Related
Yes, I know. We're all sick of these battery threads. But I just came across something I wanted to share with you all.
Before I continue: I don't use any task killers. And I've read every battery trick thread on here and on Android Forums, so I've done it all. The CDMA fix. Rooting and using OCWidget. Charging it to 100%, turning it off, and then cycling the charge with the phone in the off state. And of course, disabling every data hungry app plus setting screen brightness to 50%. This is my 3rd Android phone, so it's definitely not my first rodeo.
So last night I was using my Evo as it was on the charger. I was browsing the web, and checking out some new apps in the market, so the screen was on for quite a while. I took my Evo off the charger, did some heavy texting, some browsing, Facebook, Twitter, etc, etc, and about 5 hours later I was at 80%. I then put it on the charger, and went to bed.
Fast forward to this morning: Took it off the charger, sent a few texts, and I'm down to 95% within minutes. Of course this frustrated me, since last night I went an hour before it even dropped to 99%. It'll be getting some heavy use today, so the last thing I want to do is leave the house with my battery in the 80% range. I put it back on the charger, and resumed normal usage. Some texting, Facebook, Movies app, Netflix app. Eventually the charging light goes green again. Took it off the charger an hour ago, did some texting, stayed connected to WiFi,and I'm still at 100%. Whereas earlier this morning it dropped 5% in minutes under the same use.
Scratched my head for a second, and remembered that my phone was on and in use while charging last time, before I took it off and got great battery life.
So now, I've set it so my Evo's screen stays on while charging. I also use the Power Control widget to increase the screen brightness to 100% while charging. And then once it's off the charger, just drop it to 50%.
To keep the phone awake while charging:
Menu -> Settings -> Applications -> Development -> And then tap the check box next to 'Stay awake'.
Not saying this is guaranteed to work, and I have no rational explanation as to how this works, but it's definitely helping me. I'm going to do some testing and report back on a few things.
I think you might be on to something. I recently had an experience where my batter was around the 60% mark, I plugged it into my computer for about 30mins - 1hr and somehow it managed to charge to 100% battery in that short time span. Needless to say, the battery drained pretty quickly until it reached some stable point. I'll try the charge with screen on thing when I get a chance.
as odd as this sounds, i have notice the same thing when using my phone while on the charger then taking it off. I use screen cast when i'm at work, so my phone is always plugged into the computer. Once i leave work for the day my phone is usually fully charged or about 80% with moderate usage my phone is usually around 60-70% when i lay down to go to bed. Now on the weekened when i charge my phone overnight, the following day with moderate to heavy usage my battery drops to like 50% within a hour to a hour in a half. So i plug it in while texting or browsing, and when it get fully charged the battery seems to take 3-4 hours to get to 50% with moderate to light use. Weird
I've currently enabled every bell and whistle on my Evo so I can speed up the battery drain. I'm making note of the voltage reading at each percentage (via Battery Indicator), and then I'm going to charge it back up with the screen off to compare these numbers.
I think the issue isn't the charging with the screen on. I think there may be a "bug" that, when the phone hits full charge, it doesn't continue to charge but instead starts using the phone battery. Thus, when you charge at night, it's fully charged for a while, you start using it in the morning and it quickly drops to whatever has already been used (~94-95%). But, if you charge it and take it off soon after the light turns green, then it's fully charged and you're getting the full 100%.
I think there's a problem with the trickle charging.
gianmarco00 said:
I think the issue isn't the charging with the screen on. I think there may be a "bug" that, when the phone hits full charge, it doesn't continue to charge but instead starts using the phone battery. Thus, when you charge at night, it's fully charged for a while, you start using it in the morning and it quickly drops to whatever has already been used (~94-95%). But, if you charge it and take it off soon after the light turns green, then it's fully charged and you're getting the full 100%.
I think there's a problem with the trickle charging.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My testing confirms this theory. I put mine on the charger after work, and the light was green when I went to bed.. the next morning when I unplugged it, it dropped to 90% within a few minutes. Everytime I've unplugged it right after the green light comes on, it stays on 100% for at least 15-20 minutes of use.
gianmarco00 said:
I think the issue isn't the charging with the screen on. I think there may be a "bug" that, when the phone hits full charge, it doesn't continue to charge but instead starts using the phone battery. Thus, when you charge at night, it's fully charged for a while, you start using it in the morning and it quickly drops to whatever has already been used (~94-95%). But, if you charge it and take it off soon after the light turns green, then it's fully charged and you're getting the full 100%.
I think there's a problem with the trickle charging.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That explanation sounds accurate, so instead of doing all this it might b a simple tweak to not have this trinkle effect happen
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
It was mentioned in another thread that "trickle charge" gives the battery a better deeper charge. Perhaps a 500 or 700 mah charger will do the trick instead of risking a screen burn.
Since applying the 1.47... OTA, I can literally watch the battery drop minute by minute while the phoe is active.
Within the first 1 minute of removing the phone from the charger the Battery Status Pro reports the charge droping from 100% to 97%. That's a 3% drop in 60 seconds.
Within the first 3 minutes of active use BSP reports the battery drops to 93% charge. That's 7% loss in less than 200 seconds of use.
Now I'm not saying BSP is 100% accuerate but I expect it's not too far off.
Battery life with the Evo has never been phenominal but this seems rather extreem. The drop seems far faster now than when running the 1.32 release. And... while I am in a 4G enabled market, this is with 4G disabled and the phone running purely on 3G with no flickr, twiter, facebook or other feed widgets running and autosync disabled for all of them.
When I look at Battery Use under settings / About Phone / Battery the Android System is by far the largest user of battery, nearly twice the next closest user which is Cell standby.
Am I the only person experiencing this?
The phone was doing this before the 1.47 OTA, it's a problem with charging the battery in the phone. It does not charge properly for some reason and it will drop all the way down into the 80's within an hour of unplugging it. If you get an external battery charger and use it to charge the battery the phone will stay on 100% for an hour or more...
Have you removed the HTC people widget from home screen? The day I removed that was the beginning of decent battery life. Also try turning off the phone when charging - seems to work better that way.
I would try charging to 100%, unplug, wipe the battery, plug it back in again until the light turns green and try again and report back.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
I wondered if it was the powered off portion of that battery trick that was doing it. Hmmm. I'll have to watch. Is there any link/source on the idea that the phone itself is not working so well at charging?
Out of that voodoo on the getting better battery life the only thing I could come up with was...-charges better when off, - you need to charge for a bit while on to reset the battery indicator, - and charge a bit while off to top it up.
So I was leaning toward it being a charging thing and not a battery thing...would like to see any technicals though and not just my guessing.
People widget has been long gone.
I gave the charge it with the phone powered off thing a try. The device was down around 80% charged when I powered it off and plugged it in. In about 5 minutes the charge indicator turned from amber to green as if it were fully charged.
I can't believe that the battery charged 20% in 5 minutes.
This leads me to believe that the first response is correct. The battery simply isn't charging fully in the phone. I believe I'll look for an external battery charger and give it a try. See if it makes a difference.
frankenstein\ said:
People widget has been long gone.
I gave the charge it with the phone powered off thing a try. The device was down around 80% charged when I powered it off and plugged it in. In about 5 minutes the charge indicator turned from amber to green as if it were fully charged.
I can't believe that the battery charged 20% in 5 minutes.
This leads me to believe that the first response is correct. The battery simply isn't charging fully in the phone. I believe I'll look for an external battery charger and give it a try. See if it makes a difference.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seriously, try full-charge, wiping your battery data and then shutting it off and 'topping it off' and reevaluate the situation.
EDIT: The "topping it off" thing is all voo-doo as far as I'm concerned. I just do it to be safe, though I'm pretty sure it's ineffective.
I screw with my phone so much, so much flashing/restoring back and forth while on charge, between
charge, car charger, USB charge at work, wall charge, flashing again, kernel swap, restore back again...etc etc etc...that if I don't wipe my battery once I hit a full charge there is no way I can trust that meter to do anything more than change colors. I do it every few days when I notice the meter isn't being trustworthy.
If this doesn't work for you I'd say you probably have a bunk cell in your battery, and failing that your phone just might not be charging well.
Also, charge with the wall and not USB. USB takes forever. And 20% in 5 minutes isn't TOO far off if you are plugged into the wall and getting full-power charge. Maybe 10-12ish minutes, unless you were timing it very specifically....
I just got my bricked replacement. Here is the data from a 100% charged battery usage up time 18:13 .. Awake time 15:27 the battery is at 87%
funny im getting 20 + hours a charge after the OTA
with heavy usage
Seems most of us have not noticed:
GB stops the charger supply on our SGS as soon as the battery is fully charged and then your phone uses BATTERY instead of charger to keep itself on!
If your phone has some apps running which drains the battery fast, your phone will drain the entire battery and will shut down when the battery is dead!
This is very dangerous for the battery to discharge every day because of this bug and Samsung and most of still haven't seems to notice this!
I have tested this several times now and downgrading the Froyo fixes the issue.
This issue occurs even when the phone is sitting idle with minimal battery drain for several hours connected with charger (in such situation the drain is minimal with few percentage like when you disconnect the charger.
Let me know if some of you have different experience as my phone definitely has this issue which doesn't exist if I downgrade to Froyo.
We all can check this behavior:
Charge the phone till it says 100% charged. Use the phone normally or heavily for several minutes (like web browsing). Keep it connected to charger while it says "Charged" 100% for a couple of hours (to ensure that you did not drain the battery beyond charger capacity). You would still get much lesser than 100% charge after removing the charger (try using battery indicator tools which tells exact %age of battery).
This bug exist on all the Gingerbread images I have tried including official and those based on JVP 2.3.4
Read below how lithium ion batteries work best if used around full charge (without over charging - Phone and Battery has protection circuit) during regular use:
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries
Thanks to "$omator"
Use this software to test your battery: https://market.android.com/details?id=ccc71.bmw
Deeper than 10% charging and discharging cycles unnecessarily will significantly reduce the lifetime of the battery. Hence when phone is plugged, it should charge battery to 100% and power the phone through charger after stopping charging. Samsung usually stop charging around 96% of full capacity of battery to avoid over charging. After disconnecting the batteries once around 96% was achieved, it will restart the charging cycle around 95%. Hence all builds till Froyo reported close to 100% charge level and never less than 95% when disconnected from the charger.
GIST - Batteries should maintain floating charge voltage to avoid depletion and wear unnecessarily while connected to the charger after full charge and phone should run on Charger ONLY. Instead, Samsung goofed up Gingerbread drivers to switch off the charger and run the phone on batteries randomly draining the battery sometimes completely. GB OS thinks phone is running on charger and hence show 100% charge and RAPIDLY drains the battery till it goes dead when batteries go dead (randomly)!
Last screenshot is from Froyo. Attaching more on a later post on how stable it is in Froyo.
EDIT 1st July - More screenshots on how Froyo maintains stable voltage and do not consume battery power (current) in post #57: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=15228263&postcount=57
Screenshot #5 and #6 tells the DROP in battery voltage as soon as the charger is connected (200mV!) which speaks how much the GB OS consumes more when plugged in and STILL discharging!
Got the same problem with jpu. i didnt really realize this problem until this morning, just wondered why i had only about 90% battery in the morning after charging while with froyo i had about >95 in the morning.
today i slept until 10:00 and wow, battery was at 70(!) %.
when i plugged it in yesterday, ive got about 80% left (well, charging the phone every night seems to be a rite for me).
(and yes, im always listening to the sound when plugging the charger in).
so, as far as i can say, phone does not just stop charging at 100%, it also seems to consume much more power than it should. dangerous for battery, when the phone keeps plugged in for t >> t(100%).
This is a known issue of all current gingerbread builds. It will probably be fixed in due time.
and we wait for it
and we wait for it
Glad to hear it's a common issue. I was wondering if my batt/charger was faulty
Anyway, let's hope this gets fixed soon!
I noticed this the other day, hope it is fixed soon!
Yes, this has bugged me for the last month or more. Hence my question here about downgrading to 2.2.1...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1135297
A temporary workaround - turn the phone off. Plug the charger in, then power on. Doing it this way should keep the battery topped-up after it first hits 100% charge - at least it does for me(I think reliably, but I can't remember). But it's a nuisance - especially as I tether for my home internet these days. Machines updating the OS overnight have seen me unplug to have less than 60% charge despite it saying 100% before unplugging, which doesn't last the day.
Unimpressed with Gingerbread on the whole. And Samsung/Kies for not letting me downgrade if the latest update(s) aren't up to much.
Actually I'm running eclair today to compare the battery. Got sick of unplugging it in the morning only to have less than 70% charge.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk
I don't appear to have this problem, I put my phone on charge last night at 23:30 as usual, the alarm went off at 07:30, then played a couple of tunes, phone showed 100%. Disconnected charger, went downstairs, checked xda for any news, saw this thread, checked my phone's battery level and it showed 98% after being disconnected from charger for 27 mins. Unless I'm using nav or maps my normal battery drain is 4% per hour in a reasonable signal strength area, so 98% after 30mins is normal for me.
For ref: Galaxy i9000, XEU UK unbranded on XXJVO via keis. no mods.
Thanks for posting this I used my phone's gps yesterday when driving and I only just stumbled across this when I got where I was going, phone still said battery at 100% whilst plugged in but as soon as I turned the engine off and killed the charger my phone died with a dead battery.
Somewhat annoying to say the least, I'm going back to a 2.2.1 Rom tonight I've had loads of problems with all the 2.3 Rom's I've tried mainly lag and battery drain. I never seem to have any free RAM on gingerbread, lucky to get 50Mb on boot
oh well rant over the world can now continue ;-)
goughymachine said:
Actually I'm running eclair today to compare the battery. Got sick of unplugging it in the morning only to have less than 70% charge.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, woke up this morning and unplugged phone. 1.5 hours later and it's on 95% still, with a little usage. Didn't see that on 2.3.4. Using jg4 fully stock, only rooted. I might stick jsd on it today and see how it goes tomorrow. Not many apps back on it though. Surprisingly the phone feels quite fast at the moment. Don't remember eclair being like this. Not seeing much difference between 2.3.4 and it currently.
As I use go launcher, having gingerbread is probably less important for me cause I kind of don't use many of the features of it (the launchers etc) anyway.
Geryatrix said:
I don't appear to have this problem, I put my phone on charge last night at 23:30 as usual, the alarm went off at 07:30, then played a couple of tunes, phone showed 100%. Disconnected charger, went downstairs, checked xda for any news, saw this thread, checked my phone's battery level and it showed 98% after being disconnected from charger for 27 mins. Unless I'm using nav or maps my normal battery drain is 4% per hour in a reasonable signal strength area, so 98% after 30mins is normal for me.
For ref: Galaxy i9000, XEU UK unbranded on XXJVO via keis. no mods.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would appreciate if you could test the issue by using the phone heavily after full charge by KEEPING THE CHARGER CONNECTED AFTER FULL CHARGE (preferably playing 3D games or running benchmarks) and disconnect the charger to check the battery level.
Seems most of us are unaware of this issue and some confuse this with the excess battery drain issue after DISCONNECTING the charger.
Thank goodness I found this thread. I had thought there was something wrong with my battery. After unplugging my battery would instantly drop from 100% to 96%, once even 87%. Thinking it was something to do with battery re calibration due to me flashing new roms, i wiped batt stats many times and went through of arduous process of draining and fully charging, but to no avail. Now I will rest easy despite still facing this bug. At least I know I'm not the only one.
yep...i just flashed a couple of days ago from stock 2.2 (KC1) via kies to 2.3.4 (JVP) using ODIN. I have had it charge fully and upon removal of the usb cable, it dropped from 100% to 98%. Since then, I have gone through one full discharge and the subsequent recharge to 100% dropped to 96% upon charger removal. I recall reading about this somewhere suggesting a recalibration was needed, but I was just trying to get it up to 100% and didn't have the time to search forums (i was using a portable usb charger). I disconnected the charger and after reconnection and display of 100%, it would then drop to 97% instead of 96%. A repeat proved fruitless and so I tried to charge it while off. Turning it on after a bit I found that it was brought up to 98%. Repeated process for 99% and FINALLY 100%. Though the final 100% was achieved after a few 100% while off and while on charges. It stayed at 100% for a bit over 30 mins. I will see how subsequent charges behave...
mwshuo said:
Thank goodness I found this thread. I had thought there was something wrong with my battery. After unplugging my battery would instantly drop from 100% to 96%, once even 87%. Thinking it was something to do with battery re calibration due to me flashing new roms, i wiped batt stats many times and went through of arduous process of draining and fully charging, but to no avail. Now I will rest easy despite still facing this bug. At least I know I'm not the only one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is a serious bug as it will significantly reduce the battery life due to repeated deeper charge and discharge cycle.
unless i've misunderstood, it seems to me that what will really affect battery life is the battery stats calibration. where it once would charge to 100%, it will now charge to, for example, 96%. Doing a calibration will make that 96% appear to the phone as 100%. From reading, it seems calibration is required for firmware flashes, so the more flashes and calibrations you do, the less battery life you will have since subsequent calibrations are done when the battery reading is less than 100 immediately after an unplug. Following the example above, the next flash could also have the same issue of displaying 100% and then 96% immediately after an unplug. The user would try to calibrate their battery yet again. Now this time, the 96% is of the previous full reading (which was actually 96% but appears as 100% b/c of calibration). So, the after a second calibration, the 100% reading is actually closer to 92.16% of the original pre-flash and pre-calibrated battery (96% of 96% of 100%).
hope that makes sense and someone can confirm, or instead (which i hope), prove me wrong as I would hate to think that what I stated is true since that will GREATLY diminish battery life artificially.
such overcharging (power off + connect charger and so on) is slowly killing battery
and it is not a bug that phone dsiconnects charger when it hits 100% and starts eating batt
anyways read my signature yellow part
$omator said:
such overcharging (power off + connect charger and so on) is slowly killing battery
and it is not a bug that phone dsiconnects charger when it hits 100% and starts eating batt
anyways read my signature yellow part
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, but in pre-gingerbread roms the charging started again when below certain value, so it stayed above 90% all the time.
Now you can drain the battery heavily by using it while plugged (and the battery always shows 100%), then unplug and have it jump down to like 60%, or worse, turn off.
The only way to restart the charging is removing and connecting the charger again.
i tkink thyve must decided that such upcharging when almost full shortens battery life
mk_ln said:
yep...i just flashed a couple of days ago from stock 2.2 (KC1) via kies to 2.3.4 (JVP) using ODIN. I have had it charge fully and upon removal of the usb cable, it dropped from 100% to 98%. Since then, I have gone through one full discharge and the subsequent recharge to 100% dropped to 96% upon charger removal. I recall reading about this somewhere suggesting a recalibration was needed, but I was just trying to get it up to 100% and didn't have the time to search forums (i was using a portable usb charger). I disconnected the charger and after reconnection and display of 100%, it would then drop to 97% instead of 96%. A repeat proved fruitless and so I tried to charge it while off. Turning it on after a bit I found that it was brought up to 98%. Repeated process for 99% and FINALLY 100%. Though the final 100% was achieved after a few 100% while off and while on charges. It stayed at 100% for a bit over 30 mins. I will see how subsequent charges behave...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are confusing recalibration and battery drain after full charge
The issue is after full charge, phone disconnects the charger and start draining batteries till it goes dead.
Let me rephrase the issue - batteries start draining immediately after full charge as the phone somehow start using battery INSTEAD of charger ONLY after full charge!
This is a serious bug as the GB drivers switch off the charger (instead of batteries) after full charge when the OPPOSITE has to happen!
I flashed a new rom and in cwm, there is no wipe battery options.
- Can i do battery calibration with market applications?
- I always use usb charging. Should i use usb while doing calibration?
IMHO battery calibration is almost mith. Still you can use applications from market and see for yourself is battery suffers any improvement. But callibration is almost same charging from 0% to 100%.
Why do u need usb when phones have fully charge? :laugh: Just do that thing
Because wall charge is far away and usb charging is making battery less hotter, the half ampere of wall charge. So i think it makes battery live longer.
To make battery %0, should i power on a lot of times after power off itself? And there are some apps that use a lot ofthings to drain battery fast. ARe they suitable for those?
Because wall charge is far away and usb charging is making battery less hotter, the half ampere of wall charge. So i think it makes battery live longer.
To make battery %0, should i power on a lot of times after power off itself? And there are some apps that use a lot ofthings to drain battery fast. ARe they suitable for those?
Cursed Chico said:
Because wall charge is far away and usb charging is making battery less hotter, the half ampere of wall charge. So i think it makes battery live longer.
To make battery %0, should i power on a lot of times after power off itself? And there are some apps that use a lot ofthings to drain battery fast. ARe they suitable for those?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok. No just turn on phone one more time after he shutdown first time. You can listen music or watch videos. But don't stress that much battery doesn't like to go out 0% :silly:
dark_vader said:
Ok. No just turn on phone one more time after he shutdown first time. You can listen music or watch videos. But don't stress that much battery doesn't like to go out 0% :silly:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
YEsterday i used app, it deleted battery and i used normal usage today. I froze autostart and greeinfy and juice defender application for this first time. IT went about 10 hours. The mobile data was always on. I did not awake phone too much.
To %89, it went very fast again. Then it slowed. From %50 %60 to %30 40 it again fast. Then it jumped %14 to %5. The last %5 lasted very long. ABout maybe 45 minutes. I dont understand my battery. Then i opened 2-3 times to finish battery after shuttingh.
Now its power is off and it is charing ac. In screen i cant see the level of battery so i will wait 3-4 hours. Then will open. Maybe i can wait untilmornning, 7-8 hours because i can sleep.
IS it anything wrong i did_
So, i'm charging the phone to 100%, the "remove charger" message appears, and i remove it. But in about 10 minutes, the phone is at 95% already (with screen off). After 95% it goes down normally, 1% every few hours with screen off.
But, if i let the phone still charging for a couple of hours after it reaches 100%, the battery % goes down as it should. Another thing is that, while it is said that after reaching 100% the battery does not receive power (i read in this forum), using KTweaker charging option (from the kernel) i see that my battery keeps charging normally (or even at a higher mA compared to < 100% ).
I'm on Omega Rom v19 JB 4.3 TW with KToonsez Kernel.
Thank you!
The battery, over time, loses its ability to hold a charge effectively.
This happens gradually and slowly.
I've also read that it's not healthy for the battery to sit too long at 100%, which is why it drops fast to anything below that. I don't how how true this is though.
Also, if it the phone stops charging at 100%, then why does it stay at 100% for hours if left plugged in?
If it stops charging, it should drop to 99% after some time, at which point it would start charging again until it reaches 100% and stop again, right?
It's true what you are saying. I guess it could be because in 2 + years of usage the battery is starting to lose some properties. Maybe it's time for a new battery if it becomes an issue.
thank you!
Is an extended battery an option (mostly the extended ones with the same size as the original ... @ around 3500 mA)? Anyone has any experience with those?
I guess it will give you probably, almost, half a day more use time, since it gives you almost 50% more mAh.