I think I found the secret to good battery life... - EVO 4G General

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
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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%.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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
Click to expand...
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).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
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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Click to collapse
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

Related

This is why your battery drops 10-15% in the first 20 minutes.

Plain and simple: When the Evo is fully charged, it begins running off its battery until you plug it back in. It DOES NOT trickle charge whatsoever after it reaches 100%. When you're using your Evo on the charger, and it's showing full 100% charge, it is running off the battery, not the AC plug. And then when you unplug it, well, we all know what happens next. The battery meter drops insanely fast to the actual charge of the battery, which could be very low, depending on how long it's been sitting idle at 100% on your charger.
So all those times you've charged your Evo overnight, only to take it to work the next day and be at 80% within an hour? Your Evo was running off its battery for what I'm guessing was most of the night. It takes my Evo about an hour to two hours to fully charge back to 100%. Let's say you put your Evo on the charger at 11PM, it'll reach full charge by 1AM at the latest, and then run off its battery until whenever you take it off the charger in the morning.
Workarounds?
1) Turn your Evo off while it's charging.
2) If you must leave it on for an alarm clock, put it in airplane mode and end all CPU intensive tasks to minimize battery drain.
3) When you wake up, unplug it for 10-20 minutes (still experimenting with this number), and then plug it back in to top it off. Once it reaches 100%, take it off the charger, and go about your day.
Try it out for yourself. When your Evo is 100% charged, take it off the charger immediately, and I highly doubt you will lose the 10%-15% within minutes. Please share your findings.
Er... Point of note, mine does it even if I pull it off the charger right when it turns green.
Post some technical schematic or other type of proof that shows that this circuitry isn't available in the EVO. That will prove beyond a doubt if what your saying is true.
That being said, only a group of the most retarded electrical engineers would design a charging system as you've described. It is INSANELY easy to build Li-Polymer charging circuitry that does the following (and it pretty much has to do these):
1. Detects battery temperature, and disables charging as a protective measure. In an emergency case it should shut off the device it's powering to allow the battery to cool down. This is a design requirement, or else your house burns down as you dump water on a Lithium fire thinking it's going to put it out. If you have a HERO, you can easily test this. Running the wireless tethering, GPS/Navigation, and Music with the screen running heats up the phone a ton. You'll notice the status light blink green once, then red a couple of times. This means that it's plugged in but not charging. Cool the phone down and it turns solid red again (charging).
2. Disable charging cycle when battery reaches a certain voltage. VERY SIMPLE voltage detection circuitry! The designer can of course adjust a gap to have charging turn back on when it dips below a certain voltage. Usually since this circuitry can be made with a decent amount of precision, that "turn back on" voltage ends up being roughly when the battery discharges to maybe 99.5%. That's just a guess, I admit but there's no harm in having the circuit switch on and off, even if it's often.
There are also a few other circuits that prevent the cell from blowing up in your pocket, like a current sensor to prevent an overcurrent. There's also some stuff that prevents you from being able to discharge the cell below it's avalanche voltage. In case you don't know what that is, when a Li-Ion battery discharges to a certain voltage, it avalanches to 0 (quickly falls). If it hits that point, you've pretty much ruined the battery and it will never charge the same again.
Anyway, this is stuff they taught and had design labs on back in college. While I have no actual proof that the phone wasn't designed as the OP describes, I find it highly unlikely. If this is the behavior that the circuitry exhibits, I would find it easier to believe that it's a design flaw, probably because some idiot didn't compile the correct bill of materials.
I haven't got any schematics or any sort of technical information on the subject. All I know is, it works wonders for me. When I take my Evo off the charger in the morning, it literally drops to ~90% within minutes. Once it does that, if I place it back on the charger for ~20 minutes, it charges back to 100% and stays there for 45 minutes to an hour.
I'd urge anybody who is noticing the immediate 10% to 15% drop in battery to give this a shot.
I would turn it off while I'm charging it overnight, but I use it as my alarm clock
Me Too
I am seeing the exact same behavior as the OP. This is really lame. Because of this, most people will end up losing 10% of their battery every day. Pretty lame.
I charge my phone overnight every night. Never noticed a problem and I just checked my battery and its at 88% and has been off the charger for 2.5hours so I'm not seeing the rapid discharge issue some people are seeing.
I don't think so man, I leave my screen on full brightness while it's charging, and if what you said was true it would go dead on the charger.
I think it's more likely the cells haven’t charged equally, so you get a big initial drop.
Grims said:
I don't think so man, I leave my screen on full brightness while it's charging, and if what you said was true it would go dead on the charger.
I think it's more likely the cells haven’t charged equally, so you get a big initial drop.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm beginning to think that once the battery reaches 100% full, it runs off the battery until it reaches some arbitrary percentage. At which point it starts charging until it reaches 100% again, and then continues this cycle.
I'm testing a few other things right now. Part of me is convinced it reports 100% charge when it's actually below that level.
Krynj said:
I haven't got any schematics or any sort of technical information on the subject. All I know is, it works wonders for me. When I take my Evo off the charger in the morning, it literally drops to ~90% within minutes. Once it does that, if I place it back on the charger for ~20 minutes, it charges back to 100% and stays there for 45 minutes to an hour.
I'd urge anybody who is noticing the immediate 10% to 15% drop in battery to give this a shot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll try this out to see if I can get the same kind of behavior. I guess I honestly haven't looked to see if the phone drops 10-15% after pulling it off.
Krynj said:
I'm beginning to think that once the battery reaches 100% full, it runs off the battery until it reaches some arbitrary percentage. At which point it starts charging until it reaches 100% again, and then continues this cycle.
I'm testing a few other things right now. Part of me is convinced it reports 100% charge when it's actually below that level.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is what should be happening I believe, but I'd be surprised if it was set to such a huge swing like 10-15%
Grims said:
I don't think so man, I leave my screen on full brightness while it's charging, and if what you said was true it would go dead on the charger.
I think it's more likely the cells haven’t charged equally, so you get a big initial drop.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is an interesting theory. I do know that when you have multiple Li-Ion cells in a battery pack, if they discharge unevenly, you have to go off of the lowest charged cell. Again, if a cell were to drop below the avalanche voltage, you'd ruin the pack all together. On the other hand, the circuitry should let ALL cells charge to 100% so it's even again. Maybe they screwed this up, that design isn't so easy! Perhaps it detects one cell as 100% and shuts off the charge. Therefore, one could surmise that if you started with an unevenly charged battery pack, you'd have an immediate decrease in charge to the rating of the lowest charged cell. The good news (maybe) is that this is sometimes implemented with software. That means that HTC could release a bug fix for this, or if we have a savvy dev, they could try to fix it. We just need to prove the theory though.
This is all just a guess, keep that in mind. If I notice something like this with my phone today, maybe I can tear apart the battery and measure the voltage on each cell (if it even has multiple cells). I have a spare, so maybe I'd be up for this. Krynj (or anyone), if you have the HTC Hero, try charging your battery pack with it, see if it exhibits the same behavior on the Hero itself. If it doesn't, then try putting it back into the EVO and see if after a night of charging, it still drops 10-15% after disconnecting it from the AC.
The reason why the battery dies so fast has something to do with the memory card. Charge your phone and take the SD card out and watch it stay at 100% for a long as time. Then do it again with the SD card in and watch it dip down fast.
Apple laptops don't charge unless battery is below 90%. If you plug in the AC and the battery is above 90%, it will just run off AC power but I don't think the battery drains any then.
My battery life has been less than stellar, but I didn't notice it dropping 10-15% instantly off the charger. I did notice that it'd drop about 10% after driving to work with xiialive streaming, which was unusual to me. The battery would start running out after about 9 hours at work. I'd be in the yellow by the time I got home, and the battery would be complaining for a charge in the evening. So that's roughly 12 hours I would be getting out of the phone after normal use.
Since I'm suspecting an issue with the charging circuitry, I just recently tried charging my battery with the Hero. After it was fully charged, I put it back into my EVO last night and haven't charged it since. It's been running 13 hours, and is still nearly full green. The charge is at about 70%. I've been trying to graph the discharge all day too. It only dropped to 87% over night, dropped to 80% when I drove to work (xiialive), and then down to 74% after I spent some time setting up icons and modifying my home screen. This is...hands down a butt ton better than the past week.
I'm not using 4G.
WiFi is off.
3G is on.
GPS is on.
Not running a live wallpaper.
Sync is running at default settings.
Widgets that could be updating constantly:
I have the Clock/Weather HTC widget running.
I have the Dictionary.com "word of the day" widget.
I have the Friendstream Widget running.
Craigslist Craignotifica app is running, set to notify me with search results.
The results are inconclusive though. Yesterday, I wiped and re-flashed DamageControl 3.2.x from scratch (backed up all apps with Ti-Backup, this means Android Market won't be notifying me if there are app updates -grumble-). So, somewhere between re-flashing and also charging my battery with the Hero caused this turn around.
apollooff320 said:
The reason why the battery dies so fast has something to do with the memory card. Charge your phone and take the SD card out and watch it stay at 100% for a long as time. Then do it again with the SD card in and watch it dip down fast.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Interesting.....Will have to give a try. Will report back later.
I'm waiting for some definitive results with the "use another charging device or battery" method. It seems that the EVO just sucks at recharging the battery since people who have used another phone or a separate charger seem to report better results.
I leave my phone off at night and charge it - when I turn it on in the morning it still drops 5-10% in the first 20 minutes. But during the day it drops REALLY slow, so I still can get about 13-16 hours before 15% easily.
I have manual account sync, 3g only, wifi at home, usually gps is off, auto backlight settings for screen, and I don't run too many apps in the background, I just use them when I need them.
Has anybody found a solution to this? It's really starting to bother me. I've noticed that I don't seem to have the issue if I charge -> recovery -> wipe battery stats -> reboot. That kind of leads me to believe that something is inaccurate about the battery stats and the phone instead uses the actual raw value provided by the battery instead of whatever it is that it does with the battery stats.
I can tell you this, I bought two of the cheap battery chargers off of ebay and I have two OEM evo batteries. I don't even plug my phone in anymore. I get an hour of standby at 100% from those chargers and it falls instantly when charging from the phone. I just run them down then swap them out. I couldn't be happier and they are only like 10 bucks each with 2 batteries each.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
jnewkirk10 said:
I can tell you this, I bought two of the cheap battery chargers off of ebay and I have two OEM evo batteries. I don't even plug my phone in anymore. I get an hour of standby at 100% from those chargers and it falls instantly when charging from the phone. I just run them down then swap them out. I couldn't be happier and they are only like 10 bucks each with 2 batteries each.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
can you post a link or ebay or where ever u bought it from?
Try this I'm doing it from the phone
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250641711190&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT#ht_1991wt_913
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
apollooff320 said:
The reason why the battery dies so fast has something to do with the memory card. Charge your phone and take the SD card out and watch it stay at 100% for a long as time. Then do it again with the SD card in and watch it dip down fast.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you have apps on your sd card that are running then yes that could be the case. SD cards need power to work but I dont know how much they draw..

Prolonged Battery Charging ~ Yes, I believe it is Safe

Prior to getting the Galaxy S, after I read what Samsung were saying in the manual of not to overcharge, I investigated the reasons and wrote in various topics on the battery and the differences between Li-Ion & Li-Pol battery types.
At that point with all the evidence found it made sense to believe that what Samsung were saying in not to overcharge was accurate.
Basically, at that time it was believed the phone used a Li-Pol, Li-Pol batteries are different in that they are 'wet cell' as opposed to Li-Ion which are 'dry cell' charged.
Li-Pol can be manufactured much thinner but can not be manufactured in different shapes.
This is to allow the wet cells whilst under charge which become hot to move around the battery freely. If a Li-Pol was manufactured in different shapes like Li-Ion it would create a 'hot-spot' in an area where the wet cell could not move fluidly around the remainder of the battery.
However, it has now come to light that this is not the case and that the batteries provided with the phone are indeed Li-Ion.
Anyway, moving on to the present.......
After now getting the phone and doing a bit of testing I have found the overcharging issue NOT to be an issue.
When you commence a charge on the phone the icon changes to a charge state.
However, once the battery has reached maximum charge capacity the battery icon automatically changes to a 'Non-Charge' state and then the phone simply runs off it's own battery. This is despite the phone is still connected to the charger.... It's just that the charger although still attached is no longer charging the battery.
As soon as the battery falls below a certain figure (I've had different figures ranging from 98% right down to 91% which is probably due to whatever the phone is doing at that particular time to wake the phone up from realizing "hey, you are still attached to a charger, now wake up and start charging again").
So to all of us who have been worried about overcharging, my personal advise is to NOT worry and charge as and when you feel the need.
Hope this helps.
Beards
Thanks for clear up, I was always been scared while charging that it may blow up.
Nice find!
However, it has now come to light that this is not the case and that the batteries provided with the phone are indeed Li-Ion.
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Click to collapse
When you say "it has come to light", what do you mean? Is it just your deduction from your battery tests, or did you see this info from Samsung?
From what I understood, the LI-Pol overcharging is an issue in theory, but in real life applications its not a problem as long as you use the charger that is designed with LiPol in mind, it will auto shutoff charging once it senses the battery is full.
I have just charged mine from bone empty to full. A notification came up stating that the battery was full and to disconnect the charger. Although the battery monitor app says it is not charging and the normal battery meter has gone solid.
I agree that it seems to stop the charging circuit. Although I thought we were getting LiPo not li ion for these as well it's definitely li ion though.
Morbo66 said:
When you say "it has come to light", what do you mean? Is it just your deduction from your battery tests, or did you see this info from Samsung?
From what I understood, the LI-Pol overcharging is an issue in theory, but in real life applications its not a problem as long as you use the charger that is designed with LiPol in mind, it will auto shutoff charging once it senses the battery is full.
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Click to collapse
Take the battery out and turn it over. Now read the battery type and you will see it says Li-Ion.
if such, it will reduce the re-charge cycle....
i suggest, power off the phone and then keep charge overnight will be safe....
otherwise, if it is on and charges only full then disconnect it
hkfriends said:
if such, it will reduce the re-charge cycle....
i suggest, power off the phone and then keep charge overnight will be safe....
otherwise, if it is on and charges only full then disconnect it
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Click to collapse
Modern battery's don't have cycles where you loose power by continuously topping up the battery.
The practice I use is I charge whenever I get the chance, then after around 30 charges I run it right down and do a full charge.
As to powering off the phone to charge, this is not always convenient.
I need my phone on all the time in case I get an emergency call-out and I'm sure there are others who need their phones on overnight to use as a morning alarm.
Finally, I'm not sure if the practice you mention in powering off the phone and charging overnight would have the same effect in being able to re-charge when the battery level drops.
I think doing it in your method the charger would continuously hit the battery regardless as to whether or not it is fully charged ~ which in effect is what Samsung are saying in not to overcharge.
Beards said:
...once the battery has reached maximum charge capacity the battery icon automatically changes to a 'Non-Charge' state and then the phone simply runs off it's own battery. This is despite the phone is still connected to the charger.... It's just that the charger although still attached is no longer charging the battery.
As soon as the battery falls below a certain figure (I've had different figures ranging from 98% right down to 91% which is probably due to whatever the phone is doing at that particular time to wake the phone up from realizing "hey, you are still attached to a charger, now wake up and start charging again").
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To me it seems like the phone will NOT use the battery as long as it is plugged in. On my phone the battery meter never drops under 100 % when connected.
Beards said:
Modern battery's don't have cycles where you loose power by continuously topping up the battery.
The practice I use is I charge whenever I get the chance, then after around 30 charges I run it right down and do a full charge.
As to powering off the phone to charge, this is not always convenient.
I need my phone on all the time in case I get an emergency call-out and I'm sure there are others who need their phones on overnight to use as a morning alarm.
Finally, I'm not sure if the practice you mention in powering off the phone and charging overnight would have the same effect in being able to re-charge when the battery level drops.
I think doing it in your method the charger would continuously hit the battery regardless as to whether or not it is fully charged ~ which in effect is what Samsung are saying in not to overcharge.
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Click to collapse
AFAIK, the reason to fully deplete the battery is to properly calibrate the % remaining in your battery. Running your battery down to empty causes more stress to the phone than running it down 50%. I happened to get a free battery with my device, but I would've bought a spare if I didn't get a free one, so I can easily go 3-5 days depending on usage, during this time I have my house and work to do charges. However, let's say I were to be expecting to have less frequent charges, such as taking a vacation, prior to that I would be fully depleting the battery to 0% to calibrate because then the battery level is more important to me. The trade off of long-term life vs short term accuracy is a very easy decision for me to make due to my situation.
In older batteries you had to "use the cells or lose them" situation where it was better, to at least occasionally, completely run down the device rather than doing partial cycles. These days, charging @ 50% 2 times is equivalent to 1 cycle of 100% with less long-term "stress" to the battery.
borchgrevink said:
To me it seems like the phone will NOT use the battery as long as it is plugged in. On my phone the battery meter never drops under 100 % when connected.
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Same for me.
The reason it tells you to unplug the charger when done charging has nothing to do with battery. It is to save power. Battery chargers still draw some power just because they are plugged in. And in these green times it is ofcourse very popular to have warnings everywhere so you can claim to a green company. And every lithium ion and polymer battery contains electronics designed to protect them from abuse. Including over charging. So that will never be a problem on any phone unless you have a defective battery.
Is there a way to disable the message telling you to unplug the charger? I charge my phone overnight and use it as a clock, but when I wake up in the morning and try to see the time there's this huge popup in the middle of the screen telling me my battery has charged.
Joans said:
Is there a way to disable the message telling you to unplug the charger? I charge my phone overnight and use it as a clock, but when I wake up in the morning and try to see the time there's this huge popup in the middle of the screen telling me my battery has charged.
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I think I read that the newest, or maybe just a random middle since something has superseded it, firmware fixed this.
interesting topic thx Beards for sharing your insights.
Overcharging - read the manual
Guys, if you will read the manual that came with your SGS, it says there that "DO NOT OVERCHARGE YOUR BATTERY FOR MORE THAN TWO WEEKS". It obviously means that the battery can be overcharged for more than a day as long as it is not more than 2 weeks ( I doubt if someone will be able to do that). So that confirms also that we can recharge anytime and not necessarily have it done to zero before charging. Hope this helps also
i've pretty much quit worrying about the overcharge after the first month of usage
i was following the auto pop up message, just because i wanted to conserve battery
but having 3 spare battery made me though it's futile
and it was extreme annoying to wakeup in the middle of the night, just to unplug it
it was awesome the day i found that patch on the forum to disable the annoying pop up alert that your battery is full.
now i can sleep the whole night without the alert coming online, and rest at ease knowing if the phone actually alerts me, it'll be a phone call or something important, not some annoying "unplug me plz!" message

Your battery gauge is lying to you (and it's not such a bad thing)

I realize that much of this is common knowledge on XDA. Still, every day I see people post about how their phone "loses" 10% as soon as it comes off the charger. I also have friends who can't understand why their battery drains so quickly. Trying to explain this to people without hard numbers is often met with doubt, so I figured that I'd actually plot it out with real data.
So it's not a piece that is optimized for this audience, but I hope that you find it interesting.
--------------------------------------------------
Your Smartphone is Lying to You
(and it's not such a bad thing)
Climbing out of bed, about to start your day, you unplug your new smartphone from its wall charger and quickly check your email. You've left it plugged in overnight, and the battery gauge shows 100%. After a quick shower, you remember that you forgot to send your client a file last night. You pick up your phone again, but the battery gauge now reads 90%. A 10% drop in 10 minutes? The phone must be defective, right?
A common complaint about today's smartphones is their short battery life compared to older cell phones. Years ago, if you accidentally left your charger at home, your phone could still make it through a weeklong vacation with life to spare (I did it more than once). With the newest phones on the market, you might be lucky enough to make it through a weekend.
And why should we expect anything else? Phones used to have a very short list of features: make and receive phone calls. Today we use them for email, web surfing, GPS navigation, photos, video, games, and a host of other tasks. They used to sport tiny displays, while we now have giant touch screens with bright and vibrant colors. All of these features come at a cost: large energy requirements.
Interestingly enough, improvements in battery management technology have compounded the average user's perception of this problem. Older phones were rather inelegant in their charging behavior; usually filling the battery to capacity and then switching to a trickle current to maintain the highest charge possible. This offered the highest usage time in the short-term, but was damaging the battery over the course of ownership. As explained at Battery University, "The time at which the battery stays at [maximum charge] should be as short as possible. Prolonged high voltage promotes corrosion, especially at elevated temperatures."[1]
This is why many new phones will "lose" up to 10% within a few minutes of coming off the charger. The reality is that the battery was only at 100% capacity for a brief moment, after which the battery management system allowed it to slowly dip down to around 90%. Leaving the phone plugged in overnight does not make a difference: the phone only uses the wall current to maintain a partial charge state.
To monitor this, I installed CurrentWidget on my HTC ADR6300 (Droid Incredible), an app that can log how much electric current is being drawn from the battery or received from the charger. Setting it to record log entries every 10 seconds, I have collected a few days worth of data. While many variables are involved (phone hardware, ROM, kernel, etc) and no two devices will perform exactly the same, the trends that I will describe are becoming more common in new phones. This is not just isolated to a single platform or a single manufacturer.
Chart 1 shows system reported battery levels over the course of one night, with the phone plugged in to a charger. Notice that as the battery level approaches 100%, the charging current gradually decreases. After a full charge is reached, wall current is cut completely, with the phone switching back to the battery for all of its power. It isn't until about two hours later that you can see the phone starts receiving wall current again, and even then it is only in brief bursts.
The steep drop in reported battery seen past the 6.5 hour mark shows the phone being unplugged. While the current draw does increase at this point (since the phone is being used), it still cannot account for the reported 6% depletion in 3 minutes. It should also be obvious that maintaining a 100% charge state is impossible given the long spans in which the phone is only operating on battery power.
Using the data from CurrentWidget, however, it is quite easy to project the actual battery state. Starting with the assumption that the first battery percentage reading is accurate, each subsequent point is calculated based on mA draw and time. Chart 2 includes this projection.
Now we can see that the 6% drop after unplugging is simply the battery gauge catching up with reality.
The phone manufacturers essentially have three choices:
1. Use older charging styles which actually maintain a full battery, thereby decreasing its eventual life
2. Use new charging methods and have an accurate battery gauge
3. Use new charging methods and have the inaccurate battery gauge
Option one has clearly fallen out of favor as it prematurely wears devices. Option two, while being honest, would most likely be met with many complaints. After all, how many people want to see their phone draining down to 90% while it is still plugged in? Option three therefore offers an odd compromise. Maybe phone companies think that users will be less likely to worry about a quick drop off the charger than they will worry about a "defective" charger that doesn't keep their phone at 100% while plugged in.
Bump It. Or Should You?
One technique that has gained popularity in the user community is "bump charging." To bump charge a device, turn it off completely, and plug it into a charger. Wait until the indicator light shows a full charge (on the ADR6300, for example, the charging LED changes from amber to green) but do not yet turn the device back on. Instead, disconnect and immediately reconnect the power cord. The device will now accept more charge before saying it is full. This disconnect/reconnect process can be repeated multiple times, each time squeezing just a little bit more into the battery. Does it work?
The following chart plots battery depletion after the device has received a hefty bump charge (6 cycles) and then turned on to use battery power. Note that the system does not show the battery dropping from 100% until well over an hour of unplugged use, at which point it starts to steadily decline. Again, however, it should be obvious that the battery gauge is not syncing up with reality. How could the rate of depletion be increasing over the first 5 hours while the rate of current draw is relatively steady? And why does the projected battery line separate from the reported levels, but then exactly mirror the later rises and falls?
The answer, of course, is that bump charging definitely works. Rather than anchoring our projected values to the first data point of 100%, what happens if we anchor against a later point in the plot?
Aligning the data suggests that a heavy bump charge increases initial capacity by approximately 15%. Note that the only other time that the lines separate in this graph was once again when the phone was put on the charger and topped up to 100%. Just as with the first set of graphs, the phone kept reporting 100% until it was unplugged, dropped rapidly, and again caught up with our projections.
So what does it all mean?
If you absolutely need the highest capacity on a device like this, you will need to bump charge. There are currently people experimenting with "fixes" for this, but I have yet to see one that works. Be warned, however, that repeated bump charging will wear your battery faster and begin to reduce its capacity. If you are a "power user" who will buy a new battery a few months from now anyway, this presumably isn't a concern. If you are an average consumer who uses a device for a few years, I would recommend that you stay away from bump charging. The bottom line is that you don't really "need" to do it unless you are actually depleting your battery to 0% on a regular basis.
If you are someone who can top off your phone on a regular basis, do it. Plug it in when you're at home. Plug it in when you're at your desk. As explained by Battery University, "Several partial discharges with frequent recharges are better for lithium-ion than one deep one. Recharging a partially charged lithium-ion does not cause harm because there is no memory."[2]
Beyond that, the best advice I can offer is to stop paying such close attention to your battery gauge and to just use your phone. Charge it whenever you can, and then stop obsessing over the exact numbers. If you really need more usage time, buy an extended-capacity battery and use it normally.
Pretty nice to know why it drops from 100% so fast now .....THANKS!
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App
Well written ..even prior to the data presentation!
Are the images not posted or am I doing something wrong?
Great read, well thought out and explained.
The only thing I'll add is that while there isn't a "memory affect" on our batteries, it is still recommended to do a full charge/discharge (don't let it get to <5% though) about once every 3 months.
Thanks for the kind words, gents.
spatton said:
Are the images not posted or am I doing something wrong?
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Click to collapse
You should be able to see them embedded in the post. You can try reading it directly from my site: http://byrong.com/PowerTesting/
I'm not currently aware of any issues with my hosting, so hopefully it shows up OK for people.
toosurreal01 said:
The only thing I'll add is that while there isn't a "memory affect" on our batteries, it is still recommended to do a full charge/discharge (don't let it get to <5% though) about once every 3 months.
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Click to collapse
Good point for many devices which may learn the wrong battery stats if they are never depleted. I am still not sure how this may or may not apply to our devices, so I hesitate to comment on it one way or the other.
I hope someone takes the time to delve more deeply into the battery stats that our devices record. Given the fact that we can wipe them using clockwork recovery, we are at least aware of where/how they are being kept.
That brings up another point worth mentioning, by the way: some people claim that wiping battery stats after a bump charge is a "fix" to increase the total charge that our phones will later apply. This has not been my experience. I have bumped/wiped in accordance with the various tutorials out there, but even afterward I have still found a large difference between a subsequent bump-charging and regular charging.
For some reason, my employer does not like your site and as such, I could not see he images.
Thanks for taking the time to do this. You confirmed my suspicions that I never documented but certainly experienced.
My take on the battery thing now, especially after reading this:
Actively and aggressively seek chargers
Don't look at he specific % of battery, when it gets yellow, get more aggressive
Relax
Use it in the morning, charge it while you shower - better than running out the door.
Great article!
I used to bump charge now if I'm near a charger I just throw it on for a few minutes. I also always carry a spare battery on me.
Sent from my Incredible using XDA App
Very nice.
I have a couple questions though. So on older phones, leaving it plugged in and it hit 100%, but was still getting full current from the charger for the remainder of the night, damages the battery right? so bump charging is doing the same thing, but not really damaging it as much, becuase we're unplugging it as soon as the light turns green, so its "at 100%" but we arent leaving it plugged in for hours after its green.
Excellent read. Very informative and well written!!
very well written. thank you, sir
spatton said:
For some reason, my employer does not like your site and as such, I could not see he images.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow, I'm a little flattered. This is the first time I've heard of an employer blocking my site.
ufvj217 said:
So on older phones, leaving it plugged in and it hit 100%, but was still getting full current from the charger for the remainder of the night, damages the battery right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't have hard data for my older devices like I do for this phone, so my answers to this (and your following questions) are a mixture of anecdote, reading, and conjecture.
I don't think that the older devices were still getting full current after hitting 100% but rather some sort of trickle charge to keep them topped off. Battery chemistry itself will limit the charging current that can be applied as the battery approaches capacity.
Depending on the device and its management system, damage could come from too much charge being applied, or it could simply come from keeping the battery at the highest charge level possible for prolonged periods. That may sound like the same thing, but technically it's not.
Batteries are wear items, and even use under ideal conditions will eventually kill them. As shown on Battery University's page on prolonging lithium-based batteries, however, even minor decreases in the final charge level will greatly increase the number of cycles that a battery can endure (note figure 2)
ufvj217 said:
so bump charging is doing the same thing, but not really damaging it as much, becuase we're unplugging it as soon as the light turns green, so its "at 100%" but we arent leaving it plugged in for hours after its green.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not 100% sure whether:
Bump-charging is simply charging the battery to its physical capacity, which is greater than the capacity that our software thinks is appropriate;
Bump-charging is actually applying a charge to the battery that is outside of the rated specs for the battery; or
Some mix of 1 & 2
Also, since I can't use any logging tools while the phone is off, I'm not sure how the current behaves once the phone hits 'green' while off.
I therefore don't want to make a hard guess at the three options listed, as I don't want to spread false information. With that said, I think it is apparent through both testing and real-world use that bump-charging applies a charge that is higher than what is allowed when all of the phone's protections are "awake." Given that, we have to ask ourselves why the waking protections are stricter.
If you are inclined to believe that the manufacturer is setting limits that are too low, in an effort to prolong cycle life (or limit liability), then maybe bump-charging isn't too bad.
If you are inclined to believe that the manufacturer chose the charging limits for a good reason, and has the best interest of the consumer in mind, then bump-charging should be considered problematic.
I don't know if one of these is absolutely true over the other, but my life is easier without bump-charging, so I just avoid it. That's a personal choice though. I'm not trying to advance a position here as much as I'm trying to spread information and spark discussion.
Thanks to everyone for taking the time to read, and for your questions and comments.
Well put. I rarely bump charge myself, sometimes once i get to work (its at 88-90% by this time, 7am) ill charge it back up, then power it off and bump charge it a couple times. depending on what ill be doing that day after work. since im at a desk though all day, i usually just use it, when it gets to about 50 or so, ill plug it back in, etc. that seems to work fine for me. i do have the htc 2150 battery as well
Like you said, most people probably knew most of that, but still great to see it well written and explained.
Great job on this, I'll most definitely be passing it along to people who ask me what's going on.
Again, well written and very well explained.
Thanks
Thank you!
This has been perplexing me for some time now. Thanks for the info!
Well if youre looking for a batt fix that fixes this issue, you have to take a look in the Nexus and Desire forums. The Desire has it working for sure and I'm not sure about the Nexus. Unfortunately, their fix cannot be applied to our phones because we use a different battery driver...>.< sucks.
And bump charging works sometimes, idk why people turn off their phone to bump charge, thats actually worse than bump charging it when the phone is on. Bump charging when the phone is on is the best thing, the reason why is because percentage means actually nothing with these phones. THe percentage is read from the batterystats.bin file (I think..), which can easily be manipulated. Bump charging works because it rewrites that file once it hits 100% and at the same time, charges back to the highest voltage possible.
I've been working on a fix for our phones (i personally dont own an Incredible, I own an Evo and they use the same driver) and I'm pretty much close. Been on it 24/7 for the past few weeks and all I have to deal with now is the charger timer that seems to reset at a certain time that I cant seem to find yet. This fix should also calibrate the battery on each charge so that you will no longer need to wipe stats or bump charge or do any of that stuff.
so you can charge with the phone on until the led is green, unplug, plug back in (with phone still on) and itll change back to amber for a while?
ufvj217 said:
so you can charge with the phone on until the led is green, unplug, plug back in (with phone still on) and itll change back to amber for a while?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if you unplug and plug back in instantly it wont do jack for ya. You gotta unplug, wait until you hit 99% and then plug it back in and wait for 100%. Doing that while the phone is on is best because if you've ever noticed, the batterystats gets messed up while the phone is off for the most part (ex: Recovery mode and stuff). Also, idk if this is true for the Inc, but with the Evo, if you have the phone on the charger while its off and power it on while the LED is green, it doesnt stay charging, it goes off the charger to use some battery to power on and then it charges and that messes with the batterystats which messes with the voltage for some odd reason.
Very nicely done. There are always going to be people who don't get it, but this is easily the best synopsis I've seen yet. People get all wrapped up in numbers, instead of actual use, and the percentage becomes way more important than it should be. Just do whatever you need to do (keep a charger handy, get a bigger battery) to support your needs.
I'm one of the fortunate ones... between the tweaks I've done with custom kernels and whatnot and the fact that I'm not a real heavy user, I have no problem making it from morning to bedtime with more than 50% remaining. And you know what? I don't care whether my phone's at 70% or 10% when I plug it in before bed. As long as it makes it that far, I'm happy. I could easily go two days between charges, but I don't bother, because there really isn't any point other than to gloat about my great battery life, which doesn't impress anyone. I've got a charger, and I use it every night. It works for me.
One of the best posts i ever read here! Kudos from an electrical engineer

On Charge More Than 15 Hours a Day Hurting Battery?

I charge my phone overnight, from around 10PM to 8AM, then I leave my phone charging in its dock from about 9AM to 5PM during the work day...
any harm in doing this? I'd like my phone to last quite a while, as we are currently in a serious relationship, and I don't plan on letting her go....
What hurts your phone battery is not charging it but keeping it on high temperatures for a long time. And guess what keeps it on high temperatures: yep, you guessed it, charging for a long time.
Sent from my HTC Desire C using xda app-developers app
While it always depends on the charging circuit, keeping your battery topped up by constant charging (even trickle maintenance) will reduce the voltage level that it can be charged to. This will take quite some time to notice, and several deeper charging cycles will "repair" this to a certain extent. But with any battery, keeping it any constant level will reduce its charging capacity, and continual charging (trickle or otherwise) will "cook" the batteries chemical make up sooner.
To do what you're doing everyday will absolutely have an impact on your battery's health over the long term. But to exactly what extent is based on several factors I don't have specific data on.
Absolutely, our phone battery is designed for mobile usage, not to be tethered to a charger constantly. Constant charging is unnecessary, wasteful and leads to early battery demise.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda premium
And aren't our high end modern phones also designed to trickle charge when it gets to %100, so no harm can come to it?
caliber177 said:
And aren't our high end modern phones also designed to trickle charge when it gets to %100, so no harm can come to it?
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Click to collapse
I suppose it depends on how you define "harm". Read my post above again. Any level of current that is continually supplied to a charged battery will accelerate the aging of it.
Even if the charger were to shut off completely, and then resume charging at a certain level (which I believe is the behavior of the LG wireless charger at 95%), continually discharging and recharging from 95% to 100% is probably not ideal.
But all of this is probably not all that great of an affect in the grand scheme of things. You're not gonna kill your battery in a matter of months by leaving on the charger all of the time. Yes you will accelerate the degradation of the battery's health over time, but if your phone is in use enough so the battery is being discharged regularly between charges, I doubt that you will notice it for a long time, if at all.
I can say that if you simply leave it charging 24/7 without any other kind of use you will be able to measure degradation surprisingly soon. As to how noticeable it will be is very hard to say.
I use and suggest Battery Monitor Widget from 3c. It takes the guess work out of what you see when you're charging and what happens to the phone when it reaches 100%.
As the phone gradually reaches 90%, charging is noticeably slowed. From about 92-100% it trickle charges from around 300 to 200 to 100mA until it reaches 100%. Charger stops charging when full and lets the battery level drop slightly before charging it back to 100%. You're constantly topping it off at full and batteries of this chemistry don't like that.
As far as I can recall, these types of batteries actually thrive on being run down and cycled back up. The only catch is, don't run them down until it's completely dead. You've significantly cut the life of your battery if you do it quite often.
To answer your question, it probably doesn't hurt that much. If you do it for months, maybe years. Yeah, you'll see some degradation.
desynch- said:
As far as I can recall, these types of batteries actually thrive on being run down and cycled back up.
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Click to collapse
I would correct this and say the battery loves being near the median. Store at 40% battery! 100%-0% is bad... 100%-10% is better, 90/10 is better etc...
80/40 is really good for preserving charge cycles. Basically, charging at 30% back up to 70% is better than letting it go down to 0%
Note: this is a REALLY good battery in this phone. Just USE it until you feel it's dying too soon and buy a new one. Batteries are cheap and will be cheaper in 2-3 years.
But we can't buy battery for this phone.. I always let it run down to 14% that's when the warning message pops up.. Then back up, charges in 2 1/2 hrs then I leave it on an hour more until I leave from work so I could have a full phone.. Note, I work over nights, so its dead at around 2 or 3 am sometimes, then I leave at 6 am..
Sent from my Nexus 4
Please... I would say we can in a few months! Most of us have already voided the warranty
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda premium
Most of us in here don't keep our phones long enough to notice any battery degradation..
Just charge it as often as you can but unplug it when it's full.
To be safe I would let the phone idle off of the work charger and only plug in at home.
dralways said:
To be safe I would let the phone idle off of the work charger and only plug in at home.
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Click to collapse
Agreed, I only charge once a day and it's usually sufficient, if your a heavy user and are concerned about the phone dying at night, let the phone decharge normally throughout the day and plug it in an hour or an hour and a half before you leave, however long it takes to charge the device after a workday's worth of usage (Whatever that is for you)
I do this myself if I'm using my phone heavily during the day and know I'll be out all night. Like some said you'll probably never even notice the degradation, but when you know it's not good for the battery in the strictest sense why risk it, the phones aren't designed to be charging 2/3rd of the time, they are designed to be charged and then taken off the charger and used.

[INFO] Maintain Long-term Battery HEALTH

This is a topic that I don't think has been covered here yet, but is very important. Especially because we cannot replace our batteries.
I'm interested in finding out the best way to prolong the life of our batteries. In other words, I want it to continue holding a charge as close to specs as possible.
I am NOT talking about extending the use we get out of one full charge.
Upon googling, I found these two useful articles:
http://lifehacker.com/5875162
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries
From reading those, this is what I gather:
We should not leave our devices plugged in at 100%
Best practice would be to use phone until 50% then charge
Charging to 100% actually causes the battery stress. Charging to 90% or so is better.
I think these few facts are right, since my Thinkpad has a function that stops charging at 90% and doesnt start charging again until below 60% (or whatever values you choose).
What I'm not sure about, is what has HTC done to help prolong battery health?
Does our phone automatically switch to using power straight from the charger at 100% instead of charging and draining the battery simultaneously?
Does any phone do that?
Battery health is likely the reason why our phones charge so slowly. Slow charging = less stress = better battery health.
I've also emailed HTC to see if they have any tips. Their manual contain no tips.
UPDATE:
Okay, so HTC got back to me.. amazingly quick. lol
Its a long email, which I wont paste here, but the one important part is this:
It is better to unplugged your phone from the wall once the battery reach 100% and once the battery indicates that the battery percentage is about 15% you should plug the phone to the wall charger.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is what the guy said, word for word. The rest of the email diverges and talks about general battery saving tips.
So what the HTC rep says seems to fall in line with the three points I got from the articles I read.
Only difference being HTC recommends going all the way down to 15% before charging.. Hmm
Honestly, considering most of us get a new phone after a year or so, we're not going to see any huge hits in battery performance even if we don't follow these "rules". Not to mention I'm REALLY not going to wake up in the middle of the night to unplug my phone just so it doesn't stay at 100% all night. Just charge the battery in whatever way's the most convenient.
Useful post thanks for sharing.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda app-developers app
jason27131 said:
Honestly, considering most of us get a new phone after a year or so, we're not going to see any huge hits in battery performance even if we don't follow these "rules". Not to mention I'm REALLY not going to wake up in the middle of the night to unplug my phone just so it doesn't stay at 100% all night. Just charge the battery in whatever way's the most convenient.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You might be right. But I bet there are a few people out there who are on 2-year contracts or just don't think they'll give up their HTC One so easily.
I personally love the design of the device and want it to last as long as possible.
I haven't felt this way about a phone since my Xperia X1, which I did eventually give up because I already replaced the housing twice, the mainboard was starting to have issues, and Windows Mobile 6 was just **** lol.
Anyway, under normal use these batteries should be fine for a bit. But unintentional abuse can wear them down faster than you think. At least thats what I get from these articles. And thats been my experience in the past with laptops and cellphones.
I too probably wont be waking up at night to unplug my phone or buying a timer to automatically stop charging my phone. But when I can adhere to these guidelines, I'll try my best to.
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jonny68, no problem, glad this is useful.
These batteries have electronics to protect them, you wont be doing the battery any damage how you use it other than using your phone a lot and putting a lot of cycles through it. They never let you drain your battery 100% and they never let your charge 100%, it just shows 0-100% for the ease of the consumer. You cannot over charge your phone, if you could there would be a lot of issues out there.
Fact is just use your phone how you use it.
Terrorantula said:
These batteries have electronics to protect them, you wont be doing the battery any damage how you use it other than using your phone a lot and putting a lot of cycles through it. They never let you drain your battery 100% and they never let your charge 100%, it just shows 0-100% for the ease of the consumer. You cannot over charge your phone, if you could there would be a lot of issues out there.
Fact is just use your phone how you use it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But that isnt entirely true.
Yes, our batteries now have mechanisms to stop overcharge and deep discharge.
But these same mechanisms do not provide longevity. Instead, our batteries are geared more towards providing the most use per charge without damage.
It is done this way for obvious reasons. It also means we have a choice about whether or not we want to sacrifice a small bit of convenience or capacity now, for a better battery later in time.
For example, this chart from the second article I linked shows that if you charge only to 90%, your battery can go through double the charge/discharge cycles before dropping to 70% health as compared to charging all the way to 100%
Quote from the article:
"Should I disconnect my laptop from the power grid when not in use?” many ask. Under normal circumstances this should not be necessary because once the lithium-ion battery is full the charger discontinues charge and only engages when the battery voltage drops. Most users do not remove the AC power and I like to believe that this practice is safe.
Like i said, this is all pointless, because 100% of us charge our phones overnight, and 0% of us are willing to wake up 3 hours into our sleep to unplug it at 90% or 100%.
jason27131 said:
Those talks about voltages, not charge level btw.
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Click to collapse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_charge
Reading voltages is one of many methods of determining how much charge is left within a battery. Hence the other column in that table.
You cant just stick a meter on a battery and read how many mAHs are left.
EDIT:
jason27131 said:
Quote from the article:
"Should I disconnect my laptop from the power grid when not in use?” many ask. Under normal circumstances this should not be necessary because once the lithium-ion battery is full the charger discontinues charge and only engages when the battery voltage drops. Most users do not remove the AC power and I like to believe that this practice is safe.
Like i said, this is all pointless, because 100% of us charge our phones overnight, and 0% of us are willing to wake up 3 hours into our sleep to unplug it at 90% or 100%.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Right, and that is true for some laptops as some of them do tend to have more sophisticated battery management software/hardware. I mentioned my own Thinkpad and its functions in this OP.
I was curious as to if our phones do the same thing as laptops; disengage the battery at 100% charge and run off AC only. But it does not, as per HTC's reply suggesting phones should be unplugged once at 100%.
And for your other point, I already addressed that. I'm not saying this is essential or that everyone should follow these guidelines. But to some people this does matter, and this post is for them.
As for myself, I'll use yesterday as an example.
I got home from work at around 6:30PM, my phone was down to 30-40%, so I plugged it in.
Before I went to bed, the phone had hit 93%, so I unplugged it and left it there with wifi on.
I wake up, its lost like 3-5%, no big deal.
Around lunch time its dropped to 30% at work, so I plugged it in.
It reached 89% a few minutes ago, so I unplugged it.
So when its convenient for me to do so, I follow these guidelines. If I know I have a long day ahead with no access to a charger, or if I need to charge overnight, then so be it, I'll let it sit at 100% until I have to leave.
Technically speaking this is all correct and a guideline to try to follow. That's all. If it's impossible to do, the phone will be okay. That being said, I am of the belief that if there is a better way to do something, we should at least try to do that. I for one love this device and may never sell it. This is one of those iconic builds that I wonder how much more of its class we will see. Even right now as the music pours out of these front speakers, my love for it grows.
I just wanted to add my 2 cents. And this little tidbit:
Every 100mv less than full charge you apply, will double the lifespan of the battery. So, a rough approximation,
Charge the phone to 100% (4.3v) , discharge to about 15% You'll get roughly 250-500 cycles.
Charge to 90% (4.2v) down to 15, you'll get 500-1000 cycles.
80% (4.1) 1000-2000 cycles.
Cycle count will increase by avoiding deeper discharges...
In a perfect world, you could potentially get 2000-3000 cycles by
1. Charging to 80% or ~ 4.1v
2. Avoiding discharge below 30% or ~ 3.6v
3. Avoid extreme temperature changes and prolonged exposure to temperatures above 45c
Most of this comes from personal experience and much research. Check out battery university if you get some time.
Sent from my HTC One using xda app-developers app
By last do you mean until the battery reaches 70% maximum capacity? Honestly, at 1000 cycles, thats already good enough since thats 3 years worth of charging at roughly 1 cycle a day. I doubt I will keep this phone past 2 years.
m0nz said:
Technically speaking this is all correct and a guideline to try to follow. That's all. If it's impossible to do, the phone will be okay. That being said, I am of the belief that if there is a better way to do something, we should at least try to do that. I for one love this device and may never sell it. This is one of those iconic builds that I wonder how much more of its class we will see. Even right now as the music pours out of these front speakers, my love for it grows.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's exactly how I feel, and the reason why I started the thread :victory:
Your figures fall close to the ones in the articles, so it sounds bout right.
Im curious though, does unplugging/replugging have any effect on the charge/discharge cycle?
For example, if i'm charging my phone but i need it for something, I unplug it, use it, and plug it back in.
That shouldn't have any effect am I right?
You have to define what you mean when you talk about how long a battery "lasts".
We're specifically talking about deterioration in capacity over time.
The battery will "last" for 100,000 cycles in the sense that you will still be able to charge it and it will still be able to power a device on its own for a period of time. The question is how short does that period of time get before you say "this battery isn't useful anymore"
This came up in another thread and the threshold discussed there was 80% of original capacity. Apparently HTC rates the One's battery "lifetime" as 500-700 charge cycles until the battery capacity drops to 80% of its original level. (You also have to define charge cycle: charging from 0-100 or anything that adds up to that, such as charging from 40 to 90 on one day followed by charging from 40 to 90 on another day - counts as one "cycle".)
So this battery could "last" - in the sense that it will still have 80% of its useful capacity - for 3000 cycles if you follow some of the more conservative approaches above.
I don't know how typical my behavior is, my last three phones were bought via two year contracts, each phone was replaced after about one year, when the next-generation model appealed to me.
Don't imagine too many buyers of "flagship" devices keep their phone for over two years.
Sent from my HTC One using xda app-developers app
NxNW said:
You have to define what you mean when you talk about how long a battery "lasts".
We're specifically talking about deterioration in capacity over time.
The battery will "last" for 100,000 cycles in the sense that you will still be able to charge it and it will still be able to power a device on its own for a period of time. The question is how short does that period of time get before you say "this battery isn't useful anymore"
This came up in another thread and the threshold discussed there was 80% of original capacity. Apparently HTC rates the One's battery "lifetime" as 500-700 charge cycles until the battery capacity drops to 80% of its original level. (You also have to define charge cycle: charging from 0-100 or anything that adds up to that, such as charging from 40 to 90 on one day followed by charging from 40 to 90 on another day - counts as one "cycle".)
So this battery could "last" - in the sense that it will still have 80% of its useful capacity - for 3000 cycles if you follow some of the more conservative approaches above.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hm, yea I should update my OP with that info. The articles I referenced seem to define a battery's lifetime as the number of cycles it can go through before hitting 70% of original max capacity.
paul_59 said:
I don't know how typical my behavior is, my last three phones were bought via two year contracts, each phone was replaced after about one year, when the next-generation model appealed to me.
Don't imagine too many buyers of "flagship" devices keep their phone for over two years.
Sent from my HTC One using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not sure, but in the past I've always seemed to kill my phone's batteries before I replaced the phone itself lol.
If I look back now, that was probably because I always drained to 0% and let my phone stay plugged in at 100%. So basically I was always doing the worst thing possible, short of literally cooking my battery >.>
Nippero said:
Hm, yea I should update my OP with that info. The articles I referenced seem to define a battery's lifetime as the number of cycles it can go through before hitting 70% of original max capacity.
Not sure, but in the past I've always seemed to kill my phone's batteries before I replaced the phone itself lol.
If I look back now, that was probably because I always drained to 0% and let my phone stay plugged in at 100%. So basically I was always doing the worst thing possible, short of literally cooking my battery >.>
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I really don't think that's it. I have done that with EVERY phone i've had, GS3, Nexus, etc. After a year i didn't see any major battery difference, and I plug it in at least once a day, sometimes 2 times.
jason27131 said:
I really don't think that's it. I have done that with EVERY phone i've had, GS3, Nexus, etc. After a year i didn't see any major battery difference, and I plug it in at least once a day, sometimes 2 times.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The difference may be how much we use our phones then, because with my last phones I typically used my phone quite frequently at work since many websites are blocked. Including open source code sites which actually help me with my job... stupid corporate proxy.
Anyway, I used to leave my G2 and Photon Q plugged in all day at work and at night. So thats 16hrs of being plugged in per day... Probably wasnt good for them.
But hey, if you're right and I'm wrong, I'll be even happier cause that means my battery will be fine no matter what I do lol.
However, battery deterioration isn't a myth, and it does happen. Only question is, how much does it happen.
Nippero said:
The difference may be how much we use our phones then, because with my last phones I typically used my phone quite frequently at work since many websites are blocked. Including open source code sites which actually help me with my job... stupid corporate proxy.
Anyway, I used to leave my G2 and Photon Q plugged in all day at work and at night. So thats 16hrs of being plugged in per day... Probably wasnt good for them.
But hey, if you're right and I'm wrong, I'll be even happier cause that means my battery will be fine no matter what I do lol.
However, battery deterioration isn't a myth, and it does happen. Only question is, how much does it happen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ya i tend to just leave it overnight for about 7 to 8 hours. Sometimes during the day i might plug it in for an hour or so to grab some juice on my s3, something i haven't had to do on my One which is awesome (get about 2 days worth). Battery deterioration definitely does happen, but hey, if I have enough juice at the end of a year to still last me a day, I'm happy
I'm always on a 2 yr contract, no need to really worry about this, but good info none the less.
dont worry op .. ill put my battery in the many " to be taken care off" list.
ill make sure its in the list.
somewhere
If the ONe is anything like the HoX, the charger stops charging at 100%, then lets it drop to 95% before restarting trickle charge. However, the 95% battery state isn't immediately shown on screen, so many people use their phone then see a whole 5% jump downwards almost immediately. I haven't paid much attention to the HO yet, so I can't comment

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