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Constant recharging of the battery thru USB Sync wire?

HI!
This might be a stupid question...
During the day my O2 Mini is always connected to my laptop thru the USB sync wire and therefore its keeps getting charged.
Is that in any way harmful for the battery...does it reduce battery life over the long run??
Thanks.
Ujj

ujj75 said:
HI!
This might be a stupid question...
During the day my O2 Mini is always connected to my laptop thru the USB sync wire and therefore its keeps getting charged.
Is that in any way harmful for the battery...does it reduce battery life over the long run??
Thanks.
Ujj
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No not Lithium Ion batteries. In fact it is better to charge the battery as often as possible.

is that fact? i cant believe it.

It is the way the battery is designed, there is logic in the battery that cuts off voltage when the peak is reached as far as I know.

Thanks cruisin-thru and skjelnes .

If you let them go flat for any length of time, they die completely.

USB charging control
Still this whole battery charging and technology issue is quite ambiguous. No one can really guarantee that there is a clear answer. For instance why do you have to give the battery an initial 8-hour charging if it is a new generation battery?
In any case it would be interesting to know how the charging control works. There are some options:
- It can be controlled by a circuit which cuts off power at a certain level of charge (no way to play with this option).
- It may be controlled by software which would be great because one could (easily) interfere with it. In this case there must be some kind of relay switch controlled by the operating system.
- It could also be not controlled. In this case the battery never stops charging. Only the indication changes when a battery meter reaches a certain level. This looks more likely to be the case as the initial 8-hour charging might mean keeping the battery under voltage during the initial charge as even though the indication states that it is fully charged the charger is not disconnected by any control system.
Does anyone have some solid information on the above assumptions?
Note: I tried to isolate the power pin of the USB cable in order to prevent the device from charging but then it was not recognized by the USB (got a USB connection error). Obviously the power line of the USB is used for connection and signal as well and not only as a optional power supply to the connected device.

I'm currently trying to find something in the registry about charge control....
Maybe Microsoft has hidden a secret option somewhere in there... :?

Anonymous said:
I'm currently trying to find something in the registry about charge control....
Maybe Microsoft has hidden a secret option somewhere in there... :?
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Sorry, forgot to log in...

Re: USB charging control
savas said:
Does anyone have some solid information on the above assumptions?
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Click to collapse
Find everything you want to know on lithium-ion batteries on batteryuniversity.com
here http://www.batteryuniversity.com/partone-5.htm
and here http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm
Serge

A litium-ion battery gets worn from three things:
* Normal use
* Heat
* Full charge
A short while after the Ipod battery dirty secret leaked, I read why the batteries only last for like a year. A NiCd battery HAS to be cycled completely to last as long as possible because of their memory effect. A NiMh battery LIKES to be cycled as completely as possible for longest life.
A Li-Ion battery does not have the memory effect - therefore a lot of people seem to assume that you can charge a Li-Ion battery any way you want. That is not correct... Everyone of you ever used a laptop with a Li-Ion battery every day at work, with the ac-adaptor plugged in knows that the battery is ready for garbage bin after one or two years.
Why? You've almost never used the battery... It's always fully charged... The battery should have lasted much longer you think...
Isidor Buchmann is president at the company Cadex which makes battery chargers. He has got more than 20 years of experience from the battery business.
At the site: http://www.batteryuniversity.com he has written an article where he explains the mechanisms inside a Li-Ion battery and provides tips about how to treat the batteries.
Finally he gives the following advices:
*Don't discharge the battery completley. It's better to discharge the battery a little more than halfe than making a complete discharge.
* Discharge the battery completely and then charge it completely to calibrate the battery meter
* Keep the battery cool
* For long time storage: keep the batteries charged at 40% in the fridge
* Do not use the ac adapter and the battery when the battery is fully charged. Heat and unneccesary charging after the battery is fylly charges destroys the battery
My 2 cents.
// Anders

Re: USB charging control
savas said:
why do you have to give the battery an initial 8-hour charging if it is a new generation battery?
In any case it would be interesting to know how the charging control works. There are some options:
- It can be controlled by a circuit which cuts off power at a certain level of charge (no way to play with this option).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think most questions have been answered, except Magician specific ones, i.e.:-
The Magician has to be initially charged for at least 8 hours to:-
1. Make sure the main battery is fully charged and formed, and charging logic calibrated (future capacity depends on this)
2. Charge the backup battery. Unlike the main battery, this only gets a trickle charge which starts after the main battery is at 100%. So it needs those 8 hours to get to full capacity. Remember to do this if you ever drain the backup battery.
Lithium charging logic is built into the battery, so no way to tamper with the settings. The NiMH backup battery logic will be built into the Magician.

Very interesting reading! I didn't know about the issue with laptop batteries.

Loboman said:
Very interesting reading! I didn't know about the issue with laptop batteries.
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Me niether. I knew exactly how to treat NiCd and NiMh batteries, but when I bought a laptop, I wondered how to treat Li-Ion batteries. After some search I found the info i just presented here.
// Anders

Very interesting information indeed! Just some more comments:
Anders Johnsson said:
*Don't discharge the battery completley. It's better to discharge the battery a little more than halfe than making a complete discharge.
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Anders Johnsson said:
Do not use the ac adapter and the battery when the battery is fully charged. Heat and unneccesary charging after the battery is fylly charges destroys the battery.
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Click to collapse
Ineedtoys said:
Lithium charging logic is built into the battery, so no way to tamper with the settings. The NiMH backup battery logic will be built into the Magician.
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Click to collapse
OK we can easily avoid discharging the battery below 50% or 60% at normal conditions even when traveling through a USB port of our notebook (3rd quote)
We should also avoid a USB connection at a 100% (2nd quote) or even at a 90% (3rd quote) charge level unless we can find a way to cut off the power supply to the battery. The only option would be to find a way to do this from the device, before the internal logic of the battery. As far as I can understand the internal battery logic allows charging whenever connected to a power supply and it only informs somehow the device of the charge level.

OMG.
All this nonsense about batteries.... it's easier to just buy a new battery or a new device after 18 months, rather than let your charging habits be dictated by how batteries like to be tickled!

Easier yes, more expensive too.. Dell sure knows how to charge (!) you for a new batt with built-in subwoofer..

Does it matter if we don't charge it all the way till it's full? If I'm charging it till about 95% and I really need to unplug it. How much damage will it do to my battery?

dacmo said:
Does it matter if we don't charge it all the way till it's full? If I'm charging it till about 95% and I really need to unplug it. How much damage will it do to my battery?
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I'm not following you - I think. If you unplug it at 95% it's a lot better than unplugging it at 100%.
Summary:
Full charge: BAD
Full discharge: BAD
Heat: BAD
Extreme cold: BAD
// Anders

This is the first time that I ever heard that charging up to 100% is bad. I know that leaving it on the charger for extended periods is bad but to say that charging to 100% is bad.. that's absurd!!! :shock:

Discharged battery with flash light bulb. Problems, plzHelp

Well I read this BIG 5 page post on how the Universal shuts down at 30+-% and mine has just done that after owning it for about 8 months.. I read someone discharged the lith-ion battery with a flash light bulb. I did the same @3.6volts and the battery went to ZERO. Now when I plug it in the wall charger it resets over and over without completely booting up and self charging (at the imate welcome screen). Also If I plug it into the usb to charge it just flashes red light rapidly kinda like a 4way stop light but slightly faster. Did I screw up the battery? Did a hard reset with no luck too.

update:
Well there are four connector plates on the battery and I only discharged two of the main plates. Forget the two little plates also have cells and needs discharging.. I crossed them somehow with paper clips and for some reason I got voltage again on all cells! So the unit is back to SUB normal (turning off at 40%-+, sucks!) Time to trial a new battery!

wow you almost killed your battery
first by discharging it to zero (you meant 0 volts?!?! don't allow it to go below 3 volts!)
then shorting it.. (if i interpreted your desc properly)
:shock:

design flaw?

Last week I was traveling, and I ran the battery on my 8125 dry. I got the unit to boot twice, but only for a few seconds, then it blinked out again. It never got past the initial screen. No big deal, I thought, I just charge it at the next opportunity. But when I hooked up the charger, nothing happened. No charging light, and no charging (left unit on charger overnight, tried 3 different chargers). Took the unit to an AT&T store, but they don't sell batteries. Fortunately, the clerk used the same phone and took the battery out of his and put it in my 8125. The unit booted, and when he connected a charger, the charging light came on and charged the phone. I moved it directly to a car charger, and the phone has been fine since then.
Did HTC build in a catch-22 here? When the battery is totally empty, you can't boot the phone and it will not go into charge mode?
Is there perhaps a way around this, other than having a spare battery that has to be kept in a charged state?

If you read around this thread, there are LOTS of posts about this. Yes, the battery in the 8125 is goofy. It'll crap out at you if the power goes below (and I'm recalling from memory, so this may be wrong) 5% of full charge.
Don't drain your battery completely. I usually shut my phone off around 10-15% and only power it when absolutely necessary until it's been recharged. If you drain it dead, it typically won't charge unless you use your AC adapter charger, or in rare cases your car charger. USB doesn't provide enough juice to jump over the dead-battery hurdle. Apparently, in your case, that wasn't even enough.
The best things you can do for yourself is show the actual battery strength on your today screen somewhere (doesn't matter how, or with what). Use something that shows the actual battery strength in linear value, not logarithmic value. This will help keep you from accidentally draining it. Also, like you said, buy a spare battery. My usage isn't that high, I can usually go 2-3 days without charging, but if you're draining it daily, an extra battery is a near absolute requirement.

This is usual for these phones. When battery goes dry it's very hard to charge it. You can wake battery up with atx power supply or similar with 5volt output. Just connect wire from power supply +5 volt line(red wire) to battery + and second wire from power supply ground line(black wire) to battery -. Power on atx power. After 1-2 min your battery is alive and you can boot up your phone and charge a battery.

Phone doesn't charge

When i plug my phone to either pc or ac the yellow light blinks and the battery reads 100%. Usually the yellow light is solid and the battery show as if its plugged in. Can someone please help?

Have you examined the contacts on the usb plug and where the battery snaps in?

That is usually the middle contact for the battery.
Pull the battery cover and battery out and inspect the battery connectors. My guess in the middle one is bent forward. Bend it back gently and be careful if you have to pull the battery.
The soft reset button is a better option if you just need to do a battery pull.

Are you using the standard HD2 battery that came with your phone? I bought a cheap $5 backup battery and I have this exact same issue when I try to charge it. The stock battery works perfectly though.

hot
I have the same problem, but only when I use internet on the phone for a period of time. When the antenna is used continuously it gets very warm, and I noticed that's the moment it quits loading and flashes the light. Maybe the battery gets too hot?

so what is the solution - will not charge from network charger nor from usb - when i pluged network charger for whole noght it was blinking green and orange and indicator wrote 100 percent of charge but when i looked into battery properties it showed me 9 percent and no charge - so by night it discharged fully and no answer on any doings

Some things that may indicate the flashing lights.
orange blinking is overheating.. but don't worry it does that and then it will pause charging for a bit and charge in waves rather then 1 cycle to let the phone cool down..it wont be a previous gen devices where it stops charging or gets extremely hot.
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Flashing green light when there are new SMS, MMS or e-mail messages, missed calls, or reminders.
Solid green light when the device is connected to the power adaptor or a computer and the battery is fully charged.
Solid amber light when the battery is being charged.
Flashing amber light when the remaining battery level reaches below 10%
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Click to collapse
The only solution I heard of that works is to do a soft reset.
An alternative is to switch off the phone, then after 10 minutes or so plug it into the charger. This means that the charging circuitry is only supplying power to charge the battery and not power the phone as well.

fred_up said:
Some things that may indicate the flashing lights.
The only solution I heard of that works is to do a soft reset.
An alternative is to switch off the phone, then after 10 minutes or so plug it into the charger. This means that the charging circuitry is only supplying power to charge the battery and not power the phone as well.
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on this phone, you can't use anything but the battery for the phone. Take out the battery and you can't use the phone.

nrfitchett4 said:
on this phone, you can't use anything but the battery for the phone. Take out the battery and you can't use the phone.
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I'm not asking you to remove the battery. Either try a soft reset or charge the phone with the phone switched off ten minutes prior to charging.

Important, u8800 overcharges?

For example if i leave all night charging, does it damage the battery? Some batteries after fullycharged, they wont charge anymore. What about u8800?
And what happens if i charge while phone is open and not fully empty? Does it damage?
My charge lasts 16 hours, why is it? I dont use wifi, games, etc. Please help

All ROMs should stop the charging process when reached 100% (the icon changes, on the stock ROM the flash disappears of the icon), therefore I believe that the battery cannot be damaged by leaving the phone plugged in the whole night.
I'm sure that it doesn't matter when you recharge the phone, if it's 10% or 50% it makes no difference to the charging process or the battery. It use to matter on the Li-Nch batteries, but those are long gone...
The fact that the battery only lasts 16 hours, it's an unrelated problem, that I've been struggling with for months now...It's one of the system/hardware components that hangs and doesn't allow the phone to go to sleep...therefore, the battery lasts up to 24h.
Look at this thread, so many users are affected by this...probably most of them and only the recent kernels (.void/Miui) have measures against this problem.http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1043760

I did not make any rom differences or overclock. Still stops the charging?
Sometimes i charge from pc via usb, can it damage?
It goes 16 hours without wifi or blueetooth or 3g. I dont use too much but goes for 16 hours.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1043760
Here, it is about sleeping mode. My phone goes black screen after 15 seconds idle. What is sleeping mode?

Cursed Chico said:
I did not make any rom differences or overclock. Still stops the charging?
Sometimes i charge from pc via usb, can it damage?
It goes 16 hours without wifi or blueetooth or 3g. I dont use too much but goes for 16 hours.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1043760
Here, it is about sleeping mode. My phone goes black screen after 15 seconds idle. What is sleeping mode?
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Charging from USB is somewhat preferable to wall charger, due to it charging slower, therefore generating less heat. Although, a wall charger won't do any harm. When the screen is off and the phone is not doing anything, the CPU is suppose to go into a deep sleep state, yet with this phone it does not.

wall charging should be preferable in my experience

Ok, let me clarify a few things here.
The battery recharging process is simple, when the battery reaches 2.2V, then the current inside is not enough to sustain the hardware and it's considered empty. Any standard phone charger, will pump current until the voltage is 4.3 and then the so called "negative delta v" signal is being sent and the charger stops pumping.
USB is a BUS designed to carry data, but to be able to carry data it needs to provide a power supply to the connected device. Therefore, any USB should be able to deliver 5V and 500mA to any device connected.
As this phone's battery, according to the wall charger specification, takes up to 1Amp, the simple math tells us that the wall charger will charge the battery twice as fast. Since I've been dealing with batteries, I can tell you that in this case USB charger is a much better choice to recharge this battery, as it delivers only 500mA. The less current going through the electrodes, the lower the chance of damaging the battery due to high temperature.
For more info:
http://www.mpoweruk.com/chargers.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_charger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery
According to Wikipedia:
"Most modern cell phones, laptops, and most electric vehicles use Lithium-ion batteries. These batteries last longest if the battery is frequently charged; fully discharging them will degrade their capacity relatively quickly.[23] When storing however, lithium batteries degrade more while fully charged than if they are only 40% charged. Degradation also occurs faster at higher temperatures. Degradation in lithium-ion batteries is caused by an increased internal battery resistance due to cell oxidation. This decreases the efficiency of the battery, resulting in less net current available to be drawn from the battery."

These batteries last longest if the battery is frequently charged; fully discharging them will degrade their capacity relatively quickly.
So we must usually charge from usb and must stop before reaching %100 charge, maybe %98?
But when connect to pc, there is an icon shown, before disconnecting we need to click "disconnect secure" icon on system tray, if i dont do, it damages the system of phone?

Cursed Chico said:
But when connect to pc, there is an icon shown, before disconnecting we need to click "disconnect secure" icon on system tray, if i dont do, it damages the system of phone?
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There is a very small chance on XP, dunno about vista, no harm on win7.

So we should usually charge from usb and must stop before reaching %100 charge, maybe %98?

It is more safe since there is half of the current that passes compered to Charging with the AC adapter. But it theoretically takes almost double time.

Cursed Chico said:
So we should usually charge from usb and must stop before reaching %100 charge, maybe %98?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, that's correct. But, I wouldn't worry about stopping before 100%. I know for sure that the stock ROMs are stopping the charging process when reached 100%.

Cursed Chico said:
But when connect to pc, there is an icon shown, before disconnecting we need to click "disconnect secure" icon on system tray, if i dont do, it damages the system of phone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No.You're not going to damage anything by disconnecting the cable directly. That "safe disconnect" is only for data transfer, nothing to do with charging.

Because of the exploding nature of li-ion cells when misused, the battery itself has a protection circuit to prevent overcharge and discharge. So whatever how much the rom wants to charge, the battery will protect itself...

Exactly; the ROM does not have any influence on the charging process - that is why your phone can charge the battery even though it is turned off. The whole process is completely independent from the software your phone is running.
In 2011 it is very hard to damage a battery, it will most likely die from old age. There is just one thing that is not the best thing to do: Trying to switch on the phone when the battery is empty already. If the voltage of the battery drops below a certain point, the battery might be damaged and thus have less capacity afterwards.
To be on the safe side I always turn off the phone a few minutes before the battery is completely empty.

I agree that there is a separate circuit that does the charging, so no matter if the phone is on or off, battery would still charge. But, I believe that the Rom can interfere with the charging process, that's why on some Roms you get the flashing buttons when phone is fully charged or sometimes you can't unlock the phone from the first attempt, when battery is full.
In reality, i believe that charging process has 2 control points, the default (when phone is switched on) and the "failsafe" one that charges the phone when voltage has dropped below a certain value (which has to be is different in terms of current values, as there is no power consumption).