Nintendo Shares Advice For Those Suffering Switch Battery Issues

Thanks for the update NL

I don't have any battery issues currently but this is still useful information, so thank you! I have an OLED but burn-in is not a concern; I've seen Bob Wulff's videos on YouTube.

I can’t just leave a game on the title screen as that will add to the time played and will fudge my statistics!

I guess I'm old school, I just turn it off when not in use. lol

Would it really make much difference if you were to play on the Switch until the battery fully discharges?

@K1LLEGAL Man of culture, I see.

I have 100+ hours clocked in on Half-Life: Opposing Force on Steam because I left my computer on over a holiday and it drives me completely insane because it's like a 3-5 hour game.

Battery life is the least of the Switch's problem.
How about you fix that joycon drift Nintendo?
It's been 5 years.

I've never had any issues with the OLED. Well except for the past week it seems like it's draining pretty fast with 13 Sentinels. It's surprising because it didn't do that with more demanding titles like Doom Eternal or The Outer Worlds.

@gcunit Probably not.. sounds like the same difference

I actually have this problem with my OLED. So this is no nonsense!
I had it for 2 days in sleep mode and the battery lost 50%, that's not normal.

@Varkster haha yup sounds about right. My sister borrowed my 3DS and Animal Crossing all those years ago, and it’s still at the top of my time played charts because she just left it on.

“Nintendo shares advice for those suffering switch battery issues.” Imagine they just say get gud.

@Wordbonder
That makes two of us!

My launch switch still has a 3-4 hour run time everyday. My oled I would say is like 4-5 hours of use every other day. I don’t know for sure since I don’t feel like either has any battery issues.

@RubyCarbuncle what do you say to people who use their switch docked and charging at the same time?

Airplane mode really works too. Just turn on airplane mode and it turns off the wifi, Bluetooth and nfc radios and it stops the switch from constantly checking for updates and other things. Saves alot of battery. If you don't care about switch online features, do this.

@JustMonika

Interesting that you mention that the game is draining battery faster on lite games compared to heavy games. Skyrim and outer worlds I can play easily for 5 hours in one sitting without charging. Animal crossing new horizons I get about 2 hours. It's weird.

In general batteries deteriorate, its why some phones have a 'battery health' feature you can look at, they made be chargable but they lose a lot of efficiency over time, either in how much they drain or how much they hold.

What they're suggesting doesnt fix the issue really, it just resets the system's memory so not as much is in the system cache draining it (and its really unlikely you'd get so much..) . You could try it and see if it drains a little slower, but typically they do start rapidly running low power fast.

My phone for example, with low battery health lasted maybe 30 minutes from full, swapped the battery now it last a full day sometimes two days.

Can't say I've had battery issues with my Switch, original or my OLED.

Only terrible battery hog in this house is my Series X controller... It goes through AA's quicker than I can finish a bag of fuego Taki's.

My daughter's lite has been acting up so ill give it a shot for her.

I need some 3ds batteries Nintendo not selling them anymore on the site.

@JustMonika

Some Games are better optimized than other
My Cousin once made a Snake Clone with ASCII Characters when he was studiing.
He made a Loop somewhere and the Game brought my overpowered new gaming PC to its Knees.

Nowadays they Port Games to so many different Devices with their Hardware Architectures and Operation Systems, i can imagine that smaller Studios do not have the Experience or Capacity to port Games perfect to every System.

When i look to our new World of Apps, there are so many bad designed and over demanding Apps, many also just don't care.

@Azuris I love the mental image of an ASCII Snake game bringing your gaming rig to its knees, thanks for that.

Solid Snake's exploits run just fine, but ASCII Snake? No, please, have mercy!

@RubyCarbuncle that makes no sense to me, if that were harmful to the battery life, then wouldn't playing docked also harm the battery?

@Donutman wow, there's no way my launch switch lasts longer than 2.5 hours, probably. I didn't play it handheld at all for the 1st 3 yrs, tho, so it had all that time in the dock w full charge, so that probably, ruined it.

@Nintendo4Sonic Sometimes letting the battery discharge/drain completely and then doing a full recharge can fix this issue.

Though it is not recommended to let your battery completely discharge too often

@RPGreg2600 The battery is only being used to power it while undocked.

When docked it's recieving power primarily from the AC Adapter plugged into the dock.

Hope that clears things up

Why did NL add the paragraph at the end about screen burn in? This is just spreading misinformation. The OLED screen will not suffer from any burn by leaving the game on a title screen for an entire month, let alone a single 6 hour charge. Why did you add this to Nintendo's advice?!

@nocdaes Maybe they forgot about the articles they did with the youtuber proving this not to be the case.

My switch was running out of battery super fast, I followed these instructions years ago and it sorted it out. It must have just got used to how long I would play it undocked before charging again. All good now!

@twztid13 I’d say general use, I’m sure some games have drained it faster, but the kids get 3-4 hours of use each day from it. It is used mostly in handheld and I’d say 90% of it gaming has been. Same goes for my oled. I almost never dock that, just charge it every couple days from my controller charger.

I recently watched a YT video from SwitchForce and the guy in the video said to turn off platinum points for all users and that should solve the problem incase others are having issues

@iLikeUrAttitude You can send your JoyCons to Nintendo and they will send you back brand new (not repaired!) JoyCons back. You can also buy a stick replacement kit on Amazon for about $15 (includes screw drivers and everything) if you would rather do it yourself.

P.S. I've never actually had JoyCon drift. From what I understand it is usually cause by debris getting under the membrane. Or a small piece of plastic breaking off from the stick itself.

@K1LLEGAL Use YouTube app or something.

@Araquanid Too bad this console was designed to be thrown away when the battery died vs just being able to replace the battery. The battery is next to impossible for anyone outside of a trained electronics expert to replace.

I've had the base Switch for five years now, and the battery is doing surprisingly well. Definitely vetter then my DS or 3DS were doing at this point. Besides the joycon, the Switch itself seems to pretty hardy.

@Donutman that's great. I used to use my 3ds plugged in all the time, cuz i only game at home anyways, so i didn't care, but it screwed that battery up, too, so it won't stay charged 20 r 30 mins, now, but it had a crap battery since day 1, sadly. I want to replace it, but the Nintendo store is out of stock, so I'm waiting on them to replenish. It never mattered to me before, but in the future i will make sure to treat the battery better in systems like that, in case i ever want to sell them. My phone batteries do great, because i know how to treat the batteries properly, but i just didn't think it would ever matter on those systems. It doesn't, really, but it would be nice not to be tethered to an outlet around the house sometimes, actually.

There are lots of tips and knowledge on batteryuniversity.com I recommend checking them out for maintenance advice, specifically this page https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-lithium-based-batteries

The advice in this article sounds like the process to 'recalibrate' the percentage meter, so it more accurately reflects the state of charge, not something that actually changes battery charge capacity. Likely, fully discharging a battery will do more harm than not.

@JasmineDragon

The Mouse moved sooo slow, i needed five Minutes to hit the Close Button on the Console it was running.
But nothing happened, to call the Task Manager and close it there cost me also about 15 Minutes haha

@K1LLEGAL my solution would be to just have YouTube/Twitch on your Switch and run 10-hour videos or someone who you know is going to be streaming all day.

@Bluerangervegeta tbf the same is for phones, you can't really change the battery at home without some training/equipment. At least I wouldn't feel comfortable doing it, I'd only attempt it on my xbox since its like a PC rig wise. mobile you sometimes need a microscope to do.

The real factor is the replacement's cost, the labor of a tech geek and the price of the battery itself are very different from business to business. My phone repair place swapped my iphone 6 battery for $100USD, which is very high since the battery is online for like $18USD, a switch idk but batteries are around 20 bucks too, they're not very high quality.

@JustMonika
13 sentinels makes ps4 chug towards the end.

@TheBigK I was about to post something similar, burn-in is not an issue for the Nintendo Switch OLED.

@nocdaes I share the same concern, that should be removed from the article.

Periodically cycling completely the battery to recalibrate the little electronic component that manages the battery's charge level is a piece of advice that goes for any portable device really. Completely cycling it all the time, with every use, is bad for any lithium based battery's longevity (that's inherent to the technology of lithium batteries, older nickel based batteries for example were the opposite, if you recharged them often when they were not completely discharged, they'd lose battery life sooner over time, especially NiCd ones).

Periodical full cycling (like once a month) and partial discharges and shorter recharging cycles as the norm is the best way to keep your lithium battery healthy over a long period of time.

No battery issues on my OLED.

But good to know just in case.

@K1LLEGAL The most relatable comment I've ever read.

I picked up the OLED a while ago and usually leave it docked, but I borrowed the charger for some other things for a day or so, and somehow the battery went totally kaput while in sleep mode starting from a full charge, despite having no games running or anything.

@Nintendo4Sonic
Some other people have also mentioned it, but picked up some interesting information while scouring the internet for potential causes. Apparently there's a bug right now where the Platinum Points Notifications setting being set to On (for absolutely any profile on the system, regardless of Nintendo Switch Online) puts a huge drain onto the battery for some reason. Changing that setting on all player profiles to Off seems to fix the issue for most people being affected.

@TrixieSparkle thank you for that hint. I will check that out

I have had issues with my Switch Lite where it always says the battery is empty, even when it’s fully charged. It was caused by allowing it to fully drain. The solution is apparently to let it fully drain again, then recharge fully

I had a V1 that I bought in 2019, I had some issues but none about the battery. I decided to buy an Oled and I sold the V1, perfect state for all the use it had. Well, my Oled had all sorts of known issues, problem reading the SDcard, problems to charge the pro controller when the console was awake, and some others, I sorted all issues somehow.. but, last Thursday the battery started to drain, I saw when I woke it, for me it was due some kind of update... same thing on Friday... I decided to do the same I do with my tablet and phone, I was already aware about that title screen method but I decided to do in case of the failure of my method... I turned the console off, waited about 10 seconds, turned it on again and used it docked normaly. Saturday the battery was normal, Sunday as well. Today is Monday and the battery is also normal. I guess my method is also good.
EDIT: Too soon, today it was very drained. I'll try to official method.
EDIT2: After some months looks like the method really works, no battery draining so far.