Hi there!
Does anyone know of a way to operate the Universal solely on A/C power when there is no battery inserted?
I often use my universal as a WLAN media player in the kitchen. It just sits there for hours playing music and I would like to remove the battery from it during this time to extend overall battery life.
Unfortunately the device does not turn on when there is no battery inserted.
This should be fairly easy, if I understood well, you don't want to let the battery in the universal (even if normally the battery chargers apply a tickle current charge when the batteries are already charged to mantain it fully charged), so you just need to connect your power supply directly to the uni's battery contacts -BEWARE the power supply MUST be 3.7V REGULATED / 1A minimum current-.
Personally, I do not like to change the way the objects are, so I would try to keep it like this in this case, this means, no extra holes in my PDA, no extra connectors, etc. so you need a pair of mini alligators clips or miniclips to connect your unit to the power supply, be sure to verify the correct polarity, it's clearly written in the battery's contacts.
Alternatively, there should be a way of doing this by using the uni's own battery charger through it's own mini USB connector, it's necessary to cheat the PDA and let him "think" he's got the battery inserted, this should be fairly easy to do also, but I'm out of my work, so I could provide a complete solution like this until late april.
bye
downloadtest82 said:
Unfortunately the device does not turn on when there is no battery inserted.
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Why don't you use an old battery?
I use this way in this particolar circumstances!
Why don't you use an old battery?
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That's what I used to do, unfortunately the old battery I have is so worn down by now it won't even support the boot process any more, and the A/C power regulator kicks in only after basic I/O drivers are loaded on the device.
Since the old battery dies before this process completes I can't use that any more.
I don't believe the Universal's "battery detection circuits" are all that complex, in most modern electronic devices they can be fooled by simply bridging some of the connectors in the battery bay.
I don't know if this is true for this device also, however. So I was wondering if anyone else ever tried before I toast my PDA...
downloadtest82 said:
Since the old battery dies before this process completes I can't use that any more.
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Oh.. I understand.. Sorry..
Well: be careful if you try to solve in other way..
I received an extended battery which I ordered from ebay and i am having problems with it. The stated capacity (of 2300mah) is true however i have to remove and re insert the battery to be able to use it. E.g. I charge the phone fully and use it until it shuts down, i then remove and re-insert the battery and i still have over 50% left. If i have 80% left and i remove and re-insert the battery it will jump back to 100%. I have tried fully recharging and discharging the battery. I have also tried changing to the latest official rom for my provider which lists extended battery support as one of its features. I have seen comments in some of the extended battery threads with people having similar issues however there are no solutions mentioned in them. Does anybody have any ideas on how to fix this?
Something you will have to live with. HTC fix works with their official batteries AFAIK.
I opened up the battery and i found it is actually 2 batteries stuck together. So im pretty much out of luck for a software fix. I guess this will just become my spare battery.
(images taken by hd2)
PINki92 said:
Something you will have to live with. HTC fix works with their official batteries AFAIK.
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Where is the fix ?
Can you give a link ?
http://www.expansys.ae/allreviews.aspx?i=195058
Read this short review/opinion.
JJbdoggg said:
I opened up the battery and i found it is actually 2 batteries stuck together. So im pretty much out of luck for a software fix. I guess this will just become my spare battery.
(images taken by hd2)
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[technical head on]
That's what a battery is; more than one cell.
Wire identical cells together in a row and you combine the voltage but not the capacity.
Wire the identical cells together in parallel (ie + to + and - to -) and you combine the capacity but not the voltage.
So take two 1200mAh lithium cells and wire them in parallel and you get a 2400mAh battery.
The original ROMs were designed with a 1200mAh cell in mind, so their power meters presume that's what you have. If you take out the battery and plug it back in, it resets the power meter. Both cells are being used at the same time, don't think it uses one then flips over to the other.
Try a newer ROM and see if that sorts you out.
The original battery in my Nook had gotten to the point where it would only run for a day or so. I ordered a replacement battery and installed it. The system came up and indicated a 85% charge. Put in on the charger for the evening and then started using it in the morning. After more then a month of use the Nook indicated it was getting low so I placed it back on the charger. It was then I noticed that while it detected it was on a charger (got the large battery icon) the device/battery never switched from 'discharge' to 'charging', only to 'not charging'. Left it on over night but no change.
Thinking I perhaps had a bad battery (and not being able to return it) I purchased another one from a different source. Upon installing this one (at a 75% charge) I noticed it would show the same thing 'not charging'.
Putting the Nook original battery back in made everything happy.
I have tried different cables and power plugs, reboots, hard reboots, pulling the battery holding the power down for 60sec, even doing the factory reset re-register. Nothing seems to help.
Has anyone else seen this type of behavior with a new battery?
Possible that both are bad? Or is there some value that is not getting cleared?
Any help or pointers will be appreciated.
Thank-you
Did you try using UsbMode.apk (in the signature)?
(You'll need superuser to run that.)
Try setting the current to 500 mA and see if it will start charging.
Renate NST said:
Did you try using UsbMode.apk (in the signature)?
(You'll need superuser to run that.)
Try setting the current to 500 mA and see if it will start charging.
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Thank-you for the fast reply. I haven't rooted the Nook yet but seeing that nothing else is working I have no problem trying. I will download your app and give it a try.
Thanks again
dsfraser said:
Thank-you for the fast reply. I haven't rooted the Nook yet but seeing that nothing else is working I have no problem trying. I will download your app and give it a try.
Thanks again
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Well I did the NookManager root and sideloaded your USBMode.apk. Changed the setup from Auto to 500mA, but it makes no difference. The status says 'Not charging' (switches to Discharging if I unplug). Health - Unknown, Reg - enabled, Max current - 500 mA, Battery - 3.963V 69%, Temp - 28F (which is odd as it's about 70 in here) Problem with a temperature sensor?
I've toyed with the idea of swapping the little battery circuit card from the old battery to my new one, good or bad idea?
Thanks for your assistance.
B&N screwed up on the temperature measurement.
The were supposed to report it as in integer, scaled 10X Celcius.
So for a normal 23°C the number should be 230, B&N blew it and delivers 23.
UsbMode.apk uses fingerprints to determine if it should handle it as a bug.
There is a problem with that, there are many Nooks with different fingerprints.
In any case 28°F is below freezing, below 0°C.
If the scale were off by a factor of 10, it would still be cold.
If the charging circuits thought the battery were cold it would not charge.
Since the thermistor in the battery pack is NTC, that means it's probably open.
The resistance from yellow to black at room temperature should be near to 10K.
Those little boards are tiny and it would be easy to short the battery before the Battery Protection Module.
I'd just pick up a new battery if the yellow/black measurement is way high.
Renate NST said:
B&N screwed up on the temperature measurement.
The were supposed to report it as in integer, scaled 10X Celcius.
So for a normal 23°C the number should be 230, B&N blew it and delivers 23.
UsbMode.apk uses fingerprints to determine if it should handle it as a bug.
There is a problem with that, there are many Nooks with different fingerprints.
In any case 28°F is below freezing, below 0°C.
If the scale were off by a factor of 10, it would still be cold.
If the charging circuits thought the battery were cold it would not charge.
Since the thermistor in the battery pack is NTC, that means it's probably open.
The resistance from yellow to black at room temperature should be near to 10K.
Those little boards are tiny and it would be easy to short the battery before the Battery Protection Module.
I'd just pick up a new battery if the yellow/black measurement is way high.
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You are probably right about just getting another new battery, third times the charm? I tried to swap the circuit cards between the old, still sort of functioning, and the new 'no charging' one but to no avail. Didn't get any voltage out at all. Any recommendations about whom to buy a new battery from... I obviously haven't made very good choices the past two times.
Thanks for the help
It still could be the charging system on your Nook.
(But you say that your old battery charges ok. What does the temperature say?)
It would be nice to figure out exactly what the problem is.
Do you have a meter to measure the yellow to black resistance?
Moreover, is the yellow wire next to the red wires?
If they switched the thermistor and the ID resistor wire 30K would probably give a freezing indication.
See: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=42552349&postcount=5
Renate NST said:
It still could be the charging system on your Nook.
(But you say that your old battery charges ok. What does the temperature say?)
It would be nice to figure out exactly what the problem is.
Do you have a meter to measure the yellow to black resistance?
Moreover, is the yellow wire next to the red wires?
If they switched the thermistor and the ID resistor wire 30K would probably give a freezing indication.
See: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=42552349&postcount=5
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First off... Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you.
Now the story. I more or less (OK, more) destroyed my original and first replacement battery swapping the circuit cards around. I followed your suggestion and put a meter on the plug wires. My colors ran RRYWBB. Sure enough I had 27K where I should have 10K, and 9K where it should read 30K. Using a X-acto knife I was able to pry the plug locking tabs up and swap the Wht / Yel leads. Bingo, the Temp now reads 72F and when I plug in the charger I immediately get the battery icon with the lightning bolt and the status switches to 'Charging'. I'm guessing the first replacement battery had the same issue. These were from different companies and were packaged differently, but perhaps they all come from the same manufacture and that manufacture screwed up.
So again, thank-you for all your help.
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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X
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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.