Develop Bugs

Charging issues

So, after my previous car journey with the Desire as navigator (forum. xda-developers. com/showpost.php?p=6075788&postcount=11) I did some investigating to find out what was happening. (In brief: I was using Google nav while on car power, and it wasn't charging.)
Firstly, the micro-USB cable shipped with the phone does not work with a car charger. I have tried with two different makes of car, and on both occasions, the power seems to be draining from the phone faster than usual. It would be great to hear from anyone else who has experienced this, or from someone who has been able to use their cable successfully in their car while having both 3G and GPS on.
After doing a bit of research on this, it seems that the Tytn had the same issue, which had something to do with the sync properties of the cable. I've tried other cables and the best i can get is to have it charging, but not enough to maintain full power while using 3G and GPS. Hopefully, this can be remedied by getting a dedicated Desire car charger, cos if not the Desire would be useless as a navigator for long journeys.
Secondly, it does not trickle charge to stay at 100% when the cable is connected, not just in a car but also on mains power. When it reaches full charge it just stops, the indicator light shines green and that's it! So, going back to the nav scenario, even if it could charge properly with delivered cable, once it reached full capacity it would stop charging and start to drain, while still showing green, either until you disconnected the charger and replaced it (if you realised what was happening), or until it died on you (if you didn't).
I can't believe this is how it was designed to behave. If so, for what reason? To preserve the battery? I would rather have a battery that trickle charged and lasted half as long, than a battery that didn't, cos I find the latter to be more of a day to day nuisance.
I'm on the old tmo ROM. It would be interesting to know if people with other ROMs experience anything different.

Dead Battery potential issue

Today was the first time I let my phone's battery drain down to nothing and it died completely while i was on a phone call. But when it died, the screen went black as it should, but it refused to charge. The light didnt come on and it wouldnt power on. I had to pull the battery and then it booted to a 'critically low battery' notification on the screen. Has anyone experienced this kind of freezing when the battery is just on the verge of dying?

I don't have this specific issue, but definitely power draining problems on my Focus. I let it charge overnight - 10+ hours plugged in. That should be more than enough for a nice, full charge. Well it's been unplugged from the charger for a little over 3 hours now and it's already down 30%. All I did was listen to 4 songs on the Zune on the way to the office this morning.
Same thing happened yesterday. So two days in a row isn't looking good. By early afternoon yesterday it was almost drained.
I haven't even made any phone calls with this yet! I can only imagine what a handful of 30 minute phone calls would do.

hmm... faulty battery/phone? maybe take it back to the store and ask for an exchange?

Is there any way to calibrate the battery? Such as completely drain it, fully charge it then look around the settings menu for a way to delete any kind of battery stats file?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

I was thinking the same thing, about exchanging it. I'm going to give it more time and really put it through some paces to verify. I've got until the end of November to exchange it.
This was all without any Wifi on too

I've noticed my LG-C900 also seems like a battery hog, and takes forever to charge. The Samsung SGH-i917 is a little better, but both of them have a tendency to run out of battery quickly if I forget to charge them overnight. It's a little worrisome to me.
I don't measure smartphone battery length systematically, but my Motorola Droid seems to do a lot better, and my HTC G1 has gone all week without being charged (although the graphics aren't nearly as good, the processor doesn't have to work as hard even to change menus).
On the other hand, the advantage is in both of those phones, it is much easier to change batteries, making it possible to carry an extra battery and switch halfway through the day, something you could never do with an iphone.

The Gate Keeper said:
hmm... faulty battery/phone? maybe take it back to the store and ask for an exchange?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That would probably be a good idea.

you could look at the wifi status , turn it off when you don't need it .
wifi is "on" as default , if I don't turn it off my batt is dying really quick .
I didn't look at it but maybe you can also turn off the GPS .

The first Focus I got shipped from AT&T refused to take a charge. You could plug it in and the icon would change to a plug, but it wouldn't charge up at all. I replaced it at a store and the new one is perfect. Charges quickly and lasts much longer than my old Fuze. I don't know if it was the phone or the battery, but I'd just get a replacement.

For some reason my HD7 won't charge from PC USB ports-- it's been "critically low" in the morning the two times I left it plugged into a PC overnight (orange light on, but apparently not charging quickly enough).
The ports work fine charging my HD2 and iPhones-- apparently not with the HD7 though. Only dedicated AC adapters feeding a full 1A have worked so far-- not hugely inconvenient, but kind of odd.

my G1 and HD2 would exibit this behavior when on my car's USB port when the charge was low enough, and the last system update that came down for the G1 would just slow the drain when attached to my car.
The first trip with the HD7 in the car > home, it died on the car's USB port, very slowly. After its first full charge it does accept a charge from the car. I think it may have issues once it gets low enough just like the HD2. I think it may be the output, I don't remember how much power Honda supplies at the USB port, but obviously not enough for all devices. All my ports on my laptop, desktop and WHS, except the front ports on the WHS and the desktop, charge these 3 devices handily, the front ports on the home server and the desktop must only provide minimal power, I've had USB sticks complain and drop speed on these.

USB charging power vs battery drain. Measurements inside!

I posted this a week ago elsewhere but thought you guys might find it of interest too.
After personally experiencing having my phone (A Verizon GN) end up LESS charged than I started out with on a 1 hour trip with navigation on while plugged in, I decided to run some tests.
The first was to see how much power the Galaxy Nexus could draw from the USB connection. This turns out to be about 4.5W. (0.9A at 5V)
(Edit: Yes I tied the data lines together so the GN knew it was hooked to a charger and not a PC)
I ran all kinds of applications, benchmarks, turned on all the networking, GPS. Just sitting there idle or in sleep mode it only drew 3.5W but I could push it up to 4.5W which is fairly close to the max most USB adapters can supply. My PS can deliver 8W so it had plenty of power to offer. So no matter how powerful your charger is, the GN simply won't draw more than 4.5W. Forget about those 3A chargers.
The next test was a bit trickier. I wanted to measure how much power the GN was drawing from the battery. Tiny contacts and an expensive phone made me a little cautious but I figured out a fairly safe way of doing this, and here are the results.
In sleep mode it only drew 0.04W with occasional spikes of 1W.
Powered on and idle it averaged 3W.
Running a CPU benchmark it stayed at 4W.
Downloading a large file over WiFi got a steady 4.2W.
Now the real test... Google Maps.
This varied a LOT. Minimum was 4W with some steady peaks of 5.1W!
That seems to be the problem. The GN can draw more power from the battery than the charging system can provide. In the real world the power draw is going to be worse because of all the switching of cell towers and map data downloading. I wasn't about to take my very delicate wiring job on the road, so will just have to guess at the final numbers, but just sitting still was enough to overpower the charger.
I doubt this can be a software fix where a hardware register can be changed to let the charging system draw 1.5A or something.
This also means that a 2A or 3A power supply is not going to help. As long as you have a 1A supply, that's all the GN will take. Do make sure it's wired right or it will only draw 0.5A, and be warned some USB jacks on stereos and computers might only give you 0.1A.
Now on to something else... the AMOLED screen! Does keeping it black really save power? The answer is... sort of!
I ran several tests with the device in airplane mode and just showing a solid color on the screen on the dimmest, and brightest screen settings.
Dim black: 1.8W
Dim white: 2.0W
Bright black: 1.9W
Bright white: 2.9W
For extra fun...
Bright Red: 2.5W
Bright Green: 2.6W
Bright Blue: 2.8W
So if you run the screen at the dimmest setting, it really doesn't matter what the screen is showing. If you run it at the brightest... then white really does draw more power. A lot more. If you can set Google Maps to display the screen mostly black, that could save a significant amount of power during navigation.
I was unable to find a way of turning off the display without putting the phone to sleep, so no idea how much of that power shown above is due to the screen and how much to running the CPU and all the other functions.
Anyway, I still have my spare battery rigged up so if you have any other good ideas for tests I can try them out.
Summary... under extreme battery drain conditions even the best USB charger can't keep up, but all you need to do is reduce the power draw a small amount and you will be back in the positive. Make sure your charger is supplying a full amp. Cheap chargers and cables without the data lines shorted will only give 0.5A and that is by far NOT enough to keep a GN charged while doing anything at all.

The screen measurement is awesome, good to see some real numbers (even if its not 100% accurate).
Also some things you do can still be done with the screen off. Like downloading a large file - or playing music. You could easily compare downloading a file and/or playing music with screen on or off to see the difference. Another interesting thing would be downloading via wifi vs download on 3g and LTE

wonshikee said:
Also some things you do can still be done with the screen off. Like downloading a large file - or playing music. You could easily compare downloading a file and/or playing music with screen on or off to see the difference. Another interesting thing would be downloading via wifi vs download on 3g and LTE
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
And maybe also playing a HD (1280x720) video in Dice Player with full brightness...

It's important to point out that when your device uses more battery than it is able to recharge while being charged at the same time, then you are prone to sleep of death problem. I had exactly that happen on a ship to Finland. I only realized it the next day, once my battery ran down to percentages it was while I was on a ship and it froze. After reboot, I had lost up to 20% battery.
So I would avoid using the device while it is charging, but battery still runs down.

kristovaher said:
It's important to point out that when your device uses more battery than it is able to recharge while being charged at the same time, then you are prone to sleep of death problem.
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Click to collapse
My previous Android phone had this issue. If it got discharged too far it would shut down and wouldn't charge back up. I had to manually hook up power to the battery to kick start it. In fact... my former phone before that (Windows Mobile!) had the same issue! Seems to be a common design flaw.

iansmith said:
I posted this a week ago elsewhere but thought you guys might find it of interest too.
After personally experiencing having my phone (A Verizon GN) end up LESS charged than I started out with on a 1 hour trip with navigation on while plugged in, I decided to run some tests.
The first was to see how much power the Galaxy Nexus could draw from the USB connection. This turns out to be about 4.5W. (0.9A at 5V)
(Edit: Yes I tied the data lines together so the GN knew it was hooked to a charger and not a PC)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Saw this when you posted it "elsewhere" a week or so ago. Definitely might get more love here though. I love the idea of people or google developing more black background apps and a night mode of Maps / Navigation and Gmail. Seeing these numbers it really would make a difference.

Very interesting write up! I have a question though...you mention shorting the data lines to get a full amp. Is there a tutorial somewhere that explains how to do this? I will be taking a long road trip (like 3600 miles round trip long) this summer and will be using GPS a lot so I would sure like to do that. I would be running a Rocketfish car charger-to-USB adapter and using a USB cord plugged into that and then run that to the car dock. Thanks.

Accord281 said:
Very interesting write up! I have a question though...you mention shorting the data lines to get a full amp. Is there a tutorial somewhere that explains how to do this? I will be taking a long road trip (like 3600 miles round trip long) this summer and will be using GPS a lot so I would sure like to do that. I would be running a Rocketfish car charger-to-USB adapter and using a USB cord plugged into that and then run that to the car dock. Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003VYBCAY/ref=oh_o00_s00_i00_details
These cables don't have a data line, it'll get you the full amp. Big difference when I use it in my car vs a normal cable.

When we use the provided cable and Samsung USB adapter we still get 1A correct?
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium

arasky said:
When we use the provided cable and Samsung USB adapter we still get 1A correct?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, the provided adapter gives out a full 1 amp and shorts the data lines so the phone knows it can draw as much current as it can handle.

Official Galaxy S II Vehicle Dock Kit charging issues

A few days ago I purchased Galaxy S II official vehicle dock, so today I decided to give it a try. But to the problem I ran into, was that when I was using GPS (CoPilot) the phone shows that its charging, but it actually slowly discharges it. Well first I thought that, my car cigarette lighter plug didn't give it enough juice, but then I tried the same thing with the phone connected to regular power outlet using the original charger. The result was that the phone shows that its charging, but the percentage doesn't go up or down, it just idles at the percentage point, when i connected it to charger. I'm pretty sure it should charge the phone, even if I use GPS and the screen is switched on. My second thought was that the phone was overheating due to hot weather, but im not sure about this.
The only time I actually got the phone charging through the cigarette plug, was when the phone's screen was switched off.
So my question is what should I do? Is the dock connector damaged or something? should I consider changing it or is there some other problem? I have read all the topics about this issue and its seems, that there is no firm fix for this. Im really running out of ideas.
(The phone was charged to 80% when I encountered this problem.)
About phone:
Android version: 4.0.4
Kernel version: 3.0.33-Siyah-v3.3.1
Resurrection version 2.1
CurrentWidget stats:
Running GPS and screen switched on
638mA - when connected to regular power outlet
640mA - when connected to cigarette lighter plug
4.071V
Temp. 51C

I have actually the same issue, I just presumed that the car charger doesn't produce enough charge to actually charge.

Madiz said:
A few days ago I purchased Galaxy S II official vehicle dock, so today I decided to give it a try. But to the problem I ran into, was that when I was using GPS (CoPilot) the phone shows that its charging, but it actually slowly discharges it. Well first I thought that, my car cigarette lighter plug didn't give it enough juice, but then I tried the same thing with the phone connected to regular power outlet using the original charger. The result was that the phone shows that its charging, but the percentage doesn't go up or down, it just idles at the percentage point, when i connected it to charger. I'm pretty sure it should charge the phone, even if I use GPS and the screen is switched on. My second thought was that the phone was overheating due to hot weather, but im not sure about this.
The only time I actually got the phone charging through the cigarette plug, was when the phone's screen was switched off.
So my question is what should I do? Is the dock connector damaged or something? should I consider changing it or is there some other problem? I have read all the topics about this issue and its seems, that there is no firm fix for this. Im really running out of ideas.
(The phone was charged to 80% when I encountered this problem.)
About phone:
Android version: 4.0.4
Kernel version: 3.0.33-Siyah-v3.3.1
Resurrection version 2.1
CurrentWidget stats:
Running GPS and screen switched on
638mA - when connected to regular power outlet
640mA - when connected to cigarette lighter plug
4.071V
Temp. 51C
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can only give you 3 guesses:
1- Maybe it's some sort of weird software bug (maybe the ICS 4.0.4 + SiyahKernel combination or something);
2- It's simply the battery chip going crazy (whenever my battery indicator seems to go nuts I simply reset the fuel gauge with ExTweaks, you might wanna give it a try); and
3- A bad or damaged car-plug charger (since you have that problem when charging from the dock and directly from an original charger, I don't think it's a bad dock).
I'm saying that because I use the original car dock quite a lot - almost always for usage as a GPS Navigator (NDrive 11) with GPS, Data and WiFi Connection always on (too lazy to turn WiFi off while in the car) and usually with an increased brightness (around 50 - 70%) and even in those battery unfriendly conditions (GPS on and locked, WiFi and Data on, high brightness, etc, etc, etc) it still charges the battery. It takes a while to get a full charge, but it gets fully charged eventually. And I sometimes use the car-plug charger directly in the phone, when I'm not using my S2 as a GPS Navigator.
I would suggest you to try and use another ORIGINAL car-plug charger to check - or maybe go back to whoever sold you the dock and get it replaced or something...
Hope this helps. Best regards mate.

Tiu Fiu said:
I can only give you 3 guesses:
1- Maybe it's some sort of weird software bug (maybe the ICS 4.0.4 + SiyahKernel combination or something);
2- It's simply the battery chip going crazy (whenever my battery indicator seems to go nuts I simply reset the fuel gauge with ExTweaks, you might wanna give it a try); and
3- A bad or damaged car-plug charger (since you have that problem when charging from the dock and directly from an original charger, I don't think it's a bad dock).
I'm saying that because I use the original car dock quite a lot - almost always for usage as a GPS Navigator (NDrive 11) with GPS, Data and WiFi Connection always on (too lazy to turn WiFi off while in the car) and usually with an increased brightness (around 50 - 70%) and even in those battery unfriendly conditions (GPS on and locked, WiFi and Data on, high brightness, etc, etc, etc) it still charges the battery. It takes a while to get a full charge, but it gets fully charged eventually. And I sometimes use the car-plug charger directly in the phone, when I'm not using my S2 as a GPS Navigator.
I would suggest you to try and use another ORIGINAL car-plug charger to check - or maybe go back to whoever sold you the dock and get it replaced or something...
Hope this helps. Best regards mate.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, I thought that this had something to to with some factory blunder, but if you're saying that it works for you, then I'll give it a try and see if I can figure out what the problem is.

Anybody have an idea where to buy in México?
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda app-developers app

Michaelias said:
Anybody have an idea where to buy in México?
Sent from my GT-I9100 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can buy it on eBay - there are a lot of UK stores with very high positive reputation - I bought mine from one in UK, and it arrived about 3 weeks after the purchase (and keep in mind that the brazilian customs is recognized worldwide as one of the slowest, most burocratic in the planet). It was worth the wait, though, as the minimum value of the original vehicle dock sold "officially" in Brazil was more than twice the purchase and shipping costs from buying it in eBay...

Your problem, is everyone's problem.
This phone will only charge at 750ma, and not 1A like most smart phones.
You can change this by rooting the deivce and installing a different kernal.
Should you do this, you may notice the phone getting hotter whilst charging, and I imagine your battery's overall lifespan will be shorter,
Fon22

[Q] auto Power on when charging

Hello everyone,
I have my old willy here on a drawer and i just remembered i could use it as a GPS tracker for my car in case some day (hopefully not) someone will try to take it away from me.
The plan is just to leave it hidden somewhere inside the vehicle and have it always on probably with a power bank connected too for when the battery drains. The powerbank itself is connected to the car power to start charging when the car is on.
There are tons of different apps to handle this so the problem isn't that. The problem is the "always on"... There are some periods when i only use my car once a week or less and even then it is not enough to charge the power bank completly. So there are times when the phone would be with no battery left and shuts down.
All i want is a way for it to auto power on when some charge is initiated (ie. the car is started and the battery starts charging). Simply put, is there any way for the phone to turn on when it is connected to a charger?
I have found some people that could acheive this by modifing the lpm file in /system/bin but that file is not present in my CM7 wildfire. This file controls the launch of that ugly battery screen that shows when we charge a phone if it is powered off, the replace that screen launch by a boot command. Where in our wildfire is that file present?
If it is not possible, how much time would you gess the battery will last beeing with the screen off? What cappacity of powerbank would be needed to last for, say, 2 weeks?
Thank you very much

mad.maximo said:
Hello everyone,
I have my old willy here on a drawer and i just remembered i could use it as a GPS tracker for my car in case some day (hopefully not) someone will try to take it away from me.
The plan is just to leave it hidden somewhere inside the vehicle and have it always on probably with a power bank connected too for when the battery drains. The powerbank itself is connected to the car power to start charging when the car is on.
There are tons of different apps to handle this so the problem isn't that. The problem is the "always on"... There are some periods when i only use my car once a week or less and even then it is not enough to charge the power bank completly. So there are times when the phone would be with no battery left and shuts down.
All i want is a way for it to auto power on when some charge is initiated (ie. the car is started and the battery starts charging). Simply put, is there any way for the phone to turn on when it is connected to a charger?
I have found some people that could acheive this by modifing the lpm file in /system/bin but that file is not present in my CM7 wildfire. This file controls the launch of that ugly battery screen that shows when we charge a phone if it is powered off, the replace that screen launch by a boot command. Where in our wildfire is that file present?
If it is not possible, how much time would you gess the battery will last beeing with the screen off? What cappacity of powerbank would be needed to last for, say, 2 weeks?
Thank you very much
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Firstly, this is a pretty cool idea =)
Secondly you would need to work out how slowly the battery discharges. So say on idle with no screen time you get 2 days, with a stock the battery of say 1300mAh. In order to run two weeks you would need 7 full charges. So 7x1300mAh should be a 9100mAh battery.
Now as far as your power on is concerned its the recovery on htc devices that deal with charging while off and low power management as far as i know. So you could try look to the kernel or the clockworkmod source code for a way to power on or you could try make a device that activated the power button once the car engine was turned on, depressing it for say a full minute then releasing. When your android is already powered on the screen turning on will be the only side effect.
I will keep thinking =)
Sent from my nexus 7 using Tapatalk

You kinda answered my question. If that math is right, if I connect the phone to a 20000mAh powerbank I have a month of life to give it. I can live with that. Not the "cleanest" solution but not bad. I use the car at least once a week so....
If I hardwire it to the car battery which is 60000mAh it would last even longer
Some device to push the button would be too unpractical, it has to be a software solution like the one I talked about. People have done this in all of the samsungs and also I have seen in a Sony x10 mini, all done modifying the bootloader. Unfortunately, my knowledge about how to fiddle in bootloaders, kernels or source codes is laughable at best, so I need some kind of walk-through...

Imagine beeing able to hide it inside the sun visor with a little peek hole... Instant mugshot!
Sent through my Oneplus via tapatalk