Eli5: Why do charged electronics (Game controllers, eReaders,) lose their charge when they’re not being used?
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I just want to add, it’s not entirely true that batteries *just* self discharge.
Cheap batteries self discharge, because in a battery there is a + side and the – side, but internally, those two are back to back, very very close, and when using lower quality chemical “ingredients”, that barrier lets some electricity through, directly, inside the battery itself. That acts as a very small short circuit and turns that wasted energy into heat, but so slowly that the heat is barely detectable.
Good quality batteries have this problem reduced almost to zero, and can keep the charge for many years.
On top of that, cost optimized electronics without a physical off switch, tend to not exactly go fully off, and the battery is constantly powering some things needlessly, because “electronic” switches are not ideal, and the cheaper you go, the more electricity they let through when off. That off “leak” is not enough to power things like display or a wireless chip or the cpu, so it just lingers around the circuits and gets turned into very small amounts of heat.
I have a Nintendo 2ds I bought because i always wanted a gameboy as a kid, but being an adult i just use it like once a year or less, when i have a particularly bad day. After something like a year without charge it can still give couple of hours of play.
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