I understand that the general lifespan of batteries due to degradation varies from battery care and maintenance. But can anyone tell me the expected number of cycles I can get with the regular and high capacity batteries for the Phantom 4 Series?
Can people also comment on the number of cycles you have so far and the battery "life" left (that is the maximum percentage the battery can be charged up to, where 100% is the max) by looking at the battery page of the DJI Pilot App?

Good luck with that one LM, although I have not started a thread on the subject, I have asked similar questions a number of times on here and in PP on various battery threads with very little response. I decided that I will just have to find out for myself and then in a years time I will be able to answer the question for you.

I can say that you will always be able to charge up to 100% according to the Go app, its just that the maximum stored power will reduce as the battery ages and obviously so will the flying time.

Looking for an answer myself. DJI warranty is up to 200 charging cycles, so I guess they expect the batteries to hold for at least that many cycles. These batteries don't just suddenly die, they give you shorter and shorter flight times. Or until they don't pass the internal preflight quality checks. Something like 300 cycles before you will want to replace it with a fresh one?

Fruxen Posted at 2017-3-19 01:13
Looking for an answer myself. DJI warranty is up to 200 charging cycles, so I guess they expect the batteries to hold for at least that many cycles. These batteries don't just suddenly die, they give you shorter and shorter flight times. Or until they don't pass the internal preflight quality checks. Something like 300 cycles before you will want to replace it with a fresh one?

Sometimes a battery does die fairly quickly when an individual cell collapses from a manufacturing fault or accelerated aging and effectively renders the battery useless despite the fact the 3 other cells may still have substantial life remaining.

The Go app battery monitor usually gives clear warnings of an impending cell collapse and can adjust the maximum allowable current draw from the battery to prolong its life so the Phantom doesn't fall out of the sky. A cell collapse can happen at anytime while a battery is being used but is more common when they are new or towards the end of their useful life

While I have only had my P4P a few weeks, I can comment on overall life of DJI batteries.
I have had an Inspire for some time. My most used battery has 58 charges on it and still has Plenty of Life Left in It.
It now has a 93.9% Health Rating ~ Full charge is now 4229 mAh.
To figure the health divide the current capacity by the original capacity. (4229 ÷ 4500 = 0.9397777778)
I deep cycle all of my batteries every 10 charges.

P4 5350 mAh battery : 97.2% @ 35 charges, typically discharged to 15% occasionally to 8%, normally stored after recharge to approximately 50%, Auto Discharge set to 2 days.

Aeromirage Posted at 2017-3-19 05:51
While I have only had my P4P a few weeks, I can comment on overall life of DJI batteries.
I have had an Inspire for some time. My most used battery has 58 charges on it and still has Plenty of Life Left in It.
It now has a 93.9% Health Rating ~ Full charge is now 4229 mAh.

Inspire Battery (4500 mAh):
Okay, so we’re basically looking at a ~0.105% (~4.73 mAh) decrease in battery life per charge cycle assuming that it is the best we can get out of the battery and that the degradation occurs at a linear rate.
Using DJI’s warranty for batteries of charge cycle less than 200 times, then in the (relatively) best-case scenario, the Inspire battery will have a ~79.0% health rating (~3553.45 mAh) by then. This is fairly good for a high drain battery.
Now if we assume that the battery will fail at a health rating of 60.0% (2700 mAh), then we see that we can get ~380 charge cycles per battery.
Using 15 minutes (more realistic estimate instead of the 18 minutes rated) of flight time per charge cycle, then each battery will give us a total of 5700 minutes of flight time within the 380 charge cycles. This translates to ~0.0279 USD per minute of flight or ~0.418 USD per 15-minute flight assuming the cost of the battery is 159.00 USD.

Nigel_ Posted at 2017-3-19 07:26
P4 5350 mAh battery : 97.2% @ 35 charges.

Phantom 4 Battery (5350 mAh)
Degradation per charge cycle: 0.08% (~4.28 mAh)
Health rating by 200 cycles: 84.0% (4494 mAh)
Total charge cycles per battery (assume fail at 60.0% health): 500
Total flight time per battery (flight time = 20 minutes/charge cycle): 10 000 minutes
USD/min of flight time (cost of battery = 159.00 USD): 0.0159 USD/min
USD/flight (cost of battery = 159.00 USD // flight time = 20 minutes): 0.318 USD/flight

LackedMule1217e Posted at 2017-3-19 08:06
Phantom 4 Battery (5350 mAh)
Degradation per charge cycle: 0.08% (~4.28 mAh)
Health rating by 200 cycles: 84.0% (4494 mAh)

Now, that's what I call crunching the numbers!!!
Nicely done.

Yeah for sure!  I remember red is positive and black is negative!  It will be interesting in watching all the documentation that is available now on these batteries.  They have developed a long way from the NiCad's of old.
Jim
WA5TEF

WA5TEF Posted at 2017-3-19 18:43
Yeah for sure!  I remember red is positive and black is negative!  It will be interesting in watching all the documentation that is available now on these batteries.  They have developed a long way from the NiCad's of old.
Jim
WA5TEF

Now all we need is for a few high use battery owners to add their data hopefully including a bit of info on whether they use the auto discharge function and/or regularly fly to less than 20% and we can see if the relationship is linear instead of just extrapolating it which can sometimes lead to errors.

Quamera Posted at 2017-3-19 22:58
Now all we need is for a few high use battery owners to add their data hopefully including a bit of info on whether they use the auto discharge function and/or regularly fly to less than 20% and we can see if the relationship is linear instead of just extrapolating it which can sometimes lead to errors.

Now everyone has gone quiet, surely there is someone out there with an older Phantom battery that would like to share their battery life% and number of cycles data.

Quamera Posted at 2017-3-20 04:51
Now everyone has gone quiet, surely there is someone out there with an older Phantom battery that would like to share their battery life% and number of cycles data.

Once again it seems very difficult for experienced OPs to post some of their battery info, many will supply pages of opinion, flight info or battery care advice but as for battery life data, it must be classified because no one (except Aeromirage and Nigel) has produced any here.

If there is some real life battery data on another thread somewhere I would be grateful for some directions to save reposting.  I am sure LM has his calculator out ready to follow the lead and many curious new OPs will be interested as well.

Quamera Posted at 2017-3-21 06:14
Once again it seems very difficult for experienced OPs to post some of their battery info, many will supply pages of opinion, flight info or battery care advice but as for battery life data, it must be classified because no one (except Aeromirage and Nigel) has produced any here.

If there is some real life battery data on another thread somewhere I would be grateful for some directions to save reposting.  I am sure LM has his calculator out ready to follow the lead and many curious new OPs will be interested as well.

I notice that you haven't posted any data yourself!

Your battery may not have had much use, but the data still may be useful, for example it may be normal to loose 2% capacity in the first 2 flights and after that the losses drop to almost zero for a long time, or capacity may increase in the first few flights.  If a graph is to be drawn then we want points all along it.

I suspect the reason for not a lot of posts is that a lot of the people who fly a lot have a lot of batteries and there may not be many batteries that have actually had a lot of use?   Still good to collect some data though...

Guys,

I have two batteries and both has now 99% of battery life after 17 cycles. Is it normal?

Here are my stats.. I routinely run this battery to 15 percent.. I do run to 8 percent after 20 cycles as well. The last charge was the lowest it ever took at 4900..

fansf27541a8 Posted at 2017-3-21 07:40
Guys,

I have two batteries and both has now 99% of battery life after 17 cycles. Is it normal?

Yes that is normal..

Mobilcams Posted at 2017-3-21 08:40
Here are my stats.. I routinely run this battery to 15 percent.. I do run to 8 percent after 20 cycles as well. The last charge was the lowest it ever took at 4900..

Is that spending most of it's time full, empty or at 50% ?

I'm guessing full...

Nigel_ Posted at 2017-3-21 08:55
Is that spending most of it's time full, empty or at 50% ?

I'm guessing full...

I fly almost daily, if I am not going to be flying for more than three days I do discharge my batteries to 50 percent.. Most of the time this battery has been fully charged though.. I let them cool off in front of a fan for a few hours before I charge them.

Mobilcams Posted at 2017-3-21 08:57
I fly almost daily, if I am not going to be flying for more than three days I do discharge my batteries to 50 percent.. Most of the time this battery has been fully charged though.. I let them cool off in front of a fan for a few hours before I charge them.

Thanks, I guess that half, maybe more, of your loss of capacity is from keeping it full, you might actually be better off if you recharged before flying rather than after.   Don't know if that would fit with your life, but if it does then it would be interesting to see if your graph changed it's slope by making that change...

Nigel_ Posted at 2017-3-21 09:04
Thanks, I guess that half, maybe more, of your loss of capacity is from keeping it full, you might actually be better off if you recharged before flying rather than after.   Don't know if that would fit with your life, but if it does then it would be interesting to see if your graph changed it's slope by making that change...

That's actually a cool idea to see if it does change anything. I have had flights a few hours after my initial flight of the day where the battery was fresh off the charger and it didn't seem to make a difference really. I'm assuming you're referring to leakage these batteries have over time? And do you think it's better to leave it discharged to 15 rather than charged to 100?

Mobilcams Posted at 2017-3-21 09:07
That's actually a cool idea to see if it does change anything. I have had flights a few hours after my initial flight of the day where the battery was fresh off the charger and it didn't seem to make a difference really. I'm assuming you're referring to leakage these batteries have over time? And do you think it's better to leave it discharged to 15 rather than charged to 100?

It won't loose enough charge overnight to see any difference in flight time.

I was just talking about the loss of "Battery Life" across your graph, I suspect you could slow down the loss of life to half what you are seeing by not keeping it full so much of the time.  Not sure but it would be interesting to see.

Nigel_ Posted at 2017-3-21 09:37
It won't loose enough charge overnight to see any difference in flight time.

I was just talking about the loss of "Battery Life" across your graph, I suspect you could slow down the loss of life to half what you are seeing by not keeping it full so much of the time.  Not sure but it would be interesting to see.

It will be done haha..

Yup so far so good - the linear function of:
H(c) = -0.08c + 100, where H(c) = the health rating (%) of the battery and c = # of charge cycles
does hold up to all the data for Phantom 4 Battery (5350 mAh).

However, I'm expecting the slope to decrease as the number of charge cycles reach beyond a certain threshold.

Nigel_ Posted at 2017-3-21 06:57
I notice that you haven't posted any data yourself!

Your battery may not have had much use, but the data still may be useful, for example it may be normal to loose 2% capacity in the first 2 flights and after that the losses drop to almost zero for a long time, or capacity may increase in the first few flights.  If a graph is to be drawn then we want points all along it.

Thanks Nigel, you make a valid point but since both my batteries have less than 20 cycles and are still at 100% they seriously can't add anything to the data yet. The main reason I kept posting was so the thread didn't die because invariably that is what has happened in the past. I can see how that could be a bit annoying for some but if the end justifies the means.

And it's worked, look at that data from Mobilcams, its exactly what we were looking for. It's more linear than I expected too although can I see a slight drop off just recently or is it my imagination. I guess time will tell.

Mobilcams Posted at 2017-3-21 09:07
That's actually a cool idea to see if it does change anything. I have had flights a few hours after my initial flight of the day where the battery was fresh off the charger and it didn't seem to make a difference really. I'm assuming you're referring to leakage these batteries have over time? And do you think it's better to leave it discharged to 15 rather than charged to 100?

Neither really, if you can be bothered watching them the best way to prolong their life is to charge to 50% after cooling down and then remove the battery from the charger until an hour or so before the next flight when it should be topped up to 100%. I understand a charge bank can be programed to help with that process.

And thankyou for posting your data above, it is very interesting for those of us who have not had not had much flying time to see what happens when a battery has some decent use.

Quamera Posted at 2017-3-22 03:29
Neither really, if you can be bothered watching them the best way to prolong their life is to charge to 50% after cooling down and then remove the battery from the charger until an hour or so before the next flight when it should be topped up to 100%. I understand a charge bank can be programed to help with that process.

And thankyou for posting your data above, it is very interesting for those of us who have not had not had much flying time to see what happens when a battery has some decent use.

I do have the charging hub and have used the storage mode a few times.. I have two batteries that have high usage, I will put one on that in storage mode after using it and leave the other one discharged over night for a few weeks of flying to gather some data and see what happens!

Mobilcams Posted at 2017-3-22 03:44
I do have the charging hub and have used the storage mode a few times.. I have two batteries that have high usage, I will put one on that in storage mode after using it and leave the other one discharged over night for a few weeks of flying to gather some data and see what happens!

Excellent, I will keep an eye open for that.

I have a battery that was activated in 2016 that is now stuck in NFZ mode. Yes, the battery can tell your drone it's in a no-fly-zone and then your flight capabilities are limited severely, basically rendering the battery useless.

Since it's more than 6 months old, DJI is telling me just to buy another one. This one only has 28 charge cycles on it.

Because these are li-po batteries, if you aren't going to use them anytime soon, or just as a habit always have the batteries stored at 50 to 60%. Then check them every month or 2. I do this specially during winter. These aren't any different then r/c li-po batteries and i've had mine for many many years.

My first battery died after about 30 flights. Wrote that battery cell broken... Had try to use it when flew not very high and I made many flights with this error but then it wrote that drone can't take off... Very long life...

Mobilcams Posted at 2017-3-21 08:40
Here are my stats.. I routinely run this battery to 15 percent.. I do run to 8 percent after 20 cycles as well. The last charge was the lowest it ever took at 4900..

Sorry, is it HealthDrone? Where I can see these data about battery life?

Aeromirage Posted at 2017-3-19 05:51
While I have only had my P4P a few weeks, I can comment on overall life of DJI batteries.
I have had an Inspire for some time. My most used battery has 58 charges on it and still has Plenty of Life Left in It.
It now has a 93.9% Health Rating ~ Full charge is now 4229 mAh.

Is it safe to assume that the battery life will be prolonged if you deep cycle the battery everytime you use it?

Somnium Posted at 2017-9-6 11:46
My first battery died after about 30 flights. Wrote that battery cell broken... Had try to use it when flew not very high and I made many flights with this error but then it wrote that drone can't take off... Very long life...

I had the same problem and decided to retire the battery. I also have one battery that has faulty electronics considering that it only has 36 flights. I am still contemplating if its safe to swap the battery cells that way I can save money and not buy a new one.

LackedMule1217e Posted at 2017-3-21 19:21
Yup so far so good - the linear function of:
H(c) = -0.08c + 100, where H(c) = the health rating (%) of the battery and c = # of charge cycles
does hold up to all the data for Phantom 4 Battery (5350 mAh).

I posted over at phantom pilots a while back, and nobody seemed to care about what I was analyzing, lol.  Take a look!  https://phantompilots.com/thread ... calculation.113500/

I've been taking screenshots of the battery capacity since I started flying.  I must be up to 120 cycles or so by now, and the battery is reporting 3 LEDs of life (about 90% IIRC).  I believe the life estimate might just be a cycle counter.  My full charge capacity is still around 5300mAh, which is not 90% of the design capacity.  I can find my most recent numbers and post them here!

hOPE it help !!

I would look for DJI batteries to get even better in the future. They seem to get better and smarter each year.

Hello LM, some info of the Battery I use the most, still fly 18-20 min with it. I fly the Battery down to 10% every 10-20 cycles. The Battery life is at 76%.

We fly in warehouses every day for my company and we have far surpassed 200 cycles with most batteries still performing as normal.

Cell   #:		Serial   #:		Times   Charged:
A		0DQAE9F03200NB		379
B		0DQAE9F0320647		374
C		082AE5B0310044		371
E		0DQAE9F03200ES		300
X		082AEA903103DT		15
1		0DQAE7L03203Q7		563
3		0DQAE4Q032042N		581
4		ODQAE6T03204JF		582
5		0DQAE7L03203DL		660
6		ODQAE6203202YH		445

mb_michaelbuys Posted at 2018-10-5 03:08
We fly in warehouses every day for my company and we have far surpassed 200 cycles with most batteries still performing as normal.

Hello mb, can you share with us how do you operate with your Batteries for such cycles.