Develop Bugs

Another ODD battery problem

Since I have upgraded to WM6 with the official ROM release for AT&T I have been having odd battery issues.
I forgot to charge my phone last night but when I left the house this morning it showed 40%.
I stream audiobooks from my phone to my car stereo via Bluetooth and less than 10 minutes into the drive I received a low battery warning. By the time I got to work which is about a half hour drive the phone switched itself to airplane mode and then powered down. I could not get it to come back on until I plugged into my PC at work and then it booted so it had been fully shut down.
I have noticed at other times that the battery level goes from a high number to a low number VERY quickly. It also seems to charge very quickly and can go to a full charge from a USB connection in just about 2 hours.
Anyone else see this? It was a very steady reliable discharge rate under WM5. I have seen others talking about the OS potentially mis-reading the battery level but have seen nothing conclusive. I think perhaps it is just not updating the actual battery level when it should so when I see it at 40% it was really very low and just had not updated.
Anybody else???

I havent had my phone for long and flashed it immediately to Windows Mobile 6, but what I have noticed is that it charges pretty fast and I just notices just now that if I turn the phone off while still plugged in for charging but the charge indicator on the phone was green when it was on changed to orange to indicate charging when I turned the phone off. So maybe there is something at the software level affecting the charging process as turning the phone completely off allows me to charge even further than when the phone was on.

What has worked for a number of people is to let the phone get to 0% battery so it shuts the GSM off and then itself, then plug it into the mains charger overnight. This seems to have the effect of re-calibrating the battery meter. I have no idea if this actually works or if its complete coincidence but a number of people in various Schaps threads have had success with this. There is also the possibility that your battery is just screwed. Most of us I assume have devices that are a year or more old and mobile batteries dont last very long especially in power hungry devices like the Hermes.

Another battery Observation!
I have experimented with 3g off al day, and only E (Edge) was displayed on top. 12 hours, 5 phone calls equal to 36 minutes total, I had 60% left on battery. Same hours, 5 Phone calls, with 3G turned on, 42 minutes of conversation, one email sent, 5 received, battery displays 90%. I believe EDGE is what consumes power and drains the battery. leave on 3G and your battery will indeed last longer.

WM6 Battery Life
johnny13oi said:
I havent had my phone for long and flashed it immediately to Windows Mobile 6, but what I have noticed is that it charges pretty fast and I just notices just now that if I turn the phone off while still plugged in for charging but the charge indicator on the phone was green when it was on changed to orange to indicate charging when I turned the phone off. So maybe there is something at the software level affecting the charging process as turning the phone completely off allows me to charge even further than when the phone was on.
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I have noticed at home that when I plug it in to my Linux box (no synching of course) the charge light comes on briefly then shuts off and may come back on after about 10 seconds. I suspect in my case it may be the cable going bad but it only just started since the WM6 upgrade.

WM6 Battery Life
asfoor said:
I have experimented with 3g off al day, and only E (Edge) was displayed on top. 12 hours, 5 phone calls equal to 36 minutes total, I had 60% left on battery. Same hours, 5 Phone calls, with 3G turned on, 42 minutes of conversation, one email sent, 5 received, battery displays 90%. I believe EDGE is what consumes power and drains the battery. leave on 3G and your battery will indeed last longer.
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After a full charge yesterday afternoon I used my phone for a bit of reading an e-book for a half hour, 40 minutes listening to audio streamed via Bluetooth yesterday afternoon and another 40 minutes on the drive to work this morning and the phone is down to 50%. Wifi is disabled and I had no phone calls in that time. The only other usage is it automatically updating calendar and contacts with my exchange server but only every 4 hours ending at 6:00pm so that is not a big drain.
I have the device set to shut off the screen after 3 mins inactivity (not just backlight) but the battery drain seems to be much faster than it was with WM5. Perhaps it will straighten itself out with a few discharges and re-charges.

Battery drops from 12% to 0% in seconds & >4.3V at 100%

I've seen a few post regarding the 4.3V at 100% thing, but they're too old and haven't really given me much information.
My main issue is that I'm experiencing unusually rapid battery drops after my phone reaches 12% charge, it'd drop to 0% in just a few seconds. I downloaded a few battery calibration apps thinking that it might be a calibration issue. In that process, I noticed that the voltage read by these apps (and even in the *#*#4636#*#* menu) when fully charge is 4,38 volts. It was my understanding that Li-Po batteries should be fully charged at 4.2 volts and that charging past that point is harmful for the battery.
I also noticed that if at this point (charged at 4.38 volts - 100%) I unplugg the charger, the battery indicator would show 100% for a while, until the voltage drops below 4.2V, at that point the porcentage would change to 99%, so it seems that the device is set recognize 4,2V as fully charge, but it continues charging after that point. Also, the green light turns on at 90%, is this normal?
I tried calibrating using this app but with no results. I'm trying the manual calibration now. What is going on here? Could this be a clibration issue or do I have a faulty battery?

I think it is not normal. My P6 drops even a little bit slower from 10%. current my P6 is on 6% and 3,627V. (Edit: Turn off: 3,55V / After charge 100%: 4,32V)
Next time i will charge, then i post the Voltage at 100% for you.
To calibrate the accu you don't need any app. Use P6 until it is automatic power off. Now turn it on so often until it will not start anymore, and only show a red accu on screen. Now charge to 100%, turn on, unplug charger. Now your accu is calibrated.

heross said:
I think it is not normal. My P6 drops even a little bit slower from 10%. current my P6 is on 6% and 3,627V. (Edit: Turn off: 3,55V / After charge 100%: 4,32V)
Next time i will charge, then i post the Voltage at 100% for you.
To calibrate the accu you don't need any app. Use P6 until it is automatic power off. Now turn it on so often until it will not start anymore, and only show a red accu on screen. Now charge to 100%, turn on, unplug charger. Now your accu is calibrated.
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Thanks, heross. So apparently the >4.2V @ 100% is not so unusual. Does your phone remain at 100% for a relatively long time and drops to 99 after the voltage is below 4.2V? Mine does that, and it also turns the led green when it reaches 90%.
I'm sure the dropping from 12% o 0% in seconds cannot be normal, but I'm wondering if the above is a symptom that something is wrong or
if it's normal.
EDIT: Ok, the phone just turned off by itself, the quick drop hapenned as usual (12% to 0% in less than a minute) and the voltage fluctuated between 3,1 and 3,3 volts in the process, maybe even less than 3.1 V, but I'm not sure. I took a series of screen shots 2 seconds apart, I'll post them when I turn the phone on again, I'll let it charge as you suggested.

Yes LED green at 90% is normal. My P6 drops to 99% after 1-2minutes screen on or after a boot without charger.
12% to 0% in seconds is definitely not normal. Normal it goes down very slowly to 3% then it comes a Info and after 30sec it power off.

Hi
heross said:
Yes LED green at 90% is normal. My P6 drops to 99% after 1-2minutes screen on or after a boot without charger.
12% to 0% in seconds is definitely not normal. Normal it goes down very slowly to 3% then it comes a Info and after 30sec it power off.
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Finished charging.
I've turned the phone on and it has been sitting at 100% for about 25 minutes at 4,348V with the screen on. (I even played a video with full brightess). After that it droped to 99% and 4,079V[/B]. That can't be normal.
I saw that the P6 battery is rated 4,35 volts, so i'm not too worried anymore abut that voltage and everyone else seems to have the same values, but this quick drop with 12% and the fact that it stays for so long at 100% does worries me.
The screenshots were taken 2 or 3 seconds apart. It doesn't give me a low battery warning at 15% like most phones, but at 8%

I'm still having this extremely annoying problem. The goddamn battery goes from 12-13% to 0% in a blink of an eye. I just plugged the charger at 8% and it show 0% right after and started charging from there. Voltages are strange too, it shows ~3,6 volts when it started dropping quickly. It has charged ~20% in less than ten minutes. Look at this behavior: sudden voltage drops, never went below 3,3V and dies at 3,6V (almost nominal voltage)
I've tried calibrating several with several methods a few times, I'd prefer to stop doing that since I know it stresses the battery.
Has anyone had this issue? Can someone please shed some light on WTH is wrong with this troublesome phone?

Saw this post now. I have the same problem but it is from 9% to 0% . I don't think it is the battery, i think it is how android reads your battery info. I managed to calibrate mine by charging it when off from 0% to 100%-didn't last for long, the problem appeared once again.
It stays to much at 100% after charging, so we have the same battery life. Might be the kernel, don't know. I home when emui 3.0 is relased comes with a new kernel as well.

mcgyani said:
Saw this post now. I have the same problem but it is from 9% to 0% . I don't think it is the battery, i think it is how android reads your battery info. I managed to calibrate mine by charging it when off from 0% to 100%-didn't last for long, the problem appeared once again.
It stays to much at 100% after charging, so we have the same battery life. Might be the kernel, don't know. I home when emui 3.0 is relased comes with a new kernel as well.
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I also managed to fix it once, I don't remember exactly what I did (I've tried so many things) but it didn't last long either, it discharged normally one time, but the next time dropped from 12% to 0% again in seconds. When will EMUI 3.0 be released?

They said emui 3.0 will be released in the middle of november for p6 but they also said that it will be available for p7 since october -they kept their word and it is available but only for the chinese versions of p7. So i would expect emui 3.0 for p6 in december for the international version.

mcgyani said:
They said emui 3.0 will be released in the middle of november for p6 but they also said that it will be available for p7 since october -they kept their word and it is available but only for the chinese versions of p7. So i would expect emui 3.0 for p6 in december for the international version.
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Ok, I think I managed to calibrate it, I'm not sure yet, I will update once the battery is drained so I can see how it behaves at low charge, but there are indications that it's working.
If you're experiencing the same problem as me, then you've probably noticed that after your phone drops quickly from 9% (in your case) to 0% and you plug the charger, the battery will charge up to 9% also very quickly. If this happens, then Android is not reading the battery info right and you'll get a 100% reading before it's actually fully charged, and will keep on charging past that point (which I believe is why it stays at 100% for such a long time). It'll obviously drain from 9% to 0% again once it's discharged - because it's not really at 9%, it's much lower.
So, if we can manage to get Android to display normal charging speeds at low charge, then the battery should be calibrated. This is what I've managed to do.
Here's how:
1. Get a Battery Monitoring App (I use Battery Monitor Widget) and set the update intervals to 1 minute
2. Let your battery drain and your phone turn irself off until you can't turn it on
3. Plug the charger and turn the phone on. Watch how the charge increases in this process, it'll most likely charge too quickly (See graph screenshot - blue arrow: a steep slope indicates quick, abnormal charging speed readings)
4. Wait 5 minutes or until it reaches 10-12%
5. Unplug the charger and let the battery drain again. Watch how it discharges, if it charged too quickly in step 3, it'll most likely discharge quickly too here (You can see in the graph screenshot that the discharging slope in this process is also very steep)
6. When it says it's going to turn itself off in 30 seconds, plug in the charger (don't let it turn off).
7. If the 'turning off' message appeared, say, at 2%, your phone will probably display 0% after you plug the charger (i know this makes no sense, but it happens like that)
8. Let it charge and watch how it's charging.
After doing this my battery charged at a normal rate (Graph screenshot - red arrow) and it behaved normally approaching full charge (current started decreasing approaching 100% - green arrow). It didn't stay for ages in 100% after unplugging the charger either, just 1 hour in deep sleep (2nd and 3rd screenshots), which I think is fine because I used to unplugg the charger at night and wake up to a 100% battery, so it seems Android is reading battery info correctly now.
I hope this works for you too, mate (And that it will last more than one charge cycle).
I'll update tonight with low charge behaviour, but I'm pretty sure it'll discharge normally.
EDIT: It didn't actually eliminate the problem, but it got a little better, it now drops from 7% to 4% (instead of 12-13%) and stays at 4 for a while.

Newbie Question - Does Rapid/Quick Charge technology only work when the phone is on?

On all my previous phones, I used to turn the phone completely off when charging.
Did the same for my first 5x charge up, but noticed after 20 minutes in phone-off-charging-state when I checked the white battery icon, it wasn't showing it was filled up at all. Strange.
So I turn the phone on, it shows it's charging, but only got to 5% from a completely drained battery.
This didn't seem right, so I left the phone on for 20 more minutes where it specifically stated "rapid charging". It shot from 5% -> 31%. Let it keep doing it's thing and 20 minutes later it went from 31% -> 75% with an estimated 23 minutes left. Impressive if it really would go from 5% -> 100% in about an hour.
So, does rapid charging only initiate with the phone on? Or, is that first 5% just a natural long charge area of the battery and the phone woulda hit high-gear-rapid-charging if I left it off the whole time?

CM11 battery issues

running the 2/16 release of CM11, battery meter is acting funky, but battery life seems normal. I have no idea if it started with CM11 install or just out of the blue. couple week ago after 13 hours of running on battery I noticed the meter still said 100%, then about an hour later it said 52%, and 30 seconds later 12%, battery low warning, and 15 seconds later it did a clean power off. plugged in, powered off charging said 9%, and was 52% again in about 30 seconds.
battery still lasts all day, but I have no idea how drained it is until about an hour before it's dead. it also won't actually charge unless the meter says it's below 100%, but plugged in it also doesn't drain it more. using an app to monitor the battery, it rarely shows above 3850mv, and will hover there all day long going up and down 300mV or so, but then late in the day it'll break from 100% around 3700mv and the % starts dropping.
so, what's going on here?

so, left on charger overnight (as I do every night), status app said USB power on but discharging. came to work, plugged it in (as I sometimes do), battery said 100%, again USB power and discharging.
unplugged to go to lunch, 54%. sat down to eat, 65%. few minutes later, 70%. from there it started dropping at a normal rate. used it heavily all through lunch, only went to 58%, and seems to be charging normally now as well. I'm so confused... it's been wrong for at least 2 weeks strait through multiple charges and reboots.

What about 'calibrating' the battery?

if it does it again I'll to find time to drain it and then fully charge it powered off, but with an inaccurate reading of what the charge is it was very difficult to fit that into my schedule.
it seems to have calibrated itself now, as it's been fine all weekend.
so the questions is now: what caused it, and why did it fix itself some weeks later? I certainly didn't do anything anywhere near a calibration cycle.

Is this battery behavior normal?

I've noticed that my 2 XL battery drains very fast after full charge, but then settles to acceptable drain rates from about 90%. I'd say it takes less than an hour to drop from 100 to 90% without basically any use. Often I can't even hit 100% when charging. More like 99/98% max. If it does charge to 100%, it stays there for a couple minutes tops, even if just on standby. Which leads me to my next issue...
This prompted me to calibrate my battery which seemed to help somewhat, but I found that I cannot monitor the charge rate when charging while the device is turned off. What is shown is just what "looks like" a full battery charged icon at all times, and the screen does not dim at any point during charge. It actually seems that the phone is frozen during charging when turned off, and needs a very long power button press to turn the phone on. I actually have two Pixel 2 XLs in front of me and they both do this! Is this a known issue?
In general I am getting 5-6 hours screen-on time per charge which seems about right from what I've read. But that initial fast drain and "freezing" while charging when turned off is puzzling. Any common experiences or insight?

nobaddreams said:
I've noticed that my 2 XL battery drains very fast after full charge, but then settles to acceptable drain rates from about 90%. I'd say it takes less than an hour to drop from 100 to 90% without basically any use. Often I can't even hit 100% when charging. More like 99/98% max. If it does charge to 100%, it stays there for a couple minutes tops, even if just on standby. Which leads me to my next issue...
This prompted me to calibrate my battery which seemed to help somewhat, but I found that I cannot monitor the charge rate when charging while the device is turned off. What is shown is just what "looks like" a full battery charged icon at all times, and the screen does not dim at any point during charge. It actually seems that the phone is frozen during charging when turned off, and needs a very long power button press to turn the phone on. I actually have two Pixel 2 XLs in front of me and they both do this! Is this a known issue?
In general I am getting 5-6 hours screen-on time per charge which seems about right from what I've read. But that initial fast drain and "freezing" while charging when turned off is puzzling. Any common experiences or insight?
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It may be that the battery is not fully charged when the phone is telling you it is 100%. When using Accubattery to manually benchmark the battery, I found that my phones were still taking a low charge current (as measured by AB) for 45 minutes to sometimes even one hour after the phone was reading 100%. AB will register 100% when the phone's charging circuit cuts off to zero (and notify you). Using AB for a while will also give you a very close approximation of the remaining capacity of your battery relative to a new battery. When my 2XL was new, I was getting just over 100% (~103%). A year later, it is in the high 90's.

Thanks for the tip on Accubattery. I am going to give that a try for a while. So have you been charging up to 100% regularly in spite of what's recommended by this app?

nobaddreams said:
Thanks for the tip on Accubattery. I am going to give that a try for a while. So have you been charging up to 100% regularly in spite of what's recommended by this app?
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Yes, I turn the 80% alarm crap off and leave it on the charger all night. It is fully charged before I go to bed but I leave it on the charger all night. I use AB for bench marking my battery's capacity and it's real good at that... if you start from when AB says your battery is full. You will see it converge to a % capacity after only 2-3 full discharges. I'm just guessing but I think you are not completely filling the battery to it's full capacity. At least using AB for a while will a) provide you with your battery's true capacity wrt a new battery, and b) will rule out you not charging up fully as your mystery 100-90% quick-drop. Please do report back. :good: