Best application to monitor mA drain? - Samsung Galaxy Nexus

Currently I am using Battery Monitor Widget to view how many mA my phone is draining at any moment. But I'm not sure how accurate it is. For example, after browsing on my phone for two minutes, it shows -80 mA. It polls/measures every minute, so that would mean that my phone uses only 80 mA with the screen on, which is impossible. When I turn the screen off, the recorded values will continue to drop for a few minutes, to 70 mA and 60 mA. If I leave the screen off, it usually continues to very slowly drop to 40 mA on some days, or to less than 10 mA on other days, or anything in between. Sometimes it does show realistic screen-on values, like -250 or -400 mA or so.
Any idea why it does this? What does it mean? My battery life is generally fine, about what I would expect based on what I read.
Do you know of an accurate battery-drain meter for the Galaxy Nexus, one that updates fairly quickly (like every minute)?

The nexus cannot output current mA readings due to the fuel gauge used. So those are just guesses from battery monitor widget. No app can help you, its a hardware limitation . Many HTC phones do this though.

RogerPodacter said:
The nexus cannot output current mA readings due to the fuel gauge used. So those are just guesses from battery monitor widget. No app can help you, its a hardware limitation . Many HTC phones do this though.
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A little bit late, but thank you for the information! At least now I know it isn't possible.

Related

Battery "calibration" knowledge, gleaned from the Nexus One

This is not a thread about best battery tips, etc. And I'm hoping it is not another standard thread about how to calibrate our batteries.
There is a lot of information flying around regarding battery calibration. A lot of it involves draining the battery, plugging it in at certain time, removing the battery, erasing batterystats.bin, etc. etc. etc.
Some feel the batterystats.bin file is key, and others believe it is completely unrelated to how the battery performs--just a log of stats.
How can this be reconciled?
UPDATE: Deleting batterystats.bin to "recalibrate" a battery is total and utter nonsense
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1442989
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105051985738280261832/posts/FV3LVtdVxPT
Over on the Nexus One forum, there was/is an extensive discussion, with REAL data gleaned from reading the technical datasheets of the battery itself, and the DS2784 chip within. The key to the Nexus calibration program was the ability to reprogram values on the battery chip.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=765609
I don't know if much of anything is going to be the same on the GNex battery, since the N1 was a HTC product. However, if the charging algorithms are all dictated by the Android OS, instead of hardware specific, then it could provide useful precedent. (I am not going to go through all the Samsung forums to look for valid battery calibration threads--if you know of some, for say, the Nexus S or Galaxy S2 (predecessor and comparable cousin, let's call them) please comment).
Here's a primer for all I learned that was used on the Nexus One battery calibration program. Full credit to those fine users who took the reins and made that happen, and to the fine users who continue to provide user support to the newcomers who don't know/refuse to acknowledge the existence of a search function.
My hopes are that this will lead to more rational battery life discussions and maximization for the Galaxy Nexus.
(I am not an engineer, so if any of you out there would like to tighten the language used here, please let me know).
What are the important values in battery/calibration?
1. mV = voltage
2. mAh = milliamp hours, a measure of capacity. This is how much 'juice' your battery has left/stored.
3. mA = milliamps, a measure of current. This is how much 'battery power' your phone is drawing/using at a set time. GPS/bright screen means large mA usage.
Apparently, Samsung (and Motorola phones) do NOT have mA readings in their battery drivers. This poses a problem. Apps that measure current (such as the excellent and free "current widget") cannot give a readout.
How is the battery life % calculated?
Present mAh / "full" capacity mAh (more on "full" later)
When does a phone shut down?
1. When mAh = 0
OR
2. When mV < 3416, which is coded on the battery as the "empty voltage"
Whichever occurs first.
If mAh = 0, then batt % = 0. However if condition 2 occurs, batt % could be anything.
I have found the empty voltage on the GNex to be the same, 3416 mV.
I have found the maximum voltage on the stock GSM battery to be 4197 mV.
Through experimentation, it was found that reprogramming the "empty voltage" down to 3201mv could provide extended battery life. The voltage was found to drop very quickly any lower than that, providing minimal gain afterwards.
What is the full capacity of a battery?
On the N1 battery, it is coded into a chip on the battery itself. This can be reprogrammed with the calibration utility. The stock value was ~1400mah. This is called the Full40 value (the mAh at 40oC). A value called "battery age %" is used to adjust how close the real capacity is to the full, which decreases with use and age. By multiplying (batt age * full40), you get the real assigned capacity.
Some non-OEM batteries, however, had miscoded capacities, usually LOWER than what was advertised. This led to very disappointed users who had purchased extended batteries that lasted no longer than stock, due to wrong mAh coding. (See below how this could be corrected).
Other low-end crappy non-OEM batteries had a crap chip which was coded with nonsensical values. This also led to unreliable battery life. These chips were not reprogrammable.
The very interesting thing is whenever the battery thinks it was completely charged, the mAh becomes SET to this number. mAh is NOT an independent value. Also, you could set it whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, whether it was accurate or not. % battery left was basically calculated as present mAh / (full40 mAh*batt age). So you could get false values of either too little or too much battery left.
Why does this matter? If that was falsely low, the phone would cut out at 0% battery life, but you would still have usable battery left. If it was falsely high, it would cut out at 10% or whatever, since voltage would hit 3416 faster than mAh hit 0.
How does the battery know/think it is full?
When connected to a charger, the phone draws +mA. It can start around 1000mA (depending on the charger), and drops as the battery becomes more and more charged.
Another coded value, the "minimum charge current," tells the battery when to stop drawing current. This is set at default to +80mA.
Another coded value, the "minimum charge voltage," tells the battery that as long as the voltage is less than this #, it should continue to charge. At default, this is 4099mV.
An important concept is that once the charge amperage drops below minimum charge current (and the voltage is > the minimum charge voltage), the battery thinks it is done. Again, that state becomes 100%. Again, the capacity mAh is SET to the full capacity, no matter what is at that time. The actual mAh doesn't matter--it BECOMES whatever is coded as the (age % * full capacity).
As with other values in the battery chip, minimum charge current can be changed. It can be made to 40mA, or 20mA, or whatever you wish. By doing this, the battery will continue to draw current, and thus charge more and longer, until the minimum charge current is met.
Speaking of charging amperage, this can be an issue when using a non-OEM crap car charger when using your smartphone as a GPS. If the DC adapter is NOT truly giving 1A, the phone will use more current than it is receiving, and the battery will continue to LOSE current despite being hooked to a charger. Upgrade your car DC adapter! They are not all made the same.
How does 'bump' charging relate to all this?
Bump charging is essentially a way to trick the battery to continue charging despite the current draw being < the minimum charge current.
There is a problem with this "full" battery detection method:
If you draw enough current from the battery, while it is charging, after the minimum charge volt is reached, you can PREMATURELY fool the battery into thinking it is done.
Say the charging mA is at +200mA. If you turn on your smartphone, start GPS, turn the lights on, stream Pandora, etc., the mA will easily drop from +200 to a lesser value, negative even. The phone will think the charge is complete, since it is <80ma. THAT state becomes 100%, because the mAh get set to full capacity. Falsely.
However, this should only happen when the charge is ~90% or greater (when mv >4099). So, it may not play a huge significant role in battery time, basically missing out on 10% or so of battery life. Also, at the next recharge cycle, provided you don't fool it again, the mAh will be RESET to the more appropriate designated value.
If mAh can be set to whatever value whenever, how do we get it PROPERLY set/calibrated?
There are 2 times when mAh is automatically set. Upon draining the battery to empty (3416mv by default, 3201 preferably), when the phone shuts down, the mAh will be properly set = 0. This is good. We want mAh = 0 when mV = empty voltage.
The other time is when the battery thinks it's full, when minimum charge current is met--this is often not accurately set, not good.
If we start charging when the battery is empty, the mAh rises as the battery is charged. However, the MAXIMUM mAh needs to be watched. The mAh could be HIGHER than the programmed full mAh. Or far lower. Finding this maximum mAh, and reprogramming the battery accordingly, is the key.
Once again, when the battery hits the minimum charge current, the mAh will either jump up to the set battery capacity value (so the battery will die sooner than expected), or less commonly, drop down.
The goal is to get an accurate mAh capacity of the battery, for the voltage range between min + max, and have this set every time the battery is charged to capacity.
If we know the maximum mAh the battery reaches when charging, provided it started from 0, we want to reprogram the battery so that this value is set each time it completes charge.
There is a "learn mode" on the Nexus battery. Provided this was activated, through a series of very specific events, the battery would give itself a "battery age %". This is used to give the accurate (battery age % * full40) = true capacity. On the Nexus, the default battery age was 94%. So, mAh was set at every full charge to 94% of the full40 capacity. Obviously, this is not true for every battery forever.
Once again, why errors can and do occur:
mAh and mV are not directly linked. If mA falls to 0, or mV is less than the cutoff empty voltage, the phone will shutdown, even if the other value is still sufficient.
1. mAh is falsely high. The battery won't last as long as we think it will. Battery % is falsely high. Phone won't get to 0%.
2. mAh is falsely low. The voltage is adequate, but the mAh isn't correct. The battery % is falsely low. Phone gets to 0% too quickly. Perceived loss of battery life duration.
Why use mAh at all? Seems like mV is the only important thing?
I don't know. Why is mAh capacity important in telling the phone to shutdown? Someone enlighten me.
I think one reason is that voltage can and does fluctuate up. So using this to calculate battery % life would be extremely erratic and confusing.
What does this teach us, overall?
I'd have thought there would be much better technology built into battery calibration. Seriously. This is one big mess of poor design.
This is a bunch of technical mumbo jumbo. How does this help me?
On the N1, you can give yourself more battery life!
1. Set your 'empty voltage' lower
2. Set your minimum charge current lower
3. Calibrate the maximum mAh to a higher value to accomodate the new 'empty voltage' and 'minimum charge current' values
4. Don't play with the phone too much when it is >90% charging or it will prematurely end its charge cycle, give you a falsely higher charge %, resulting in the battery dying before you think it should.
5. Profit.
(On an extended 3200mAh battery from Seideo, after lowering the empty voltage and minimum charge current, I found >3900mAh (!) as my new maximum mAh. That's a heck of a lot of free juice).
On other phones? I'm hoping real programmers here can figure out how to do the same.
So, for the Nexus One, there is ABSOLUTELY NO correlation between battery calibration and the battery stats file. NONE. The values on the battery chip determine everything.
So, please comment on how battery calibration tech has changed over the past 2 Nexus generations. If it has.
ADDENDUM:
RogerPodacter, the xda guru/user who was instrumental in creating the N1 battery calibration app, has been looking into the GNex battery quite intently.
I just stumbled across some useful info about our battery fuel gauge from the sgs2 forum. Basically the result is there is not much we can do with our fuel gauge. But they do talk about how to truly calibrate it. And they discuss the improved version max17042 which is used on tbe sgs2 and has all the bells and whistles.
Heres the topic.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=1312273
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(If you found this info useful, please click the THANKS button!)
Somebody is looking at this already. That same somebody who made the nexus one battery app. This chip doesnt supply amperage either. After i told him my battery seems to only charge to about 4.15v and that on discharging/charging my voltage is everwhere so it is hard to ascertain how accurate my % is. He finally got a chance to look over some stuff and we both think the nexus only allows charging to 4.15v. And. I think the battery shutdowns at 3.6v this go around. From initial observation he led me to believe everyrhing seems to be fine and we might not be able to do much. He might be able to get 4.2v and 3.4v for the voltage cycle. This is partly my speculation but we did agree that samsung may have done this intentionally for longevity of the battery. We will have to wait and see because he is still tinkering with his phone and deciding how to initially proceed. Might be a few days though. I am getting the extended battery soon so i would like to see what changes there are from the 250mah difference.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium
To gleam is to shine or sparkle... to glean is to learn or become knowledgeable about.
FrayAdjacent said:
To gleam is to shine or sparkle... to glean is to learn or become knowledgeable about.
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..wow, just wow.
To the OP thank you for all this compiled information.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA App
FrayAdjacent said:
To gleam is to shine or sparkle... to glean is to learn or become knowledgeable about.
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I thought the same thing but possible typo. N and m are next to each other. But if op ends up giving us something tangible positively foe the nexus he will have gleamed. Lol.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium
Agggh. I suppose gleam could be appropriate here. But yes, glean was the original intent.
Due to my grammar OCD-ness, it has been edited. =P
@rbiter said:
Somebody is looking at this already. That same somebody who made the nexus one battery app. This chip doesnt supply amperage either. After i told him my battery seems to only charge to about 4.15v and that on discharging/charging my voltage is everwhere so it is hard to ascertain how accurate my % is. He finally got a chance to look over some stuff and we both think the nexus only allows charging to 4.15v. And. I think the battery shutdowns at 3.6v this go around. From initial observation he led me to believe everyrhing seems to be fine and we might not be able to do much. He might be able to get 4.2v and 3.4v for the voltage cycle. This is partly my speculation but we did agree that samsung may have done this intentionally for longevity of the battery. We will have to wait and see because he is still tinkering with his phone and deciding how to initially proceed. Might be a few days though. I am getting the extended battery soon so i would like to see what changes there are from the 250mah difference.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium
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Great to hear! Is that on this forum or rootzwiki, or a private communication?
I have noticed that shut down is usually at 3.6 or so. I drained it completely one time with multiple reboot attempts, and I got battery monitor widget to log a 3.417 or so that ONE time, but yes, the battery prefers to quit more around 3.6.
Battery monitor widget outputs an 'estimated' mA, but that's the closest thing I could find.
Wow you brought up the nexus one battery project. I was actually the one who re-wrote that battery driver for the n1 linked in the thread in the first post. Then I wrote the apk with dvghl. I even got my altered battery driver officially merged into the cyan kernel repo for the n1.
Anyway my point is that I learned an ENORMOUS amount about how these fuel gauge chips work, specifically the ds2784 chip in the n1. The bad news is our galaxy nexus chip max17040 doesn't have all the cool features that I cracked open on the ds2784 chip. But still worth trying a few things. Specifically I'm curious what the rcomp register does in our battery driver.
Also the other bad news is our galaxy nexus max17040 cannot give current mA readings. It can only be estimated using battery monitor widget for example.
Unfortunately we don't have a learn mode or age register like we did in the n1, so we can't get too deep into the chip like we did in that project. Kinda unfortunate. Seems the max17040 only has about 7 memory registers, where the n1 ds2784 had about 30 or so registers we could hack into and tweak.
RogerP, so good to see you here! Hope my summary gave some hint as to the enormous amount of effort your project took, and the huge leap in battery charging knowledge it provided.
waylo said:
RogerP, so good to see you here! Hope my summary gave some hint as to the enormous amount of effort your project took, and the huge leap in battery charging knowledge it provided.
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Hey man, you did a near perfect job with the write up. That project was a one of a kind opportunity in the sense that the ds2784 chip, and the tech sheet and hacks we did, all lined up to be the perfect storm of what we can learn and do with these batteries. So much knowledge was extracted from that effort.
The bad news is that Samsung phones don't typically use the ds2XXX fuel gauge chips, instead they use max1704X chips. These chips use voltage to determine SOC along with their "secret" algorithm that they don't publish. In the end there isn't as much ability to do anything with our fuel gauge like we did with the n1. There are 7 registers or so, SOC, mode, volt, rcomp, but no current and no mAh. The rcomp is the one I was curious about tweaking.
This weekend I was thinking of setting up Ubuntu build environment and attempting to play arount with this new driver and see if we can learn anything more. I'm sure there are more capable devs who maybe already know about this fuel gauge cause the nexus s and other Samsung phones use similar chip. It'd be another fun project if so!
Thanks OP. Very helpful.
Glad to spread the word!
Don't forget to click the THANKS button if I helped!
thanks!! helps alot more knowledgeable now about batteries
I bought the spare battery kit that comes with an external charger. I run my battery to near empty or empty then swap it out. Do the external chargers behave the same way?
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk
Very happy to see the same crew from the N1 battery calibration days on the GN. I was pretty disappointed when I got the NS and there was little discussion or attention given to the battery at such a detailed level. By the time I picked up the GN I had mostly accepted that the N1 situation and battery related dev/testing/discussion was unique in that it was both possible to tinker with and we had some dedicated fellas, especially you RP, that were willing/able to tackle the task.
As with the N1 battery testing, I'm all in to test and help whenever possible to break some ground with the GN.
This topic made me reminisce about my old N1, wish I hadn't sold it on eBay. I sold it to a Canadian, cost me a bloody fortune to ship to him bc of restrictions on amount of lithium cells/customs regulations. The guy was probably wondering if he bought it from some nut job when it arrived with like 7 batteries of many different manufacture/capacity and spare battery chargers. I half expect that US/CAN Customs put me on some kind of list when they inspected the shipment.
ellesshoo said:
As with the N1 battery testing, I'm all in to test and help whenever possible to break some ground with the GN.
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I'd also be willing to contribute to these efforts.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk
deekjx said:
I bought the spare battery kit that comes with an external charger. I run my battery to near empty or empty then swap it out. Do the external chargers behave the same way?
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That's an excellent question I don't know the answer to. I'm not sure what kind of charging algorithm the external chargers would use, except to stop charging once the current reaches a certain low level.
As RogerP described above, most of the GNex battery algorithms are a mystery at this point, with some proprietary methods that won't ever be voluntarily revealed =P.
There is probably not a whole lot that can be done with the nexus battery. Yall gotta remember there was a bugnor bad programming revealed and that is why so much time was devoted to that. Roger already found that the battery stops around 4.15 volts. Changing it 4.2 will not make a big difference here and im sure it is intentional to extend charging cycles.
My grandma beat me down and took my nexus. Sent from a jitterbug with beats by dre.
well i dont think this project is "dead". i still plan to compile a kernel with a few batt driver tweaks and see if we can extract what the "rcomp" register is, what values it contains, and if we can tweak it at all. same with the "mode" register. also if you guys browse the source, there is a different driver called max10742 and it has all the extra options including "age". if only samsung had given us that one.
the other thing i want to do, or someone here could do, is map the voltage readings to the batt percentages. we did this way back in the beginning on the n1, except we mapped percentage vs mAh. but here we dont have mAh readings, only volts. what we can learn from this is if the percentage is calculated precisely from the voltage, how linear the mapping is, or if it's loosely estimated based on their modelgauge algorithm or whatever they call it at maxim.
i think it would be easy to just use battery monitor widget and export a full day's worth of your logs. maybe i'll install it and give it a shot.
I already have weeks of mv vs. batt % if you need that, specifically from battery monitor widget.
Graph 1: All data from the start. 5000 data points.
Graph 2: ~600 data points, starting from after I ran the battery down to 0 completely, plugged in with phone off, and charged to 100%.
Not sure why all the data gives 2 distinctly different patterns. The lower data plots seems more favorable, with higher % at lower mV.

[Q] Battery self charging!?

Hey, has anyone noticed their battery meter saying a low percentage and then seeing it increase after not touching the phone for a while? ive noticed my phone will say 2% for example and ill let it sit for a while and when i check it again its all the way up to 10%. I have calibrated the battery but it doesn't affect it and it still happens?
lol yea my battey is solar powered.. lol jkjk.. but naw its because when your screen is on it adjusts tye percentage based off how your using it.. if its asleep for a while tye battery percentage will increase because its not being used make sense?
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elliwigy said:
lol yea my battey is solar powered.. lol jkjk.. but naw its because when your screen is on it adjusts tye percentage based off how your using it.. if its asleep for a while tye battery percentage will increase because its not being used make sense?
Sent from my SPH-D710 using XDA
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Nope, it actually doesn't make sense.
You're gas gauge in your car doesn't go up when your car isn't being used. Percentages shouldn't increase without charging no matter what.
FWIW, I've experienced this a few times. My battery has increased as much as 5% without being charged and that's in one string. For example, my battery may go down to 50%, then over the next 20 minutes go to 55%, then an hour later 42% and rise up to 45% and so on. Not sharp spikes either, steady gradual increases.
elliwigy said:
lol yea my battey is solar powered.. lol jkjk.. but naw its because when your screen is on it adjusts tye percentage based off how your using it.. if its asleep for a while tye battery percentage will increase because its not being used make sense?
Sent from my SPH-D710 using XDA
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No, it does not work like that.
Battery app re-calculates the remaining battery based on the battery power currently being used (mV) and history. That's why we are doing the calibration to correctly measure the current battery status and range of it.
In most case, battery power (mV), it goes down from the top and it usually up & down within a small range but for overall, it goes down.
But sometimes, the current mV is goes up and it's caused by
1. Battery usage forecast was wrong or
2. Battery is recovering its power again - for example, after CPU intensive task, the voltage could goes up
3. the remaining percentage goes up if the battery usage is slower than the expectation (it's not going up because it's not being used. Even the screen is off, the battery is still being used). In this case battery app recalculate the percentage based on the current mV and trend that how fast battery mV is decreasing. If mV is increasing, then battery app will show like it's being charged...
There are couple of more things that we also consider in here but I think this is enough information to know.
Update: Let me add a couple of more.
From OP's screenshot, it shows that there's big drop in battery percentage. Usually, big drop happens (battery power is decreasing so fast), it's really hard to calculate the exact remaining percentage because battery shows some irregular pattern after that kind of fast drop. So, some point of time, battery app recalculate the percentage based on current voltage. That's why it's showing going up.
One more case is, the pattern change. After big drop and/or voltage is about the same (stay almost same), then battery app also adjust the remaining battery level indicator.
Simple example) Just like Human. I just finished eating and fully charged. After a meal, I worked so hard and almost exhausted. No power left. But after a little break, I could recover my power a little more.
This example is not exactly same but it would be more easier to understand.
I have noticed this. Could it be that after the battery runs out the phone puts itself in a low consumption mode, thus the battery cools down, increasing the efficiency of delivering power, thus increasing the apparent voltage available? This would be similar to putting the battery in the fridge to get a litte bit of extra juice...
Sent from my SGT10.1 using XDA Premium
Its just the phone reading the voltage wrong, the calibration is outta wack.
qwerty12601 said:
Nope, it actually doesn't make sense.
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Makes complete sense. There is no accurate way to judge the potential energy stored within a battery. Changes in temperature are one of many things that effect the chemical availability of energy.
Little shifts in measured overall capacity and current charge change all the time on every device you own. Most of them do not update to reflect this, some dont update in the wrongest way. My ASUS gaming laptop doesnt report new full charge capacities to windows and now more than ever with the battery being half shot i can hit 150% but it always did this from new sometimes would show it had stopped charging at 98% when it reached full capacity or 101%.
I can explain the software aspects of the problem. But you will need an electrical engineer, chemical analyst to help you go over the batteries end of it. I of course am not familiar with Android in particular but Portable PC's Sony's PSP etc seen it everywhere.
Its due to a flaw in Samsung phones where it does not correctly read the battery. Sometimes a phone reboot will show as much as a 70% (from my experience) in battery but then my battery will start to "charge" itself as the phone reads the voltage better. I've seen this happen on our phones and the captivate
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qwerty12601 said:
Nope, it actually doesn't make sense.
You're gas gauge in your car doesn't go up when your car isn't being used. Percentages shouldn't increase without charging no matter what.
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you have no idea how mechanical measuring works, do you? here is an example of how gas is measured; a floating ball attached to an arm changes the voltage of the signal depending on the amount of fuel in the tank. Higher the ball, higher the voltage, and thus higher the gas gauge.
Consequently, you will notice fuel gauges reading higher going uphill and lower when going down, because gas doesnt just sit in one place. The gauge is usually calibrated for when the car is standing still.
Now that you have an idea how mechanical measurement works, can you apply this to battery chemistry? NO, because they are completely different!
Battery life is measured using a formula, not a mechanical device. It is, in essence, a best guess. Some formulas are better than others, but they are all still estimates. And you will notice fluctuations.
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rianbechtold said:
Hey, has anyone noticed their battery meter saying a low percentage and then seeing it increase after not touching the phone for a while? ive noticed my phone will say 2% for example and ill let it sit for a while and when i check it again its all the way up to 10%. I have calibrated the battery but it doesn't affect it and it still happens?
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Click to collapse
i had the same thing happened to me, and i have the pic somewhere.. where the battery just dropped from like 80% to 30% in less then 5 min.. i was using it, and had the screen off, and had it on again.. and it went down like crazy.. and afterwards.. it started to go up, as if i was charging the phone..
some one said that, its a bug by samsung, where if you charge your phone not quiet to 100% and use the phone, this can happen..
concerning what some other guy said about turning the phone off and on, can boost batery power.. that was hilarious sad..
likkkkkke thisssss?
first one is recent.. second one is from one of the initial ics leaks..
Or this freak
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Somairotevoli said:
Or this freak
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Um or not lol. Considering you have charging in there
RainMotorsports said:
Um or not lol. Considering you have charging in there
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Or yes as you can see it clearly (or in your case, not so clearly) going up at points it's not being changed
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Somairotevoli said:
Or yes as you can see it clearly (or in your case, not so clearly) going up at points it's not being changed
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However very much expected. You have created a circumstance where accuracy was guaranteed to be off. Making sure that multiple corrections were a reality.
I would hope that in a 2 day period you had 3 to 4 hours to sleep where this phone could have reached 100% twice and only been on the charger about 4 times. Obviously a couple very busy days for you. I could guess any number of occupations that might have done this to you
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That looks almost as if to suggest the sampling did not occur at all while the phone was sleeping.
turbomeister said:
you have no idea how mechanical measuring works, do you? here is an example of how gas is measured; a floating ball attached to an arm changes the voltage of the signal depending on the amount of fuel in the tank. Higher the ball, higher the voltage, and thus higher the gas gauge.
Consequently, you will notice fuel gauges reading higher going uphill and lower when going down, because gas doesnt just sit in one place. The gauge is usually calibrated for when the car is standing still.
Now that you have an idea how mechanical measurement works, can you apply this to battery chemistry? NO, because they are completely different!
Battery life is measured using a formula, not a mechanical device. It is, in essence, a best guess. Some formulas are better than others, but they are all still estimates. And you will notice fluctuations.
Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Now that you've got that out of your system, let me explain it a little more simply so you understand.
It was an analogy. I never said that battery percentage was calculated the same way as fuel capacity. But it's an analogy to help you relate.
Batter percentage is a measure of volume of power left in the battery. It should never fluctuate UP without being charged, unless something is wrong with the battery/phone. 55% is 55%, no matter what temperature, usage time, current usage is. If the battery is 1800 mah, then 50% battery level means there's 900 mah left. It's not a calculation of anything else. Just like if your fuel tank hold 16gal, and the needle is at 1/2 (stationary of course, not parked/driving up or downhill as you needlessly pointed out), you have 8 gal left. There's no mathematical calculation needed there.
Just for reference, I own no other electronic device that magically increases in battery percentage. My laptop goes down unless it's being charged. It's a quirk/flaw with the system in the phone. Plain and simple.
BTW, no apology needed. I'm just happy to educate you!
Didn't you know? Our device's covering is actually made of solar panels
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium
qwerty12601 said:
Nope, it actually doesn't make sense.
You're gas gauge in your car doesn't go up when your car isn't being used. Percentages shouldn't increase without charging no matter what.
FWIW, I've experienced this a few times. My battery has increased as much as 5% without being charged and that's in one string. For example, my battery may go down to 50%, then over the next 20 minutes go to 55%, then an hour later 42% and rise up to 45% and so on. Not sharp spikes either, steady gradual increases.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My gas guage goes up when i park uphill.

Battery meter is just useless

Hi,
On my One-X battery meter is completely inaccurate. Sometimes it sits for hours on one value (e.g. 90%) and then suddenly drops (with no CPU/data activity whatsoever) to for example 80%. This results with very jerky battery use graph (attached mine). I am on 1.29.401.7 and done multiple full discharge/charge cycles, but it does not make any difference.
I have never seen such bad battery meter behavior on any other Andoid phone. Have you got similar problem?
I have the exact same problem actually.
Same here. It's as if it doesn't update the battery meter when it's in sleep (fifth core running). I suspect it's because of the T3 architecture and power management. As soon as you wake it, after maybe a minute, it updates the battery status...
Mines does it. Can sit on a %age for an age then with little use it will plummet.
@Op,
No I didn't notice such a problem on a unrooted One X and with no modifications running the latest OTA update 1.29.401.11.
Did you play with battery apps or did you modify something yourself which could cause this issue? Did you investigate what could cause it?
How long do you have your device, did you install apps? Can you provide more info about it maybe? Do you softreset your device?
Did the problem exist when you bought the device?
Thanks.
So it must be general problem then. It happens to me not only in sleep mode, but when browsing the web, etc.
I think these sudden percentage jumps and meter inaccuracy also contribute to all these battery life complains from various people. I was personally shocked when after a few minutes of web browsing battery dropped instantly from 30 to 20%. It looks like crappy battery, but in fact seems to be just dodgy meter...
Laurentius26 said:
@Op,
No I didn't notice such a problem on a unrooted One X and with no modifications running the latest OTA update 1.29.401.11.
Did you play with battery apps or did you modify something yourself which could cause this issue? Did you investigate what could cause it?
How long do you have your device, did you install apps? Can you provide more info about it maybe? Do you softreset your device?
Did the problem exist when you bought the device?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have got the phone for almost a week now and I am pretty sure this problem has been there from the very begining. I initially though this is because a couple of full charge / discharge cycles are required to calibrate the meter, but it did not make any difference. My phone is not unlocked, no mods or battery apps. I did not try soft reset though.
It looks to me that meter is somehow not updating during the sleep. When device wakes from sleep, after a couple of minutes value drops significantly. This problem is probably a reason for various false claims that One X does not consume a single percent of battery during the overnight sleep.
Yeah, i have the same thing. Sometimes my battery drops about 2 or 3 percent at once, sometimes 10 percent...pretty annoying.
Thanks for your reply.
I'm new to Android but I do have some Windows Mobile experience.
It's weird to me seeing people having such problems because I realy don't experience it.
My battery meter is constant, also after a night sleep.
Maybe it's because I use my device different as others I don't know, it's strange to see all these reports in XDA forum as the One X to my opinion is a very cool device.
Maybe you could try some battery percentage apps and see if it realy is that insufficient?
aszu said:
I have got the phone for almost a week now and I am pretty sure this problem has been there from the very begining. I initially though this is because a couple of full charge / discharge cycles are required to calibrate the meter, but it did not make any difference. My phone is not unlocked, no mods or battery apps. I did not try soft reset though.
It looks to me that meter is somehow not updating during the sleep. When device wakes from sleep, after a couple of minutes value drops significantly. This problem is probably a reason for various false claims that One X does not consume a single percent of battery during the overnight sleep.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No problems with the battery monitor whatsoever (unrooted) 1.28.161.9
Laurentius26 said:
Thanks for your reply.
I'm new to Android but I do have some Windows Mobile experience.
It's weird to me seeing people having such problems because I realy don't experience it.
My battery meter is constant, also after a night sleep.
Maybe it's because I use my device different as others I don't know, it's strange to see all these reports in XDA forum as the One X to my opinion is a very cool device.
Maybe you could try some battery percentage apps and see if it realy is that insufficient?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I used your excellent ROMs on my HD2 in dark WM6.5 ages . I am glad to see you here with One X!
I installed Battery Meter Widget and (if the readings are correct), my One X consumes about 10-15mA during the sleep with Wifi and 3G on. I will keep an eye on the percentage.
Don't get me wrong - besides of erratic GPS and dodgy battery/power management problems, I really love this device.
I really wished that international One X version was based on S4 SoC (superb GPS with GLONASS and great power management as S4 is a 28nm chip). It is such a shame that dodgy Tegra 3 ruins this excellent device...
Hello, maybe this behaviour is only due to the voltage sampling/display ...
Someone here says the native battery app was only at 5% precision at display
and it looks like it updates in long time samples too ( 5 minutes ? ) ...
Knowing that Li-Ion goes from 3600 mV ( 0% ) to 4200 mV ( 100% ),
it means 600 mV of voltage variation from empty to full, with 1 mV precision.
So 1 millivolt is 0.2% of battery charge.
The display should be really more precise if all voltage precision was used.
aszu said:
Hi,
and then suddenly drops (with no CPU/data activity whatsoever)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
looking at that screenshot you have posted the sudden drops appear to be perfectly aligned to the 'screen on' or 'awake' periods so the most likely (and obvious) cause is that using the phone causes most battery use. I have seen this with many phones, I think its normal. Being in standby doesnt use much power at all but lighting the massive 4.7" screen and running a quad core processor does, so when you use the phone it uses loads more juice... thats my analysis anyway
f_padia said:
looking at that screenshot you have posted the sudden drops appear to be perfectly aligned to the 'screen on' or 'awake' periods so the most likely (and obvious) cause is that using the phone causes most battery use. I have seen this with many phones, I think its normal. Being in standby doesnt use much power at all but lighting the massive 4.7" screen and running a quad core processor does, so when you use the phone it uses loads more juice... thats my analysis anyway
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, this is different. Drop in fact seem to be related to wake up from deep sleep, but the point is that this drop is massive and instant i.e. battery instantly drops from 30 to 20, bypassing all other percent states in between. Also, I am sure battery state does not update properly in deep sleep in many cases. At some point I left my phone for almost a day alone (wifi, 3g, Gmail and exchange sync, etc) and it did not lose a single percent, but as soon as started using it I observed instant 20% drop.
Same problem here even after hard reset
Sent from my HTC One X using XDA
d33f said:
Same problem here even after hard reset
Sent from my HTC One X using XDA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
And I have even worse problem, can anyone help me?
Take a look at my thread (not highjacking yours, just want some help too), my current widget never reads a real value AFAIK.
It stay with -850 for more than an hour at times...
And my battery life is dismal...
So this means that seeing no battery discharge throughout the night in sleep mode isn't due to excellent power saving feature of the companion core but is in fact poor battery meter?
And yes, my One X shows fast and huge discharge (3-5% at once) when I use after being in long sleep mode
samuelong87 said:
So this means that seeing no battery discharge throughout the night in sleep mode isn't due to excellent power saving feature of the companion core but is in fact poor battery meter?
And yes, my One X shows fast and huge discharge (3-5% at once) when I use after being in long sleep mode
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think it too. Phone on sleep with data and sync on for 1 or 2 hours and % don't change. Use it for 2 min. and it suddently goes down by 5/10%
In my opinion the battery meter lacks of accuracy. This brings to inaccurate real time current calculations and wrong information about what's consuming power when we use it. That's bad!
I'm also seeing these big drops. For me it seems to happen between 100%-60% battery, battery level will drop anything from 5%-10% chunks at a time. After 60%, it does seem to be more stable and drop in 1-2% increments.
I've recalibrated the battery through CWM a couple of times but still get this issue.
It almost seems like there's a bug in the code that is causing the fuel gauge to not update.
I can tell you this, I modified other HTC phones battery driver. The nexus one driver for example updates volt, percent, temp, every 50 seconds while the screen is on. When off the sample poll changes to 10 minutes per update. This is real easy to see in the driver code, and you can filter dmesg log for "batt" and see the time stamps do in fact match this.
But the one x looks to be getting hung up on that part. Anyone know if kernel code has been released yet?

[Q] Horrible Battery Life

How is everyone finding the battery life. Personally, I am finding it just plain horrible. I'm not sure what the issue is specifically but either something is draining it or it is just really that bad, in which case I will return it. I can't get a day's worth of moderate use out of it. It seems to be at most half of what I get from my note 10.1 and they aren't set up any differently. I've tried some of the basics like turning down the screen brightness (which annoys me), turning off the smart stay (but why have a feature you can't use), tweaking email checking settings, turning off samsung sync, turning off bluetooth (don't use it), and locations services. Is anyone else seeing this as an issue and does anyone have any additional suggestions for me to try?
Thanks in Advance
I get about two days between charges on mine. I get a decent amount of usage on a daily basis between email, Facebook, and candy crush. I even have Google Now running. How many charge cycles have you been through?
05GT said:
I get about two days between charges on mine. I get a decent amount of usage on a daily basis between email, Facebook, and candy crush. I even have Google Now running. How many charge cycles have you been through?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If by charge cycles you mean fully discharging the phone until it shuts off, I haven't done that, but could give it a shot. It has gone down to 10% several times though.
No battery problems here. I wouldn't blame charge cycles, if they have any effect at all, it is minor. If I were you, I would do a factory reset, followed by an exchange if the reset doesn't fix it.
I have smart stay on , backlight on auto, and take no extra precautions for battery savings.
DownTFish said:
How is everyone finding the battery life. Personally, I am finding it just plain horrible. I'm not sure what the issue is specifically but either something is draining it or it is just really that bad, in which case I will return it. I can't get a day's worth of moderate use out of it. It seems to be at most half of what I get from my note 10.1 and they aren't set up any differently. I've tried some of the basics like turning down the screen brightness (which annoys me), turning off the smart stay (but why have a feature you can't use), tweaking email checking settings, turning off samsung sync, turning off bluetooth (don't use it), and locations services. Is anyone else seeing this as an issue and does anyone have any additional suggestions for me to try?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you please post some screen shots of your battery life at the end of a typical cycle? It will help with comparisons by giving us more details on your running apps, screen-on display times, etc. Also, what wakelocks do you have? Use BetterBatteryStats or Wakelock Detector from the Play store for that. This info might help us to identify just how much drain is related to rogue apps or the general battery life itself.
sefrcoko said:
Can you please post some screen shots of your battery life at the end of a typical cycle? It will help with comparisons by giving us more details on your running apps, screen-on display times, etc. Also, what wakelocks do you have? Use BetterBatteryStats or Wakelock Detector from the Play store for that. This info might help us to identify just how much drain is related to rogue apps or the general battery life itself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks. Just downloaded BetterBatteryStatus. I'll let it run for a bit and see what comes up. I'll post what I came up with with screen shots from it. Thanks for pointing me in a direction.
Also, it'd help to know how many hours "just plain horrible" is.
I'm not delighted by the battery life I'm seeing, I'm finding I want to charge every night, and that I can easily consume 15% / hour or more even without the screen turned up past 20-25%. (watching video off the NAS in the house.)
Then again, this is the first LCD display I've been able to read in full sunlight, and that's remarkable to me. I often wind up with full sun in the morning when I get up, and am delighted that if I did charge overnight I can use the device even then.
The battery needs some initial "training".
Charge fully on the first and run it all the way down to nearly zero, and fully charge again.
DO NOT interrupt the initial charge.
Battery life is great here after 5 cycles running it to 1% and recharging full at first it was draining faster but now I can watch 4 hours of netflix and still have 25% left nice thing is that the battery charges superfast so no worries
DownTFish said:
If by charge cycles you mean fully discharging the phone until it shuts off, I haven't done that, but could give it a shot. It has gone down to 10% several times though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
10% is just fine, for purposes of calibrating the battery meter. Preferable actually. You shouldn't actually drain the device until shutdown. There are safeguards that are supposed to ensure the battery voltage does not drop too low (its not actually zero when the phone shuts down). However, in reality these safeguards are not always failsafe and I've seen plenty of cases on various Android devices where letting the battery drain to shutoff renders the battery unable to take a charge (below the minimum threshold voltage). Sometimes, letting the battery charge overnight will bring the battery back. Otherwise, you are pretty screwed, as the only remedy would be a battery meter with a boost function.
In any case, the battery meter is not very accurate, even under the best of circumstances, so letting it drain to 10% is plenty accurate enough. Then let it charge to 100%, and let it sit at full for a while, as fully saturating the battery takes extra time.
---------- Post added at 11:15 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:08 AM ----------
That said, its hard to say what "moderate use" means. Everyone uses their devices differently. If you are playing intensive games, downloading files, heavy internet usage, it can drain the battery much faster than other activities. And the number of hours of screen-on time is key. So the idea of getting some battery stats and screenshots, is a good one.
I haven't been tracking screen-on time myself. But I find the battery to be decent. I use it a good amount in the evening (don't bring it to work) mostly for reading and web browsing. I have brightness on 40-50% usually (sometimes less, if the room is darker). The battery was just under 40% after 2 nights of use (maybe 40 hours after the last charge). Just guessing, but maybe 3 or 4 hours of screen on time?
Some online reviews mentioned the battery life is not as good as some other comparable devices (such as Nexus 7 and iPad Mini). Not surprising, since the Note 8 has a faster processor and higher resolution screen than either. And so far, battery life is not amazing, but seems comparable or better (better drain while idle) than my old HTC Flyer tablet. So for me, thats just fine.
I got about 4 hours screen-on time on my first battery cycle with heavy usage. Was playing games, movies, internet browsing, etc. My second and third cycles were better, giving me 5-6 hours screen-on time with moderate to heavy usage. Didn't really play any movies, but did play a fair amount of games and stuff.
On those later cycles my screen-on drain represented about 85% of my overall drain. This leads me to say that you can expect 4.5-6.5 hours of screen-on time with the Note 8, depending on usage. Keep in mind that I keep wifi always on, disabled bluetooth/auto-sync/smart stay, stopped some running apps like Maps and Factory Test, and kept brightness down to about 15% of the max setting.
Screen is definitely the big drain here, and these results lead me to believe that even with root and apps like Greenify I would not get much better results. Looks like any further battery savings will need to come from a custom kernel and custom rom (unless maybe you root and then underclock/undervolt using a third party app like Voltage Control or SetCpu). Anyone else have similar (or different ) results?
mingkee said:
The battery needs some initial "training".
Charge fully on the first and run it all the way down to nearly zero, and fully charge again.
DO NOT interrupt the initial charge.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
dumbest thing wrote in this thread probably. You do not need to train or do a full charge. How come people still believe that nonsense in 2013 ??
Bagbug said:
dumbest thing wrote in this thread probably. You do not need to train or do a full charge. How come people still believe that nonsense in 2013 ??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
:what:...XDA is for fun and for sharing; not for putting others down. Please be a little more respectful towards forum users when you post in the future. If you disagree with something then just explain so we can all learn together.
I am assuming the Note 8 has a lithium based battery. I couldn't confirm it though. The below link has some tips for how to care for different type of batteries. Useful reading.
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tablets/how-and-when-to-charge-your-tablet-battery/814
Sent from my GT-N5110 using xda app-developers app
Although the battery life is of concern to me, the fact it charges via a micro USB input rather than propriatry cable alieviates that worry (looking at you Apple). I dont think I go anywhere where there isnt a charger available thanks to the amount of devices that use them.
Bagbug said:
dumbest thing wrote in this thread probably. You do not need to train or do a full charge. How come people still believe that nonsense in 2013 ??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
While his terminology might have been a bit clumsy, he is not completely incorrect.
The terminology of "training the battery" invokes the concepts of conditioning the old technology NiCad batteries to prevent memory effects, which are not a concern with Li ion batteries, which is what you seem to be referring to. Folks on XDA will often talk about conditioning or calibrating the battery, which can be a bit misleading (as often they have the behavior of the old NiCad batteries in mind when saying this).
However, it is true that the battery meter needs to be calibrated to be completely accurate. This calibration has no chemical effect on the battery itself (like it does with NiCad batteries) but simply effects how the current readings are displayed by the % battery meter on the device's screen. Without fully charging and draining the device, it doesn't have fully accurate "flags" associated the current to battery %.
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/battery_calibration
Failure to calibrate the meter won't have a negative chemical effect, like failure to periodically condition a NiCad battery. And therefore it won't have an affect on the battery life. But properly calibrating will give you the most accurate % battery reading possible. The battery meter is not accurate out of the box, after a ROM flash, and an OTA may also reset the calibration.
As I've already mentioned in a previous response, I don't recommend draining the battery to shutoff. As doing so can lead to the battery no longer taking a charge, and the device no longer powering on. Its rare, but it does happen. Fully changing, then draining to 10% or so is enough. Full cycles are also not good for the long term life of the battery, although just doing it once every few months is still acceptable.
---------- Post added at 10:21 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:07 AM ----------
kisrita said:
I am assuming the Note 8 has a lithium based battery. I couldn't confirm it though. The below link has some tips for how to care for different type of batteries. Useful reading.
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tablets/how-and-when-to-charge-your-tablet-battery/814
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Pretty good link, thanks. And reinforces what I just said above.
Most any smartphone or tablet made in the past several years uses a Li ion battery. This confirms it: http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_note_8_0_n5100-5252.php
---------- Post added at 10:26 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:21 AM ----------
hertsjoatmon said:
Although the battery life is of concern to me, the fact it charges via a micro USB input rather than propriatry cable alieviates that worry (looking at you Apple). I dont think I go anywhere where there isnt a charger available thanks to the amount of devices that use them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The charger for the Note 8 is 2 Amps, while most MicroUSB chargers (at least for phones and other small devices) are 1 Amp. Although this varies, and there are other tablet chargers that are also 2 Amps; but these are far less common than phone charges that just about anyone with a phone that isn't Apple will have.
What this means is that the 1 Amp charger will charge the Note 8 very slowly. I tried mine on a 1 Amp charger just once so far. Left it on for maybe an hour, and the charge only increased by a few percent.
So yes, you can charge with most MicroUSB chargers in a pinch. But it will be slow.
hertsjoatmon said:
Although the battery life is of concern to me, the fact it charges via a micro USB input rather than propriatry cable alieviates that worry (looking at you Apple). I dont think I go anywhere where there isnt a charger available thanks to the amount of devices that use them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't get the physical plug of a charger confuse you - I believe this tablet needs a 2amp output from the charger, meaning just because your charger has the same end connection, it won't necessarily help you charge this battery. I've had my users come to me thinking their devices are defective because they somehow started charging their tablet with their Bluetooth headset charger.
Someone also mentioned the black wallpaper that might help with the battery consumption - I believe that is only helpful on AMOLED screens that Samsung has used on other devices.
I'm really still on the fence on keeping it after I bought this - I'm coming from a GT 7.7 which had excellent build quality,screen, and battery life. The loss of the AMOLED screen for both graphics and battery efficiency is bothering me. I put both up side by side and feel disappointed that Samsung couldn't just make a JB updated 7.7 with new CPU, 2GB RAM, and stylus with the same design and beautiful Super AMOLED Plus screen. It's not even the price - but just feeling like I'm getting a somewhat inferior device (in a few but important aspects) from the 7.7, when it's supposed to be an upgrade to the older device.
I've seen the news about an upgrade to the 7.7 possibly coming, but will it come with the stylus that is also important to me and the other software enhancements from the Note 8?
Bagbug said:
dumbest thing wrote in this thread probably. You do not need to train or do a full charge. How come people still believe that nonsense in 2013 ??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Funny thing happened on mine.
The battery was VERY BAD the second day, but it could play live streaming for two hours when the battery was 1%. As soon as the tablet went off due to depleted battery, I charged it until it went all the way until the "full battery" came up.
After that, the battery is much better now, so don't say anything "dumb" or any nonsense because it works.
rEVOLVE said:
Someone also mentioned the black wallpaper that might help with the battery consumption - I believe that is only helpful on AMOLED screens
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is correct, having a black background does not effect battery life on LCD screens.
On AMOLED screens, black pixels are actually not emitting light (while pixels displaying other colors emit light), which is why a black background will cause less battery drain than other colors.
On an LCD, the liquid crystal layer that depicts the colors is not itself a source of light. Its lit from the back, and the light intensity of the backlight is the same regardless of what color is being displayed. How much light is blocked or let though by the liquid crystal layer varies depending on their alignment (what color is being displayed). But this doesn't affect how bright the backlight is, anymore than pulling a window blind makes the sun burn less hydrogen.
Speedy Gonzalez said:
Battery life is great here after 5 cycles running it to 1% and recharging full at first it was draining faster but now I can watch 4 hours of netflix and still have 25% left nice thing is that the battery charges superfast so no worries
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Only four hours? My Nexus 7 averages about 10.5 hours of Netflix with 10% left. I wonder how other note 8's compare?
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda premium

Determining the Actual Battery Capacity on a new S9

AccuBattery shows estimate of 2740 mAh on S9 one week old. If true, I'm replacing the phone tomorrow, if for no better reason than a comparison. However, there must be a better way to determine the actual "depth of power" of a non-removable battery. (Actual amount of juice)
Can anyone tell me how to determine that? How do I know I've gotten what I paid for in a battery speced at 3000 mAh?
Not with apps
Only 100% accurate way would be hooking a test unit up to the actual battery
*Detection* said:
Not with apps
Only 100% accurate way would be hooking a test unit up to the actual battery
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you mean by opening up the phone?
I do not see that as a good alternative in this situation.
Has no one created faux pas benchmarks such as playing a particular Youtube video for 1 hour (or variation) with Google Chrome, with wifi measured signal strength noted, Screen on 100% brightness or measured alternative, and noting any other variables, for various devices?
Could you post any known similar results, compilations?
harmonz said:
Do you mean by opening up the phone?
I do not see that as a good alternative in this situation.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What I mean is, stop listening to apps for something they cannot possibly measure accurately as it would have to be done with hardware
If you want more accurate estimate of the battery capacity through Accu Battery - do not forget to go to flight mode first and then charge your phone.
BTW my 1yr old s9 shows ~2715mah (and it actually says it approximate value).
Sent from my Galaxy S9 using XDA-Developers Legacy app
Sunslayer said:
If you want more accurate estimate of the battery capacity through Accu Battery - do not forget to go to flight mode first and then charge your phone.
BTW my 1yr old s9 shows ~2715mah (and it actually says it approximate value).
Sent from my Galaxy S9 using XDA-Developers Legacy app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the reminder. I usually keep the phone off but have not always been vigilant about Flight Mode. Definitely no data, but I have sometimes left WiFi or Bluetooth. With as little activity as I get lately, I had assumed I was not using much if any mAh during the charge.
2715 mAh on a 1-year-old S9 seems impressive. Do you generally try to stop charge at 80% or let it go to 100%?
Do you charge overnight?
Do you generally let power go until the phone notification of charge at 15%?
Thanks,
Marc
Comparative test of different recent phones
I noticed that AccuBattery's Estimated Capacity can be tricked into reporting a higher value by having the screen on for a few minutes just before unplugging.
That is discouraging this one from trusting the algorithms for the AccuBattery, as also stated by 'Detection.'
I did run a preliminary test with a few phones.
2 hours run time, in safe mode, airplane mode, WiFi strength ~ -53dBm at a distance of 30 feet. Google Chrome browser, youtube running Battery Drainer 2 video, sans audio, 100% brightness. (I assume the S9 is at 100% when fully to the right and into the red line for a little bit of distance.)
1st phone a 3-month-old refurb with specs battery capacity of 3400 mAh ran about the same time as the S9 spec at 3000 mAh. Which would suggest either the S9 is in better condition or the refurb is in worse condition than originally considered.
I will probably run this again using a movie and audio though I'm limited on the one phone to play video with 'Drive' video player. Hopefully, the S9 can use this as well.
All suggestions welcome,
Thanks,
Marc
harmonz said:
Thanks for the reminder. I usually keep the phone off but have not always been vigilant about Flight Mode. Definitely no data, but I have sometimes left WiFi or Bluetooth. With as little activity as I get lately, I had assumed I was not using much if any mAh during the charge.
2715 mAh on a 1-year-old S9 seems impressive. Do you generally try to stop charge at 80% or let it go to 100%?
Do you charge overnight?
Do you generally let power go until the phone notification of charge at 15%?
Thanks,
Marc
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tend to stop charging at 85% (or around) occasionally to 100% when I forget to unplug the phone. I start charging at whatever percentage I notice it needs charging, sometime 15 sometime 25 sometime 40%
Sent from my Galaxy S9 using XDA-Developers Legacy app

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