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Hey, I have bought myself a second-hand Universal and found it turn off at about 40% of battery. Could it be a software fault?
i have the same problem ( need help plz
i have the same problem ( need help plz
I'm pretty sure it's a battery issue. It has been reported numerous times, my Universal started turning off at ~35% battery after about one year, bought a new one, problem solved.
akpidis said:
I'm pretty sure it's a battery issue. It has been reported numerous times, my Universal started turning off at ~35% battery after about one year, bought a new one, problem solved.
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oh....
Maybe it is somehow recoverable?
I have no money for a new one... in my country they're quite expensive.
i have the same problem in wm5 and mw6
cycling the battery
You could try cycling the battery. Its probably LithiumION. You need to somehow drain it all the way down, then charge it up all the way a few times.
This should bring the battery back to full capacity. Only you can't do it on the phone cuz the phone shuts off at 40%.
That may or may not work. Typical life of a lithium Ion is only 2-3 years.
Ebay has really good deals on them for phones.
It is a battery issue.
Why don't you search a little.
There are some exact same threads already.
Buy a new battery!!!!
All well an good saying look at other threads and "buy a battery" but from my experience I am very sceptical about this issue. I have read many forums on other similar phones and it appears that the Exec seems to be the only model that seems to have this battery issue.
I cannot seriously believe that buying a new battery is the answer, there must be an underlying problem here which allways goes unanswered...!!!
I am now on my third battery, the last one lasted no more than four weeks when it started shutting down at around 75%, and this was a battery from the manufacturer...
My only other option now is to purchase a big blob of a thing which once fitted, will not allow my exec to sit in its cradle whilst on the move...
oh... these Universals seem quite problematic, but anyway I think i'll stay with one a little longer.
I think Universal needs too much power and this is why batteries, which loose some voltage after being drained, are so weak with it.
Some say that when they turn WiFi on, the battery faints at 80% I think it is caused because WiFi module takes even more power.
The problem is, Li-Ion batteries only last around 1000 dis-/charge-cycles. (see Wikipedia) and on WM6 I found no way to disable the charging while connected to my PC. (Okay, I didn't try another cable.) So every time you plug your device to your PC for some minutes, it's like charging your battery and it gets a bit weaker.
Also there's no memory-effect with Li-Ion-batteries so a full discharge followed by a full charge may not bring any results despite of an even worse capacity. You should only do this on the very first usage of the battery.
Wikipedia also says the capacity depends on the age of the battery. So if your dealer sells you a battery he has had in his shelf for 2 years, it won't have the capacity as a brand new one.
Read Wikipedia for more info on Li-Ion batteries. WM6 seems to consume some more power than WM5 and thus the battery shuts down a bit sooner than with WM5. It's really a battery issue.
If you could manage to charge the battery only when it is at around 10%, it will last longer than if you charge it every day or even on every PC connection.
Cheers,
-mARKUS
So every time you plug your device to your PC for some minutes, it's like charging your battery and it gets a bit weaker.
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Also there's no memory-effect with Li-Ion-batteries
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If you could manage to charge the battery only when it is at around 10%, it will last longer than if you charge it every day or even on every PC connection.
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AFAIK there is no problem to charge Li-Ion batteries every day even if it still has any level of charge exactly because there is no memory-effect.
from my experience - WM6 issue
reverted back to WM5 and now it happens at 20% rather than 40% previously with WM6.
try reverting back to WM5 to find if that is the same case for you as well.....
If you could manage to charge the battery only when it is at around 10%, it will last longer than if you charge it every day or even on every PC connection.
-mARKUS
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this ain't what HTC FAQ section says. That states the battery can be charged at any level withoyut any detriment to the battery life over a period of time.
I'm referring to the fact that the battery drains rapidly in the first few minutes, and might drain more rapidly than it should the rest of the day.
heres a post i made on another thread, but created a new topic also because i feel i really want to start a discussion about 2 different things:
1 my perceived odd battery charge cycle.
2 how many of us have this issue?
3 if not all of us have this issue then maybe there's hope i can swap this out for a different phone with out this issue.
here is my original post:
i do have something unique to add to this discussion but first:
well i can say that i did try this "top off" thing and it does seem to work, but as soon as i discharge the battery though use and recharge that night i was right back in the same boat of having a battery that drops very rapidly in the first 10 minutes or so and then continues to drop faster than it should the rest of the day. so imo, this top it off method only works at that moment, ie, not a long term fix.
also, i charged my evo battery in my touch pro2 and the charge didn't drop rapidly in the first few minutes. Also it seemed to last all day much better then it previously. i was able to play around all day with the phone and the battey drain was surprisingly good.
ok, the interesting thing i observed and i can replicate is:
when using the battery graph app i can watch battery level percentages versus time on a chart. in this chart i observed a charge cycle pattern that has me concerned.
while charging the percentage line on the graph was gradually increasing at a semi steady rate from 0% till 90%, then changed its charge rate at 90%
here is how it broke down.
0% 114am
90% 309am steady increase all the way to 90%
100% 315am very rapid charge at this stage (probably not good)
basically it had a steady charge rate of .78% per minute until it hit 90%.
then the remaining 10% rate was: 2.5% per minute.
this last 10% of the charge cycle charges 3.2 times faster rate then the previous 90%. i don't know much about charging but this may be a hint to something that's causing this issue.
also, just how many of us have this issue? all of us, whether we know it or not?
some of use? will there be a fix? is this covered by a warranty or software fix, or so we need to "top it off" every charge?
i'm still within my 30 days and i dont want to swap this out for another if they all have this issue.
I think its the way evo charges the battery.. As I posted about my findinga that when charged in my tp2 I dont see this fast drop anymore. The drop I saw was a 1/8 of the battery icon within 15 min not using.. So more than 10% drainage.. Also its nice the tp2 battery is the same.. So I always have a charged battery so I just switch out batts.. Most of use have this prob unless rooted and tweeked with setcpu..
Edit: only charge batteries from tp2 not from evo anymore..
sent from my Evo
I have read that this is the way the Evo is supposed to work. The battery charges to 100%, then it quits charging and runs off of the battery until it reaches approximately 90% charge, Then starts charging again. This is supposed to be better for the battery. So, if you take it off of the charger when it is about ready to start charging again, it can drop 10% in the first 5 minutes.
Franky, it appears to work this way with my phone, but I have not had the rapid battery drain issues that some have. My battery regularly makes it through the day fine with moderate to heavy use.
Another thing I have noticed is that not messing with it helps a lot. After I upgrade my rom it seems to take about three days for the battery to get back to its normal cycle. for the first day it drains faster than normal, but last longer each day thereafter.
i have done the same thing with using the touch pro 2 to charge my evo battery. kinda rediculas dont ya think?
that sure makes for an expensive charger, i would much rather sell my touch pro 2 to offset some of the cost for early termination what not.
i talked to customer support and of course their response was the canned response of "your evo is power hungery thats all...yada yada"
do you think that all evo's have this issue and no one else is noticing?
What I find funny is you buy a heavy use device that is designed for using. Everything you do on this device uses battery. I went from the touch pro 2 to this device and I am happier with the EVO than I was with the tp2. You might be surprise how much battery life you would get if you turn off all the radios except for the phone portion and only us this as a phone.
After the touch, mogul, touch pro, and tp2, I am permanently an HTC customer.
Sorry, just my opinion. I may be wrong.
Sent from my Sprint EVO 4g with the XDA app!
The bad thing is not all of us have an extra touch pro 2 lying around to charge our evo.
When I leave my phone on the charger and not use it at all and it drains 10% in 6 minutes that's rediculous. even though my phone has technically been in standby mode and using the battery for the top 10% their hasn't been one time where I took my phone off the charger and it didnt drop in 5 minutes.
Mine is random. Some days I get great battery life, and others I get 5 hours. I'm going having two spare batteries and a wall charger will fix this.
Sent from my EVO using XDA App
Maybe I gave too much info and perhaps I drowned my main point
The charging algorithm changes The speed in which it charges the battery at the last 10% of the charge.
This is probably the problem.
My tilt 2 does not do this. Therefore I get a proper charge and the charge lasts as it should.
Look at my findings above.
From what I have seen, most battery life comparisons/stats are usually done with the phone in standby/screen off majority of the time.
I decided to do it the other way.
Last night to this morning:
I tried charging my battery to 100% but time constraints only had me charge it to around 84% (late for work).
I don't use/have a charger at work nor do I have one in my car. I work 8 hours straight (11pm - 7am) and I almost always stream pandora the entire time.
I am using the seidio extended battery and the only thing that stays off is wifi when I am not within range of any kind of open network (starbucks) or my own saved connection list. 4g/3g, gps, and background data are constantly on.
So, from 84% left the house and started streaming pandora in the car. Get to work about 15 minutes later with no interruption in streaming (just turned the volume down). I do shut off my screen while streaming when I put the phone in my pocket.
Surfed the web, watched some youtube videos, checked gmail and facebook (which auto sync about every hour and gmail notifies me of every single email I get), and played some games here and there (nothing great) throughout the night.
Basically my intent was to never let the phone sit and do nothing. The entire time pandora was streaming (browsing the net and streaming, checking gmail/facebook and streaming) but youtube would always stop pandora.
Got 8 hours of constant use. I don't want to say moderate/light/heavy as that scale changes from person to person. Moderate for one person may be heavy for the next.
I charged the battery in the phone because I don't have an external charger for it. Although I may get one because my charging method still involves me taking the battery out of the phone.
No task killers, no setcpu (I am rooted), no custom rom (from the dev forum).
I am using bakedsnack kernel #4, launcherpro, and I have personally uninstalled a crap load of stuff (even htc sense and rosie altogether).
My opinion is that all these gimmicks that we have to go through to get good battery life while in standy are not necessary. What is necessary is for the charging system in the evo to be revamped. This is my own opinion, but I think the charging system in the evo skips stage 2 of the charging process http://www.batteryuniversity.com/partone-12.htm which is why (this is what I think, I am no expert) so many people see the sudden drop from 100% down to whatever shortly after they unplug their charger.
It kind of makes sense as to why some people who charge their stock batteries in the ebay externals get better battery life, it's because they are actually being charged properly.
Again, this is just my opinion and I am in no way an expert on this. Just disclosing my experience and observations of my phone and it's behavior. Take from it what you will.
That's pretty amazing dude. Me personally would consider your use for this test to be pretty heavy. I'm more than impressed to see 37% battery life. And from what I've been reading up on the external charger is definitely the way to go. Although it's quite a pain to have to charge our evos like this just for maximum battery life. Hopefully in the future releases of phones we won't have tis do things like this. As mentioned in another post the switching of the battery to charge it will eventually make the back door loose or maybe even break sooner than planned, which is a problem for people who don't have extra doors. I guess it's not a bad investment to buy extra doors though.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
lovethyEVO said:
From what I have seen, most battery life comparisons/stats are usually done with the phone in standby/screen off majority of the time.
I decided to do it the other way.
I am using the seidio extended battery
My opinion is that all these gimmicks that we have to go through to get good battery life while in standy are not necessary.
It kind of makes sense as to why some people who charge their stock batteries in the ebay externals get better battery life, it's because they are actually being charged properly.
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Here is my take and i edited your post down to the points i am discussing.
First I like the fact you realize most battery tests and many of the people getting ridiculous battery life are idle most of the time (even if they say they are moderate use normally they have 1-3 hours of moderate use out of the 30 hours battery life they claim). I think showing actual usage time is much more impressive.
Now if you are going to do a battery post and talk about opinions and what your battery life is ... i don't suggest using an extended battery. you show that over aprox 8 hours of use (wont classify it as heavy moderate etc since you didnt) you lost about 50% the problem here is the extended battery from seidio has a much larger capacity then your standard htc battery that comes with evo (even if it doesnt actually have the 3500mah it is still a lot more). On a est i did i could play a movie on a stock battery for just over 5 hours before the battery drained using nothing but the stock install of a rom and without changing settings to turn things off etc. So in my opinion the battery life you are showing is actually a little low for that battery but that not really the point.
now as for the evo charging incorrectly. the reason why peoples batteries drop quickly the first 20-30 minutes (for most who have a correctly calibrated "battery") is because EVO doesn't have a trickle charge. this doesnt mean the evo isnt charging the battery correctly. the idea behind not having a trickle charge is it helps prolong the life of the battery it self at the cost of 0-10% charge depending on where it is when you take it off the charger.
While i personally would rather have the trickle charge and have to buy replacement batteries more often. it isnt that the evo charges incorrectly it. They jsut made the choice to try to make the battery itself last as long as possible at the cost of some battery use time depending on when you take it off the charger.
These are my latest seidio 3500 numbers with correct battery conditioning. Going to try and duplicate these numbers. Most of about 10 hours was slacker and pandora. This was from 100 to 14 percent on 3500 seidio. Pics for your pleasure and debate. I was able to get another 8 hours standby from this point and hour of lets golf before battery died. That was my 2nd conditioning of the battery. Going on 3rd full slow trickle charge up now. The trickle charge on battery wall charger takes about 12 hours wtf but worth it. I just use my cheap china 3000mah to cover the time.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
omegasun18 said:
Here is my take and i edited your post down to the points i am discussing.
First I like the fact you realize most battery tests and many of the people getting ridiculous battery life are idle most of the time (even if they say they are moderate use normally they have 1-3 hours of moderate use out of the 30 hours battery life they claim). I think showing actual usage time is much more impressive.
Now if you are going to do a battery post and talk about opinions and what your battery life is ... i don't suggest using an extended battery. you show that over aprox 8 hours of use (wont classify it as heavy moderate etc since you didnt) you lost about 50% the problem here is the extended battery from seidio has a much larger capacity then your standard htc battery that comes with evo (even if it doesnt actually have the 3500mah it is still a lot more). On a est i did i could play a movie on a stock battery for just over 5 hours before the battery drained using nothing but the stock install of a rom and without changing settings to turn things off etc. So in my opinion the battery life you are showing is actually a little low for that battery but that not really the point.
now as for the evo charging incorrectly. the reason why peoples batteries drop quickly the first 20-30 minutes (for most who have a correctly calibrated "battery") is because EVO doesn't have a trickle charge. this doesnt mean the evo isnt charging the battery correctly. the idea behind not having a trickle charge is it helps prolong the life of the battery it self at the cost of 0-10% charge depending on where it is when you take it off the charger.
While i personally would rather have the trickle charge and have to buy replacement batteries more often. it isnt that the evo charges incorrectly it. They jsut made the choice to try to make the battery itself last as long as possible at the cost of some battery use time depending on when you take it off the charger.
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50% loss over 8 hours of near constant use (my awake time shows that it did manage to sleep somehow even though I streamed pandora constantly) on any battery (extended or not) is actually a good thing as it shows that even with the phone fully bogged down (almost all radios on) it can last a full work day (which is what most people are concerned about).
I still believe the evo does not charge the batteries correctly and it is not solely related on the absence of a trickle charge.
Again, from my observations over the course of the past three weeks. I started with what my battery was calibrated to according to the phone. Let it drain down to about 15% (according to the phone) and wiped the battery stats and did a different charging method from the htc "rain dance".
Here is where my opinion of the evo not charging properly comes into play.
From 15% to 100% charge (charged while phone and screen are on to monitor voltage, temp, mA draw, etc.) took about an hour +/- a couple minutes. As soon as the led turned green (yes, I literally sat at my phone watching the percent slowly rise) I unplugged the charger and noted the resting voltage level and percent (according to three seperate battery status applications). Once noted, I powered down the phone. After the screen completely shut off I removed the battery and tested the voltage. I did this for my own information because I wanted to verify the phone itself was actually reporting the voltage levels correctly. It was.
Now, recall that I had just charged the phone to 100% and had wiped battery stats prior to charging.
Replaced the battery back into the phone and powered up. Normally people see a jump in battery percentage when they power down and back up. Not in my case. To my amazement, the evo reported my battery as being at 78% charge level. So I went from being 100% charged down to 78% percent charge all from powering down, removing the battery, checking voltage, and then replacing battery and powering up. Time to power down, remove, check voltage, replace and power up is somewhere around the one minute mark +/-.
Again, referencing the link I provided earlier about charging li-ion batteries, the evo seems to skip stage 2 of the charging process which usually results in about a 70% charge (according to the link).
Charged it again from the 78% mark to 100% and the charging time took just over an hour to get back to 100%. Same routine, check voltage on phone, power down, remove battery, check voltage on mmeter, replace battery, power on, check levels.
Second time around I dropped from 100% charge to about 89%. Voltage levels were always accurate. Charged again and took about another hour +/- and finally achieved a charge to where it would not fall or rise between a power down (97% seems to be my cap which is fine since I don't want to truly charge the battery to 100%).
To test the discharge rate I tried my best to keep the battery running condition identical for each discharge run.
I monitored the battery temp, cpu temp, battery voltage, amp draw, and cpu load.
Streaming only pandora and nothing else I usually managed to keep the amp draw to around 300 - 360mA with the screen on. This was my way of measuring the discharge rate without access to equipment that could give the battery a steady discharge load.
Every time the percentage dropped one I would note the volts, temps, amp draw and cpu load. Across the board temps and cpu load remained close to constant as the phone wasn't doing too much multitasking.
At this point, I have about 4 full voltage readouts from 100% down to 15%. Without wiping battery stats, if I charge the phone with my method (charge to 100%, power down, remove battery, replace battery, power up and recharge) my past voltage readouts coincide with my battery readouts on the phone (87% falls within a certain voltage range and so on) but if I just charge the battery until the phone says it's 100% then the readouts on the phone no longer fall within my past readouts until I go back to my charging method. This tells me that if I let the evo charge the battery the way it is programmed to (hardware or software) then it is not actually charging the battery to its full potential (not necessarily 100%).
Across the board the cpu load and the temps rarely drastically changed as it wasn't running multiple tasks at once. This is just my own observations and tests that I did/started doing for my own intellectual reference.
I have done the same charging method with my wife's evo and stock battery (1500 htc oem). I wiped her stats but only managed to get two full voltage readouts with her phone. She has stated that her battery does last longer than before and she is only rooted to remove bloatware. She is running stock rom, stock kernel, no task killers, no memory managers, and her radios and settings are close to mine (she gets more mail and facebook notifications than I do).
Again, this is just my opinion and personal observations. I did this solely because I got tired of having to constantly turn things on and off just to use them. My past phones never had this problem and I don't think the evo should have to be babied just to get good battery life. I still believe it all lies in the charging system of the phone and not necessarily the battery (extended versus stock).
Hey, what battery conditioning did you guys do? There's a ton of different suggestions and I am wondering if one or two have finally been proven to not be placebo.
I decided to do the HTC charging method when I changed roms to cm6. I went into hboot after and wipe stats. Turned on and took about 20 minutes to get to 98% using internet. Anyways I let phone die. Plug it in and I have system monitory with history monitoring. So I go to bed, and wake up to expect 100%. Nope 80%. Checked the monitor and trickled from 80% to 70% for 2 whole hours. I did the HTC thing again for full charge. Repeated. Only charges to 80%!!!! I changed roms. Same thing.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
martyzidek said:
I decided to do the HTC charging method when I changed roms to cm6. I went into hboot after and wipe stats. Turned on and took about 20 minutes to get to 98% using internet. Anyways I let phone die. Plug it in and I have system monitory with history monitoring. So I go to bed, and wake up to expect 100%. Nope 80%. Checked the monitor and trickled from 80% to 70% for 2 whole hours. I did the HTC thing again for full charge. Repeated. Only charges to 80%!!!! I changed roms. Same thing.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
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Your situation also points to my opinion that the charging system on the evo does not charge correctly. I am also thinking that the battery stats dont play a huge role but I still jave more monitoring to do.
I also prefer the constant-use benchmarks, and did one myself as well. Charge to 100% and then stream DI.fm using XiiaLive (96Kbps MP3) through WiFi (router in same room) + full brightness + screen ON (no timeout). My poor Evo lasted 3:55 before forced shutdown . Btw, running Fresh v3.1.0.2 with netarchy v4.1.8-cfs, no SetCPU or any other "battery saving" tools.
frifox said:
I also prefer the constant-use benchmarks, and did one myself as well. Charge to 100% and then stream DI.fm using XiiaLive (96Kbps MP3) through WiFi (router in same room) + full brightness + screen ON (no timeout). My poor Evo lasted 3:55 before forced shutdown . Btw, running Fresh v3.1.0.2 with netarchy v4.1.8-cfs, no SetCPU or any other "battery saving" tools.
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I am at work now and when I get home I plan on charging the stock battery as best as I can and doing another constant use run to satisfy the crowd who run the stock battery.
Don't charge your phone overnight! When it gets really low, slap it on the charger for a couple hours until you've got 85-90%. Unplug and enjoy fantastic battery life. I have gotten about double normal battery life (approximately 48 hours) using this method. I'm on CM6.1, mind you, so it may be some quirk with the ROM.
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Sent from my HTC Supersonic using Tapatalk Pro.
Ive been saying this for a while. I charge up my phone to about 96% and i let it go till almost 5% before i throw it back on the charge. That usually gives me 12 to 18 hours. A lot of people tend to get "battery panic" and throw it on soon as they see it draining a bit. Just leave it alone.
I charge on a wall charger. I have three batteries and change daily. I get 22-24 hours and 5-6 hours of hard use.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Here are my observations:
The Evo seems to have a peculiar way of using external power. Once the battery reaches full-charge the external power apparently gets shut off and the phone operates on battery power until the battery level drops to somewhere around 85-90%. Then the charging current switches back on until the battery level reaches 100% again and the process repeats itself. This differs from more conventional scenarios where the phone actually runs on the external power (rather than the battery) once the battery reaches full charge.
I came to this conclusion while playing with my Evo while it was plugged into the charger. First I noticed that the charging light would cycle from green to amber and back every so often. Then I noticed that the battery level indicator would drop even while the charger was plugged in.
So I started checking my battery level in the morning before I removed the phone from the charging dock and discovered that it was rarely at 100%. I'm convinced that the phone does get charged to 100% when I put it on the charging cradle, but then it sits there running off of the battery until it drops to that magic ~85-90% level and the charging current is reestablished.
But a typical night on the charger isn't enough time for the battery level to drop enough to re-start the charging current and if I come along and just grab the phone, I'm starting my day with a battery which isn't completely charged. In my case, the only time this doesn't happen is if my day ends real late and the next morning starts real early.
Once I had a good idea of what was going on, coming up with a work-around was simple: One of the first things I do when I get up in the morning is look at the charging indicator on the phone. If it's amber I do nothing because the phone is already in charging mode. If it's green I remove the phone from the cradle for a moment and put it right back on. Most of the time the indicator will switch from green to amber when I do that, but if it doesn't I'll go online and read the news or something for a few minutes before I put the phone back on the cradle.
Either way, the phone will then charge for 30 minutes or less before the indicator goes green again. By then I'm done with my morning routine and ready to face the day, and when I grab the phone it's fully charged.
My Evo is out-of-the-box stock (for now). It's a hardware version 0003 and has firmware v. 3.29.651.5. I typically leave my Bluetooth turned on all the time, but I leave 4G, WIFI, and the GPS turned off unless I need 'em. My typical daily routine involves several phone calls, some email downloads and uploads, some incidental web browsing, and some geocaching if a new cache is published within a few miles. As long as I stick with that typical routine, my battery is always in the 40-50% range when I put the phone back into the cradle for the night. Of course if I use the phone more it discharges the battery more, but I'm set up to charge it at home, at work, and in the car.
Now despite everything I've posted here, I can't imagine any practical reason to not top off the battery whenever it's convenient. Letting the battery run down before you charge it doesn't have any effect on how long a full charge will run the phone. In fact, it will actually reduce the number of charge-discharge cycles that your battery can provide before it starts losing capacity. I don't want to type it all again, but if you're interested you can CLICK HERE if you'd like to learn more about LiPo battery characteristics and maintenance.
'Nuff outta me
Pete
the evo charges to 100% then cycles to 90% then back to 100% so that it does not explode from over heating thats why when you grab your phone in the morning it might say 93% rather than 100% i dont mind though cause i dont want my phone to blow up
ThatTmoGuy said:
the evo charges to 100% then cycles to 90% then back to 100% so that it does not explode from over heating thats why when you grab your phone in the morning it might say 93% rather than 100% i dont mind though cause i dont want my phone to blow up
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I'm a lot more inclined to believe that it's either an engineering error or a half-baked idea with undesirable consequences. The reason I say that is I've had countless other cell phones and consumer electronics devices which used LiPo batteries for power, yet the Evo is the first device that I'm aware of which operates like that. The rest will stop charging when the batteries are fully charged, but they'll continue to use the external power to run the device as long as it's plugged in.
Pete
PGRtoo said:
I'm a lot more inclined to believe that it's either an engineering error or a half-baked idea with undesirable consequences. The reason I say that is I've had countless other cell phones and consumer electronics devices which used LiPo batteries for power, yet the Evo is the first device that I'm aware of which operates like that. The rest will stop charging when the batteries are fully charged, but they'll continue to use the external power to run the device as long as it's plugged in.
Pete
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I think the purpose is to prolong the battery life so it doesn't charge again every time it drops to 99%.
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Sent from my HTC Supersonic using Tapatalk Pro.
TheBiles said:
I think the purpose is to prolong the battery life so it doesn't charge again every time it drops to 99%.
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Apparently my point is just blowing right past everyone.
For most modern consumer electronics devices the charger can serve at least two functions which are charge the battery and run the device. These functions are remotely related by virtue of the fact that the power comes from the same source, but the functions themselves are typically quite independent of each other. In other words, most devices can run off the charger's power regardless of whether the battery is being charged or not, and when the device is running on the charger, it's not drawing power from the battery.
But it appears that the Evo doesn't do things that way. In essence, it seems like the Evo is hard-wired to the battery and the charger is incapable of independently powering the device when it's not charging the battery. So the battery reaches full charge, the charging circuit shuts off, and the phone starts draining the battery despite the fact that the charger is still connected. Once the battery drains to ~85-90% the charging circuit kicks back on, the battery gets charged back to 100%, and the whole process repeats itself.
Consequently it's a crapshoot whether our Evos will be fully-charged when we take them off of the charger unless we take some additional steps. I can deal with those extra steps, but I can't come up with any practical reason why we should have to. No matter how long I analyze the situation, I can't see any benefit to doing things that way except, perhaps, to save on manufacturing costs. All I can come up with are annoying extra steps and unnecessary battery charge-discharge cycles, and I can't grasp how those benefit anyone.
I see that you and I have carried some of the same phones in the past, TheBiles (Sanyo 8300, Treo 650, Hero) and I don't remember any of those phones coming off a charger with anything less than a full charge unless I interrupted the charge cycle. In fact, I'm convinced that no phone that I've ever carried has had this problem. The Evo is the very first one which is why I suspect some folks at HTC are quietly saying oopsie.
Pete
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Pete, I'm not convinced most smart phones actually power themselves off of the wallcharger when plugged in as you seem to think. I have no real evidence to back this up, though - other than my own observations.
I will say that the EVO's method isn't as isolated as you seem to think. For example, the Palm Pre which I owned for a year previous to the EVO operates in the exact same manner.
The Pre would hit 100%, stop charging, operate on battery power until it dropped to 95%, then charge from 95 back to 100. The EVO, however, drops down to 90 before it starts the charge cycle again. This is probably better for the battery - but more confusing from a user perspective.
This might be your first phone that operates this way, but it certainly isn't unique to smartphones or HTC.
PGRtoo said:
Apparently my point is just blowing right past everyone.
For most modern consumer electronics devices the charger can serve at least two functions which are charge the battery and run the device. These functions are remotely related by virtue of the fact that the power comes from the same source, but the functions themselves are typically quite independent of each other. In other words, most devices can run off the charger's power regardless of whether the battery is being charged or not, and when the device is running on the charger, it's not drawing power from the battery.
But it appears that the Evo doesn't do things that way. In essence, it seems like the Evo is hard-wired to the battery and the charger is incapable of independently powering the device when it's not charging the battery. So the battery reaches full charge, the charging circuit shuts off, and the phone starts draining the battery despite the fact that the charger is still connected. Once the battery drains to ~85-90% the charging circuit kicks back on, the battery gets charged back to 100%, and the whole process repeats itself.
Consequently it's a crapshoot whether our Evos will be fully-charged when we take them off of the charger unless we take some additional steps. I can deal with those extra steps, but I can't come up with any practical reason why we should have to. No matter how long I analyze the situation, I can't see any benefit to doing things that way except, perhaps, to save on manufacturing costs. All I can come up with are annoying extra steps and unnecessary battery charge-discharge cycles, and I can't grasp how those benefit anyone.
I see that you and I have carried some of the same phones in the past, TheBiles (Sanyo 8300, Treo 650, Hero) and I don't remember any of those phones coming off a charger with anything less than a full charge unless I interrupted the charge cycle. In fact, I'm convinced that no phone that I've ever carried has had this problem. The Evo is the very first one which is why I suspect some folks at HTC are quietly saying oopsie.
Pete
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Click to collapse
I completely agree. This is clearly going on, and I'm surprised more people don't talk about it. I put Cyanogen on mine the day I got it, so I thought that was the issue, but I went back to stock (for a day) and it did the same thing. The light goes off after 90% and it stops charging at 100% until it drops below 90%. I also agree that it doesn't seem to serve a usable purpose, and seems to be a design flaw.
I'm still very happy with the phone, but when battery life is this important, that's kind of a big deal.
BHack said:
Pete, I'm not convinced most smart phones actually power themselves off of the wallcharger when plugged in as you seem to think. I have no real evidence to back this up, though - other than my own observations.
I will say that the EVO's method isn't as isolated as you seem to think. For example, the Palm Pre which I owned for a year previous to the EVO operates in the exact same manner.
The Pre would hit 100%, stop charging, operate on battery power until it dropped to 95%, then charge from 95 back to 100. The EVO, however, drops down to 90 before it starts the charge cycle again. This is probably better for the battery - but more confusing from a user perspective.
This might be your first phone that operates this way, but it certainly isn't unique to smartphones or HTC.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had two Pres, and both had the battery % mod on them. I used to set them on my touchstone at work all day long, and I would take them off periodically. My battery drained so bad I could lose 30% in an hour with light use. If I ever took it off the touchstone when it wasn't at 100%, it was only because it got too low and wasn't at 100% yet. I noticed this on day one with my EVO, and never noticed a single issue anything like this on my Pre.
I'm not saying it wasn't there, I'm saying I NEVER noticed this. As far as I knew, it charged to 100% and then ran off the plug, or at least that's what I assumed.
this is a strange thread for xda; competent, fully formed sentences. civilized banter. it's nice!
on topic though, i have noticed and came to this conclusion independently a couple months ago. it's kind of irritating - i hate how cheap manufacturers can be sometimes (all the time).
turn said:
this is a strange thread for xda; competent, fully formed sentences. civilized banter. it's nice!
on topic though, i have noticed and came to this conclusion independently a couple months ago. it's kind of irritating - i hate how cheap manufacturers can be sometimes (all the time).
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Hey, I've seen MUCH worse forums. Try Anandtech sometimes. Some great threads there, and a ton of awful.
I feel like HTC is just not that company that cuts corners. I think this might have been a real attempt to make something work well - or better - but in my opinion it failed miserably.
WrlsFanatic said:
I had two Pres, and both had the battery % mod on them. I used to set them on my touchstone at work all day long, and I would take them off periodically. My battery drained so bad I could lose 30% in an hour with light use. If I ever took it off the touchstone when it wasn't at 100%, it was only because it got too low and wasn't at 100% yet. I noticed this on day one with my EVO, and never noticed a single issue anything like this on my Pre.
I'm not saying it wasn't there, I'm saying I NEVER noticed this. As far as I knew, it charged to 100% and then ran off the plug, or at least that's what I assumed.
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You may not have noticed it, but I can guarantee you the Pre charged as I described. It was a "crapshoot" when you pulled it off the charger as to where you actually were in the charge. You could be anywhere from 95 - 100. Of course, the Pre would always show 100%, just as the EVO does.
Because the Pre's battery was smaller, WebOS was more battery hungry than Android, and the fact that it only cycled down to 95 instead of 90 like the EVO are all reasons why you might not have noticed it, but it was there.
BHack said:
This is probably better for the battery - but more confusing from a user perspective.
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Click to collapse
Why would it be better for the battery? They may be partial charge-discharge cycles but they're cycles nonetheless and the Lithium Polymer cell chemistry is only capable of so many of 'em before it starts to degrade. Short cycles are easier on it than full cycles, but they all take a toll.
I currently have something like 40 LiPo packs that range from dinky little 35mAh single-cell micro batteries to a couple of 10S (37V) 5000mAh packs. I use them in my R/C planes and helicopters, communications gear, and electronics projects and I've used up and disposed of many times that over the years. I even had to build my own packs and chargers when I first started using them because the cells were experimental and there wasn't anything commercially available yet.
And I survived all that without having a single LiPo fire (that I didn't deliberately trigger) and I attribute that to the fact that I've been rabid about learning everything I can about the technology and the use and care of the batteries.
And I'm unaware of any benefit that can be gained from unnecessarily cycling LiPo batteries regardless of how small the cycles are.
Pete
WrlsFanatic said:
I feel like HTC is just not that company that cuts corners. I think this might have been a real attempt to make something work well - or better - but in my opinion it failed miserably.
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Click to collapse
My predominant theory is that HTC has erred on the side of caution on the advice of their legal department. LiPo cells can easily become little firebombs if they're mistreated and the overwhelming majority of "events" occur during a charge cycle. Search YouTube for lipo fire and you'll find pages and pages of examples, but beware:
You may not want to carry yer phone in yer pocket right next to yer cojones anymore after you do.
Pete
Having the wall battery charger solves this issue. The wall charger will charge the battery to full capacity.
It also allows me to test battery life on roms/kernels as accurately as possible. Only time I connect the phone to USB is when I need to move files.
Bioxoxide said:
Having the wall battery charger solves this issue.
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When you say wall charger, do you mean one that you have to remove the battery from the phone and insert it in the charger?
Pete the Curious
Just wanted to say that there have been many discussions on this here at xda, I guess most of us just deal with it.
What I do is charge externaly with a cheap Chinese charger that Came with two batteries that work great.
Every since I made this move I haven't looked back. My battery life is great now, 24 plus hrs per charge. Sometimes I go close to 40 hrs, and I use Bluetooth, have GPS and WiFi ways on. In fact I don't cut any corners, no under clocking either.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
I've noticed if I have the phone partially charged, lets say 50%
I reboot with the phone still connected to the charger, it will jump the charge percentage reported to 70% or so.
This can explain why the phone doesn't charge completely and why people experience shorter run times.
Has anyone observed this?
I've seen this happen from Gingerbread, to ICS. Nexus S 9020T
Actually yes, I've seen this too. I put it down to the handset recharging when it was rebooting...
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA
Same thing has happened to me with AOKP roms. It doesn't seem to throw my battery stats out of whack, but I've still made a habit out of unplugging the phone prior to rebooting.
I hope to bring attention to this because I've seen the bug since gingerbread but no one has reported it
Perhaps a talented developer can take this cause up and look into the issue.
It is more a shortcoming of the method used to find the state of charge. Our phones initial finding can be quite far off (after a reboot with varying conditions, for example), however as time goes on and the phone is on it will get closer and closer to the real state of charge. This is done by the battery to my knowledge, not android.
I've mentioned this a couple times, check the battery benchmark thread.
The simple answer is the phone charges much much quicker when off. The mere minute while the phone is shutting down and booting and time all hardware components are off line is enough to bring the 20% battery load. Lithium batteries charge the quickest from mid point to about 80% or 35% to 80%.
If you want to do a test discharge the battery to about 20% and turn the phone off and leave it on AC charge for 15-20 minutes. A good battery should be charged to about 80-85%. Try doing this while the phone is on and it will take at least an hour.