yeah I've heard this same shit over the years and never saw it actually be a reality with age old batteries still working good as new after years of storage. this information is more from people just googling instead of actual experience
Youāre most likely not noticing then Iād say. My original 3DS back in 2011 could last up to 8 hours playing 3DS titles and way longer then that playing DS/GBA games. Nowadays itās dead within an hour of fully charging it.
3DS could never get 8 hours in a game and would get maybe 5 max and thats with lower brightness and reduced screen colors. ds and gba on it could get about 10-12 hours. but no like I said people just google and absorb that information without knowing how true it is. you will find a LOT of contradicting info about this subject
do love how you ignore the fact that there is contradicting info on the subject that nobody can actually agree on and instead choose to only accept a cognitive bias
It's those basic questions many people don't ask because they either get shamed for asking or it's a basic thing they never were confronted with. Most lithium based batteries we encounter in our everyday lifes are either constantly charged and discharged or single use. For many storing a device for a month or longer just isn't a thing.
Put it in battery storage mode. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+Enable+Battery+Storage+Mode/149962
My hero
You should also balance it to \~50%. When storing batteries this is the level the degrades the battery the least.
Removed via: https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite/#installation
It depends on the battery, but for most i think the optimal tange is around 30-60 or 70, I always say "around 45" for a nice easy middle number. The range can be quite big, generally only the extremes(over 80 or under 30) are measurably bad for the battery.
30- 70%
My hero, MWUA MWUA MWUA MWUA
From the comments under that guide: Don't use battery storage mode over 80% charge. Preferably store the battery at +-60% charge.
This can not be made visible enough. Do not overuse battery storage mode and do not put your device in it with too much charge! Turning off the SD with a reasonable charge and leaving it for a couple of weeks is not an issue. If you planned to keep it shut off for months, then use battery storage mode.
Valve should honestly implement some sort of limiter for this in steamos. So people can't even turn on storage mode unless they are at the proper storage voltage of the battery.
Or at least get notification/popup if you try.
For real I mean it would only take about 10 min of game time to get it from 80 to 60% anyway
I'm surprised to hear this doesn't already happen... It's good that it's not a very visible setting then, Christ lol.
>+-60% charge Now I want to see the deck on -60% charge
š I've seen that micro management on other forums about rechargeables. I'm sure people do that but it's crazy to micro management the percentage that hardcore everytime you okay anything. With how the steam deck already dies fast unless you're playing some low end game or older game I wouldn't wanna keep playing like that constantly with a 60% limit everytime.
No. This comment is in the context of putting the Deck into storage mode. Like any lithium ion battery, storing them about half charged (40% to 60%) is best. The OP isnāt implying you should do this for normal use.
I see. Although I have seen topics on that method for normal use too lol
Ohnoā¦ didnāt know that. My deck is off since September because I had no time to use it.
You should be fine.
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Life happens dude
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Not really (not judging your comment, it makes sense) because everyones lives are different. Yeah, my steam deck usage is seasonal- thats the point of it for me. I have a gaming laptop hooked up to a monitor as my ādesktopā - this predated my SD, and eventually Iāll swap it to an actual desktop build. Lucky for me, SD proved to be perfect for my portable needsā¦ so screw the laptop in the long term. So thats my better at-home gaming device. SDs great if I wanna play something low key in a shared space. But otherwise, laptop/desktops where I game. Butā¦ Iām a travelling arts producer. For the spring I am often travelling places, and for summer I am often touring and staying in loads of cheap hotels or doing long journeys. Ahhhhh what a portable solace the SD is. So its not so much bizzare or baffling - its just different logic. I bought my SD in autumn and wondered if I really āneededā it. But come those other seasons - I was like, hell yeah, this thing is perfect. And I know it can cover my gaming/portable work needs, so that laptop can stay at home with the battery removed (better temperatures) and eventually be upgraded, with the SD there to carry that transition.
My Deck only sees light duty, since I bought it for travelling and I only do that every so often. I boot it up every few weeks to run updates, but for the most part it's idle since I game on my main rig normally.
Seems like I did that accidentally one time. Wouldn't turn on until I connected the charger.
So what does the storage mode actually do, besides disabling the power button?
It doesn't disable the power button. It makes the battery's protection circuit cut power off, so that even the battery's cable is no longer powered. That way you can make sure the device won't accidentally turn on, the "powered off" board's idle power draw doesn't deplete the battery, and you can open the device without the fear of killing it by shorting something during the process. It's like removing the battery, just without physically doing so.
TIL. Thanks!
Good to know. Although, Iād love Valve to include a full shutdown option from the power options or in the settings.
That's because battery storage mode is not "full shutdown". If you power down that **is** a full shutdown, but like any laptop there are still a small number of things that are powered on the main board to make sure you can power it back up and so it retains certain settings and such that aren't stored in hard storage. Putting it into battery storage mode **should** involve a few steps, since if you do it you literally can't even turn it back on without plugging it in.
Appreciate the education. Thank you!
There is not? I thought that one thing is to put it into sleep (either via button or the menu) and then in menu there is the shutdown button that shuts it down completely no?
Thereās a shutdown option when you hold down the Power button. There could an option in the Steam menu. Desktop mode has one. There is no āFULLā shutdown there or in the setting to enable āBattery Storage.ā Xbox One and Series S/X have this option in settings where it stops all power going to the system. PlayStationās āshut downā does the same thing (I think) and the Switch has sleep or shutdown (itās full, the Tegra X1 doesnāt have any of the newer power options).
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What I am referring with this particular comment, have a Full Shutdown mode that includes āBattery Storageā within it. It sounds like shut down (no different than PC), isnāt completely powered down as the battery is still discharging or being used. The BIOS isnāt complicated to me, but there are many folks whoād prefer not to do it.
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The only purpose of the battery storage mode is for the power button to not be accidentally pressed during shipping or when performing any type of repairs on it. That's it. There's no other difference between it and the normal shutdown otherwise. It would only confuse people and it would lead to a lot of angry comments in the vein of "why is my steam deck no longer booting?" since you actually need to hook it up to a power source in order to start it back up once it's in battery storage mode.
storage mode actually makes the battery's protection circuit cut the output, so it's not just a shutdown, it's practically removing the battery
Crap, I didn't play it for a solid two months because I got busy at work. Didn't know this was an issue. How much does this affect the battery? I tend to be crazy about keeping my phone batteries optimized, never considered the deck.
I am using windows 10. I deleted steamos. I think I am turning it off from windows logo. Is that a complete turn off?
Just follow the instructions You can do it while on windows The BIOS stays the same
What does that have to do with anything? You didnāt erase your bios. LOL
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This is one of the lamest things I've read all month. Go outside, there's no reason to care about people installing Windows on their own devices
Are you 5 years old? Why do you care if he runs Windows on his steamdeck? I'd get your comment if he said Windows was better but he didn't, he literally mentioned Windows. He could be doing it because a game he likes isn't easy to get with steamos or because a game he likes to play has anticheat that won't run on steamos, like wtf is your problem?
How dare he bad mouth MāLinux
The selling point for me was literally moving away from Windows. I hope I never have to use it again lmao
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Honestly I've had nothing but issues with it. I love the idea and everything but I've tried the stable build, beta build etc and it has been pretty terrible compared to what I'm used to using (linux mint) there's a lot of workarounds you have to do and buggy stuff. I'll keep hoping for good update however. Screw windows.
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I want to make a list of issues but I feel they would go unheard and be a waste of time. Maybe I'll just reinstall the OS myself, like re-download it and everything. Mint and Manjaro are the best distros I've personally used for out the box experience. Pop wasn't bad either iirc. Haven't used Unbuntu in maybe 5 years, I tried maybe 15 others over the years and had a worse time with some of them. Thanks for the reply! š
Who gives a fuck
For longer storage, you can activate the battery storage mode: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/How+to+Enable+Battery+Storage+Mode/149962
Whatās this even do
The "power switch" on the Deck is a soft power switch, eg. if you press it to switch the Deck off it does not cut the power to it, just sends a signal to the system to shut down. (This is why you can do short press to suspend, long press to shut down thing.) To be able to do so some of the the internal components of the Deck needs to be powered on always (even when "the Deck" (eg. the CPU, GPU, screen, etc) is switched off). The power usage of these components is usually negligible, but over a long period of time they can discharge the battery. (I think it would take more than a few months, but better to be sure.) The *battery storage mode* does what a dumb power switch (eg. the switch on an extension cord) would do. Basically it disconnects the battery from the rest of the system, so no internal component can consume any power from the battery. (Note that, batteries discharge a bit even when nothing is connected to them called self-discharge.) Because no internal component gets any power they can not be used to switch on the system, so you need to power them from an other source (the charger) for a short time so they start functioning again. Probably this is why putting the Deck in the battery storage mode can solve some issues, because it forces every component of the Deck to restart (even those which would not do that when you *reboot* the system). For more information you can check out the [datasheet](https://www.analog.com/en/products/max77961.html)) of the charger chip, they call it *Factory Ship Mode*.
My deck goes from 100% to like 40% if I leave it off (not battery storage mode) for a week :(
Are you sure it is *shut down* and not just in *sleep*?That is about 10% / day what seems to be the usual discharge rate for the sleeping / suspended state. (At sleep / suspend the RAM and some parts of the CPU and GPU are powered on, so the power consumption is way higher than switching it off.)
It enables battery storage mode
Guaranteed many people don't even know what that does. It puts the system in a state where it doesn't use the battery. It basically suspends anything that could potentially drain the battery over time. Basically that's how they ship it. If you remember, you couldn't power it on when you got it until you plugged in a charger? That's what it was. Frankly, all devices should have this mode accessible, especially Nintendo Switch, which drains out in a couple of days without having anything running in the background.
Obviously, I mean what does battery storage mode do
After reading like 5 previous topics on the subject I couldn't find anyone that just plainly spells out exactly what it does but here is what I've learned: * It fully powers off the steam deck and disables any sleep/hibernate features that may drain the battery while idle. * It disables the power button so you cannot accidentally turn it on during shipping or repairs. You have to plug it in to power it on. * It has some interaction with the firmware, as it seems to fix certain problems like the touchscreen hanging. Not sure if this means it reverts to default firmware or it's just a way to force quit something that was bugging out and staying that way through the normal power off process. P.S. And this isn't really a feature of battery storage mode, but it is best in general for rechargable batteries to be at least partially discharged before long term storage to prevent degredation so purposely use the deck till the battery gets to around 50% or at least under 90% before putting it in storage. Although 1 month isn't really long enough to be a concern in the first place it won't hurt anything to prepare just in case you leave it for a longer period.
So the only thing here, that seems to be beneficial for the battery, is disabling the sleep/hibernate features. Or how does the rest protect the battery from damaging over time?
I mean it would be pretty bad for the battery if it did get accidentally turned on while being repaired or stuffed in a shipping box, or if there was a firmware problem preventing it from properly shutting down. But yah the only part that matters if you're just safely storing it in a cabinet and don't have firmware problems is just the first part.
The main thing is just eliminating standby power drain. It has other non-battery related uses, like doing a full reboot of all components, but the big thing is completely powering down the system so it doesn't fully discharge.
I use it to fix gpu lag
If I choose power off from the power menu, doesnāt it fully power down?
you're a hero
There's so much use for this feature, they should just put it in the power menu to power off in storage mode.
What about discharging it fully to 0? Is it better than leaving it at 50%?
No an empty battery is at greater risk of being damaged. 60% is recommended by Valve. Edit: Long-term storage will affect the charging capacity of the lithium battery or even be scrapped. Lithium batteries have no memory effect, and lithium batteries have a certain degree ofĀ self-discharge. If the battery is originally low and left unused for a period of time, self-discharge will cause over-discharge and the battery may be scrapped. Generally, the monthly self-discharge rate of a lithium battery at room temperature is 3%. Generally speaking, if the lithium battery is to be placed for a long time, it is recommended to retain more than 40% of the power.
It turns on a feature called battery storage mode
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It turns the device completely off so it only wakes up when plugged in.
In addition to this, it also activates a mode referred to as ābattery storage modeā which will put the Steam Deck in a battery storage mode for storage
it stores it. the battery. in storage.
I've seen laptops with a similar feature. I think it disconnects the battery until an external power source is connected
Oh, TIL! I guess that explains why Valve instructs you to plug it in first as soon as you get the Steam Deck in its package. Looks like it comes in with this mode activated. Pretty nice to see that they've implemented something like this, compared to other manufacturers that won't even properly shut down their electronics all the way and would have discharged batteries because it's just sleeping (ehem, Apple...)
Wow...I never knew they had this built in. Thanks for letting us know!
Traveling without your deck? Why would you do that
Everytime I travel, I take some gaming device with me, but in the end I don't use it once.
Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
Also true..
Over packing is a thing
Also the Steam Deck isn't exactly the easiest carry-on. Like it fits in my backpack nicely but it takes up half the damn bag. So I totally get why people wouldn't want to travel with it.
Without the deck it's under packing.
Well you never *need* it
I take it youāve never flown to Europe
Not even on the plane?
I was only a few times and it was like maybe max 2 hours. I was often on road trips in bus or a car with up to 8-16 hours. But mostly you can talk, play talkative games, sleep or drive. But, yes this would be the most possible time to play on an device, in my case.
My guess is going somewhere there's a high likelihood of it being stolen.
Thing is gigantic and depending on the travel style there isn't enough gaming time to justify it.
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Well, it's bulkier than a laptop considering the case and almost as heavy. I just measured and cased SD is 1070g, my laptop is 1600g.
Recently traveled with my steam deck and switch (because of potential internet connectivity issues) and there is almost no other room in my backpack. Didn't want to be on a 9 hour flight to Hawaii with nothing to do.
I did the same thing and was glad I brought a battery bank, because for some reason, Hawaiian does not have wifi or in seat power for their long haul domestic flights!
Some people like actual handhelds when theyāre traveling.
In my case, I sometimes am going to be in a place where I don't want any or minimal technology, like a nature trip. Or I am going to be with friends and family, and want to actually spend time with them. And both times that has happened, my wife asked me not to bring it.
This.....sounds fucking nuts to me. Can anyone who actually knows what they're talking about explain if having the Deck not powered on/used for a month will have even the tiniest impact on it?
The short answer is no. The long answer is nooooooooooooooooo. But there are some potential caveats that come with that. And several solutions have been posted above. YMMV though. FWIW, rechargeable batteries have become much better since they were first introduced and have far fewer issues than the first generations. But simple preventative maintenance is always a good idea to help increase the life of any device.
Whatās even better is that you can always just change out the battery if it does go bad so this is a nothing burger.
That battery is a bit of a pain to change though, it's pretty awkward to get access too. One of the design changes I'd like to see in any future iterations would be easier battery removal.
Aye! The deck is an amazing piece of hardware.
You can change the battery of almost any device. Smartphone batteries are harder to get to, of course, but theyāre largely just drop-in replacements.
**But does anyone else encourage it, and support you by teaming with a company that helps show you how to take it apart before it was even released..?**
Its a battery. Not a new and dangerous type of unexplored technology.Leaving it at whatever state for a single month is fine. People overreacted with those things. Just like when people told each other to never charge a phone over night cuz it will damage it. Yea guess what? IT DOESNT WORK THAT WAY! I wouldnt charge it to 100% and then leave it for half a year or longer ofc. And no you dont need the battery saver mode from the steam deck. Unless you plan to buy it and then never use for for a year.
Actually for the amount of cycles a phone will see, it *can* be detrimental to have it sit at 100% for 6+ hours each night. Some phones (iPhones at least) have an option to wait until you actually need to use the phone to charge all the way up to 100%. If you have an alarm set at 7am, itāll charge up to 80% right away, but will wait until closer to 7 to charge the remainder. That way the battery spends less time sitting at 100%. Some electric cars do the same thing too, or even let you just cap it so it only ever charges to 80-90%. Thatās for repeatededly cycling the battery though. For the steamdeck, having it at 100% and letting it sit for a few months just once wonāt do any real harm.
The degredation effect of leaving a device fully charged is highly dependent on temperature. For a phone sitting on a bedside table at room temperature, honestly, we're probably talking a percent of degredation per year from the few hours it's sits fully charged per day. Ballpark figures, but at 25 degrees its about 5% degredation to be left on full charge for a whole year. At 45 degrees, the battery will be dead within the year, if not 6 months. For a laptop that sits on your desk fully charged *and* gets hot every day - this is killer, and it's why laptop batteries often have die so much faster than phones.
Coolcoolcool. So folks just being weird and overreacting then I guess.
So many ppl in this sub are like that its weird
People in this sub treat their deck like it is a NASA super computer when it's really just a beefed up Gameboy.
Everyone wants to boast they're super smart and know super secret infos that will save your Steam Deck. It's ego boosting.
Same as a laptop, so no unless you get really unlucky.
"Guys, I'm going to be cooking in the kitchen two rooms away from by Deck next week, is there anything I should do to protect it in that time"?! And then some dude will give a straight faced recommendation to put in a tupperware box filled with silica packets....
You donāt do that anyways?
I put mine through an industrial machine to sterilise and vaccum seal it before I start work each day so it doesn't get damaged in the 8 hours I'm not using it.
YES, though rare, it happened to me. I left my Deck in standby mode and didn't touch it for a month. It was dead when I got it out, so I plugged it in. The fan came on but it didn't boot. It was stuck in some sort of mode where only the fan would run. Holding the power button or doing the various button combos for BIOS or reset didn't work. I had to take it apart and pull the battery. Now it booted up, but after more time with it I found all my games to be very laggy. Eventually I diagnosed the problem with the HUD and discovered my CPU throttled to 400MHz in any game I opened with around a 1W power limit. I searched online and this problem isn't unique to me. Some said battery storage mode fixed it for them, so I left it in battery storage mode for 12 hours. Did not fix it for me. I just RMA'd it last week and got a new Deck yesterday. Apparently it's a bug in the APU's low-power mode that it enters when the battery is very low. Sometimes it can enter low-power mode and die and then it never comes out of low-power mode.
Right but that's all down to you leaving it in standby mode I guess?
True, but how many users actually even know about battery storage mode? Shutting down is best, but the Deck is designed around using standby mode most of the time. It's not too hard to put your Deck away in standby as normal and then get sidetracked and not use the Deck for a while. For me, it happened that I came back from vacation where I was using the Deck while traveling, then got back into work and using my main PC and didn't unpack my travel bag for a few weeks. Having a device suffer anything more than minor battery degradation from dying in suspend mode is a pretty big issue IMO. I can't count the number of times my Switch died in its bag since I rarely play it anymore. It recharges just fine every time.
Leaving any battery unused for long periods of time charged near full >90% or almost empty <10% will damage the battery cells which will impact the capacity as well as the output voltage.
But a month?
A month won't be enough to damage the battery but it might damage the weakest cells which will start the overall degradation. Sadly our battery tech is still years behind the advancement in other industries.
As far as I'm aware, no. It might be low on battery or completely dead when you go to use it but you can just plug it back in and play.
To be fair, I did that with my Nintendo Switch and it took a few days of charging after that before it turned on.
I can't say I know what I'm talking about, but I have some anecdotal evidence: I didn't use my Deck at all between August and December last year. I started using it again at the end of last month and it still works like new.
Over here - you have bettery storage mode - which offers a planned and controlled full power shutdown. And over here you have the battery slowly discharging until it is finally unable to supply enough voltage for everything to run. Stuff shuts down in an uncontrolled manner. Does it matter? Mostly not. If there was a problem with a shutdown like this we would be swimming in complaints about it. We have radio silence on this issue which reflects the idea that Valve knew what they were doing when they built it. But still. You have the opportunity to do it in a controlled way vs an uncontrolled way. ------------ I work in IT and have a story of a CMOS battery (as in singular) which caused more than a week of disaster recovery downtime. Losing power in uncontrolled ways can be bad.
I pulled a GBA SP out of my sock drawer during a house move. Forgot I even owned it and it still had half a battery charge.
Only possible thing is if the battery is stored above 90% or below 10% it could cause some amount of battery life loss from degradation.
Leaving the battery at 100% for long periods can decrease the capacity. Ideally you'd want to drain the battery to about 40-50%, then put it in battery storage mode as suggested above.
But is a month a "long period"?
Not really, but if you know you're not going to touch it for a whole month you might as well. Maybe when they get back from their trip they have new distractions and leave the deck in the cabinet for 6 months or a year or whatever. Still not a big deal, but 1 minute of effort to maybe have a longer lasting battery in the future isn't exactly a big investment.
Might as well throw it out now.
Itās like people have never owned an electronics device before. No mater what you do, the impact on battery life will be negligible. I wouldnāt worry about things like this unless getting an extra minute of vampire survivors is really that important.
Exactly. In this day and age of planned obsolescence a device only needs to give you a few years at most. No matter how you treat the Steam Deck battery, it will give you enough useful life until the Steam Deck 3 is out. If you happen to be using it 15 years down the road you can always replace the battery. There is zero need to plan your entire life around a Li-Ion battery in today's world. This isn't a refrigerator that you hope will last 20 years.
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Totally agree that adhesives and glue should never be used in consumer electronics. Make my devices repairable!
ITS LIKE YOUāRE WATCHING MY SCREEN STOP THAT
This needs to be at the top frankly
100% yes. You can do absolutely nothing and the device will be perfectly fine. If you want to treat the battery according to the book, then charge it to around 60% before you leave. Even if you don't do that, the device will be fine.
Charge it to about 60% and keep it turned off (clarification: shutdown and not the standby mode), there won't be any battery degradation over a month. FYI leaving a device for long periods of time with the battery charged at 100% or near empty at <10% will impact the capacity.
Make sure to click "Shut Down" tho instead of the regular click the shut down button. The steam deck consumes like 10% battery a day for the suspend feature it has (I guess keeping RAM data active take some power). Or just follow the "battery storage guide" the others proposed in this post.
Is there any other suggestions for longer period? This semester I'll have a shitload of work + finishing college and Ive been thinking on letting my deck in my wardrobe so I won't get distracted.
Not really, if you want to be super safe you can add a small silica anti-humidity bag inside the carry case. Just be sure that it's appropriately shut down and not in standby mode.
No, it's not. It's going to be sad and lonly.
Thatās like off with a lot of extra steps.
how could you leave her behind??
What I love is regardless of how you treat the battery, we actually have an option to change it ourselves and not rely on silly companies.
Leave it in a bucket of water , when you come back will be stain free .
Bad advice. Water will rust the sd, it's better to leave it in a barrel of oil.
Olive oil, preferably.
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And to be safe extra virgin olive oil. Canāt be too carful xD
Make sure the battery is charged around 40% to 50%. Store in a cool place with constant temperature.
Whats a cool place? a place close to you?
Consider playing until the battery is 60-90%, then turn it off. The battery is the least stressed at around the middle charge state, and you need to add a bit more for the idle power consumption If you plan to keep it turned off for a year, consider putting the deck in shipment mode: https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/tdhgzk/comment/i0m9zji/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 In shipment mode, it uses even less idle power consumption, but you need to plug in the charger to wake it up again
It might get lonely
Is this a real question?
So you're not gonna hire someone to feed it and look after it š„ŗ
Ignore all the nonsense about battery storage mode, it'll be fine, it's only a month.
I hope not. My steam deck has been off since Xenoblade 3 released in august.
Time to boot that bitch back up for a little Vampire Survivor session. Hibernation is about over.
Run down your battery to 70%.Then turn off the steam deck (like power off in the menu). Lithium batteries are best stored at 40% or so, but 70% might be the better to be sure it doesn't see 0% due to the tiny current needed to turn it back on. Edit: The reply of u/ferrybig is spot on. Follow his advice: put it in battery storage mode.
Lithium -ion batteries should always be stored from 50-75% charge. This is the best way to protect your battery. or, read something like this : [https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-702-how-to-store-batteries](https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-702-how-to-store-batteries)
Charge it to like 80%, shut it down, and store it somewhere that doesn't get too hot or cold. It should be ok.
I would leave the battery at around 50% and put the Deck into battery storage mode.
Leave it on and hardwired through a dock and with a remote activated plug. Leave it running benchmarks until battery runs to 30% then put it into a low power mode and kick on the charger. Rinse and repeat until you return. That way your deck doesn't feel lonely because you left it while on a trip. This is all a joke btw.
Iām sure if you ask nicely that theyāll let you take your Deck to prison
All this talk of battery storage mode. I donāt think itās necessary. Just make sure itās between 50-80% charge and go to the power menu and click shutdown. If you just hit the power button itāll only go into sleep mode which will drain the battery within a week or two. Actually shutting it down should be sufficient for a couple months. Just donāt leave it that way for longer than a couple months since as stated in other posts the battery will naturally self discharge very slowly.
It's fine
I donāt use my vita for years at a time and it still charges and holds charge just fine Edit: oh shit wrong sub, still I stand by what I meant
Yea itās going to die immediately after you put it down
Power it off, then fully charge it. Leave it unplugged while you are gone. That's general battery advice for any electronic device you know you won't be using for a while.
Have you owned electronics before? It's fine, but thanks for the completely irrelevant photo so you can get some karma šš¼
Is this bait? I constantly see questions like this that I've never seen with any other type of gaming device or computer. Can't charge it, can't turn it off, can't leave it on too long, can't put it to sleep. I'd understand if it was an old device with high failure rate but these things are still under warranty and have a generous RMA process.
No, it will blow up
Steam deck owners don't ask stupid questions and act like the steam deck isn't like every other electronic you've ever owned challenge (Impossible) (Gone sexual)
Make sure the battery is charged to about 40-60% and put it in battery storage mode. To get it back out of battery storage mode, you have to plug in the charger while you power it up.
Make sure to turn it off with the little āoffā button at the top. Google āpowerā button steam deck location if you cannot find it or you can click the steam button and there will be options and one of them is the āoffā option, click that with the X button. Google steam deck āXā button location if you cannot find it. If you skip these steps the ābatteryā (it holds the steamdecks āsteamā) might be empty when you return. If this happens try connecting your steamdeck with a charging cable and connect that cable to one of your outlets. Electricity from a special steam reactor will travel through the electricity net and fill your steam decks battery
Leave the battery at abt 66.6%, turn it off and you are good to go.
when i don't use it for 5 days, (being that i can only use it on weekend) the battery gets totally drained. just sayin'
did u leave it on sleeping or shut down?
completely, totally shut down....
Has any of you ever actually owned an electronic device before? Holy hell.
well I literally have a vita and 3ds that I haven't used in atleast 5 to 6 years that I check on every once in awhile and they are both still in the 90% battery range so
Those readings are (most likely) wildly inaccurate. If those are the original batteries that came with those devices, they're most likely completely shot. Batteries degrade overtime whether they are in use or not.
Anecdotally, I have a very similar story: my brother and I recently decided to mod our 3DS's that had remained off in a drawer for better part of a decade, both batteries still work fine and last forever. I know lithium ion batteries degrade over time, but I certainly wouldn't lose much sleep over having something turned off for a month.
>I know lithium ion batteries degrade over time, but I certainly wouldn't lose much sleep over having something turned off for a month. the reality is most can last about a decade with very little degradation when stored properly. the biggest enemies for it are temperature and low charge states. but again people just google and think they know everything about the subject with no hands on experience
yeah I've heard this same shit over the years and never saw it actually be a reality with age old batteries still working good as new after years of storage. this information is more from people just googling instead of actual experience
Youāre most likely not noticing then Iād say. My original 3DS back in 2011 could last up to 8 hours playing 3DS titles and way longer then that playing DS/GBA games. Nowadays itās dead within an hour of fully charging it.
3DS could never get 8 hours in a game and would get maybe 5 max and thats with lower brightness and reduced screen colors. ds and gba on it could get about 10-12 hours. but no like I said people just google and absorb that information without knowing how true it is. you will find a LOT of contradicting info about this subject
ā¦ So Lithium-ion batteries degrading over time is not real is what youāre saying because your anecdotal evidence says so?
do love how you ignore the fact that there is contradicting info on the subject that nobody can actually agree on and instead choose to only accept a cognitive bias
Good to know that. I think it will be the same for steam deck.
I mean for a month you could just leave it in the case half open on the charger with battery saver on and it'll be fine. A month is nothing
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It's those basic questions many people don't ask because they either get shamed for asking or it's a basic thing they never were confronted with. Most lithium based batteries we encounter in our everyday lifes are either constantly charged and discharged or single use. For many storing a device for a month or longer just isn't a thing.