Nexus 6 battery replacement and charging issues - Nexus 6 General
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your post. Which ROM are you using?
Stock, 7.1.1, N8I11F
Related
[Q] cannot charge droid X even on AC adapter, after successful rooting and SBF flash
I'm a hardware engineer/software developer, it should not be this hard. Have Droid X with Android 2.2.1, after rooting using SuperOneClick with PDANet for Android, it would no longer charge, even on AC adapter, battery discharged during phone call. I did a lot of research online, have done as detailed below, but still not charging, and am awaiting delivery (a week away!) of a an external Droid X battery wall charger. I AM ABLE TO USE MY PHONE ONLY FOR NOW USING THE HACK INVOLVING OVERLAYING THE BATTERY WITH CUT OPEN POSITIVE/NEGATIVE LEADS OF A USB CABLE AND INSERTING INTO PHONE!!! After establishing the USB/battery hack, I did the following (none resulting in battery charge restored): Removed root authority from apps intended to calibrate CPU and Battery, removed these apps entirely from phone. Removed root authority from ALL rooted apps, removed all such apps from phone. Unrooted phone Downloaded RSDLite 4.8, 64 bit Motorola Drivers and VRZ_MB810_2.3.34_1FF_01.sbf (latest I could find) -- all onto Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit, no problem flashing the new SBF, which is replaced Android 2.2.1 with only some minor cosmetic difference from what I started with. Yet still will not charge, even on AC adapter. Downloaded the Motorola PC/USB charging drivers referenced on several website. But they are NOT compatible with Windows 7 and will not even install. I don't really think these would fix my issue anyway since I cannot charge even with AC adapter. (Please note that the battery was pulled on numerous occasions and I did remove the bare USB positve/negative leads from the battery before attempting to get it to charge either from PC or wall charger again.) Can somebody please advise? I regret ever having rooted the phone, but in fact, only after I rooted it was the first time the battery completely discharged while in use. The battery also ran down way too fast after rooting. I have read some users experiencing this issue with a completely unhacked/unrooted phone. And since I am now experiencing this with a newly-flashed SBF and unrooted phone, I just have to wonder. Is there really any point to reflashing the bootloader? (It is version 30.04 by the way.) I really DON'T need the phone to be rooted, though having Samba would have been cool as would complete access to the Linux command shell. Am willing to try some more steps with flashing, drivers, et cetera, if anybody can suggest a proper solution. Otherwise, what I really need to know is ... once I have flashed Android 2.2.1 back onto my phone, will Verizon be able to know that I hacked it ... if indeed it seems the only solution is to depend on warranty to get a new phone? Are there other steps I need take? (I would likely remove my 16 GB micro-SD card and replace with a 2 GB one anyway so no trace of apps/backups would be there.) The battery has had a lot of scotch tape stuck on/removed in past few days. I am thinking therefore that I want to avoid taking this phone directly into a Verizon store for service. I also rather wonder if all this cut-open USB cable jumpstarting may be affecting the battery. For all I know, the battery was flawed anyway. I guess that, once I receive the external charger, I can verify whether the battery itself is capable of holding a charge. The good thing here is that it really DOES seem difficult to actually brick the Droid X. Well, unless one crosses wires when laying a cut-open USB cable over the battery leads in order to jumpstart.
You sound more like a heart surgeon than a software engineer....wow! Unless you have a wall charger you might as well stop what youre doing, so you dont risk killing the patient. If you were connected via USB to your PC then this is exactly where the problem lies. You prolly do not have enough juice in the battery to do anything. An easy test of this would be press the volume down, camera, and power buttons all at the same time. This should throw you into the bootloader, and if you do not have juice in the battery it should tell you that the battery is low and cannot program. The ONLY way I have been able to get my DX to power up in this condition is to connect it to a wall charger and go from there. As a side note I invested $60 and bought an Energizer Energi 2000K power pack. It comes with a standalone battery, tips for every conceivable device, and wall/car charger. All in one small handy pack. A must have for all us geeks! Steve
I thank you for the post. It is clear my battery is discharged. This is why I used the USB splice procedure I found on this and other websites to jumpstart and flash, which works just fine. I rather suspect that, once I have the charger, it will not solve the problem. Rather, I will just be stuck charging externally. Some have solved this issue by reflashing an SBF (which I did). Others by installing new PC-based Motorola USB charging drivers. These are not compatible with Windows 7 and anyway my problem persists even when charging from AC adapter. I hope what you surmise is correct. However that would reveal an immense flaw in the phone. Cannot: cannot charge up when battery completely discharged. I have trouble believing this is the case. For now, I am having to continue to use the USB cable splice just to make crucial phone calls, as this is my only phone. Otherwise, my poor Droid X remains off and in a safe place. I don't believe the spliced/hacked power interface hurts the phone at all ... but it probably is not very good for the battery. However, occasional phone calls are a necessity. I am in utter withdrawal not being able to text and do all the other non-voice things I am accustomed to. Because I have read a number of posts where people found themselves in my situation even though they had not rooted their phone ... in some cases after upgrading to Android 2.2, in some cases not ... I am really wondering if it could be true the Droid just can't cope at all with a depleted battery. Unless one uses an external charger, the battery depends on having a running operating system to charge. The OS seems to require the battery to have some power itself in order to charge. Not exactly a classic "deadlock" situation but something like it. O, woe is me. Wish I were a surgeon ... I could afford to just buy a new Droid X and forget about all this mess. Got this one from Verizon for just $70 -- they would charge me hundreds for a replacement.
SOLVED! (for me anyway) This is so typically stupid. One can go to extremes and the problem is so OBVIOUS!!!!! I was using the wrong AC/USB adapter. Like everybody else I have about a billion of these things now and they all look just alike. I almost didn't even bother to do this, but did go look through my drawer of chargers and located the Motorola one. As soon as plugged in, the thing started to charge right up. I removed all the temporary wires from the battery, put it back into the Droid X, put on the cover, and it is currently charging right back to where it was. (I am glad however that I spent the $8.00 for the external wall charger, because a Verizon tech did verify for me that the battery has to have some minimal charge in it for the phone to charge at all. Thus, if the battery were every to totally discharge, an external charger might be a good idea.) This kind of stupidity is so typical in the computer field. Once, when I was in college and programming FORTRAN for the biochem department, I wasted a whole weekend slaving over what turned out to be just two variable names joined into one, where there was not a comma at the end of one line ... blah blah blah.
Brand new Atrix won't charge. Green LED.
I installed/flashed Gingerblur yesterday and it was working fine for the whole day. At night, I put it back into it's case because I'm still waiting for my New Screen Protector and Case to come. I take really good care of it. Then I did not use the phone for the whole day. After having a really bad day, I started up my brand new Atrix for some fun and it was already at around 5% battery left so I went ahead and tried to charge it. I noticed plugging it into the computer did not work, so I tried wall charging it and that also did not work. To sum it up, Symptoms: -Green Led for 2-3 seconds when I hold down the top main button then shuts off led. Note: Only happens/works if the phone is plugged into the wall. -Green Led for 4 or more seconds if I plug in wall charger then shuts off led. -No visual image on screen after battery drained out at all. What can I do? I don't think I bricked it since it was working perfectly yesterday. Is there anything I can do? I have tried removing battery with no avail, it is plugged in to the wall charger still for the past hour.
This is a very weird problem and I don't know the exact answer..I just know i bricked my atrix before (failed to flash on a full battery) and couldn't charge the dead battery even on AC. I ended up buying a universal battery charger from radioshack and then returning it once I got my battery fully charged and flashed the rom. Haven't had any battery problems since. Hope this helps
Thanks, I will try this but it is night time right now. I hope someone else has had experience of this before and can guide me to any other directions. I did not fail a flash, unless the flash can fail even if Gingerblur was working 100% before it failed. I don't know if thats possible.
Are you using the usb cable/charger that came with the phone? I know it sounds ridiculous but the phone does NOT charge on any of my existing MicroUSB cables or wall chargers (used to have a nexus one). Pretty bummed about that :/
Yeah I am using the one that came with it. I also want to update that I've tried my sister's HTC Inspire charger and an old Samsung charger I have left around. Both are USB to wall Adapters (I am not using the same wall power adapter for each charger) so I wonder if I need the one that plugs directly into the wall?
Yeah, you probably just have a dysfunctional battery or charger, either way, you're going to have to diagnose which one is the problem (fingers crossed that it isn't the phone) /e: it sounds like its not the charger, from your most recent post. I think your phone is the problem, it's not processing how to charge the battery from the cable.
Common problem. You need at least 850mA to charge the phone, so older usb ports wont work. The wall charger is actually working. Pull the battery out, put it back in, plug in the wall charger(don't press any buttons!) and let it sit for about 30min to get a decent charge. Should boot up after that.
designgears said: Common problem. You need at least 850mA to charge the phone, so older usb ports wont work. The wall charger is actually working. Pull the battery out, put it back in, plug in the wall charger(don't press any buttons!) and let it sit for about 30min to get a decent charge. Should boot up after that. Click to expand... Click to collapse Hm, it's been charging for over an hour now and still hasn't turned on. But I did not do it exactly as you said. I unplugged the battery acouple times but I always try to hold the "fingerprint" on button right after plugging it in. I'll try not pressing anything this time. Thanks, I'll post back if I get any results.
The phone should turn on if charging, you don't need 850mA either. Standard USB is 500 and it just charges slower. I know this for a fact as I just charged it like that. Take it into a store or contact where you bought it from. Plugging in phone while off: Green LED for a bit, moto logo, battery icon Power on, no charger : green light for a bit longer, moto logo, boot animation. Try an at&t stores charger and see if theyll let you charge the battery. Sent from my Motorola Atrix 4G on the network with the most backhaul, whatever that is. This post might have errors as I hate touchscreen keyboards.
Mgamerz said: The phone should turn on if charging, you don't need 850mA either. Standard USB is 500 and it just charges slower. Take it into a store or contact amazon support. Sent from my Motorola Atrix 4G on the network with the most backhaul, whatever that is. This post might have errors as I hate touchscreen keyboards. Click to expand... Click to collapse With a dead battery you need 850 mAH. The phone needs 850 mA ti boot and it needs to boot to charge (strange yes but software controls the charge). I would suggest trying all the chargers you can (the Moto one may be giving you to little amps) and if that does not work you can try to either 1) make a dev cable (post on how to in the dev section, though it requires soldering and such so you may not be able to do it if you don't have supplies) or 2) get a charger for the battery (one to directly charge the battery vice through the phone).
The battery method did not work, I did not try to hold the main button until 1 hour later to no avail. I'm going to Best Buy tomorrow for a replacement.
Edit: Oops..Too late to the party! I had the same issue that was fixed when I used a good quality micro-usb charger!
850ma? You sure? I've charged and booted my phone from dead on a 700ma charger and 500ma usb on numerous occasions.
U need not worry .. put it in a wall charger .. and let it sit dere for atleast an hour .. the green led will come up when charge level reaches around 50% or more .. be patient .. LivingChampion said: I installed/flashed Gingerblur yesterday and it was working fine for the whole day. At night, I put it back into it's case because I'm still waiting for my New Screen Protector and Case to come. I take really good care of it. Then I did not use the phone for the whole day. After having a really bad day, I started up my brand new Atrix for some fun and it was already at around 5% battery left so I went ahead and tried to charge it. I noticed plugging it into the computer did not work, so I tried wall charging it and that also did not work. To sum it up, Symptoms: -Green Led for 2-3 seconds when I hold down the top main button then shuts off led. Note: Only happens/works if the phone is plugged into the wall. -Green Led for 4 or more seconds if I plug in wall charger then shuts off led. -No visual image on screen after battery drained out at all. What can I do? I don't think I bricked it since it was working perfectly yesterday. Is there anything I can do? I have tried removing battery with no avail, it is plugged in to the wall charger still for the past hour. Click to expand... Click to collapse Sent from my MB860 using XDA App
I had the exact same issue the other day. I forgot to put my phone on charge at night, and it was dead in the morning. I plugged into the wall with my Moto charger, the phone turned on and went right to CWM. I rebooted from there, the phone showed 5% battery level, and within 10-15 minutes was at 20%. I thought it strange my phone went right to the old Tenfar CWM even though I uninstalled it after unlocking my phone and installing the latest CWM from Tenfar. It does seem that the shut off with the battery is 5%. I am assuming this is the safety factor built into either the Android OS, or the batteries themselves, as they do have circuits in them much like mini computers to shut them off before 100% discharge, as this will kill a Lithium Ion battery. Some simple facts regarding the Lithium Ion batteries: •They start degrading as soon as they leave the factory. They will only last two or three years from the date of manufacture whether you use them or not. •They are extremely sensitive to high temperatures. Heat causes lithium-ion battery packs to degrade much faster than they normally would. •If you completely discharge a lithium-ion battery, it is ruined. •A lithium-ion battery pack must have an on-board computer to manage the battery. This makes them even more expensive than they already are. •There is a small chance that, if a lithium-ion battery pack fails, it will burst into flame. What I would like to know is why some people have problems getting a charge back in the Atrix after a complete discharge. There I was at 20% after 10-15 minutes using the Moto wall charger, while other people can't even get their phones to turn on after an hour on the wall charger.
I have the same problem, tried everything and finally found a solution Get a warranty replacement. The phone won't turn on, so they don't know what you did to it. Got my new phone today, popped the dead battery in and voila, it charges ! Sometimes it's like people say, it's because of the charge, but your phone probably have issue, just get a replacement
I let it charge all night and it still has the same symptoms. Going to Best Buy in an hour when it opens. When I get my new phone, should I Gingerblur it again or am I going to face this same issue? Was this software related or hardware? Gingerblur was relatively easy to do, but I don't want to risk killing my phone a second time. UPDATE: Got a replacement phone. Complementing whether I want to Gingerblur it again because that's the only thing that could have caused the battery issue other than it being hardware related.
LivingChampion said: I let it charge all night and it still has the same symptoms. Going to Best Buy in an hour when it opens. When I get my new phone, should I Gingerblur it again or am I going to face this same issue? Was this software related or hardware? Gingerblur was relatively easy to do, but I don't want to risk killing my phone a second time. UPDATE: Got a replacement phone. Complementing whether I want to Gingerblur it again because that's the only thing that could have caused the battery issue other than it being hardware related. Click to expand... Click to collapse You can try it again should work fine for you. If not... You can always use their phone and your "dead battery" and visa versa theirs into your phone. Then if same issue happens. Just warranty the phone. If your in warranty do it. I've had g1's for no reason not charge. Led says it, os says it, yet NONE of my working batteries were getting any charge off the phone. Especially when the phone was 3 days old. Warranty.... if its free do it.
tehrules said: 850ma? You sure? I've charged and booted my phone from dead on a 700ma charger and 500ma usb on numerous occasions. Click to expand... Click to collapse Well, according to motorola it needs that much... so you never know
Ciloteille said: You can try it again should work fine for you. If not... You can always use their phone and your "dead battery" and visa versa theirs into your phone. Then if same issue happens. Just warranty the phone. If your in warranty do it. I've had g1's for no reason not charge. Led says it, os says it, yet NONE of my working batteries were getting any charge off the phone. Especially when the phone was 3 days old. Warranty.... if its free do it. Click to expand... Click to collapse Yes if warranty then ok .. But we are here to do the impossible.. I just reconditioned a new battery just so it can turn phone on in same instance for a friend. So yes batteries and phones new can have charging issues. There is an issue with smart-phones and batteries and has been since day one. If you are here then evidently you either love these phones and want to mod them or you are like me and love playing with electronics. Real simple if you in the smart-phone world there are a few rules of thumb.. 1.) Never begin working without a fully charged battery (some say 51% or better I say 100% ) 2.) Buy , borrow , get an external battery charger and/or stronger wall charger 3.) Extra batteries are always good. 4.) Read the damn stickies and wiki's ... People have taken plenty of time creating them. Those who know me know I have written some myself. 5.) The biggest problem is located between the chair and the keyboard .... (lol)
Troubleshooting - a500 won't charge - Is my power supply or tablet dead
As of last night my A500 will not charge. I left the device overnight and unfortunately now have Zero charge. - My charger makes a noise, I think it always did, so I'm assuming the charger is OK. Can anyone confirm that the chargers give off a kind of electrical buzz when working? - I get no light at all on my A500. If the charger is OK I'm thinking something has gone within the tab, be that circuit or battery. Any ideas or tips here? - Sadly I do not have a multi-meter to test either the charger or the tab, no friends with a similar device, I've lost my proof or purchase (which is painful and rules out warranty), and am a bit stuck what to do. Any ideas? - I've heard/read that allowing the power to drop too low can cause a problem. Obviously Zero is bad in this case. Can anyone confirm this rumour or suggest a fix? - I did try entering recovery and resetting the battery stats - whether this made things worse or not is unclear - it certainly did not help. ANY HELP OR IDEAS WELCOME (bear in mind that I have spent quite some time searching and trying other peoples' ideas already though. Thanks,
ta-wan said: As of last night my A500 will not charge. I left the device overnight and unfortunately now have Zero charge. - My charger makes a noise, I think it always did, so I'm assuming the charger is OK. Can anyone confirm that the chargers give off a kind of electrical buzz when working? - I get no light at all on my A500. If the charger is OK I'm thinking something has gone within the tab, be that circuit or battery. Any ideas or tips here? - Sadly I do not have a multi-meter to test either the charger or the tab, no friends with a similar device, I've lost my proof or purchase (which is painful and rules out warranty), and am a bit stuck what to do. Any ideas? - I've heard/read that allowing the power to drop too low can cause a problem. Obviously Zero is bad in this case. Y Can anyone confirm this rumour or suggest a fix? - I did try entering recovery and resetting the battery stats - whether this made things worse or not is unclear - it certainly did not help. ANY HELP OR IDEAS WELCOME (bear in mind that I have spent quite some time searching and trying other peoples' ideas already though. Thanks, Click to expand... Click to collapse Quit guessing and get the charger checked
In reply to myself and to help those with a similar issue. Yes a charger my buzz when good OR bad. The trick to seeing whether it is working or not (aside from it charging the pad) is to see if it gets warm -- no warmth, probably broken. As for measuring with a multimeter the trick is to insert a paper clip into the small hole in the plug and measure the voltage between the outer plug (negative) and the paperclip (linked to the positive). Few multimeters have pins that will fit inside the super tiny plug on the A500 charger so the paperclip is your way in - obviously be sure not to short circuit the thing! There are many chargers available out there. In Australia Jay-Car and **** Smith both have perfect chargers, the correct type, voltage, amps etc, they even come with multiple pins -- sadly none fit the A500! My solution was to go to Infinity who are a provider of Acer spare parts. They have the correct charger and are easy to deal with BUT -- It's not cheap! They want $40 for the charger and a further $30 for the little bit on the end that gives the plug its nationality. In most cases we do not need this though as we can reuse our old one, but hey, not cheap all the same. Still, it works and I'd rather be ripped off than get the wrong thing and blow the mother board. NOTE: if you do get a charger from anyone other than Acer or a supplier of theirs - be sure to match every detail of your current charger - especially polarity.
I had problems with charging on my A500. When I plugged in the charger the power button would turn orange for a few seconds and then start flashing white. I took the back cover off and found that the wire to the centre pin of the power connector on the tablet had almost broken off. I touched it lightly and it came away. Re-soldering the wire fixed the problem, it now charges as expected. After fixing it I measured the charge current. It starts at a small value for a few seconds and then jumps to full charge rate. It seems there was enough of a connection to handle the small current but as soon as it switched to full charge current the voltage drop across the remains of the connection was too much and charging stopped.
Charging problem I too just experienced the no charging problem. I looked up how to open up the tablet and tried to trouble shoot the problem myself. My problem turned out to be a very easy fix. The Posative lead on the back of the charger port had come loose, a simple touch of the soldering iron and its fixed. I thought since I had it open I might as well go ahead and change the battery too since it was 4 years old. Its an old tablet and time to turn it into a hand me down for a lucky niece or nephew
[FAULT] Battery not holding or taking charge even when showing that it is charging...
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. Click to expand... Click to collapse
Android Security Patch
Hey guys, my partner just did the November security patch from Google on her T-Mobile Priv. The phone would not take a charge and eventually powered off; couldn't power it back on and still wouldn't take a charge from several different chargers on several different wall outlets. When I got home I attempted to plug it into my computer hoping that I could at least access the onboard data and save that. The computer wouldn't even register anything was plugged in. After a bit of frustration she made a half cocked comment about doing a battery pull to which I replied that the phone is a unibody. However, I was wrong. Where as the phone isn't meant to come apart for the consumer, it can be accomplished. I was able to disconnect the battery from the board, wait about 30 seconds, then plug it back in and reassemble it. Plugging the phone into the computer let me access the onboard storage and quickly grabbed the important files off of it, the phone said it was charging but the percentage was going down. Plugged the phone into a regular charger off a wall with a 2 amp plug and it appears to be charging properly now. The reason I'm writing this is to find out if anyone else had a similar problem with the November security patch or if there was an app update from Blackberry that nearly killed the phone. As a side note, I don't know for sure if the battery disconnect actually fixed the issue or if I did something different when I powered it back on. If you end up needing to perform a battery pull, make sure you have non-magnetic tweezers or small needlenose pliers and a T5 torx bit. This is the YouTube video I glanced at to get the battery cover off https://youtu.be/lRj_F7b4JvE Thanks guys, maybe this will help someone else out or maybe there's a more specific answer to the problem we had.