Database Users

Bad battery?

Today I went to use the GPS on my phone and it lasted about 2 min battery still showed at 60% but phone just keeps turning off. When you turn it back on sometimes it shows 50-60% sometimes 1-2% I turned my phone off and let it charge for 4 hours same thing after just a few min on GPS and I can't take a picture with flash at all when it is acting up. The only reason I'm not sure if the battery is the problem is issue looks to be hit and miss right now my phone is taking pictures with flash just fine on battery but I'm not sure how long it will last. My battery is over a year old so I feel that it may be the problem. Has anyone had this problem I don't want to get a new battery just to find out something else is wrong with the phone.

Let me guess:
Two possibilities.
A) gps cable is not plugged correctly so that it might cause an electric jam with other components?
B) a heavy rom sided crash when turning on the gps?
Sent from my Black Ice'd Glacier using XDA App

fosunite said:
Let me guess:
Two possibilities.
A) gps cable is not plugged correctly so that it might cause an electric jam with other components?
B) a heavy rom sided crash when turning on the gps?
Sent from my Black Ice'd Glacier using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well it is not just the GPS but I have not checked the cable. I'm not in a place that I can feel ok taking the phone apart. The phone turns off when using the camera flash sometimes so I'm 98% sure it is just the battery that has gone bad. I'm waiting for my new battery in the mail and will update. As of right now I can use the phone and GPS but I can't expect to get more then 5min out of it. I was just shocked at how it stopped working overnight.

Well you can try out with the new battery. It is at least safer than opening the phone. Let s put the openphone stuff into the worst case.
Sent from my Black Ice'd Glacier using XDA App

OK so I got my new batteries in from HERE and everything is working right again. The new batteries are both 1700mah and the battery dock/usb charger is great. I still need to cycle both batteries a few times but so far under super load (gps,4g,games,wifi,flashlight, camera all at once for 30+ min) I have not put more then a 30% drain on them.
On the the next question I do feel that my stock battery should have lasted me longer (lasted less then 6 months). That and my problems started out of the blue with no real warning or loss of charge time. I was doing some reading about Lithium-Ion batteries and I'm now sure my nonstop ROM flashing and some of the "safe" overcharge tweaks caused this problem. After every ROM flash I would calibrate my battery by charging over night deleting the bin and then letting the phone die to the point I could not get it to turn on. Come to find out this is VERY BAD for Lithium-Ion batteries. The next thing i did was use the overcharge again VERY BAD because it can lead to build up inside the battery. In fact to get max life out of a Lithium-Ion it should only be charged to around 80%.
Lesson learned only flash ROM's at 100% battery so you have no need to do a battery cal, and never use a overcharge "tweak" unless you want to spend some money / time without your phone as you wait for a new battery. Missed some great pictures of my kids this weekend happy to have the extra battery now.

Take the battery out and look at it's profile. If it seems a bit swollen, replace it. I had a battery that would say like 60% and then seconds later my phone would shut down. Turns out my battery was kaput and had 'popped'. I picked up a used OEM one and a couple cheap ones off ebay. The OEM one, is where it's at. The others were crap even though they claimed 1800 mAh

Dieselboypunker said:
Take the battery out and look at it's profile. If it seems a bit swollen, replace it. I had a battery that would say like 60% and then seconds later my phone would shut down. Turns out my battery was kaput and had 'popped'. I picked up a used OEM one and a couple cheap ones off ebay. The OEM one, is where it's at. The others were crap even though they claimed 1800 mAh
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm very happy with my new ones working great and much longer lasting then stock. And yes my old one is a bit swollen. I had nothing to compare it to at the time so I had no clue.

yup... new battery time
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oak25 said:
yup... new battery time
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How old is your battery?!?

My battery is 18 months old. I am thinking the reboots are due to the battery. I charge it all night... 100%.. 30 minutes later it reboots at 1% battery. So I will be buying a new battery soon.

oak25 said:
My battery is 18 months old. I am thinking the reboots are due to the battery. I charge it all night... 100%.. 30 minutes later it reboots at 1% battery. So I will be buying a new battery soon.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah that is the same thing mine was doing. Good thing they are cheap.

[Official] battery stats thread

Once we get charged up (and back down), let's see how the battery life in the S4 compares to the quad core.
Please make sure to include your screen on time, as that is the best indicator of light/heavy use.

pleasantly surprised
I can't believe how good the battery has been so far, 84% after 13hours (over night)
I am a light user. still - that is impressive for stock. I never got close to that with my OG Epic on stock which was usually 3% per hour.

davidmumper said:
Once we get charged up (and back down), let's see how the battery life in the S4 compares to the quad core.
Please make sure to include your screen on time, as that is the best indicator of light/heavy use.
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Click to collapse
Mostly on WiFi
Screen brightness set to max
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Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

1h, 3M Battery down to 76%.
screen on for 38 min, 33% of battery usage.

Heres mine on a first day full charge...

Not too bad for first day with moderate to heavy use!

This is heavy usage. Screen on time of 3.5 hours. Downloading Max Payne and a lot of apps. Downloading and listening to audio on Google chrome. Lots of Pulse usage. Games, YouTube, and 30 minutes of phone calls.
*edit* Bluetooth and wifi on all day long.
Sent from my SPH-L710 using XDA

More information is better for those of us living vicariously through you guys. Remember to include screen-on time. Thanks!

Here's mine for the first full day. Should my cell idle be taking up that much of the battery?
Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

one thing im NOT noticing here is Allshare Service taking up a high percentage in your guys battery stats...
on mine its been at 7-9% and i dont know why, i have something waking up my phone when the screen is off and it might be that... ive forced stop, but i check later and its active again, ive disabled the service and the Allshare play in the application manager but still comes back on... hmmm i think im gonna have to root and just get rid of that file, or freeze it or something

Question... Does having all the motion settings on effect the battery? Also does having the NFC and sbeam on hurt the battery?

lse4 said:
Question... Does having all the motion settings on effect the battery? Also does having the NFC and sbeam on hurt the battery?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
in addition, the eye tracker thingy?

This is only the 2nd cycle. Going to wipe stats after this charge

I'm still waiting for the second cycle to finish I have the motion controls on and the eye thing and I had no drop at all overnight

sewhuy said:
This is only the 2nd cycle. Going to wipe stats after this charge
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wish I could get some stats like that. The screenshots are while I was sleeping and 7% seems like a lot of drain for it just sitting there. Only thing on was wifi. Cell standby time on is always the same as the time on battery, is that normal?
edit: the phone now shows 79% battery left with time on battery of 12h 46m; cell standby the exact same; screen on at 9% with time on of 48m. I'm fully stock and running power save mode.

Here are my stats. I think the battery life isn't too bad so far but we will see.

are the battery stats suppose to reset when you restart the phone? For dinner reason my persist even after a reboot
Sent from my SPH-L710

xtrezpasor said:
are the battery stats suppose to reset when you restart the phone? For dinner reason my persist even after a reboot
Sent from my SPH-L710
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, they will carry over until you re-charge or change the battery.
I was going to make a thread like this, but it was already here! Here are my results after my second full charge and regular usage. The results are on par with my fully modified and decked out Epic. Of course, this device has a bigger battery, but it also has a larger screen. Between the hardware and software upgrades, I'm very impressed with the stock battery life. This includes wifi on at all times as well as signal w/data. Some motion features are enabled, nfc is not, and google sync is off (I use stock email). Now how much further can this be improved?? Remember not to be discouraged, Screen On times will vary depending on what the phone is used for. Showing pictures is much less battery intensive than watching YouTube videos.
DEVICE: Sprint Galaxy S III
ROOT: Non-Rooted
ROM: Stock
POWER-SAVE: Disabled

Calibrated

sewhuy said:
Calibrated
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What is involved in calibration?

The "all of the sudden" battery fix on ICS

I have been using my s2 only 1 day on GB so i cant really tell you was the battery life good or bad there, but i i have some news for ICS
stock ROM users.
I was actually really depressed by the ICS battery life (i upgraded from GB same day i bought brand new S2), battery life was terrible,
turning on/off syncing, mobile data, gps etc etc helped a bit, but not that much. i still couldent get full day out of it with moderate use.
Again, im on stock 4.0.3 atm.
And then, a miracle.
Let me say right away, i am aware that these types of batterys (i have stock one btw) dont react on this whole "fully discharge then recharge" thing, but i do think now Android ICS as a system does! Cuz it was exactly what i did-i said what the heck doesent hurt to try and i was playing games like crazy when battery was on 10 or less percent so it wld shut down. then, i connected charger and used as normal on charger until it was fully juiced. repeated 3-4 times and what do you know... i now get 50% OR MORE WITH THE SAME BATTERY!
I am not really sure what happend there. Did battery gauge reset? Did ICS "learned" my battery properly? I dont know. All i know is that i am now able to get trough whole day (i get up 7:00AM, go to sleep round 01:00) with only 1 full charge. I dont even bother turning off wifi sometimes when i go out and dont need it.
I have been also reading around the web that some people got the same result. No calibration trys,pulling battery etc etc...just let it go trough few cycles and let system/phone "calibrate by itself".
Not exactly sure if this is a solution, bug, feature or whatever. I just thought it was worth writing to you guys
cheers, loop

why dont u share some screenshots

np mate, but in evening or tomo morning when i come home

Well, you actually shortened your battery life span by draining your battery to nothing, you should probably google what happens when you drain lithium batteries, and how it affects capacity, and not just
dont react on this whole "fully discharge then recharge" thing
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You probably did reset your fuel gauge as your phone had no power to hold the gage memory, but you could of saved yourself a lot of battery capacity, by using search and finding out how to reset the battery gauge on the Samsung galaxy s2. Hint* search extweaks and Siyah kernel.
Anyway at least other people who read this, hopefully learn and do it all the easiest and battery efficient way and not
I have been also reading around the web that some people got the same result. No calibration trys,pulling battery etc etc...just let it go trough few cycles and let system/phone "calibrate by itself".
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hope this helped, and for future reference do not drain lithium batteries, whether it is your phone, laptop, ps3 controller. Try not to get it under 50% for the best efficiency, but the more you drain it to minimum charge the faster it degrades.

Did you uninstall anything? Did you change any settings? Sounds to me like wakelocks that were removed more than ICS "learning" your battery.

Take it like this: i upgraded to ICS over GB and did full wipe. First day i installed lets say 20+ apps that i use. mostly utilities,few games.
In this period of "recovery" i only updated few apps, installed GTAIII and Flipboard.
Let me make this perfeclty clear as i stated in OP and as deniso wrote: i am aware of todays batterys and how do they work. i am not senior android user but i know my way around,so as i stated, i know i dident "FIX" the battery itself. But i still think the main problem here is not the battery itself,its how ICS uses it.
However this:
Try not to get it under 50% for the best efficiency
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Click to collapse
is just... funny. "try not to" ok i get it, but below 50% is when u need your phone the most, should i carry a portable generator with me? no offense.
Please, do not throw rocks at me. I am aware what i wrote, and i am aware that it doesent makes sense with todays batterys and smartphones.
however,i still do have my better battery life, whatever u say or dont say.
Ill make some screenies when i come home.
Ty all for your feedback.

I said TRY not to, I personally use my phone all day and my battery only gets down to about 75% -85% at the end of the day, so it takes nothing special for our phones, unless you do heavy gaming or movie watching all the time.
And what I said, which wasn't throwing rocks at you, is that you probably just reset your fuel gauge as there was a lack of power to the memory chip, and like I said in my first post, Search EXTWEAKS and Siyah kernel as they have that exact function in them which does not require you to drain your battery below critical values or at all.

hello again, just posting screenies that i promised
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(its in croatian,but you can see what is important)
So as i said before. This is roughly really 50% MORE then what i was getting first few days on ICS. now, i dont know still if this is very good or average, but
it gets me trough day for sure. As u can see, i posted "screen on" time, cuz i was not getting even half of that before and i still have 34% left!
The day was filled with 5-6 emails, i watched 4 youtube videos, did cca 29 mins on surfing and cca 30-35mins in plants vs zombies. few sms, few calls.
So, im not playin smart here or anything, i just have more batter with whatever i did, and it makes me happy
Cheers

You getting more battery after 3 days could quite simply be due to the fact that you flashed new firmware and it always takes a few days for the kernel and modem to 'settle in'. You will never get a true indication of battery drain straight after flashing firmware.
And to the guy above who said he can use his phone the whole day and it never falls below 75%, wow!
I would love to know what firmware, kernel/modem combo you're using.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda app-developers app

How to calibrate battery?

My battery stats and consumption have been pretty good and whatnot but I just realized it's off and sometimes doesn't count down consistently. But then it will catch up real quick. I am assuming the battery chip/driver are able to measure amps and not guesstimate voltage because of this behavior. I charged battery all the way up, unplugged, turned power off, plug back in til full and started up again but the behavior is still erratic. I am pretty sure I am getting somewhat accurate readings, it is just doing so in an erratic method. Ideas or references I missed? Anybody else notice?
As a side note I thought I was losing 1-2% per 6-8hours of standby but I realized there is a bug or the battery driver doesn't read correctly in standby. Anybody notice this too?
I voided my warranty.

@rbiter said:
battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The battery reporting is definitely inconsistent on this device. I've tried pinging it via terminal emulator to "force" it to re-poll voltage and capacity, with no luck, it doesn't update it to where I know it should be. Not sure if anyone has dissected this battery yet, many Li-Po's have an internal chip, not sure about this one.

I am quite sure it has a chip. Trying to confirm if it has a chip that measures amperage. I am guessing driver is bad or bugs.
I voided my warranty.

One thing I've noticed is that it seems to poll correctly if I charge to full and don't reboot at all. As soon as I reboot it starts flatlining after that point.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

Here's my best example yet. Upon plugging in it's quickly gone from 15 to 25...err....29% however. If I charge to 100% and don't reboot after that it doesn't drift. Something breaks the phones ability to read voltage/capacity for some reason upon rebooting. Stock or not stock, same behaviour. A few reboots in there, a couple where the % went UP.
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What is the problem can any one point out why I am getting do less battery is it because of atooma or acuupedo
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda app-developers app

There is no battery calibration method that is anything more than a placebo. Just flash your ROMs at 100% and don't charge your phone 5 times a day. Let it drain and fully recharge once in awhile. Past that, there isn't much to be done.
Edit: Franco mentioned in his kernel thread that the battery reporting seems a little wonky. He is hoping it is addressed in 4.2.2.

Charge your phone fully while it is off to 100 then do a battery star wipe. Let drain till around 5 to 10 from regular use and then charge all the way up.
And remember that batt wipes do nothing more than have your rom read the battery more accurately, it had nothing to do with giving it better battery life. You are gonna want to flash a more efficient kernel or rom to achieve that.
Sent from my SGH-T999 using xda app-developers app

estallings15 said:
There is no battery calibration method that is anything more than a placebo. Just flash your ROMs at 100% and don't charge your phone 5 times a day. Let it drain and fully recharge once in awhile. Past that, there isn't much to be done.
Edit: Franco mentioned in his kernel thread that the battery reporting seems a little wonky. He is hoping it is addressed in 4.2.2.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hard to find info about the li-po battery, especially the one in this phone. I wouldn't rule out poorly designed circuitry at this point either. Love the phone, question build quality.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2
---------- Post added at 12:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:20 PM ----------
djpingpong said:
Charge your phone fully while it is off to 100 then do a battery star wipe. Let drain till around 5 to 10 from regular use and then charge all the way up.
And remember that batt wipes do nothing more than have your rom read the battery more accurately, it had nothing to do with giving it better battery life. You are gonna want to flash a more efficient kernel or rom to achieve that.
Sent from my SGH-T999 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wiping battery stats does nothing more than reset the current charge cycle's percent usage by app/process. That's it, it won't increase the accuracy of capacity reporting.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

CMNein said:
Wiping battery stats does nothing more than reset the current charge cycle's percent usage by app/process. That's it, it won't increase the accuracy of capacity reporting.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2
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This is spot on. I tried to make that point earlier with my placebo comment, but some people are slow to catch on. Thanks for spelling it out.

My battery is dismal on 8.0. Can anyone help?

Now. This is bad.
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Ugh. I need some assistance. I've done all I can to maximize battery life, but my phone is just not going to cooperate. According to battery apps my battery is healthy, but you have got to be kidding me. Look at this. It's quite terrible.

Is that like 1 hour into a new rom or something...looks like you have no battery stats to go by. Plus if your stock 8.0 stand by is horrible... Flash a custom kernel and underclock the large cores...that has really changed my battery life.

noXcape said:
Is that like 1 hour into a new rom or something...looks like you have no battery stats to go by. Plus if your stock 8.0 stand by is horrible... Flash a custom kernel and underclock the large cores...that has really changed my battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is just a few hours after turning on my device. I will record my battery percentage throughout the day and repost a new image. It's pretty dreadful

It gets better. Don't worry to much. I still recommend flashing a custom kernel.. there are some really good ones around here and underclocking the big cores has really changed this device for me

AlphaRidl3y said:
Now. This is bad. Ugh. I need some assistance. Look at this. It's quite terrible. :crying:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check your battery capacity with a program like Accubattery like everybody else does. Have you not read the 25 or so other battery threads here on the exact same topic? Step #1. Test your battery!

Gsam battery can offer some good battery stats as well. You will want to enable ADB on your 6P and then you can enable more stats in Gsam. ( google Gsam enable more stats)
What helped my battery life was turning off bluetooth scanning ( search bluetooth scanning in settings). Gsam was showing a bluetooth wakelock using a lot of battery.

v12xke said:
Check your battery capacity with a program like Accubattery like everybody else does. Have you not read the 25 or so other battery threads here on the exact same topic? Step #1. Test your battery!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I probably should have stated that I have done this and attempted to root and use gsam and the like to disable wakelocks, and mess around with alarms and services. No increase of screen-on time.

I put in a new battery and with stock 8.0 it was about 2.5 sot. Got rid of stock kernel and started tweaking some things and get like 4 sot. I don't really trust the battery apps. They have done nothing for me

noXcape said:
I put in a new battery and with stock 8.0 it was about 2.5 sot. Got rid of stock kernel and started tweaking some things and get like 4 sot. I don't really trust the battery apps. They have done nothing for me
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can't even get 1 hour screen on.

noXcape said:
I put in a new battery and with stock 8.0 it was about 2.5 sot. Got rid of stock kernel and started tweaking some things and get like 4 sot. I don't really trust the battery apps. They have done nothing for me
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can't even get 1 hour screen on.
I haven't used my phone virtually all day and I'm down to 60%

PS. Any suggestions for a custom kernal?

I'm stock 8.0 ATM using ElementalX
I underclocked the big cores to 1500 /small leave stock at 1500
Leave off all the gestures to wake
Also turn off WiFi and Bluetooth scanning
I turn off location until I need it and keep brightness at 50%
If that doesn't help u prbly should replace ur battery
I bought a new back when I did my battery... it was pretty easy.
About 40 $ total..that's battery and back with new glass and bottom trim
If you do it urself just use suction to separate the body from the screen and watch out for the display ribbon under the center of the battery

noXcape said:
I'm stock 8.0 ATM using ElementalX
I underclocked the big cores to 1500 /small leave stock at 1500
Leave off all the gestures to wake
Also turn off WiFi and Bluetooth scanning
I turn off location until I need it and keep brightness at 50%
If that doesn't help u prbly should replace ur battery
I bought a new back when I did my battery... it was pretty easy.
About 40 $ total..that's battery and back with new glass and bottom trim
If you do it urself just use suction to separate the body from the screen and watch out for the display ribbon under the center of the battery
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Alright, thank you so much! I will be trying both of these.