Database Users

WMWifiRouter Battery Issue

Hello all,
I'm experience a little trouble by WMWifiRouter.
I think I find a power management bug because this behavior is very weird.
When run WMWifiRouter and the phone is plugged in by AC Outlet, sometimes it will trigger discharge mode. So, my phone will be plugged into the wall and at the same time it will be draining the battery down to 0% from full charge very rapidly.
It only occurs if WMWifiRouter is running - so the wifi will be on, BUT even if I shut down WMWifiRouter and switch off hard switch wifi on side of phone, my phone will remain in discharge mode until I reboot the phone.
When the phone reaches 0% capacity it will shut down even though it is plugged in by wall.
This occurs with wall adapter, USB cable, and XV6700 car charger. All the same.
Since the battery only has a finite amount of discharge/charge cycles, I want to be very careful about this issue so I don't destroy the battery. Also, I can't use direct USB cable for tethering because every five minutes or so, I must disable ICS and then restart ICS since my computer enters USB power save mode which causes loss of connectivity, and this is a little inconvenient.
Only solution is WMWifiRouter, but by use this, my phone will discharge completely in maybe 30 minutes if I try to use it while plug to wall.
Sorry for the long post about this issue.
Hiromitsu

When your phone is plugged in, is the orange battery light flashing or steady? Normal charging should have it steady. If it is plugged in and the battery isn't charging properly (because it's too hot while wifi is on) then the light will flash, which means it isn't charging. Since it's not charging, then it's your wifi that's draining your battery.
Having wifi on makes your battery very hot, and at some point, it may stop charging.
When I use wifi and need a charge, I plug in a USB cable to my laptop. It doesn't seem to get as hot.

Overheat Mode
When using WMWifiRouter, the battery drains quickly.
1. Make sure bluetooth is off.
2. Make sure beaming is of.
3. USB charging is too slow to keep up with WifiRouter
4. Plus phone into the wall
5. Slide keyboard open to release heat quicker so the phone does not go into discharge mode.
6. Enjoy

I just tried your method Ectropian.
By plug to wall and slide open keyboard, it will dissipate heat quickly and won't enter discharge mode. So, this is a fix and I am very thankful for your help!
Hiromitsu

I have found that USB charging is fast enough to keep up. The phone overheats.under some circumstances it can even overheat during a normal phone call. Im trying to get a small fan for it. I plan on using a fat back battery cover for an extended battery,and wiring it to the battery terminals. I will drill some vent holes in it and connect it with a temperature sensor. It will add some thickness to the phone,but should not effect battery life as the fan wont turn on until it overheats.
Unfortunately the 3mm thick fan I want is only available in quantities of 200. I will probably have to go with a 5mm thick fan for now. I dont know if it will fit under the back though. Does anyone have one of the thicker batteries they could accurately measure for me?

Does anyone know how to set up a password for WMWifiRouter so it is a secure network and no one else around me can use my internet?

Ectropian said:
5. Slide keyboard open to release heat quicker so the phone does not go into discharge mode.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's a good idea! Hadn't thought of that : )

Ectropian said:
When using WMWifiRouter, the battery drains quickly.
1. Make sure bluetooth is off.
2. Make sure beaming is of.
3. USB charging is too slow to keep up with WifiRouter
4. Plus phone into the wall
5. Slide keyboard open to release heat quicker so the phone does not go into discharge mode.
6. Enjoy
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In addition to these good suggestion, I have find that if you also
a.) Remove stylus from stylus slot, and
b.) Turn the phone upside down while WMWifiRouter is in use,
It will dissipate heat even quicker.
You see, stylus to the XV6800 is made by metal, so,, it conduct heat and hold it in that stylus hole. Take stylus out, heat escapes through hole instead of build up by metal stylus rod.
Also, back of keyboard is metal, so turn it up, and air pass over it and remove heat too. (Make sure keyboard is slide open when turn upside down, as previously mentioned by Ectropian. This will improve air flow to heat conducting areas.)
Hope it helps everyone else like it helped me.
Hiromitsu

weav4444 said:
Does anyone know how to set up a password for WMWifiRouter so it is a secure network and no one else around me can use my internet?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When you setup the new adhoc connection in wilan settings/comm manager/ (need to have the wifi ant on when you do this) in wm6, you can setup the network name and key.
I want to set up my SSID next time i'm sitting in starbucks for all the people that bring their laptops.
Network name/SSID:
Ask the guy with the coolest phone you see for the network key.

read the wmwifirouter thread. Chainfire addressed this issue by making the "unattended" mode. You can and should hit the power button and turn the phone to standby while using wmwifirouter. This saves enough power so the wall charger can keep up with the drain... maybe even the usb charger. I think very few people if any agree with the opinion above that the usb charger is better. The consensus is that it's the amount of power the charger can deliver that's important more than the heat... of course more power is more heat.
Batteries charge more rapidly when they're closer to discharged. Before using the unattended mode... (could maybe happen wth an older battery too) I found that if I disconnected and reconnected power after dropping below about 70% that charging would kick back in and then be more likely to keep up.. holding the charge steady at about 70%. Above this, the charging current probably dropped below the usage current. With the unattended mode it is fine even at 100%.
Edit: Let me make this more clear. A given charger can provide more current because it has a lower internal resistance and lower voltage drop under a current load. Increased charging current increases heat which may increase resitance within the battery and charging circuits and in turn limits charging current, even if the heat isn't increasing the resistance is a sign that lot of power is being lost to resistive losses. It may be that the dominant resistance is due to the device itself, not the charger and that a better charger won't help, but it's silly to say that a better charger will make it worse.. if it's getting hotter it's only beacuase it's charging with a higher current... which is a good thing (at least until the divice is actually damaged). It may be that internal limitations keeps it from charging at a significantly higher current so the wall charger might not do significantly better, but it can't be worse... if it was worse... it wouldn't be getting hotter.. it would be cooler(because of less charging current)... unless maybe there's actually a thermal cutoff? I suppose that's a possibility... but still the end result observed should in that case be that the phone seems cooler after hitting the cutoff, albeit not charging if that's the case.

dagurasu said:
unless maybe there's actually a thermal cutoff? I suppose that's a possibility... but still the end result observed should in that case be that the phone seems cooler after hitting the cutoff, albeit not charging if that's the case.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is in fact a thermal cutoff. The problem that many people,including myself experience is that while the phone is charging,and the battery is getting hotter,the phone is also producing heat. The battery gets so hot that the thermal cutoff trips and the battery stops charging. I tested this with a can of compressed air and confirmed it was a heat problem. I then placed the phone on top of a small fan,with the battery cover off and the phone ran all night long without over heating. When I dont have it on the fan it overheats,stops charging,discharges and shuts down. Opening the keyboard and removing the battery cover helps,but it does it still,it just takes longer.

Well I guess as with most things on these phones.. there are different results for different people. When mine starts flashing it doesn't seem to have cuttoff charging.. but rather just indicates it's not quite keeping up. The wall charger gets hotter.. but the flashing never happens with it.
I'm a little surprised about this strange cuttoff behavior for several reasons, but there are too many unknowns... I guess we better stick with what's observed.
The powersave battery hacks help ALOT. It's also clear that (at least with powersave hacks) the more data rate you use, the more power it uses. If yours is getting that hot "overnight", then either you aren't using the powersave hacks, your phone is broken.. you're continuoulsy downloading stuff for hours which could lead me to guess full data capacity full time, or running a server of some kind with at least some significant use. If it's something like the last two, I guess I'm not surprised some modifications are required to get that kind of steady performance out of a little pocket device. I've had actual wireless routers overheat and lock up in such conditions. It's a phone not a cisco. Still if your fan can make it into a cisco.. then that's kind of cool.
OH yeah.. also I turn down the wireless power all the way in the settings, but that actually doesn't seem that important, not sure.

I have been searching for a solution to this as well. I have all the power saving hacks and everything on my mogule and mine still overheats and eventualy dies. I found another temp solution, I put it on an ice pack and it doesn't have the problem..lol

better idea than ice pack (I know this is a year old post but owhell)
better idea,.... ice pack could void phone with H2O.
Throw tha ***** in to the freezer and call it a day!

dagurasu said:
It's a phone not a cisco. Still if your fan can make it into a cisco.. then that's kind of cool.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
sig material

eigerzoom said:
sig material
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Its not a Cisco? Ive been using it like that for years. Seriously,I have.

I actually use mine in my truck and the nice thing about it is I have a phone holder that clips on the air vent. So while running WMWifiRouter on the road for our laptop I just keep the AC on the back of the phone and no heat issues or charging issues.

Interesting. AC charging better then USB??

Hrm.. This is interesting.. I used to always charge my G1 with AC power. However past couple days, I was lazy and used my laptop USB to charge it. I noticed those days however the battery life was HORRIBLE! I mean I couldnt even get past lets say 9 hours without the battery being at 15-30% and this is without doing anything major. On AC I always got home with 50%.
Has anyone else noticed this? I am using the power profiler mode, so unless something goes out of whack on USB power mode, which I dont see why it would...
(Also I did turn off phone and back on to reset anything just in case) but its just a interesting thing that it seems USB charges suck?

Yes I noticed the same thing, used the computer USB to charge and only lasted about 6 hours of the day. I use the Wall charger and get about 9 hours consistantly. Not sure why but I have noticed this several times........
Mark

Every Tmobile rep I've talked to always say the AC charger does a better job of charging the phone.

Hrm, is this info on a G1 Wiki yet? Would be good info to pass around. My logicial guess is that USB charging can only allow the voltage on the battery to charge to "x" max. While AC power being stronger could bring the battery up more. I cant say thats fully the case.. but since the USB cannot supply the power max a AC could.. its possible.

I've got and idea for a little test, would be helpful to see a lot of different users results as well..
Get Battery Graph, run your phone dead, plug in usb charger and graph. then take a screenshot of the overall charge time, clear graph
Run it dead again, plug in AC charger #1 and and repeat
Repeat the process for each additional recharging apparatus
The reason I mention additional apparatuses is because I think my car's DC charger does better than both ac and usb (tho this will be hard to get a full accurate graph of) , also I use my gf's moto charger from time to time (i know bad mojo)..
This will probably take a few days as charging will take place at sleep time for me but this should give us an over all view of how things are working if we all get pretty consistent results..

Mysticales said:
Hrm.. This is interesting.. I used to always charge my G1 with AC power. However past couple days, I was lazy and used my laptop USB to charge it. I noticed those days however the battery life was HORRIBLE! I mean I couldnt even get past lets say 9 hours without the battery being at 15-30% and this is without doing anything major. On AC I always got home with 50%.
Has anyone else noticed this? I am using the power profiler mode, so unless something goes out of whack on USB power mode, which I dont see why it would...
(Also I did turn off phone and back on to reset anything just in case) but its just a interesting thing that it seems USB charges suck?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've had 4 different miniUSB charging phones and all of them have had this same behavior. I'm sure that the voltage coming through the USB isn't as strong as AC.

I have the same issue too...!!!

No offense.. but EVERY phone charges better w/AC versus USB .. This is not just a G1 issue .... lol

jamaicansolja said:
No offense.. but EVERY phone charges better w/AC versus USB .. This is not just a G1 issue .... lol
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Indeed.
Also, USB charges at 500 mAh, while the AC gives double if i remember correctly.

jamaicansolja said:
No offense.. but EVERY phone charges better w/AC versus USB .. This is not just a G1 issue .... lol
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Im wondering, if I use my usb while plugged into my laptop (for tether wifi app) will this hamper my battery life? I have the extended battery (2200mah) and I get far better life from it and to be honest I like the bigger size because the g1 felt too much like a toy to me before.
What do you guys think will this mess it up? I dont have wifi at home so the tetherwifi app is the only way I have net on my laptop unless I go somewhere where they have wifi. Cursed neighrbors and there password protected networks!

Might using a USB stepup voltage converter help? I've used it to charge my Nokia phone on usb in the past so it would reach the battery is full message.
The argument is usually that laptop usb don't output adequate voltage.
Its cheap and works for me on the nokia phone, Haven't tried it on the G1 yet though, can anyone find the ac charger's output info?
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.2649

yea this goes for alot of devices.. my ipod/psp charge pretty slow compared to wall outlet, however i didnt really see strength difference.. never tried USB charging my g1

I think it's worth noting I have the G1, My girlfriend has a HTC Touch(Elfin)
Both use Mini-USB Charging, both have 5V 1A Batteries (can't remember mA rating though)
Through a wall charger, my phone seems to charge quicker, but I get no longer out of it, the same behaviour is exhibited with the Touch. Both USB and the Wall charger are rated at 5V (It would/coul destroy componants methinks if it was any higher).
USB's Specifications say that unless a device has special permissions, It can only draw 500mA, with a maximum of 1000mA and a very rare (as in, one maybe two things use it) 2000mA.
Also, I have a custom made USB charger, that takes 3 AAA batteries (1.5x3 = 4.5)
It causes the phones internal battery to mess up, but does actually charge it (just a lot longer than other methods). It's more of an extended battery however, as it says it is charging, yet the battery life slowly degrades.

It's simple really and it has already been explained.
The USB port on a computer is limited to 500mA for most devices where as AC chargers like
The G1's can rpovide up to 1 Amp, even more/less depending on the chargers.
It doesn't depend on the voltage but on the current delivered. Less current equals
More time to charge and viceversa,
There is no myth.

Evil Eris Lightening: Wireless Tether Power Drain

I flashed the Evil Eris Lightening ROM to my Eris a couple of weeks ago and have noticed a few hiccups, but the most notable has been the Wireless Tethering app that comes with the ROM. Even when it is plugged into AC, the battery power continues to drain slowly. This seems to be a flaw in either the hardware or the software, because at the very least the phone should continue to hold a constant level of charge, not drain. In fact, since the phone is plugged into the AC charger it should continue to charge the battery.

piccolo75 said:
I flashed the Evil Eris Lightening ROM to my Eris a couple of weeks ago and have noticed a few hiccups, but the most notable has been the Wireless Tethering app that comes with the ROM. Even when it is plugged into AC, the battery power continues to drain slowly. This seems to be a flaw in either the hardware or the software, because at the very least the phone should continue to hold a constant level of charge, not drain. In fact, since the phone is plugged into the AC charger it should continue to charge the battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well to start off there isn't a evil eris lightning rom that I know of...there is the evil eris rom or the eris lightning rom...but either way wireless tether sucks alot of juice out of the phone. The charger has never kept up with the battery drain on any rom for me with wireless tether. The phones were not made for wireless tether which i why you need root to run it. I don't believe you are experiencing anything out of the ordinary though as it is the same for me on any rom.

seconded. I dont think the charger can keep up with the drain of Wireless tether, but I could be wrong...

I've actually had a thing pop up while it was charging that the charging current wasn't sufficient please switch to a/c lol it was plugged into my wall
Sent from my Eris using XDA App

Simple, that app draws more power than the charger can supply. You don't dare use this w/o being plugged in, that's for sure !! I do suspect that the amount of "traffic" it moves is a factor though, so you must be using a lot. I use it in the car, plugged in, and my son or wife has their iPod touch use the wireless. Even Pandora streaming hasn't drained my battery or maybe we didn't run it long enough...

Spencer_Moore said:
seconded. I dont think the charger can keep up with the drain of Wireless tether, but I could be wrong...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Back when the (stock) Eris was still on 1.5, a few people over on Androidforums pointed out that you could discharge the Eris with very heavy use while it was plugged into a real USB hub (rather than the AC adapter). Typically this would happen when streaming a feed from the mobile network and also manipulating the display (games, web browsing, et cetera)
That was with a stock phone where the WiFi radio and Cellular radio are only incidentally used at the same time.
USB 2.0 devices are limited to 500 mA @ 5V, so that result means that the phone was dissipating something north of 2.5 Watts for this to happen. That observation is entirely believable, as the RF PA (Power Amp) in the Eris can burn 2 Watts by itself in weak signal areas.
OTOH, with wireless tethering, both radios are going full bore when there is traffic present. Presumably the CPU is also chugging away with overhead as well.
It may well be that the programmed charging rate of the battery limits how much current can be jammed into it (to preserve battery life), so that even using the A/C adapter (1.0 A @ 5V) rather than USB doesn't change how fast the battery charges when the battery temps are elevated because of heavy use.
I believe it - sort of doubtful that the phone was thermally designed for that much continuous power dissipation.
I was going to say "there's always the option of running a Linux box with a Wireless AP stack, and then using wired tethering as the Linux box' WAN connection" - but then you are back down to the 2.5W limit.
It might just be that you "can't get there from here" with the Eris - unless the usage is something like reading stuff off the internet - short periods of high traffic interspersed with practically no activity at all.
bftb0

bftb0 said:
...sort of doubtful that the phone was thermally designed for that much continuous power dissipation.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's another factor when tethering... The phone gets HOT ! I let someone tether their laptop off of my phone for 2-3 hours (casual internet use) and the phone got up to 47' C. Never went higher though.

Does anyone know why wired tether doesn't seem to work with any ROM? I used it on my wife's myTouch 3g and it seems to be able to keep up with charging her phone when plugged into the laptop.
Is pdaNet the best way to do this or is the wired tether app better? I haven't been able to try pdaNet yet.

The wired tether worked for a bit with CyanogenTazzv3.
Speeds were as good with the wifi tether, but it seemed less stable.
Phone would randomly reboot while using it some times.
As for the battery drain with the wifi tether...
I noticed after configuring the setcpu screen off profile (245/245), as long as i left the screen off while tethering and using the wall charger, it was able to keep up with the power drain and actually charge the phone.
This was also on CyanogenTazzv3/4 however..

The battery drain isn't unique to the Eris using wifi tether. It's the app and all the traffic going through the phone.
I've tested this on my Eris, and friend's incredible, evo, my touch and, G1.
Its just a power hungry app.
Sent from my Eris using XDA App

Using PDANET and my phone dies anyway??

Hey all, i have an odd one that i wanted some opinions on. I've been working a convention for the weekend and have been using my desktop PC for audio work. Since the desktop doesn't have a wifi card, i connected my evo to the hotels wifi and then connected it to the desktop via PDANET. i've been running it all day, about 11 hours now and even though the phone reports 98 percent, it just clicked off. No warning, no low battery, just off. When i plugged it back in via wall adapter the battery reads 3%.
My assumption is that running WIFI drained more juice then the USB power could supply and this killed the phone. My question is, how come the phone reported a full battery and subsequently neglected to display any low battery warnings?

I tether using usb with pdanet 4 days a week anywhere from 6 to 12 hours. Never had that problem. Might be a setting to not charge while tethering.

than its ur phone pdanet does not kill battery

[Q] will keeping charger plugged in 24/7 ruin the battery?

Sorry if this should be in the general forum but there are different opinions for different phones so I thought it's better to ask here. I don't use my tattoo nowadays but I'm getting a new contract today and my old will run for 2 more months and I thought I'd use the sim-card for my old contract in my tattoo only for wifi hotspot usage and keep it on 24/7, like a router. Will that ruin the battery? I know it can't run on charger only but I don't want to destroy the battery cause the tattoo is a good backup phone. How does it actually work when the battery is 100%, does the charging stop?

Yes
I used to have my Tattoo plugged in most of the time. Within one year my battery got swollen up and was able to give only 2 hours backup on standby. Although this was my experience, maybe the battery was defective in the first place. I suggest that you take out te battery plug in the charger and switch on the phone. If it does switch on, then you may usr it this way. I have also noticed that te phone goes very hot while in tethering mode.

lanny25 said:
I used to have my Tattoo plugged in most of the time. Within one year my battery got swollen up and was able to give only 2 hours backup on standby. Although this was my experience, maybe the battery was defective in the first place. I suggest that you take out te battery plug in the charger and switch on the phone. If it does switch on, then you may usr it this way. I have also noticed that te phone goes very hot while in tethering mode.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks for the reply! I know, it get's almost so hot that it burns when using wifi tethering, that's also an issue with keeping it plugged in all the time cause high temperatures is bad for the battery. Booting it without battery doesn't work. Can't understand why this isn't standard with all phones, a lot of people use wifi tethering and it eats battery fast and you have to keep the phone plugged in the whole day. I have unlimited data and it's fast enough so I don't need any other internet at home so I use wifi tethering daily.

Alternate option
If you are not considering the cost factor, you can buy a 3g Dongle and a Wifi router that supports it. If that looks costly to you you can go ahead using your phone and then replacing the battery when it goes bad, if ever. A new battery costs about $12 here in India.

How about making charge braker, a circuit that would stop charging and start it again every lets say 12 hours

Yea, a kinda timer. We have such things in Denmark.

Sounds Cool
It sounds like a cool geeky idea. Never thought about such a thing. Does anyone have a DIY tutorial on how to go about it?

Why don't you just plug you're phone on a programmable socket?
You just have to configure the socket to restart every 8-10 hours...giving your battery the time to normaly drain and restart charging.