no that is not normal

you will never be able to hold a decent charge, i have main plugged in mains pretty much all the time, deck is amazing but the battery is not

Not normal at all, few days ago when I put my SD on sleep the Friday, and using it back again the next Monday, it has lost 20-30% at most, sometimes I'm surprised it hasn't lost much than 10.

But that's sleep mode, I don't really notice loosing battery on shutdown, at least it is much lower than with sleep mode.

Have you tried to go in Desktop mode and see the reported battery health ? It's reporting 98% actually here.

when shutdown, the battery should last months. when on sleep, the CPU is off but other parts like RAM are powered so the drain is a lot higher.

Not normal from my experience.

I am not sure if the steam deck has a proper shutdown mode from the menu or holding down power button in the way that you are thinking... I could be wrong so please no hate, and yes is can be strange. Sometimes my deck will lose 80% charge if I have not used it for more than a few days but other times it is only a few % if it's a day.

I am not sure why, I can speculate about updates and keeping wifi on etc but it would just be speculations and a complete guess, lol.

But there is a small procedure if you know that you are not going to be using it for a few days or longer, and how it arrived to you in the first place while still having charge despite being in warehouses and back of vans / planes etc.

https://gtm.you1.cn/helpsteam/en/faqs/view/69E3-14AF-9764-4C28

Long term storage
If you won't be using your Steam Deck for a while and would like to place it back into storage mode to increase long term battery health, you can use the following steps to do so:

Power the Steam Deck down normally (choose Shut Down from the Power menu)
Hold down the Volume+ button and press the power button. The Steam Deck should boot into the BIOS menu.
Using the D-Pad and A to select, navigate to "Setup Utility"
Navigate to the Power Menu
Choose Battery storage mode, and confirm.


You should see the Steam Deck power off, and the power LED will blink three times to confirm battery storage mode has been activated.

To wake your Steam Deck from storage mode, plug in the provided power supply and power it on normally.

It would be nice to have an option to do it within the deck I guess, but also I do not know how much fun that would be since you need to plug it in to get it to come back to life which might confuse some into thinking that their deck is bricked and cause unnecessary RMAs hehe.

For now (and for many years) sadly battery degradation is just an inevitability, and something like the steam deck is not ideal... but what you are describing is not that I do not think. But I do not know... if anyone is bored I guess this explains some of it better than I ever could...

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2021/cp/d1cp00359c

the battery storage mode is designed to be used in manufacturing and shipping, when the device is sitting in a box for half a year. There are posts with people enabling it and then the deck never turning back on. You have to be careful to make sure that the battery isn't too low or too high for this mode to function properly. Don't use it for a week or a month lol.

Originally posted by Škoda 14Tr:

the battery storage mode is designed to be used in manufacturing and shipping, when the device is sitting in a box for half a year. There are posts with people enabling it and then the deck never turning back on. You have to be careful to make sure that the battery isn't too low or too high for this mode to function properly. Don't use it for a week or a month lol.

hehe.. no idea, It is just valves own advice for if you don't want to use it for a while ?

There have been a few posts of people leaving it off for a few weeks - months at 100% and then wondering why their battery is dead and needs trickle charged hehe, technically it shouldn't be, but emm... personally I would do similar as I would with laptops; get it to about 65% and then disconnect if I am going to leave it plugged in or unplugged for months at a time. That should be what the storage mode actually does in my mind without having to open it up and disconnect.

"If you won't be using your Steam Deck for a while and would like to place it back into storage mode to increase long term battery health"

Valves words not mine, no mention of it being for shipping only, or any warning against using it. Knowing how my deck reacts I would do that if I was leaving it for a week or longer on purpose I guess.

People not being able to turn it on and panicking is kinda like I said ? the need to plug it back in might confuse people and make em worry / RMA etc ?

Don't use it for a week or a month lol.

What do you mean in any way ? storage mode is literally designed for them to sit in warehouses for months or even just days in shipping without dying or causing harm to the battery... technically it should mean everything is off without even a trickle charge to see if the power button is being pressed, why you need a power cable to kick it back into life. Honestly sorry if I am wrong, I just don't see why it would not do what it says on the tin ;)

Edit: probably they should say leave it at 60-70% or so first. but I do not know, maybe the guy who wrote that thought it was understood knowledge, same as me :P... honestly, nobody noticed that everything they get is at about 60% ? .. depending on how long they spend in in warehouses, that is not by chance or luck :) Knowing humans though, it would be interesting to see how many actually plugged in the power cable before saying their deck was bricked.

I mean, the same with most devices that have any form of OS on them the power switch is not an actual on off disconnect switch, it technically needs power to function, like by plugging it in you give the board enough power to know that the power switch is giving it a signal to boot back up, otherwise there kind of always has to be some draw from the battery just to keep things awake to know that the power button has been pressed. lol. This is not a deck design fault.. it is the same for your phone / laptop / whatever :)

Battery storage mode is to reduce the self-discharge of the battery. The deck can stay charged for months without being in this mode, so I don't see the point in using it unless you know it's gonna be left for a long and undefined time.

The posts about people bricking the decks with battery storage mode do mention plugging a charger back in, and it seems the fix is to unplug the battery, discharge any residual electricity within the deck and then plug the battery back in.

Also, trickle charging does not mean what you think it means. Lithium-ion batteries get damaged by trickle charging, so you probably mean something else.

I left the Deck fully charged for ~1 day in shutdown state, and at the moment battery is still full.
It must be something that kicks in after 2-3 days of being shut down, because as I wrote in the beginning, I had it stored for 4 days and yesterday it again didn't power up unless the charger was connected and steam showed 0% charge. And this has happened a lot in the last 6 months.
I saw that battery storage mode in the setup, but I don't think it's intended for putting it away for 1-2 weeks.

Originally posted by Škoda 14Tr:

Battery storage mode is to reduce the self-discharge of the battery. The deck can stay charged for months without being in this mode, so I don't see the point in using it unless you know it's gonna be left for a long and undefined time.

The posts about people bricking the decks with battery storage mode do mention plugging a charger back in, and it seems the fix is to unplug the battery, discharge any residual electricity within the deck and then plug the battery back in.

Also, trickle charging does not mean what you think it means. Lithium-ion batteries get damaged by trickle charging, so you probably mean something else.

what ? :) batteries do not self discharge... are you sure that you know how lithium based batteries work ?.. it is not a tyre that you fill up and has a leak, it is not a balloon that you fill up with air that leaks out, you are not "filling" anything and enabling storage mode is not plugging a hole.

If you are talking about electrical discharge then you are talking about something that actually is connected to the circuit to discharge them, like the wifi being on in power down mode, or background updates etc etc.

I know that lithium batteries and every rechargable battery based on electrolytes and ions and electrons do lose power over time, but hehe. not in a few days unless something is drawing power.

trickle charging is what trickle charging is, I do not know what else to say

Originally posted by roarinelk:

I left the Deck fully charged for ~1 day in shutdown state, and at the moment battery is still full.
It must be something that kicks in after 2-3 days of being shut down, because as I wrote in the beginning, I had it stored for 4 days and yesterday it again didn't power up unless the charger was connected and steam showed 0% charge. And this has happened a lot in the last 6 months.
I saw that battery storage mode in the setup, but I don't think it's intended for putting it away for 1-2 weeks.

I honestly do not know... I can try mine now for a test I guess ? :).. let's see how it likes 5 mins of storage mode ? hehe

You are right, I made a mistake - what I actually wanted to write was self-discharge of the deck, not the battery, of course storage mode won't change anything inside the battery.

However I really don't understand your second paragraph - at first you wrote that batteries don't self-discharge, then you explained HOW they do self-discharge. So I guess even you realize that self-discharge is a real phenomena.
Depending on the source the discharge is from 2% to 4% per month.

Trickle charging is slowly charging a fully charged battery - even some Ni-MH cells do not tolerate it, and Li-ions don't even have such concept as all charging is done thru a BMS.

Originally posted by Škoda 14Tr:

However I really don't understand your second paragraph - at first you wrote that batteries don't self-discharge, then you explained HOW they do self-discharge. So I guess even you realize that self-discharge is a real phenomena.
Depending on the source the discharge is from 2% to 4% per month.

https://youtu.be/Dnk0Be4a0aw

hehehe... I did initially write an explanation of how ions like to swim in one direction with electricity while electrons swim in the other through the electrolyte , and how over time they are pulled back to the positive for the lithium ion which = 0 charge hah... and degredation = all the little fishies building bridges to try and connect each side because they are lazy and do not like to swim. but it seemed condescending, sorry.

trickle charger for lithium cells is normal if they have been undervolted for too long... and is the only way to try and bring them back to life, I am not sure where you are coming from heh... sorry for the lack of a proper source, I am tired and most pages annoy people trying to trick us into allowing them to install cookies just to look at info now but I do not know, take it from a lithium battery manufacturer I guess ?....

https://www.redway-tech.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-understanding-lithium-battery-trickle-chargers/

I know what you are meaning maybe, but I do not know.. I think there are different terms .. hehe. there are industrial ones but there are also ways to just try and give batteries a tiny amount if they are beyond their edge. Like what you are talking about is what kills lithium if done wrong, but the same term is also used for when lithium cells are completely dead and chargers wont work normally at full amps... so... emm.. do we both get a cookie ? :D

Originally posted by Spooky:

I honestly do not know... I can try mine now for a test I guess ? :).. let's see how it likes 5 mins of storage mode ? hehe

shock.. just put in power cable and pressed power and deck came back out of storage mode and booted up... it is almost as if they designed it to work that way ! hehe. honestly everyone that owns a deck has done the same, it there was something scary do you think that valve would hide it ?... it is valve that has to pay for constant RMAs, lol... just because people don't plug in a cable before pressing power button before screaming deck is bricked refund me!!!!! etc.

sorry, I do not know any more.. I can do it again if you want ? hehe. honestly even "take it apart and "the fix is to unplug the battery, discharge any residual electricity within the deck and then plug the battery back in" emm what ?you mean just holding the power button down with the battery disconnected I hope ? and not.. sigh.. I do not know. It is not some mythical beast, its a small amd laptop hehe.

I don't mind taking mine apart again if there is somehow an issue with this feature that valve has to know about yet somehow missed despite having used it throughout the whole dev process. I should really take apart one o my laptops now anyway and hook battery back up for a cycle and hoover everything out hehe... or will that magically fail also ?

Sorry, I am honestly not trying to be arrogant, just way I am some days hehe, if it is an actual isue I would like to see it for myself before trying to trust it and finding out the most annoying way haha.