Hi everyone,
I have been using Ticwatch E since April 2019. So far, no much complaint after disabling all unnecessary system app; except the battery life. I need to charge twice a day, to ensure the watch last when I can't go home early. I have only the original cable, and hate to bring it everywhere.
After about a year, suddenly the watch sometimes doesn't charge at all. I clean the pin at the watch, because it seems dirty and broken. Wriggling the cable and reposition, it can charge properly again. But not long after that, sometimes it charged normally, sometimes very slowly. Until approx 2 months ago, it started to become slow charge all the time. I measured the incoming current, maximum is 70 mA only (when I buy it, it can reach 300 mA). It charges very slow, about 20% per hour. It took 5 hours to charge from almost empty to full. Cleaning the pin doesn't help anymore. I have to live with it then. I don't wear the watch to sleep then, although it is my second alarm. I leave it charged overnight to ensure it is always full at the morning. (I can't wait it to charge 5 hours during day, render it useless).
I googled and found some thread at reddit suggesting to clean the pin. But I already did it. Some say buying new cable can help, but I am a bit skeptic, since I can't see any visible damage on the cable and connector, although the pin at the watch is messy already. I reconsider to go back to the proprietary non WearOS watch, since my previous mi band 2 can last for 2-3 weeks before charging. But somehow I just deal with it and use it like that.
This early September, the cable totally broken. Charging never increase the battery level anymore. Incoming current only 20-30 mA. No matter how long I leave it there, the battery level can't increase anymore. I finally try to pry open the charging connector, but don't have any success. New original cable in the online store here cost about 200.000 IDR (approx USD 13). I think that's too expensive for charging cable.
I managed to find a cheaper, but from China. It cost only 65.000 IDR (approx USD 4,3). Looking at the good review, I decided to take the risk and buy 2 directly, still cheaper than online store here. And today it arrived, 1 week faster than my expectation.
View attachment 5093913
The cable is not noodle type just like the original one, it is normal round cable. I try both, and now it can charge properly already, 300 mA, despite the same messy pin at the watch. So the broken part is the cable connector, not the watch pin.
I estimate rough charging speed, it is about 16% / 10 minutes, about 1,6%/minute. It takes about 1 hour 10 minutes to charge almost zero to full. (my watch battery must be degrading by now, so it should charge a bit faster). I am happy again with my Ticwatch E. Hopefully it will last until the next generation of WearOS watch with better battery life.
I will try not to charge as frequently as before, to prolong the connector lifespan. I bring one to office, so I don't have to charge so frequently at home.
TLDR : If your Ticwatch E is charging slowly, takes hours to charge full, then most likely it is your cable connector. Buying new cable will most likely make it charge normally again.
Related
So I upgraded to the latest mr clean rom and did some tweaks with the registry wizard. I was playing around with it for a while and turned it off to charge overnight. I wake up and try and turn it on and nothing. I've tried soft reset, and hard reset and it doesn't turn on or do anything. When I plug in my charger the light on my phone doesn't even come on. PLEASE HELP. WHAT CAN I DO!!!.
This exact same thing happened to me last week. I played with it everday hoping it would turn back on, but nothing worked. Out of nowhere, it powered back up after 7 days of being non-responsive.
So I would just suggest waiting it out and making sure it is fully charged. Sorry I don't have any better solutions, but this is what worked for me.
leave it charging (even if there is no light) for a couple of hourse. then hold the power button for 3 secs. It will work...ciao,V.
Charge it with the charger, not usb, mine did this and I thought it was dead but it's probably just a dead battery. For some reason it can self discharge to the point where the USB charger can't recharge it.
I've done that, had it charging for over 24 hrs now on the home charger. I guess the next step would be a new battery? Do T-mobile stores carry them? TIA
YOU HAVE TO USE THE ORIGINAL 1A CHARGER!!!!! 800mA will not do the job!!!
that's what i've done i think...the home charger... it doesn't say how many A though.
I fixed it , What I did was zap the battery with a 9v battery in 3 sec intervals, I did this about 5 times, then I pluged my phone into the charger and turned it on, the 9v gave it enough juice to boot up and the usb took over from there. So to everyone out there who is having this same problem, try this but don't over zap, check your battery with a multimeter.
my wizard wont turn on this morning. I just tested my battery and it's at 3.1 volts (not 3.7 as stated on the label)
Would your method work do you think ? My mains charger is at my girlfriends house i rely on usb here
Yeah I've had this issue before and I have it again. Last time it self-started after about an hour just sitting on the desk. This time it's taking longer, and is still out. I'm charging it as we speak - no light but I'm hopeful.
So this is a battery fault then? I guess that's a slight relief - I've already sent one in for repair and I can't do it again, as I'm on the far side of the channel..
ive never been backwards in trying these things out so i gave it a go. Slightly different method (a little safer).
Found an old 5v 2A charger lying around bared off the wires and used my meter to identify the positive and ground cores.
tested the battery again.. 3.1volts
applied the wires of the charger to the terminals for 5 secs
tested battery.. 3.25 volts
re applied wires for 5 secs
tested battery.. 3.45 volts
re applied wires for 5 secs
tested battery.. 3.52 volts
put in the wizard.. boot screen.
I think i have a seperate problem as i now have a red flashing light and then it locks up around 20 secs later but im a little further on at least !
cheers,
malty
all sorted here. I hadnt quite enough juice in the battery. Re applied the charger until the battery measured 3.62V Booted ok to the point then that the usb charger took over.
many thanks to the original poster
You saying that giving it brief jolts helps restore the battery? Given the time you applied it for, I can't really think it's being recharged by this action...
its a very temporary thing like a 'kick' and the extra voltage isnt sustained very long. It worked. thats all that matters
Yeah. But I'm reluctant to pump power into an electrical device without knowing why. In my case, the battery is giving a steady 4.2V output, which should be enough, no? In fact, the battery seems to be healthy in every way possible, and a few minutes before it died was reporting a ~80% charge...
I'll try kicking it though
4.2V is over voltage but yea that should be enough. sounds like you may have a more serious problem
Yeah, so do I. Battery was unaffected by a kick, output is still at the rated 4.2V, well above the needed 3.7V.
So, what would make an apparently healthy phone sporadically fail? It wasn't dropped or exposed to anything. I had it, on, on my desk. The screen turned off after 30 seconds, as usual, and then wouldn't turn back on. Soft and hard resets both fail to invoke any response whatsoever. No charging light.
The only thing that's different is that I did an ActiveSync for the first time in weeks, on a new computer, a few hours before it died. For which I'm extremely thankful, as I'd got a lot of data building up without a backup until then. But I'm doubtful that the sync has anything to do with the failure.
These symptoms occured before, a month or so ago, but the phone revived on its own after an hour or so. This one has been out two days now, which worries me.
Hi All,
THANK YOU!! I just bought this 8125 and thought I broke it in only 2 days. The 9 volt battery did the trick.
Now I can get on with trying to use it.
I have had the same problem last week and I used a 9V battery briefly onto the + and - of the phone-battery.
this just gave the phone-battery enough juice to start up and I was able to normally charge the phone again.
Old Trick but !!!Caution!!!
What you guys are doing is reviving a deeply discharged battery.
I frequently do that to normal AA 1.2v NiCd or NiMH Rechargeble battery that have not been used for a long time. When they measure about 0.2v you just jolt a 10v current through it for 1-3 seconds and then carry on charging as normal. If it does not come right, throw it away or use it as a paperweight
Problem comes in with the type of battery you do it with. I had a Lithium - Ion battery explode in my hands once.. (Thank god I wear glasses) I only had a few cuts on my hands and my shirt was ruined so I came off very lucky.
With lithium-Ion batteries one should be very carefull when attemting to boost it when deeply discharged... They dont like it very much.
My 10cents worth
Hi everyone - I hope this isn't a redundant or duplicate thread however all information I can find on battery problems centre around the issue of having to power off via the bootloader. This is different. A little backstory....*wibbly lines*
My N7 is two weeks old. Last week I decided to make a pogo pin dock for charging and I guess this is where the problems started. Whether this is coincidental or not is difficult to ascertain. The tablet no longer recognises USB chargers (stock or otherwise), however it had been sporadically charging for short period via USB and now not at all. It has been possible to charge via the pogo pins, yet leaving the house today with a 100% charge and minimal usage the battery was dead less than six hours later. Minimal like, less than 15mins of non-intensive work. Battery history details shows 1h 55m on battery with a slow decline over that entire period to maybe 95% then a total drop to nothing. Plugging in the tablet to my pogo charger shows charging both in the OS and in the black and white powered off charging script. The N7 will boot up however the battery shows 0% and has done for the last couple of hours. Removing the pogo charger shuts the N7 off straight away - whether that is battery deadness or OS terminating because of an apparent flat battery, unsure.
I suspect that something is very very wrong here. Possibly screwed battery management? Faulty battery? Anybody else with the same experience would be gratefully welcomed into the discussion. I'm about to start an RMA and wondering whether I should flash back to a stock kernel/ROM and wipe the tablet first....
Nice to see a warm flow of conversation over this fault.
Unit RMA'ed. I doubt I'll get feedback as to the cause of the problem as I pushed for a complete replacement since repair would take 2-3 weeks off a device only a little over a week out of the box. Hmph.
Good luck with the replacement unit.
Based on the chronology you describe (& other factors) I think I would be reluctant to use your homemade charger on the replacement.
Prostheta said:
My N7 is two weeks old. Last week I decided to make a pogo pin dock for charging and I guess this is where the problems started.
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I have noticed that I can start with my phone fully charged....get to work...facebook, text and mayb..e YouTube some, connect
To an external battery charger and then be on and off the phone all day maybe 15 mins per hour using the phone not
Connected to charger and then 45 mins on the charger and the phone never gets fully recharged.
It will rise in fall by maybe 20-30%
So if I let it get down to 50% use it it will go down to maybe 30-20% then let it charge it may come back to 50% and it does that
For the rest of the day. Even if I leave on charge for maybe an hour it won't get past 50-60%.
I tried just leaving it on a charger while listening to pandora.... at best it looses charge very slowly. Maybe 5-10= an hour.
I started off today fully charged and have maybe had it off an external battery for 30 mins during the last 3.5hrs and it is down to
77 or 75%. Is this normal? Yes there are a lot of notifications and such running non my phone.
This is very common place if you are not using the Samsung cable & Samsung charger. Generic chargers and cables don't always deliver the full current to the phone. Some will only pass about .5amps which is not enough to charge and have the screen active. There is a thread in the General Section called car chargers that has a lot of info on this.
As many other of you, I have had problems with my battery charging properly. Often it would only charge up to 40-60%. Usually, I could fix this problem by running my battery down to 2%, then turning it off and plugging in the charger. Most of the time it would charge up to 100% then, save for a few times it didn't.
Still, I was getting annoyed by this, so I figured I might as well try pulling the battery out and plugging it back in. And, wow, did it fix some issues for me. So far, my battery is charging itself back to 100% without having the pull the plug multiple times. But maybe even better, it gave me a completely renewed battery life.
Before reseating the battery, I was getting about 5-7.5 hours battery life depending on what I was doing. After reseating, I now have about 10.5 hours of battery life. That's a HUGE difference. The attached images below show my latest 10.5 hour battery life with about 9% left, which should give me another 45 minutes to an hour if I needed it. Power saving was on during the entire time, screen brightness varied between 10-25%. Mostly I internetted, reddited, used Feedly, 1.5 hour of youtube viewing. I put the tablet in airplane mode for one night to see if it gave any significant battery life, but it only took about 1% during the night it wasn't in airplane mode. Sync with all my accounts was also on the entire time. Android version is stock, rooted, though I only use Xposed and Greenify.
If it stays like this, this will be the first time I am truely happy with my battery life.
To reseat the battery, I used this Youtube video:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEVFYQksmxM
If you want to try it, which I certainly recommend, you can try pulling out only the battery cable. I wasn't able to, I didn't want to put too much stress on the cabling, so I unscrewed the entire battery. It's not stuck with adhesive anyway. I do however recommend strongly that you use this guide to pull of the back cover, instead of opening at the screen:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5vTAeWyq7I
Can't link to the video's themselves, I am not allowed to do that yet. I believe this video was made by someone on XDA? Please give a shout out, so I can give you proper credits for it. Becareful when opening the device when near the USB port and the audio jack. The plastic connecting to the tablet itself seems very fragile in those places.
Thanks for sharing.
Same experience, I did it two days ago after noticing that it stopped charging at 96%. With the same usage I should have needed to recharge it by now but I still have 52% battery left with my usual 3 hours of screen on over 48 hours. So it doubled the battery life .
I did remove only the connector, I used a plastic coated paper clip that I passed under the cables to pop it off. The cables are strongly attached enough to remove the connector without any issue.
I think I'll keep this tablet longer than I thought, the processor and screen being future-proof.
I'll try it and post my results...
Anybody else tried that or has a clue why that happened?
reseating battery helped, now won't charge from USB
I too have been frustrated with charging and battery issues on my Tab Pro 8.4. So I tried the battery reseating trick.
I can now report, that it has helped with battery life. But a new issue came up.
Previously, I could not reliable charge the tablet on AC power ( USB cable connected to the AC charger ). It would not charge to 100%. The solution was to charge from an USB port on my Mac. This would charge to 100%.
After the battery reseat trick, the tablet does not charge over USB, but charges nicely to 100% on AC. And the battery life is much better.
Right now, I am trying if the battery is even charging over USB while off. The little dots are scrolling on the screen, seems something thinks the charging is ongoing, but I need more time to see if the charge level has moved up.
Any ideas ? Thanks, Paul.
I had also proceed to that "surgery". Battery life seems better but it could be placebo. Im not sure.
But 3 times in a row charging went from 15, 20, 35 % straight to 100.
To the usb charging issue mentioned, due to the bad contactivity of the battery cable before tha fix, it may displayed false reading of charging level. The normal changing time from a standard usb port is at least 4 to 5 times longer than the original charger (2000mA vs 500mA max). So you have to wait longer for a usb charging level change.
About the USB charging issue - the device does charge when off, while plugged into an USB port on a Mac. When the device is ON, the battery icon shows a red cross, and the info in the Battery windows of settings is showing Not Charging. My guess is that this is some restriction on the firmware, that does not attempt to charge the device while having a data link on the USB. I will try to obtain a charging-only cable, to see if that fixes the issue.
Paul.
Just checked for myself, but my cable that came with the tablet doesn't work either. Tried it with different cables too and the same red icon pops up in the battery. I honestly never tried charging it myself via my PC before I reseated the battery. Maybe it has something to do with the fact a PC USB 2.0 port can only supply 500mAh, which isn't enough for the tablet (while it is turned on)?
I m also suffering from this charging problem...i wish to reseat bt i have a question...after opening the back cover does it reinsert normally or i need glue..?
I tried first to remove the back cover. Some of the clips chipped off. So I removed the screen. No damage removing the screen. Just be patient to unclip all spots all around the screen
kensheen said:
I m also suffering from this charging problem...i wish to reseat bt i have a question...after opening the back cover does it reinsert normally or i need glue..?
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There is some adhesive between the cover and the tablet itself, but mostly there are a lot of small plastic pins that lock in place. I did not add any new adhesive, and I honestly can't tell the difference.
paokaras45 said:
I tried first to remove the back cover. Some of the clips chipped off. So I removed the screen. No damage removing the screen. Just be patient to unclip all spots all around the screen
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Oh that doesn't sound good. Is the back cover still fine now with the chipped pins? I personally didn't try via the screen since I saw an image in a different thread of someone getting bubbles of some kind in one of his screen corners.
The fit close to the ir port is not as tight as before. I don't mind because i use a case. The screen came off without any issues.
PS: after power on the tablet for the first time, i forgot to set time and date. It didnt connect to any secure site or servive (play store, youtube, facebook). So keep in mind to set them correctly
paokaras45 said:
The fit close to the ir port is not as tight as before. I don't mind because i use a case. The screen came off without any issues.
PS: after power on the tablet for the first time, i forgot to set time and date. It didnt connect to any secure site or servive (play store, youtube, facebook). So keep in mind to set them correctly
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So, after some days, how do you note the battery? Improved indeed?
favero_ said:
So, after some days, how do you note the battery? Improved indeed?
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I think yes. I now get full charge every time (5 times from various percentages) and screen on time increased by an hour approximately. Maybe its from the better changing cycles.
With medium usage (tapatalk 20%, greader 30%, facebook 20%, youtube 30%) no gaming at all i get about 6 or more s.o.t. at 20% brightness most of the time.
Right now i am at 30% left with 5 hours sot, unpluged 13 hours ago.
I reseated my battery..now my tab pro showed it is full charged after long time. Previously it didnt cross 29% even i charge it for whole day..battery is better now. I opened the back cover by ruler and reseated only the battery connection as shown by video...
thankx sicron.
are you guys sure there is nothing wrong with your charger, you should get a usb amp reader (like $5 on ebay) and make sure the tablet is pulling 1800~ mA when it charges from 50% or less (rate will drop when it gets close to full)
Also always use the Samsung cable that came with the tablet since it has high quality Copper wires that can carry the correct 2A current , if you use another cable it is most-likely only rated for 500 mA (Computer USB current) and will either
1. Not carry enough current to properly charge the tablet.
2. start charging ok but as the cable heats up (or contact pins on the usb parts) it will start to degrade
I suggest only using the Samsung wall charger, and never Ipad , iphone, computer or other brand chargers to charge it.
otyg said:
are you guys sure there is nothing wrong with your charger, you should get a usb amp reader (like $5 on ebay) and make sure the tablet is pulling 1800~ mA when it charges from 50% or less (rate will drop when it gets close to full)
Also always use the Samsung cable that came with the tablet since it has high quality Copper wires that can carry the correct 2A current , if you use another cable it is most-likely only rated for 500 mA (Computer USB current) and will either
1. Not carry enough current to properly charge the tablet.
2. start charging ok but as the cable heats up (or contact pins on the usb parts) it will start to degrade
I suggest only using the Samsung wall charger, and never Ipad , iphone, computer or other brand chargers to charge it.
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It is definitely not the charger, otherwise the problem wouldn't be fixed by reseating the battery. Which happens to work for a lot of people. I personally tried a Nexus 7 2012 2A charger both with the original cable and with my Samsung cable. I also tried the OnePlus One charger (2A or 2.1A, not sure) with both cables and it didn't charge. It seems to me it is some kind of calibration issue, that somehow gets fixed by unplugging the battery and plugging it in again.
Sicron said:
It is definitely not the charger, otherwise the problem wouldn't be fixed by reseating the battery. Which happens to work for a lot of people. I personally tried a Nexus 7 2012 2A charger both with the original cable and with my Samsung cable. I also tried the OnePlus One charger (2A or 2.1A, not sure) with both cables and it didn't charge. It seems to me it is some kind of calibration issue, that somehow gets fixed by unplugging the battery and plugging it in again.
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Yeah strange, maybe some-kind of a bad connection on the battery clip where on the assembly line it didn't get fully pressed down or just comes loose overtime, and maybe the battery wasn't reporting back stats correctly (if you look in logcat you can see it constantly is getting updates from the battery circuitry)
would be interesting to see what logcat reports on a device with this problem (might need root logcat)
IE mine shows this.
D/BatteryService( 944): level:61, scale:100, status:3, health:2, present:true, voltage: 3836, temperature: 248, technology: Li-ion, AC powered:false, USB powered:false, Wireless powered:false, icon:17303447, invalid charger:0, online:1, current avg:-784, charge type:0, power sharing:false
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I completed the battery reseating and can say it definitely has improved the battery charging and performance. Prior to I was having the charging stopping issue at various percentages. Since the reseating it now charges 100% and the battery performance has definitely increased by at least 20%. Would recommend to do this if your having battery issues. Take off the back cover as it is very easy. Just need to go slow around the perimeter. It is help on by small clips and glue. Use a slow and forceful prying with a credit card and the back cover will slowly become undone. Area around the charging port has a little extra glue so may take a little more force.
Long-time lurker, first-time poster. I've gotten a lot of good insight from reading posts and figured I would join to share what I've learned.
Its a long one and if you get all the way through it you will understand why.
Nexus 6 XT1103 with original battery running stock 7.1.1. Started showing issues in early 2020. Apps would be slow to respond. Camera would take forever to open and take a picture. Scrolling through news feed would be annoying because it would register my scroll as a tap into a news story. Weird static sound coming from speakers during scroll. Phone started to shut off on its own at around 20-30%. Installed Accubattery and it showed battery was at about half its original capacity. Progressively got worse throughout the year. Got to the point where it would shut off around 50% or even at 80-100% if opening something that would result in high CPU use spike. It was time to replace the battery.
Looked up battery recommendations. Ebay batteries seemed iffy. Initial install reviews would be fine but some reports of lasting for a year and then crapping out, or just no long term follow-up. Review of Akku Polarcell for a Nexus 5 seemed promising. Email to Wannasee was answered quickly. Batch of batteries they were offering was made in late 2019. They could have just made that up but I had no reason to doubt them. Looks like an actual brick and mortar operation. Ratings are pretty high. $10-15 for unknown battery off Ebay vs $35-40 for something made in 2019 from a reputable vendor. I decided to go with the Polarcell. Bought it after trying to open the phone up the first time to make sure I could. Could have bought the Polarcell from Wannasee’s store on Ebay. Waited for one of those mythical Ebay coupons to show up in my inbox but that never materialized, by which time the phone was really in bad shape. Compared the price for buying the Polarcell off of Wannasee’s Ebay store to buying directly from Wannasee’s site. Went with the direct buy since it was a buck or two cheaper with the exchange rate at that time and I didn’t have any Ebay coupons to use anyways. Paypal payment using credit card. Pay attention to currency conversion setting in Paypal. Was better for me to have my credit card do the conversion rather than let Paypal do it, but that’s because my card doesn’t charge foreign transaction fees. Came out to $36.68 when I bought it. Their email comm is pretty good. They let me know when it was going to ship, when it shipped, when it was expected to arrive and provided a tracking number.
By the time I was ready bite the bullet and buy the battery, the phone wouldn’t even recognize the charger. Went through multiple chargers and cords trying to figure that out. Seemed possible that it was cord or USB port related. Sometimes if the cord was held just so it would charge. Got to a point where it wouldn’t charge at all while on. Wouldn't even recognize the charger was plugged in. I did figure out that it would charge while off, but even that was hit or miss (more hit than miss though). Even while off it did seem like it wanted a higher output charger. I had been using a 1.5A HTC charger mainly. Eventually that didn't work. I tried 2A Samsung and that didn't work. A 4A Asus charger seemed to work the most reliably. So at this point I am debating whether its worth it to buy an almost $40 battery if something is seriously wrong with the phone. What made it worse was that my first attempt to open the phone ended up slicing through a flex cable part of the wireless charging coil. So I could have tried to figure out whether the charging issues were due to the USB port by trying a wireless charger, but not anymore! I was using plastic cards to separate the back from the frame; nothing metal. But the amount of force required to push through the glue was enough that when it broke through the card slipped and it was enough to slice through the thin plastic and copper of that ribbon. Irritating due to the loss of ability to troubleshoot the charging issue further, but I wasn't too burned up about it because I never use a wireless charger so I just took it out and left it out. Works fine without it, except of course no more wireless charging ability.
Looked up lots of videos on how to open up the phone. Most helpful ones were:
Most warn about the cable for the power and volume buttons; rightfully so. None mentioned the wireless charger flex on the opposite side. The power/volume ribbon did get a decent crease into it as well, but luckily no damage. Straightened it out and it works fine.
22 screws. They are tiny but they come out easily. Pretty much everything I read and watched said they were T4 screws, but at least with my screwdriver kit the T3 bit is the one to use. Besides getting the back off the rest of opening the phone to get the battery out was pretty simple. The videos say to separate the two halves of the power/volume ribbon where they intersect but I didn't have to do that. I just removed the end that plugs into the board. Seemed easier than messing with the tiny connector at the intersect and it was. Removing the battery connector didn't work how it should have. The plastic had become brittle with age and just broke apart when prying at it from the opening in the frame. Had to get under the frame and pry it off from the back side of the connector where the ribbon cable goes into it. By the way, by luck I had a decent charge on the old battery before removing it. More on why that was important later.
The Polarcell didn’t come with a curve in it like the OEM battery; it was just flat. But it wasn't hard to massage the edges down. Used the old battery as a guide to bend the new battery into shape. Other than that it went in just fine. Ribbon cable was already folded in the right direction so it just plugged right in. Frame went back into place without any interference. The phone turned on just fine. I dont remember if it charged while on that first time, or if I had charged it while it was off. Probably the latter. But it went to full charge. I did get a capacity reading from Accubattery so it was charging while on. It was in the low to mid 90s vs the rated capacity. That was worth it for me. The phone didn't shut off randomly anymore. The apps were quicker. The camera took pictures the way I remembered it used to. No more static noise. But the charging issue was still there.
The back came off a few more times after that as I tried troubleshooting as best I could to see whether there were any issues with the charge port. There were no visible issues. I did end up picking out some dust with a needle, but not any significant amount that would have explained why it wasn't recognizing being plugged in while on. I probed with a meter on the backside of the USB port while the phone was apart and plugged in to make sure voltage from the charger and cord was coming through. No issues there, but also not advisable to do. The contact points that need to be probed are very tiny and very close to other things. I was lucky I didn't short the 5V to anything important. Pretty sure I did short it at least once and it didn't do any damage, after which I stopped while I was ahead. Cleaned out the port with an old toothbrush dipped in isopropyl alcohol. That definitely seemed to help it charge more reliably while off, but it still wasn't charging while on.
I’ve read posts that suggested the charge port was bad and needed to be replaced, but the fact that the 5V was coming through the USB port meant it had to be something else. Before I had opened the phone up the first time and was troubleshooting this problem I had tried a full reset. Backed up the whole phone manually. It wasn't rooted at that time. At the same time I unlocked the bootloader to get ready to root it once I replaced the battery because I wanted to use a charge limiter with the new battery to extend its life (whether or not that actually works to extend the life I don’t care, its worth the tradeoff to me). The factory reset had made no difference to my charging issue. I had not reflashed the factory image at this point. I was just doing a factory reset with the image that was already on the phone.
After I replaced the battery and it was still having issues, I tried flashing the factory image. Even going in and wiping cache and data through stock recovery made no difference. In addition to charging issues while on there would also be connection issues. It would connect and disconnect if the USB cable was not held in the right way. Not the ideal condition to be flashing a ROM but I managed to keep it connected for long enough. This was not just once. I tried a couple different methods. The first probably was using the Nexus Root Toolkit. Then when that didn't work I went in and manually flashed each file with adb from the command line. At some point I had gotten it to a condition where I did not recognize what it was doing during boot and it was just sitting on the Google screen before the animation starts. Didn't realize then that it should not be on this screen for long. I let it sit like that overnight. I had it plugged in to a charger but I had no way of knowing whether it was charging… it was not. Drained the battery just sitting on that screen all night. Phone came apart again. Battery was down to 2.7V and the phone would not charge. Green light in the speaker came on once (I didn't even realize that light was there before this). It would charge a bit, screen would come on and then immediately die. Started looking up how to charge a Li-Po battery outside of the phone. Eventually my brain cells started working and I pulled out the new battery and put the old battery back in. It had a 4V charge in it still. Was able to get the phone to boot into the OS for the first time after the ROM flash. Turned phone off, pulled old battery out, put new battery in, plugged it in while it was off and it started charging. I kept the back off and had a fan blowing across it while it charged to make sure it didn't get hot. It charged to full. I pulled it out again to see that I hadn't done any permanent damage. It felt the same thickness as before. Nothing was swollen. Will eventually know for sure when I have some more charge/discharge cycles on it, but I think it will be fine since it wasn't discharged lower than 2.7V.
Phone back together. Still only charging while off. Last thing to try is what other posts were skeptical about working. Time to root in order to get access to the batterystats files. Tried to flash TWRP to recovery. It would take but it would not stick. Tried a few times and then gave up and moved on to installing Magisk without it. Turns out Magisk will work just fine with the stock recovery. Used Magisk to patch the boot image. Flashed the patched boot image with adb (still with a wonky USB connection that seemed like it needed to be held just right, but it was only 8meg so it flashed fast). Went with FX File Explorer to browse root. Navigated to data/system folder and moved the three batterystats files off the phone. Kept the files on my computer just in case something went south and I needed to put them back. Rebooted the phone. Booted up without any issues. Plugged in the charger. Recognized immediately and started to charge while on for the first time in a long time. But then it would do the same thing again where the next time I tried charging it would not. It would recognize its plugged into power but would not charge unless I turned the phone on. After a while I realized it would charge while on if I just rebooted it. I still haven’t figured out why this is happening, but its a minor inconvenience. Went through a few weeks worth of charge cycles and Accubattery is showing the Polarcell is at 95% health which seems good to me. I also installed Battery Charge Limit and set it to 80%. Whether or not that’s really going to extend the life of the battery I don’t know but its working fine for me. I get more than a full day out of it before I have to charge again, but I’m not really putting a heavy load on it.
This summarizes troubleshooting and fixing that spans at least three months, for an issue that has been going on for about a year. I’m sure a lot of the issues I had are interrelated. There were definitely a few red herrings along the way. There is no physical damage to the USB port or cables or chargers even though the behavior would have indicated there was. I’m sure the old battery caused issues with either corrupting the batterystats files or just loading it with bad data, and that somehow caused the charging issues I was having. That also seems like it was causing general connectivity issues via the USB port.
Normal people would not go through this much trouble for a 6 year old phone that was presenting so many problems. Safe to say I’m not normal. But I like fixing things and I don't like waste. Hopefully this experience, or at least portions of it, helps someone else keep their Nexus 6 going or maybe even other phones since none of the issue I encountered seem to be specific to the phone.
Quite an adventure!
I would think that your USB connector is physically damaged. You should not have to fiddle with the cable to flash a rom, and also, charging isn't just passing 5V to the phone, it checks the data lines as well to identify the kind of charger.
People say that it is possible to replace the USB connector, but I guess you need to be a real pro at soldering. Maybe a repair shop can do it.
Replacing the charging coil is probably easier - I've done that, though it took some tries before I got the connectors aligned.
It could be the connector or it could be something further downstream (inside the phone). The connector looks physically fine; nothing obvious. Either way, if that's the issue it will be time for a new phone. I've seen those videos and that is well beyond my capabilities. The coil seems simple enough to replace but I've never used wireless charging anyways so I am fine without it.
However, I tend to think its more software related than hardware related just because I can do nothing else besides turn the phone off and it will start charging just fine. I have stood absolutely still, not moving the phone or cable at all and just turned it off and it will start to charge. And when I turn it back on it will still be charging and recognize that it is charging vs before turning it off it would seem like it recognizes its plugged into a charger but it would not be charging (Battery Usage screen goes from telling me how much time it estimates is left with the charge the battery has on it when the cord is not plugged in to saying "Not Charging" when the cord is plugged in).
Any pointers on where to read about how the operating system controls charging? I'm running stock 7.1.1 (N8I11F) with bootloader unlocked and Magisk installed.
Also, what controls charging when the phone is off? I'm assuming that its not the OS.
Thanks
You can always try clearing the bootloader logs:
[Q] Dying at 17% battery
My Nexus 6 is dying at around 17% battery. I've tried using battery calibration apps to fix it but they haven't worked. I've also factory reset, and went from LMY47D to LMY47M, both of which would die at 17%. Any suggestions?
forum.xda-developers.com
That should reset the battery status. It doesn't delete any user data.
I had tried clearing the bootloader logs before, and have tried it again. I had seen a response on a post (that i can't find anymore) that suggested the logs were cleared during a power cycle anyways. Not sure if there's any truth in that, but that's why i thought charging while powered off was working. However, i think i'm agreeing with you now that its the charge port. Last week it stopped working on the charger/cord combo (4A Asus charger and cord that came with some other device) that was reliable up to that point while powered off. Now it will only charge if i push in the cord real hard (won't work with the cord i was using, now i'm back on the OEM cord still with the 4A Asus charger). I think once this method stops working it will be time to move on to another phone.
Any battery recommend ?
I like the Polarcell. Accubattery says its at 94% health (3000mAh compared to the 3200mAh design rating). It hasn't changed since I first installed it two to three months ago. I don't use the phone for anything much more than phone/text/email/alerts so I don't have much screen-on time. I have other devices for that. With that lite use it will take two full days to drop about 50% charge before I put it back to charge. Phone is just as responsive as when I first got it. No random shutdowns or app crashes.
Vincent Adultman said:
I like the Polarcell. Accubattery says its at 94% health (3000mAh compared to the 3200mAh design rating). It hasn't changed since I first installed it two to three months ago. I don't use the phone for anything much more than phone/text/email/alerts so I don't have much screen-on time. I have other devices for that. With that lite use it will take two full days to drop about 50% charge before I put it back to charge. Phone is just as responsive as when I first got it. No random shutdowns or app crashes.
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Thanks for your post. Which ROM are you using?
Stock, 7.1.1, N8I11F