I noticed the back of my steam deck feeling uneven yesterday. Opened it up to find a spicy pillow inside.
Replacement is underway, but I'm gonna remove this one now, already. Wish me luck...
this post was submitted on 26 May 2025
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Steam Deck
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I hate lithium batteries. Every so often I see one of these type of posts and have to go through every single electronic in the house to check for spicy pillows.
Now, OP, please tell me you the let battery fully drain a bunch and recharged it full and left it there but not plugged in and when you did again you played until it powered off.
Because I know battery management systems, and battery management systems still need electricity to work correctly. If the battery gets fully discharged they can't work correctly and occasionally the pillows get spicy.
If youre talking about before the operation: I let the battery discharge completely (fired up a game and played until the system shut off on its own). I haven't charged it afterwards, but imidiatelly removed it.
If youre talking about general usage: it was plugged into the outlet whenever I was not gaming, It barely drained below 40% when I used it.
Dang. You understand batteries. I was really hoping that it wasnt chance that the battery went poofy.
Time to do my paranoid check again
eh, apparently, not really. When it comes to battery health, it feels to me like the wisdom changes every few years. It probably wasn't very healthy for the battery to be on the charger for dozens of hours on end, despite battery management.
If he understood batteries he probably wouldn't have left it plugged in all the time. That wouldn't be an issue unless he always left it in sleep mode, so it would short charge cycle every other day.
the steam deck bypasses the battery if it's fully charged, and powers itself directly from the charger. Unlike a phone.
Thatβs not the point. Itβs bad for lithium batteries to be full all the time. Thatβs why iPhones wait to charge the last 20% until right before you wake up, and why Samsung phones have the option to limit charging to 80%. However, the most ideal charge for battery health is between 50-60%, so if you leave your Deck plugged in all the time, you should limit the charging to that for maximum battery life, and only charge it higher when you know youβre going to be needing it.
FYI the latest SteamOS release (just a couple of days ago) added an option to only charge to 80%.
It doesn't do that in sleep mode, though. Only while screen is on. In sleep mode it will cycle.
I thought the Deck would discharge it to like 80% if it detected a long charge period. Maybe I'm just really lucky
I thought it was 90%, but baybe it is 80. If you leave it plugged in while asleep all the time you may still be charge cycling to max capacity a lot, which is bad for the battery, though.
Regardless, having to replace the battery every few years isn't terrible, except for the price of like $85 is damned expensive for it.
I don't mind the replacing thing. It's the unexpected spicy pillow I don't like.
the latest beta update for the steam deck offers an new option to limit charging to 80/85/90% btw!
Oh, sweet! It's about damned time.