Valve is looking to add an optional battery charge limit to the SD, to preserve battery life

While this is nice, I do hope they consider making it easier to remove and install a new battery for the next iteration of the steam deck.

To clarify, I mean something similar to phones where the backplate can slide off or preferably a panel, secured by a screw, when removed allows direct access to the battery and allows it to be easily swapped out - similar to many kids toys.

To be fair, most phones don't have easily replaceable batteries anymore either. I remember in an interview that one of the steam deck leads said they really wanted an easier to replace battery, but it was a compromise they ended up making. I think they blamed it partially on inexperience with hardware production, and that they hoped to do better on future hardware.
- To be fair, non-swappable batteries are fucking bullshit and need to go away forever.
- its gonna come back. at least in the eu, phones will be required to support it:)
- Yeah. People underestimate the thermal and "durability" benefits of just holding that in place with some double sided tape.
  Going by https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Steam+Deck+OLED+Battery+Replacement/168676 it doesn't look great but it looks "reasonable" and the replacement battery comes with new tape.
  The other month I was reading up on a white paper proposing an industry standard adhesive designed to pretty much dissolve instantly when exposed to the right solvents. Whether said solvent is at all human safe or what the cost of switching to these kinds of strips were was not discussed which... kind of is an answer in and of itself.
  But, in general, I come down on Right To Repair being more about making it reasonable for small repair shops to exist rather than for Joe Schmoe to fix his own iphone. And if you can be trusted to deal with ribbon cables and tracking screws, you can be trusted to use a heat gun and a plastic shim.
- That's not "being fair", that's just making excuses.
If the Steam Deck's airflow wasn't so delicately balanced, they could probably just skip the glue and add some foam or rubber patchs on the corners to prevent rattling. Then it'd be fairly easy to replace.
- What about 2 screws and some tabs
Nice I didn't know power tools has this, I will configure that when I get home today. I often leave my deck plugged in and forget about it and charging the battery to 100% is no bueno

Would definitely be really nice since we tend to leave our Steam Decks plugged in all day

The Steam Deck has power pass through so the battery doesn’t get worn down when plugged in: https://bloggedoff.com/2024/04/25/steam-deck-battery-lifespan-power-passthrough/
- Sure, but that helps prevent degradation due to charging cycles, not charging capacity

this really should just be a bog standard feature on all devices with a screen

With a battery*
My iPhone battery has survived a surprising amount of time, and I’m going to guess that’s because of Apple imposing its own researched limits on battery charging based on what it sees from my usage.
That could mean it’s sometimes lying when it says it’s at “100%”.
Yeah I don't get it either. Just make 80% the new 100%, and if someone wants to get the most capacity as a "power user" (no pun intended), they can manually switch to a capacity of 120% at the warning that this will decrease battery life time.
This way, it's opt-out instead of opt-in.
- 120% of 80 is 96. You'd have to let them charge to 125% to get to 100
- That doesn't really work with manufacturers trying to win customers on battery life, as well as hoping that customers will buy a new device rather sooner than later.
- Mmm i wouldn't go that far on most devices, most of the time that would result in unsatisfying runtime.
  however for devices where they can easily run days on a charge, yeah it makes sense. My xiaomi smartwatch gets 6 fucking days on 70% charge with quite a lot of power-drawing features enabled, so there's really no reason to ever charge it above 80%.
  But on my phone i very much need to be able to charge it to 100% before travelling, it only gets like 16h with the screen off on a full charge.

I would like this since I mostly play plugged in, but I would like easily swappable batteries even more. If they were hot-swappable, that would be even better!

Hell yeah another valve W, I always do that using power tools

That's how all rechargeable batteries work isn't it? If I understand correctly, there's no such thing as 100% because it would break it.

Is the change here that they're letting the user set the limit?

not quite, there is a 100% and there is a true 0%, but going above 4.2V or below 3.7V damages the battery's capacity incredibly fast, so it's better to avoid those by setting 100% to 4.2 and 0% to 3.7 (also because that's the interval where most of the energy is stored) (Talking about Li-ion here)
Yes, but this allows user to define lower limit, which further prolongs the battery life.
I want to be able to control whether it charges up to 75, 90 or 100 of the available capacity.

My Samsung phone does this and it drives me crazy. i wish they'd lie about the laat 20% they're keeping free and just show me at a full charge

Alternatively, they could just charge to 80% and show that it is 80% charged, like iOS and macOS do.
edit: I seemed to have misread the comment above. It’s useful to not be lied too, in my opinion, because then you still have the option to charge to 100% when needed.
- I think that's what it's already doing. That's how my wife's Samsung operates