alt Hacker News> Undoubtedly at least one of the readers of this story will raise alarms at the prospect of keeping a lithium battery on full charge all of the time. It's a fire hazard! It can explode!
> I have a fair bit of experience with charging batteries of many types, and with confidence I can say that these concerns are largely overblown. Any appropriately designed battery charging system will stop charging the battery once it's fully charged.
Tell that to the multitude of laptops I've owned and/or repaired because the battery swells up and pushes the keyboard and trackpad out of the chassis.
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Author here. All good points from this point and its replies, which to me says best to me that not all products and experiences are equal, so proceed based on your comfort level.
Note that the app is capable of monitoring both battery charge percentage and temperature. If one was inclined a USB to serial adapter with some simple circuitry could be used to monitor and control the state of charge. Good idea for a follow-up project and article!
Also:
> so there's little (not nothing, but little) to go wrong.
Yes, but if "going wrong" means your house burning down (because the phone overheated while you were away), most people will try to avoid even the slightest possibility of that happening, because people are generally pretty attached to their house/flat/whatever and its content.
Yeah, it's not a matter of stopping charging, that is a necessary but not sufficient condition to stop the battery from exploding. It's generally keeping the battery fully charged and hot inside a device that's always plugged in and always on that does them in like this over time.