[Q] Is my battery borked? - Epic 4G Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I'm beginning to wonder if my battery is borked for my phone. I've done every single thing out there to ensure my battery was always 100% charged and calibrated.
However, today my phone read as being 100%. Went home, charged it up when the phone was powered off to make sure it actually did get to 100%. It did that, all was fine, or so I thought. A bit later, I check my phone and it's reading 72%.
There is no way this is normal for a battery. My phone has been dropped a couple times (mild drops, not huge ones), so wondering if it's possible a cell in the battery has been borked?

Had it been calibrated?
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA Premium App

Volknochi said:
I've done every single thing out there to ensure my battery was always 100% charged and calibrated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I said it in my first post.

What ROM? Did you look at it when you removed the charger? Did it still say 100%? Was it warm when you picked it up? Did you have signal? Did you install any new apps? Did you just reboot? Did you have a random reboot?
Don't sweat it, charge it and check it again.

No ROM, just a regular Gingerbread shoved through Odin, along with CWM purple.
The phone was 100% before I put it on the charger. I only checked the phone when I heard it doing the signal lost/found noise, and that's when I saw it went down dramatically (there is NO way that attempting to find a signal can lose battery power by 28% in 30 minutes).
Phone was not warm at all.
I have about 2 bars of signal.
I have not installed any new apps.
I did not reboot.
I never have random reboots (it's a reason why I don't mess with the Gingerbread ROMs).
I'm not sweating this, I'm more annoyed. And, all people do is say "Charge it, do this and that to calibrate, turn off phone, charge it again, reset battery stats, spin it 360 degrees, read it a bed time story...." But it simply doesn't fix it some times.
Wouldn't this point towards a faulty cell in the battery?

Volknochi said:
No ROM, just a regular Gingerbread shoved through Odin, along with CWM purple.
The phone was 100% before I put it on the charger. I only checked the phone when I heard it doing the signal lost/found noise, and that's when I saw it went down dramatically (there is NO way that attempting to find a signal can lose battery power by 28% in 30 minutes).
Phone was not warm at all.
I have about 2 bars of signal.
I have not installed any new apps.
I did not reboot.
I never have random reboots (it's a reason why I don't mess with the Gingerbread ROMs).
I'm not sweating this, I'm more annoyed. And, all people do is say "Charge it, do this and that to calibrate, turn off phone, charge it again, reset battery stats, spin it 360 degrees, read it a bed time story...." But it simply doesn't fix it some times.
Wouldn't this point towards a faulty cell in the battery?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Look at your percentage when you pull it off charge. There is a bug in the Gingerbread leaks that kills the bump charging. So while it says 100% while connected, at that time it continues to run at 100 Mhz but not charging actually killing your battery. So you can go back to EC05 stock and see if it still does it to be sure. Assuming you did reset the battery stats already with that bed time story...LOL.

I see Spare Parts has a "battery condition" category. Can anyone verify its accuracy?

Related

Battery Charging Issues

Normally I charge my phone nightly right before I go to bed and don't plug it in at all during the day usually.
I have noticed that on days where I have to use my phone heavily and require a charge midway through the day for the next week my phones battery life is almost cut in half. If I charge it regularly at night for a week or so the battery life will go back to normal. Has anyone else noticed this behavior? I'm trying to figure out if this is an incredible issue or an android issue.
Another thing I noticed is that under the battery stats it lists that my awake time is 43 hours. Its just slightly less that the up time. This makes me think that my phone isn't going to sleep. Anyone know how to tell if my phone is sleeping or tell me which app is keeping my phone from sleeping?
Install this app
http://www.appbrain.com/app/spare-parts/com.androidapps.spare_parts
Go to partial wake. in one of the drop downs.
I checked the partial wake usage and I don't see anything out of the ordinary.
I actually have an update to the situation. As a last resort I wiped my phone and loaded Cyanogen 6.1. At first it was working awesome. Battery life was awesome but as time went on the battery life got worse and worse and now i'm back where I started.
It sure seems like there is software problem with the way the phone tracks the battery usage/charging information. As I said it seems like charging the phone midway through the day or charging the phone before the phone is dead seems to have a negative effect on the battery. I don't get it. Letting the phone completely die isn't realistic. Charging the phone when I go to bed without affecting how long the phone last after the next charge should be totally doable you would think.
Does anyone have any suggestions or insight that might help me out.
You don't say if you charge with the phone powered off or on. But sound like you're always charging with the phone turned on.
I don't think the phone charges fully while turned on (to prevent overheating maybe? ).
If you can, I'd suggest trying to charge with the phone off, at least during the nightly charge.
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Unrevoked forever
SkyRaider Sense 3.5
Radio 2.15.00.11.15
Yes I do charge my phone while its powered on (like the rest of the world). I don't know anyone that turns their phone off to charge.
My phone is paid for by my company so that they can get ahold of me in the event of a server failure or some other IT related disaster. If the phone was off I wouldn't be able to receive those important calls.
I can't believe no one else has witnessed this type of activity with the incredible. I have tried 2 phones (replaced for an unrelated reason) and 3 batteries. The behavior seems like a software glitch. I have noticed with with both AOSP and Sense Roms.
Does anyone have an in depth understanding of how the battery system works on this phone. I also have an Iphone and the battery life compared to my android phone is ridiculous. I would use the Iphone exclusively but it doesn't do everything my android phone can do. I'm hoping there is a way to fix this.
Well, now you do know someone who charges with their phone off. Me!
I'm in IT as well and on call one week per month. But we don't run a third shift, so late night calls are almost never, and they have my land line number.
Back on topic, I have experienced better battery life while charging with the phone off. Maybe you can get an external charger until a solution is found.
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Unrevoked forever
SkyRaider Sense 3.5
Radio 2.15.00.11.15
Well i'm on call 24/7 and I don't have a landline.
What do you mean by "get an external charger until a solution is found." Do you mean a second charger to charge during the day? I have plenty of chargers. Thats part of the problem. Charging in the middle of the day I believe is causing the problem. Until a solution is found? Are you saying there is in fact a problem?
Having to leave my phone plugged in all day kind of defeats the purpose of having a wireless phone don't you think?
Please...anyone have any knowledge of how the charging system works in android and specifically how it might work differently on the incredible?
trevoryour said:
What do you mean by "get an external charger until a solution is found." Do you mean a second charger to charge during the day?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I should have said get an extra battery and a stand-alone charger that allows you to charge the extra battery while it's disconnected from the phone.
Have you read the thread in general titled 'your battery gauge is lying to you'. (or something like that). Good read. Also there's hundreds of other threads on the inc's battery issues. Well known problem.
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Unrevoked forever
SkyRaider Sense 3.5
Radio 2.15.00.11.15
If your up time and awake time are essentially the same, you definitely have something running in the background. Try menu/settings/applications/running services and see what program might be running that shouldn't be. You can also use an app called System Panel to do a comprehensive survey. I recently had an update that resulted in the program running continuously in the background, affecting my battery life.
Some other threads have discussed that after 40+ hours of up time, their phone goes into max CPU usage all the time. Again, using the app System Panel, I confirmed this for my own phone at 45 hours. My ROM is the stock Froyo 2.2 with a custom kernel. the simple solution is to power off/power on the phone which resets the uptime.
My routine is to charge the phone with power on over night so I can use the alarm. When I get up in the morning, I power off the phone and bump charge it for about 30 minutes until the light turns green again. Then I'm usually good for about 10 - 12 hours of uptime with 3-4 hours of awake time using a 1500 battery. That time can also be reduced considerably if I'm receiving a poor 3G signal.
I did originally have a problem with a program not allowing my phone to sleep but I have since uninstalled that program and now my wake time numbers are where they should be. I think the remaining battery issues are a result of me having to charge my phone in the middle of the day as a result of the misbehaving program prior to me uninstalling it.
It almost seems like the the battery in the incredible has a memory. On a hunch I have started completely discharging my phone completely everynight before I put it on the charger. As a result my battery life as almost doubled. When I get home at night I start playing angry birds with the brightness at full until the battery gets to about 3 percent left. This obviously isn't a permanent solution but It certainly sheds some light on the root of the problem.
Prior to doing the full discharge I did a bump charge and wiped my battery stats. The battery is working great now. I wish someone would create a kernal/rom that has this issue resolved. Since these new lithium batteries aren't supposed to have a memory anymore I'm thinking it has to be something that the OS is doing with the battery stats file.
According to this article you should fully charge and discharge once every 30 or so charging cycles to resync the battery meter with the actual battery voltage. So maybe the complete discharge fixed your problems.
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries
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Unrevoked forever
SkyRaider Sense 3.5
Radio 2.15.00.11.15
not sure if this will help or not, but i have been running advanced task killer ever since 2.1(haven't gotten around to uninstalling before now, ha ha) and recently uninstalled it and installed watchdog task manager and my battery has increased two fold!
just my two cents worth.

[Q] Instant discharge.

So, I'm on my Evo today, playing a game (Air Strike). My battery is at 93% when I picked the phone up to play, and the phone is plugged in. Suddenly, with no warning what-so-ever, my phone shuts off. Of course a mini-freak out and many "wtf's" ensue. No warning, no signs, even the led went off. I pulled the battery, put it back, then plugged the phone in again. After that it gave me the blinking light indicating the battery was too low to turn on. After a few minutes charging she came back on and battery was at 5%.
How the hell does a battery go from 93% to 0% in less than 5 minutes, and give no warning at all?? Anybody else ever have this problem?
Wow I've have never heard or that happening before. Maybe a glitch in the battery stash? Did it take awhile to charge up to 100%? Can you reproduce the issue again?
Sent from my EVO (CM 6.1.1) using XDA App
I had this problem with my older phone once. The battery itself may have a problem or your phone is not getting charged properly.
Try These :
1) Try charging the phone overnite from the Wall charger (Not through USB of your computer)
2) If the above does not work, and you have access to another evo battery, then try using that.(try using a friends battery and charger for a day. ) (Ofcourse needless to say the charger and battery must be for Evoonly )
In my case, my phone started working fine again after getting my battery & charger replaced.
Probably shouldn't worry about it too much just yet. Could be something as simple as your battery meter was mis-calibrated. The meter itself is software so it can easily be wrong/off. If it continues you may have a bad battery.
Sounds to me like something is wrong. Did you just get the phone or have you had it?
Idk... The phone had been plugged in for most of the day (hadn't gone anywhere. Lazy day lol) And like I said, the led went completely out as well.
Haven't had the problem again, so we'll see I guess....
Mark_Hardware said:
Idk... The phone had been plugged in for most of the day (hadn't gone anywhere. Lazy day lol) And like I said, the led went completely out as well.
Haven't had the problem again, so we'll see I guess....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've seen some posts about the Evo battery shutting off the charge when its being used. Were you using your Evo while it was charging?
If the battery doesn't seem to be giving you percentages that are accurate, you might want to recalibrate your battery.
Common misconceptions sticky (Evo Q&A) said:
Battery recalibration (Thanks to Cyanogen for this and to fachadick for bringing it to my attention).
If you're experiencing higher than normal battery drain, try the following:
1. Charge the phone to full battery; let it keep charging until the battery says it is fully charged. Do not just wait until the light is green, it isn't always fully charged, causing a lot of inaccuracies. (You can check by going to: Settings -> About Phone -> Status -> Battery Level = Full.)
2. Boot to recovery and wipe battery stats.
(To have the most accurate of battery stats, reboot the phone immediately after wiping the battery stats and wait for your ROM to boot completely to the desktop. Once your entire boot is done and you have full access to the phone, go ahead and pull the charger and continue.)
3. Do not charge the phone until after draining the battery completely, resulting in it automatically shutting off. Take out the battery, and keep trying to turn on your phone until it will not turn back on at all.
4. Recharge the phone completely and then use as you normally would.
This is a method that has been proven to work, I am sure there are other ways. My battery lasts longer after doing this and the reading is much more accurate. It might be advisable to do this after every ROM install if you want the most battery life and most accurate battery reading by the phone's software.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

[Q] Sudden Massive Battery Drain?

What does it mean if, after resetting your phone, the battery level drops from 60% to 13%? Is that hardware? Is that the ROM? is that the battery?
I ask because, after hanging on a PRL update (that i don't think was successful) for an hour, the phone wouldn't stop pulling down data for any discernible reason, so I reset it. Before the reset, the SRF 1.2 baterry icon showed 60% battery and after booting back up, the phone prompted me to charge it because it was down to 13%. In addition, I put the phone on the charger for the PRL update, during which the charge level actually decreased slightly and the phone heat up to around 35C. Spare Parts reports the battery is healthy. Is this just a freak occurance or should I be worried?
Don't worry. Just run the battery calabation procedures. Theres several ways to do it floating around the threads. Also, i've had prl updates hang as well just check under phone status in settings if it changed. Even when it has hung on me it properly updated and showed whatever I was changing to.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA Premium App
this happens to me a lot...i have calibrated a few times and it always happens...it usually happens after i dip below 70 percent in battery life..when i reboot, it can say 8 % or worse.and sometimes gets stuck at at a specific battery for a while and reboot sometimes brings it back to the normal battery level..i mentioned this before in a thread but I haven't found a solution...so i barely reboot my phone unless i need to backup in clockwork or flash something
Oh man. I reboot my phone once a day to flush the RAM and keep the system fresh.
I rebooted in CWM to reset the battery stats, btw, and when I hit the "reboot phone" command, it rebooted into CWM 3.0.2.5 (I'm running the latest 3.1.0.1), which was jarring. Before that, after leaving it on charger for less than an hour, it jumped back up to about 57% and charged to full in another hour or so. Unfortunately, the batt. reported a full charge at 93%. I bump charged it up to 94%, but I ultimately decided to reset the stats just the same.
Are these known symptoms of something, or just hiccups?
I have had this issue as well. I believe it to be a calibration issue. I swap three different batteries so I attribute it to the different ones.
Strange thing happened the other day, my phone was at 22% or so and then all of a sudden just shut off. I switched batteries and it was fine, but strange.

[Q] Battery staying at 100%!

I know there have been a few posts regarding this, but mine is not exactly the same.
The battery life indicator is ALWAYS ON and colored green, even after hours of use, light is still on with battery at 100% and indicating that it's being charged. This happened during the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, I constantly pulled battery in and out to conserve battery, temperature kept going up and down. During sleep, it is frozen solid, after a few use, its hot, happened maybe over 15 times.
After my power came back on, I did everything people suggested in the other post, I discharged my phone from 0, then charged to 100, but it was a TEMPORARY fix. After it was charged to 100, the battery light indicator is stuck on green with charging indicator stuck on as well.
Phone is not rooted, no custom rom, nothing modified. Next, I tried factory resetting and wiping data, gave myself root, changed to a custom rom, problem is still there! I tried with both my Seidio's 3500mah battery and 1500mah battery, but I did the battery pulling on both during the blackout caused by Hurricane Sandy.
So... Any suggestions..?
Maxman190 said:
I know there have been a few posts regarding this, but mine is not exactly the same.
The battery life indicator is ALWAYS ON and colored green, even after hours of use, light is still on with battery at 100% and indicating that it's being charged. This happened during the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, I constantly pulled battery in and out to conserve battery, temperature kept going up and down. During sleep, it is frozen solid, after a few use, its hot, happened maybe over 15 times.
After my power came back on, I did everything people suggested in the other post, I discharged my phone from 0, then charged to 100, but it was a TEMPORARY fix. After it was charged to 100, the battery light indicator is stuck on green with charging indicator stuck on as well.
Phone is not rooted, no custom rom, nothing modified. Next, I tried factory resetting and wiping data, gave myself root, changed to a custom rom, problem is still there! I tried with both my Seidio's 3500mah battery and 1500mah battery, but I did the battery pulling on both during the blackout caused by Hurricane Sandy.
So... Any suggestions..?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Motherboard maybe fried if its reading as overcharged. I'm surprised it would still work if that's the case..
Sent from my SPH-L710 using xda premium
death-by-soap said:
Motherboard maybe fried if its reading as overcharged. I'm surprised it would still work if that's the case..
Sent from my SPH-L710 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is there a way to check if that's true? Also, when the battery notification light is stuck on, it doesn't connect to my PC via usb, my PC can't detect it, and my phone gave no pop up or show a usb icon. I can only connect to PC via bootloader/recovery.
Unfortunately I can't provide any suggestions about correcting your problem. (Besides just getting a new Evo, sucks but it sounds like your maybe genuinely dangerous.)
Airplane mode enabled on my Evo usually lasts a few days on a full charge.
How many days did you get off yours by doing what you did?
9h0s7 said:
Unfortunately I can't provide any suggestions about correcting your problem. (Besides just getting a new Evo, sucks but it sounds like your maybe genuinely dangerous.)
Airplane mode enabled on my Evo usually lasts a few days on a full charge.
How many days did you get off yours by doing what you did?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Before rooting, my battery dropped insanely quick. I didn't use airplane mode to conserve energy, I just shut it off via power button. I turned it off for one class approx. 75 minutes, after class I turned it on, 15% of the battery went away.
After rooting, I was able to disable all the useless sprint apps eating at my battery, so now, it's lasting maybe 3x longer than it did before.

[Q] battery dies too soon

I have an epic that was working fine. I got a new phone so it sat with the battery dead for a little over a month. Now I gave the epic to my daughter and the battery is all wonky. It will charge up to 100%, but when I take it off the charger it will last anywhere from 20 minutes to 4 hours, which I got the other day with no use and airplane mode on. Now here's the wonky part. It only goes down to around 88% and than goes dead. If I plug it back in it says it has about 80% charge. But if I don't plug it in and just try to turn it back on it acts like it doesn't have enough juice. Now on this phone I'm on cwm 6.8.x or something like that and you can't wipe battery stats so I didn't try that. So I guess my next step would be to flash another recovery and wipe battery stats. I did just flash the peoples ROM 2.2 (I think was the number) just yesterday and wiped everything else for a clean install. Has anyone heard of or experienced this? How can I fix this? Will wiping battery stats work? Also, the battery was great, I could easily get all day out of it with average use just a month ago. Please and thank you.
Nothing?
This community is very small now since this device is old. You need to have patience regarding replies to threads.
Sounds like you need to replace the battery. Look on Amazon and eBay.
I haven't heard of this happening before, nor has it happened to me. Even though some would advise against it, i'd 'calibrate' the battery just to see if that would fix it. If that doesn't fix it, I have no idea.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk 2
From what I recall there was a lot of different opinions about the battery wipe in CWM.
If you google it there should be a video that shows you how to use it. I think you drain the battery until phone shuts off then charge it full, unplug it wait 10 minutes, charge it full, then turn it on and wipe battery stats. Then run phone dead again and charge again. Don't really want to charge it until after running it dead.
I used it a couple of times and it seemed to help but people say it has no affect because the battery stats are in the rom or something like that.
I also have heard that after you load a new rom you have to give it some time and the battery will get better.
I have never experienced what you are so sorry I can't help.
I would guess most would say its the battery buy a new one cause it sounds like the battery is only charging 20%.
I still have my stock battery after almost 2 years. It will get me through the day if I just make phone calls and text, but I have to keep a charger handy if I'm going to use the phone for other things. Sometimes my battery will drop if I reboot. It will be at like 30% and when I reboot it will come on with 15% and tell me to charge it.
They say the 1800ma model will work in this phone and I would check into that if buying a new battery.
Well good luck!
The battery was working fine two months ago. That's why its weird to me. Wiping the stats didn't help. I guess a new battery is in order. Grrrrrrrr
only1penny said:
I have an epic that was working fine. I got a new phone so it sat with the battery dead for a little over a month. Now I gave the epic to my daughter and the battery is all wonky. It will charge up to 100%, but when I take it off the charger it will last anywhere from 20 minutes to 4 hours, which I got the other day with no use and airplane mode on. Now here's the wonky part. It only goes down to around 88% and than goes dead. If I plug it back in it says it has about 80% charge. But if I don't plug it in and just try to turn it back on it acts like it doesn't have enough juice. Now on this phone I'm on cwm 6.8.x or something like that and you can't wipe battery stats so I didn't try that. So I guess my next step would be to flash another recovery and wipe battery stats. I did just flash the peoples ROM 2.2 (I think was the number) just yesterday and wiped everything else for a clean install. Has anyone heard of or experienced this? How can I fix this? Will wiping battery stats work? Also, the battery was great, I could easily get all day out of it with average use just a month ago. Please and thank you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
only1penny said:
The battery was working fine two months ago. That's why its weird to me. Wiping the stats didn't help. I guess a new battery is in order. Grrrrrrrr
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If it was the original battery it already has some miles on it and if it sat for a month or two dead in the phone then it's most likely toast. You will get best results with li-ion batteries during the first 300 to 500 charges, so after a year or two the battery will naturally loose it's ability to hold a charge, that's just the nature of the beast. A new battery will do wonders!
The percentage that is displayed is usually directly correlated with battery voltage. So 3.200 V would represent 100% and I think it is 2.6 is 0%. So what sounds like is happening is the battery has a bad cell and jumps from say 3V or whatever is 80% right to some voltage below 2.6. A new battery "should" fix this.
kennyglass123 said:
The percentage that is displayed is usually directly correlated with battery voltage. So 3.200 V would represent 100% and I think it is 2.6 is 0%. So what sounds like is happening is the battery has a bad cell and jumps from say 3V or whatever is 80% right to some voltage below 2.6. A new battery "should" fix this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
check that 4g isn't on or google talk isn't on. Google now is a big battery waster too. For unexplicable drains, check for a defective battery and if all else fails a clean wipe/install. I've had just about all of these issues on the 4 epic's we own.

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