Develop Bugs

[Q] Desire Z Battery

What kind of battery time are you guys getting on the original battery?
I've had my phone for about 14 days now and im not getting more than 12 hours on a charge.. the first week iv'e been using the phone alot.
I have alot of apps installed and im wondering if that could have a impact on the battery.. i have tryed using a task killer and without..
From the battery usage statistics page the screen is definitely the one that uses the most. Voice calls is number 2.
Will all applications show on the battery statistics page or is this something the applications have to implement?
Sent from my HTC Desire Z using XDA App

My battery has gotten better since I got it. But I have been doing a few things to help my battery - e.g. I completely drain the battery (until the phone doesn't even turn on anymore) and then fully charge it overnight.
Read about task killers and Android here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=849974
All apps will show in the battery usage statistics. If the screen has been using the most power, that means exactly that - you've been using the phone a lot and as such the screen has been taking up a lot of power.
I would recommend though to try to completely drain and then overnight charge, and repeat that cycle as often as you can.. I'm no technician, but I do think how you charge the phone matters

i've read about the task killers and have decided to uninstall them compleetly and let android do what it wants.
Regarding the charging, i have ran the battery flat out almost every day..
Im going to try a few different charging methods and see if there is some difference..
however i suspect that if the indicator is saying 100% charge, thats exatcly what it is whatever the charging method. (i hope)

It does get better. When I first got the phone I was getting about 14 hours. Now I'm getting about 30 hours or so.
JuiceDefender and setCPU help preserve battery life, too.

I am lucky to even get 12 hours with minimal use. No calls, just some texting and maybe browsing my bank website. Screen is always the killer for me, even on 20% brightness. If I go lower the screen actually flickers.
I bought the red HTC Chichitech batteries and they didn't help me at all.
Tried overclocking module, didn't change much.
The only app that ever shows any significant battery use (over 5%) is Maps, when I use maps.

i always thought completly draining a Lithium-ion battery is a bad idea?

Yes, it is.
Older batteries such as Ni-MH should be completely worked out from full to dead in order to keep them going in the long run. Li-ion doesn't need to be worked out, in fact the more it is worked out the faster it will run through it's lifespan and stop holding a charge.
Now that batteries, phones, and chargers are all smart, it's supposedly good to keep them plugged in as often as you can instead of letting them run dry.

sukie said:
i always thought completly draining a Lithium-ion battery is a bad idea?
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The post (#7) above is correct on this. You should not let the battery dip below 30%, since discharging it too low may prevent it from being able to take a charge. It happens to most of us on accident every once in a while. But you should avoid it if possible.
It is good to run through a couple charge/discharge cycles to calibrate the battery meter. Many people still think this is to "condition" the battery, but battery conditioning is only the case with the older NiCad type of rechargeable batteries. Charging/discharging the battery just helps calibrate the battery meter on the phone. For new phones or a new ROM flash, I usually charge the battery to 100%, then let it drain to 30%, and repeat a couple times.

sukie said:
i always thought completly draining a Lithium-ion battery is a bad idea?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's also a bad idea to charge a cold Li battery, but I believe that affects lifespan more than charge. For those of us in colder climes, remember to wait for the battery to warm up to room temp before plugging in.

On my DZ I usually get 15~20h of battery life and it's O/C @ 1.4Ghz
3G & wifi : always on
facebook, gmail, emails, news, weather updates each hour
about 1h per day of audio streaming (deezer, Synology DS audio)
1~2h of internet and games per day (baseball superstars, angry birds, psx4droid...)
less than 30min of calls per day and about 20-30 sms...

sukie said:
i always thought completly draining a Lithium-ion battery is a bad idea?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It depends what you mean by "completely". If you drain the voltage of a LiIon battery too low, you will damage it. But the circuitry of the phone is normally designed that there's a cut-off before you get to this, i.e. "completely" discharging it by running it till the phone turns off will be before this dangerous level, so should be safe.
It's unnecessary though, your phone can tolerate a *lot* more partial discharges/charges than full discharges/charges. If you drain it ten times from 100% to 90% and charge again, then that's roughly equivalent to one whole discharge/charge from 100% to 0% and back again.
As redpoint73 said, the main issues it "training" Android to get the battery calibration right, not conditioning the battery (which only applies to NiMH, NiCad, etc).

Li-Ion batteries are protected from deep discharges in two ways:
1. The Phone, it will stop you from discharging too low.
2. The battery itself. Each Li-Ion battery contains circuitry that stops it from discharging too low.
Basically both have to fail to have you end up with a dead battery -> rarely happens.
Li-Ions take the heaviest duty when charging the top 90-100% charge, charging just that bit stresses the battery more than from 0-80% (ofc 0 not really being 0 ) Note: This only has an effect on battery LIFE, not battery capacity! -> if you keep charging your battery from 90-100% (for example by keeping it plugged in after driving to work, then recharge after driving home, basically always going from 100-90-100 you're really doing your battery a disservice life-cycle wise)
If Li-Ions are not in use for a while they should be stored at around 60-70% charge.
Now as for batteries in Android devices, I'd estimate that most causes of extreme battery drain are due to rampant programs/too many internet accesses.
Everytime you log onto the internet, or change speeds (3G -> Edge-> whatever) you take a lot more power than usual. Try to ensure that all your programs that regularly access the net, do so together (HTC Sense interface tries to do this)
Rampant Programs: Especially services that need to poll the clock a lot, or keep updating their info, keep their FPS high (games) It is for this reason I try to avoid installing a lot of programs at once, and keep it one at a time (especially for system programs) to see if there's a inordinate change in battery life.
Oh and do turn off unneeded things like bluetooth, wifi, and GPS if you don't need them... but thats a given.
Gee typed more than I was planning, just get tired of seeing these threads all over

Jacina said:
Li-Ions take the heaviest duty when charging the top 90-100% charge, charging just that bit stresses the battery more than from 0-80% (ofc 0 not really being 0 ) Note: This only has an effect on battery LIFE, not battery capacity! -> if you keep charging your battery from 90-100% (for example by keeping it plugged in after driving to work, then recharge after driving home, basically always going from 100-90-100 you're really doing your battery a disservice life-cycle wise)
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Sorry but I disagree with that. Have you got any evidence to back that up ? Continually charging the battery from 90% to 100% should be fine and shouldn't shorten its life at all. Chargers will sometimes reduce their charge when the battery is nearly full, and a slower/lesser charge will actually increase its life (I have no idea whether the DZ's charger does this or not).

Jacina said:
Li-Ion batteries are protected from deep discharges in two ways:
1. The Phone, it will stop you from discharging too low.
2. The battery itself. Each Li-Ion battery contains circuitry that stops it from discharging too low.
Basically both have to fail to have you end up with a dead battery -> rarely happens.
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Click to collapse
Coming from the Touch Pro 2 forum, there are somewhat occasional posts by users that discharged their batteries too low, and get stuck in a boot loop. Leaving the battery on the wall charger (USB is not enough) for a long period of time seems to solve the issue in some instances, while others are forced to replace the battery.
As you said, instances of this are relatively rare. I've drained my battery until the phone shuts down plenty of times on accident, with no ill results. But best to play it safe and not do it intentionally.
When you mention the phone prevents the battery from discharging too low, is that the hardware, or the OS? I guess either way, maybe the Desire Z or the Android OS are better at this then Windows Mobile and the Touch Pro 2. But I still wouldn't discharge the battery too low intentionally.

I'm pretty sure on the Touch Pro 2 it was software based (hence actually allowing you to boot before saying "not enough charge" )
I doubt that ANY charger that comes with a phone is anything but a normal "charge till full" charger...
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries
All information is gathered there. (other articles there are also highly informative)

nivlheim_o_O? said:
On my DZ I usually get 15~20h of battery life and it's O/C @ 1.4Ghz
3G & wifi : always on
facebook, gmail, emails, news, weather updates each hour
about 1h per day of audio streaming (deezer, Synology DS audio)
1~2h of internet and games per day (baseball superstars, angry birds, psx4droid...)
less than 30min of calls per day and about 20-30 sms...
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Click to collapse
That is intense, are you serious?!
I barely make it through the day and I don't game or make many calls. usually just texts and emails.
My update intervals for emails are much more frequent though.
Lucky !

im usually not getting more than 10 hours on a charge... :s thinking about getting the 1800mAh mugen battery...

Sh0rty007 said:
im usually not getting more than 10 hours on a charge... :s thinking about getting the 1800mAh mugen battery...
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Click to collapse
Are you using it pretty heavily? I just got the phone Tuesday, and still playing with it a lot, so I can't comment on battery life yet. But what is your screen brightness set to? If you look at the battery use graph, you will see that the display uses the most power, and with any smartphone, the biggest culprit of short battery life. Turn the brightness as low as you can tolerate for your "average" viewing conditions. Also, be sure you've calibrated the battery meter as I've described in Post #8 above.
A word of caution as far as the Mugen extended battaries: one of the users here did a bunch of battary tests on OEM and different aftermarket brands, on various phones. The Mugen 1800 mAh batteries did not rate any better than the OEM 1400 mAh. Mugen tried to explain away the test results. But judge for yourself.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=583927

My screen brightness is just 25 or 45%. And i really don't make it to the end of the day.
I now have setcpu, so that when my screen is off my cpu is running on 300mhz. Think i can make it now through the day.
I use my phone a lot, thats true. But only to view the market or twitter things..
Ow and i don't use live wallpapers...

I think there is a lot to be said for keeping things turned off if you do not use/need them too much.
I leave my phone charging overnight (between 11pm and 6:30am). So when I leave the house in the morning it is fully charged.
I keep Wifi and 3G turned off unless I need to use it and I keep brightness to a minimum - again, only increasing it if I need it.
Normal usage for me would be about 1 hours music listening during my commute to work, a couple of texts a day and about 10mins worth of calls a day.
On top of that about 4 hours worth of data use (both Wifi and 3G) and I usually find I still have over 50% battery life left when I plug it back in around 11pm before going to bed (according to the Mini Info widget).
Granted this is fairly light use compared to some people, but I think if you take the time to control your app usage you should see better performance results!

Is this good Battery Life?

So I've just recently rooted my Incredible (about 4 months now) and I bought a 3500 mAh battery off ebay for about 12 dollars around the same time. I used to get really great battery life with it. About 2 full days without having to charge. I'm not sure if the battery's getting worse or if this is normal battery depletion for all you other Incredible users.
I'm running CM7 nightly 258, the latest one, and have the newest Incredikernel, just flashed the kernel about a week ago. I'm still pretty new to the rooting game. Before I flashed the kernel I just had the normal kernel for CM7. I was getting about 10 hours of battery before and tried the battery calibration, but I think I did it wrong and got maybe 8 after that.
So I tried running the Incredikernel and was getting between 12-20 hours of battery life after that. My usage is at least 2 hours of Pandora a day using 3g, sometimes 3-4 hours. Moderate to high internet usage, rarely make calls, and moderate texting. I'll sometimes play some games, but that probably equals about half an hour's worth per charge, an hour at most. I'm also running juice defender, too.
With the new kernel I have the smartassv2 governor and have my processor speed between .128-1.113ghz. I think I did the battery calibration the correct way this time. I bumped charged it until it was completely charged. Then let it completely drain till it shut off yesterday. It lasted about 24 hours with the normal usage I have stated above. I then turned it on 2 more times to make sure the battery was completely drained. I took out the battery for a couple minutes and then put it back in. Then I let it charge off until the light turned green. I then booted into recovery and cleared battery stats. Rebooted the phone until it was completely started and then unplugged the phone.
I let the battery drain completely again and it lasted another 24 hours with the same usage I have stated above and I'm now charging again. I turned it back on while it's still charging though.
Is this normal battery life compared to you guys. Remember I have the 3500 mAh battery, but it was off ebay (stated new though). If you could also post you're battery usage and how long your battery lasts, as well. Also any other important info like, kernel, ROM used, CPU speed, etc. I'd like to compare to see how everyone else is doing. Thanks again.

I'm on CM7 right now with the latest Incredikernel. I use the Incredicontrol app to undervolt and set my frequencies from 128-921 Mhz. I have a standard battery and with light usage I get a day and half off a single charge, moderate/heavy usage it'll range from 12-20 hours.

You use any powersaving apps like Juicedefender? Also what do you classify as moderate/heavy usage? What battery governor do you use? Did you do a battery calibration?

graymonkey44 said:
You use any powersaving apps like Juicedefender? Also what do you classify as moderate/heavy usage? What battery governor do you use? Did you do a battery calibration?
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I don't use Juicedefender or any power saving app like that. Moderate/Heavy use I mean texting all day making calls, on the internet, playing various games. Don't get me wrong there have been times that I kill my battery in less than 10 hours, but that's when I'm on my phone non stop or on Netflix. For a governor I use smartass, not smartassv2. I did calibrate my battery once, last year when I got the phone. To me what makes the biggest difference is undervolting with the Incredicontrol app. And the phone runs much cooler.

I might try undervolting to see how long that lasts. 1.113 ghz might be overkill, but I have noticed a performance increase. The majority of what kills my battery is the display though when I check out my battery stats. It's always at around 60%. I have the amoLED screen as well.

graymonkey44 said:
I might try undervolting to see how long that lasts. 1.113 ghz might be overkill, but I have noticed a performance increase. The majority of what kills my battery is the display though when I check out my battery stats. It's always at around 60%. I have the amoLED screen as well.
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Click to collapse
I always dim my screen as well. If its on the highest setting it'll kill a lot of your battery quick. I used to have my phone over clocked to 1.113 GHZ but after testing different things out I noticed if I lowered it under 1 GHZ there was not much of a diff. For undervolting I dropped the number by 25 at a time until I noticed the phone lagging. hope this info helps.

I have my screen on auto brightness. It's usually at a low bright setting unless I'm outside. I'll try out undervolting, too. I have noticed the phone does run a little bit snappier with the 1.113 ghz though, but I can live with it being a little less if it means better battery life.
I don't know if it's my battery or not though, but everytime I unplug it, it's been going right back down to like 89% within minutes. I understand that you can't fully charge the Li-ion batteries all the way, but I don't know if I'm fully utilizing the battery to it's full potential since it is 3500 mAh.
I might go back to my standard battery and see how it compares. Although I do like the feel of having the extra thickness with the bigger battery.

graymonkey44 said:
I have my screen on auto brightness. It's usually at a low bright setting unless I'm outside. I'll try out undervolting, too. I have noticed the phone does run a little bit snappier with the 1.113 ghz though, but I can live with it being a little less if it means better battery life.
I don't know if it's my battery or not though, but everytime I unplug it, it's been going right back down to like 89% within minutes. I understand that you can't fully charge the Li-ion batteries all the way, but I don't know if I'm fully utilizing the battery to it's full potential since it is 3500 mAh.
I might go back to my standard battery and see how it compares. Although I do like the feel of having the extra thickness with the bigger battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Charge it while its off or get an external charger. That's the only way to get a true 100% charge from a phone battery.
-My life is a shooting range, people never change-

Yeah, I have been bump charging as of lately(about a month), but I hear it decreases the life of the battery so I've been holding off on doing that.
With my latest charge, I've gotten 1d 14h 49m 20s, with moderate usage which I think is pretty impressive. It's still at 5% and I'm going to let it completely discharge and then charge it off again until the light turns green.
Edit: It lasted me right around 40 hours all together. It shut off so I decided to turn it back on and see how long it would last again. It was at 2% when I turned it back on and I got another half hour out of it which led me to the 40 hours. Do you think that's good battery life with a 3500 mAh battery?

Battery Meter or Voltage Meter problem?

My G2 gets ghastly battery life. I've tried Juice Defender and I've recalibrated more times than I can remember. Most notifications are turned off and I'm conservative about powering off the various radios when I'm not using them. It wasn't always like that. I felt like I was getting most of a full day on one charge and loving it for many months, but something happened last summer I think. Maybe dust or moisture affected the phone. I've got a total of six batteries and three external battery chargers. No battery whether it's the OEM original, 1500mah spares that were amazing before, or the new 1800mah evo shift 4g batteries I tried out, will last more than about four hours from full charge to the 15% warning sound.
I've tried only charging in the phone. I've tried rotating batteries charged in the external chargers. Like I said, I've tried calibration scenarios of various kinds.
Last night, I took a fully charged 1800mah battery and put it in my phone and then charged the battery in the phone. The orange led never turns green when the phone is off. When the phone is on, I can just barely get the led to turn green at about 91% (starting from what should be a full charge that is reported as 80% by the phone). This takes a good 10 hours of charging. As soon as I woke the phone this morning, the battery meter started dropping while the phone was still plugged in. After unplugging, the meter drops to 80% in a matter of a few minutes.
Like I said, I tried juice defender. It only helps a little but the cost is waiting for the data radio to reconnect every time I wake the phone. I thought BT was the culprit for a while, but now it really doesn't matter if I leave it on or turn it off.
At the other end of the charge, the phone can run for several hours when the battery is supposedly between 1 and 3%. I know we are told to start charging again at 15% but my phone drops to that level in 3-4 hours of regular use. I haven't seen the phone report 100% charge on any battery in six months time, but it runs and runs at 1%. This is what bugs me. Is the phone just mis-reading how many milivolts are coming out of the battery? Why can't I complete the first step of calibration (charge overnight to the 100% mark)? Is there a hardware component that can be causing this or should it be entirely fixable in software?
Thanks for any ideas or tips

Did you wipe battery stats?
Sent from your phone

waxinpoetic said:
Did you wipe battery stats?
Sent from your phone
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes I have many times but thanks for the suggestion.

Figured so.. Too bad, would have been too easy. I'm starting to see some batttery drain on my desire z now too. Im wondering if mine is a radio issue.
Sent from your phone

waxinpoetic said:
Figured so.. Too bad, would have been too easy. I'm starting to see some batttery drain on my desire z now too. Im wondering if mine is a radio issue.
Sent from your phone
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I changed radios and did RIL matching last fall based on other's comments about better battery life, 4G and GPS. While I've had faster GPS locks and maybe better 4G performance, my battery life did not improve. It may have even gotten worse.
Today I'm trying out some different CPU governor settings. The CM 7.2 RC1 default is 'interactive' and I wouldn't normally touch those settings. I think the powersave governor helped a lot, but the phone became almost unresponsive. Trying 'conservative' now. I should have read This long ago, but just got around to it today. I might invest in the SetCPU app as well.

OK, I can count on a good six hours of normal use if setCPU is holding down the max cpu frequency at night or when the screen is off. I'm still tweaking. Today, the phone crashed while playing music over A2DP and tracking a run with runkeeper. I think it needs to tick faster than 368Mhz when the screen is off.

Are you seeing improvement? I changed radios and like you havent seen much improvement. But I am a little better off than you are. My battery drain is terrible (1-3%per minute) only when connected to the internet (4g or wifi) or using navigation. If the screen is off, or if Im using non-internet apps I seem to get regular battery use. Good luck with your cpu settings.. I have ordered a new battery, but I doubt it will solve my issue. I may try tweaking my settings too soon, but Id better research more.

Just wondering do you have SuperCharger V6 installed? On my Desire Z I had some serious battery problems just as you mentioned. After I would flash my ROM (wiping the caches + reinstalling) my battery life would return to normal. But whenever I would flash SuperCharger v6 my battery life would spiral out of control. My suggestion for a ROM that handles battery life fairly well is Andromadus Audacity B2, just make sure you download and flash GAPPs (google apps). For example running that rom I have been getting very good battery life, approx. 16-20 hours of battery life with moderate use) with default CPU settings and data always turned on. I'm sure if you use Juice Defender to control your data you'll get above average battery life.
Note: Andromadus is an ICS (android 4.0) ROM

Qwerty_Uieo said:
Just wondering do you have SuperCharger V6 installed? On my Desire Z I had some serious battery problems just as you mentioned. After I would flash my ROM (wiping the caches + reinstalling) my battery life would return to normal. But whenever I would flash SuperCharger v6 my battery life would spiral out of control. My suggestion for a ROM that handles battery life fairly well is Andromadus Audacity B2, just make sure you download and flash GAPPs (google apps). For example running that rom I have been getting very good battery life, approx. 16-20 hours of battery life with moderate use) with default CPU settings and data always turned on. I'm sure if you use Juice Defender to control your data you'll get above average battery life.
Note: Andromadus is an ICS (android 4.0) ROM
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks (and thanked) Ive been waiting till ICS roms are bug free and having working cameras, but I think I may just jump on it now. My battery issues are untenable at the moment on a CM7 based rom. Thanks for the advice.

I was seeing some improvement due to SetCPU profiles. However, now if I have GPS and Bluetooth on so that I can listen to music and track my run in runkeeper, the phone seems to 'crash' after about 35 minutes or so. The battery meter shows that the battery takes a nose dive and I think the phone shuts down at 1%. If I restart the phone, it might say I have 30 or 40% charge left but then it drops rapidly again. It seems like it hates the warmth of my pocket. If I let the phone out in the cool air like on my desk, I can reboot at get back to 60 or 70% even though it was just saying 3%. I'm not running SuperCharger.
I'm trying to find cheap G2s for parts on ebay now. Maybe I can at least test out my six batteries in a different phone to see if any of them are shot. They all seem to have the same problems in my phone.

This will be my final update. I bought a used G2 off ebay. The same batteries I used before now show as fully charged when I expect them to be fully charged. I will be getting a feel for general battery life over the next few days, but I expect battery life to be roughly the same. I just won't have to guess at what the current battery level really is.
I'm seeing now that the new phone will show a 60% charge when the old phone shows 15% for the same battery at about the same time.
The new phone shows 100% when topped off but if I put the topped off battery in my old phone, I see 75-80% charge.
I may try sending the old phone to HTC depending on what they offer for repair services.

revwillie said:
I bought a used G2 off ebay. ... the new phone will show a 60% charge when the old phone shows 15% for the same battery at about the same time
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think what's happened to your old phone (and mine!) is that the onboard voltmeter chip is reading low. I've compared the on-board mV reading to a multimeter-measured battery voltage and what the phone reads as 3.9V the multimeter gets 4.2V (a fully charged Li-Ion battery).
Who knows what's behind it, but it seems like a hardware problem to me.

Battery remaining life decreasing after 100% charge. Theories...

Ok so after a hard reset and at 100% charge my HTC Radar says 1 day and 15 hours remaining. It has been like that for a few days. After about a week, 100% charge results in 20 hours remaining life. Eventually after a few more charges it averages at 15-17 hours remaining battery life. That is a big worrying decrease. These figures are always noted after a 100% charge and leaving it to settle for a bit.
So I started thinking what could be causing this decreasing stand by time?
Two theories:
1. It must be an app as I got excellent stand by time from a hard reset and with no additional apps so maybe a particular app is playing with the battery meter?
2. Could it be leaving the phone over night plugged in is doing something to the battery? Maybe I should unplug it as soon as it gets to 100%?
The strange thing is it can't be the actually battery degrading over time as the phone is new. Also, I have recently flashed a custom ROM to my Radar at a point when stand by time was at 15 hours at 100% and after the flashed ROM the standby time went back up to 1 day and 15 hours. Something is not right. It must be an app.
Any other thoughts/theories or anyone else in a similar situation?
Discuss please so we can all learn something to hopefully solve this problem for other handsets too!

My guess: calibration. The system estimates your runtime based on previous runtimes, that's why it's getting lower. Did your phone actually ever run that long, btw?

yes it did. very very close. i was amazed.

and does it now actually run out faster? I have noticed this on my ipod. It used to tell me 1h battery remaining and it would run for another 3h until i got home and another 2h the next day (when I noticed I forgot to charge). Also, are you using your phone more now? The biggest battery drain is the display.

Remaining battery life is estimated as follows:
Immediately after being removed from the charger is based on previous usage charging.
After this time estimate is based on current consumption.
In the first week after hard reset or install ROM the period are recorded in the system.
After a year of use of personal phone (HD7) and trying different rom and different settings for gps, 3g, edge, and light i found that the consumer eating large battery . After a more detailed study will say that is the main consumer.

Thanks for your comment Ovi but this is not about how the consumer is wasting the battery by usage. The question I raised was about how the standby time varied at 100% after a hard reset and after weeks of usage at 100%. The stand by time decreased without using the phone after a full charge. That is what is puzzling me. In theory it should be the same stand by time no matter how long the phone has been owned and the rate of discharge is due to usage - agreed.

[Q] Battery Life and Battery Reading Problems

Hi xda-dev
I'd like to ask you guys for your input on a battery issue I've been having. I know you get many a question on batteries, despite this I haven't been able to find an answer, nor anything even related to what I'm trying to fix. I'm at a point where the phone wont last a day of idle at school with it not leaving my pocket, and I don't know what I need to do to resolve this rather unique issue.
I have two S3s, and therefore two batteries. On one of the phones the screen is shattered, so I use it to charge the extra battery. To do so I wrote a tasker profile which voices the battery percentage and time charging when it detects that the screen is "on" (i.e. power button pressed). I installed the exported app factory apk to the broken S3 by swapping motherboards. This setup has been working great for me because I never had to plug my S3 in, I could simply charge one battery at home while the other was in use. That is until about 3 weeks ago now where I've begun to notice that the phone I carry with me cannot properly read the percentage of charge remaining on the battery. I believe the issue started after a return to stock rom for unlocking, or flashing leankernel. A factory reset and all caches have been cleared since.
Here are some symtoms:
It remains unable to charge the battery above ~70%, without using the charging phone,
drains very rapidly,
upon reaching 0% a reboot causes the battery to return to roughly 45%,
and finally the battery percentage may raise while the phone is not charging
the charge may sit at within the range of 1% to 3% for extended periods of time (see screenshot).
And here is some data:
Rooted
Custom Rom: CyanogenMod Version 10.1.0-RC5-d2att
Rom build number: cm_d2att-userdebug 4.2.2 JDQ39E eng.jenkins.20130607.100250 test-keys
Custom Kernel Version: [email protected] #56 Sun Jun 16 19:21:51 PDT-2013
CPU governor: ondemand
CPU Min/Max: 384/1512 MHz
Few apps installed as I just did a factory reset, with Google latitude location reporting set off.
While writing this post I swapped the batteries between the phone I use and the charging phone. The dead battery read 4% before I powered down, but when it was put into the charging phone it immediately voiced that that same battery had 81%. The battery that was removed from the charging phone was at 100%, but when the other phone booted that "charged" battery had 89%. That reading was taken when I started typing this post, at 5:45, and now 15 minutes later (6:00) the battery has lost 23% leaving it at 66. The draining phone sat idle while I wrote this post, as I am on my laptop, so that drop of 23% occurred with about 90% screen off time, (note that media scanner would be running since the phone just booted).
In the following screenshots you will notice the time is over 24 hours, this is because the phone has not held a 100% charge since then. Large direct jumps of power are either simple reboots or a battery change. Notice the graph increasing without the charging state being active. I chose not to include a bbs screenshot because the phone had just booted so there were no good reference points. Total screen on time is 4 hours 20 minutes, and 8tracks has had a CPU total of 1 hour 20 minutes with a keep awake of 2.5 hours.
Thanks for any help you can suggest.

Try using only one battery for couple of days, and see the results.

Zev.Isert said:
I have two S3s, and therefore two batteries. On one of the phones the screen is shattered, so I use it to charge the extra battery. To do so I wrote a tasker profile which voices the battery percentage and time charging when it detects that the screen is "on" (i.e. power button pressed). I installed the exported app factory apk to the broken S3 by swapping motherboards.
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Click to collapse
Sorry why exactly was it necessary to swap motherboards?
It sounds like some hardware on ur device is shot either the battery or something else..

atrix4nag said:
Try using only one battery for couple of days, and see the results.
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Click to collapse
Battery length is lasting longer now after using a single battery for a few days. I will continue to stay with one battery.
Heisenberg420 said:
Sorry why exactly was it necessary to swap motherboards?
It sounds like some hardware on ur device is shot either the battery or something else..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
By "swap motherboards" I mean I attached one screen from one device to the other, it was necessary to install the charging app I wrote through tasker, to automate shutdown when charged, and say battery percentage when power button pressed. The matching motherboard and screen remained in their corresponding phones after that was done.