That's not correct statement. First of all, You can always provide much more current (not charge, thing flowing through cable is current, but I'm not sticking to details ) using soldering, that any "plug", even done with pure silver.
Anyway, soldering wire is NOT worse than copper wire - soldering wire got very thin layer of silver (i we understand the same thing as solder wire), so its probably even better. Again, no real world difference, if it plug really thick to battery
Anyway, thank You for reading this huge thread, and for overall professional question posting It was just nice to read question asked like this.
There is also an app for rapid disabling/enabling of the status area widgets, should be "powatool" if I remember correctly.
Try to do one more recharge and see if it reaches over 80%, just do it when needed. If it cannot get past 80% then there could be a "loose" connection between your battery's, thats why i made my mod like i did, to avoid any connection problems.