Develop Bugs

[Q] Instant discharge.

So, I'm on my Evo today, playing a game (Air Strike). My battery is at 93% when I picked the phone up to play, and the phone is plugged in. Suddenly, with no warning what-so-ever, my phone shuts off. Of course a mini-freak out and many "wtf's" ensue. No warning, no signs, even the led went off. I pulled the battery, put it back, then plugged the phone in again. After that it gave me the blinking light indicating the battery was too low to turn on. After a few minutes charging she came back on and battery was at 5%.
How the hell does a battery go from 93% to 0% in less than 5 minutes, and give no warning at all?? Anybody else ever have this problem?

Wow I've have never heard or that happening before. Maybe a glitch in the battery stash? Did it take awhile to charge up to 100%? Can you reproduce the issue again?
Sent from my EVO (CM 6.1.1) using XDA App

I had this problem with my older phone once. The battery itself may have a problem or your phone is not getting charged properly.
Try These :
1) Try charging the phone overnite from the Wall charger (Not through USB of your computer)
2) If the above does not work, and you have access to another evo battery, then try using that.(try using a friends battery and charger for a day. ) (Ofcourse needless to say the charger and battery must be for Evoonly )
In my case, my phone started working fine again after getting my battery & charger replaced.

Probably shouldn't worry about it too much just yet. Could be something as simple as your battery meter was mis-calibrated. The meter itself is software so it can easily be wrong/off. If it continues you may have a bad battery.

Sounds to me like something is wrong. Did you just get the phone or have you had it?

Idk... The phone had been plugged in for most of the day (hadn't gone anywhere. Lazy day lol) And like I said, the led went completely out as well.
Haven't had the problem again, so we'll see I guess....

Mark_Hardware said:
Idk... The phone had been plugged in for most of the day (hadn't gone anywhere. Lazy day lol) And like I said, the led went completely out as well.
Haven't had the problem again, so we'll see I guess....
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I've seen some posts about the Evo battery shutting off the charge when its being used. Were you using your Evo while it was charging?
If the battery doesn't seem to be giving you percentages that are accurate, you might want to recalibrate your battery.
Common misconceptions sticky (Evo Q&A) said:
Battery recalibration (Thanks to Cyanogen for this and to fachadick for bringing it to my attention).
If you're experiencing higher than normal battery drain, try the following:
1. Charge the phone to full battery; let it keep charging until the battery says it is fully charged. Do not just wait until the light is green, it isn't always fully charged, causing a lot of inaccuracies. (You can check by going to: Settings -> About Phone -> Status -> Battery Level = Full.)
2. Boot to recovery and wipe battery stats.
(To have the most accurate of battery stats, reboot the phone immediately after wiping the battery stats and wait for your ROM to boot completely to the desktop. Once your entire boot is done and you have full access to the phone, go ahead and pull the charger and continue.)
3. Do not charge the phone until after draining the battery completely, resulting in it automatically shutting off. Take out the battery, and keep trying to turn on your phone until it will not turn back on at all.
4. Recharge the phone completely and then use as you normally would.
This is a method that has been proven to work, I am sure there are other ways. My battery lasts longer after doing this and the reading is much more accurate. It might be advisable to do this after every ROM install if you want the most battery life and most accurate battery reading by the phone's software.
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Battery calibration-It requires a full discharge, but isnt this bad for LI-ion?

I just got some new batteries for my i-9000. I am wondering, I have always heard LIthium batteries do not like to be fully discharged. I want to perform a calibration on the new battery, but all the battery calibration apps say
1.Fully charge the battery
2.Press calibrate battery button.
3.Run the phone fully flat until the battery dies.
4.Fully charge the battery to 100% uninterrupted.
Now, step 3, going all the way until the phone dies, is that a good thing to do or a bad thing to a new battery?

Letting your cellphone's battery drain until the phone dies is a normal thing that won't damage your battery, because the battery won't really go to 0% charge.
Cellphones always shutdown it-self when the battery levels get too low (like 3%), to avoid the damage it would do in the Li-ion battery if it would go to 0%. So you have nothing to worry about.

yeah mine shuts down around 2-3% percent for that reason. You'll be fine.

thanks.
.

just doing it once when you get a new phone or after noticing horrible battery life on a newly flashed ROM can work wonders
other than those times, I only let my phone get to 20-40% before I plug it back in

I Use BOS Gingersense Port From Kingdom, My battery is good and i didnt do that whole discharging,recharging crap.

calibration works for me...

Calibration even worked for me too, on my Galaxy 3. Previously i was getting backup of only 1 day, but after calibration i get around 1.5 days. I know its not much improvement, but still its worth.
And you don't need calibrate frequently. Just once in two weeks is fine. And I've heard that deep discharge once a while is infact good for the battery. Correct me if I'm wrong.

waiting for phone to completely die right now. One question though can I turn on phone while charging or should I just leave it off after dieing?

I called Sammy, they told me letting the phone turn off by itself because the battery can't power it is bad for the battery in the long run, they said you can't really see the bad effect that time, they told me, we have learned on are testing that when you see the low battery message pop up that is where you need to charge the phone, that warning is where the calibration starts, now draining it to the point that the phone turn itself off is bad for the battery. Do you believe that?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using XDA Premium App

Only if you leave the cell empty.
It's best to recharge a cell as soon as possible if you have discharged it.

Discharge/charge cycles should be kept to a minimum, ie when you first get the battery, when you are sure you need to recalibrate, and when you've got no choice.
Top up charges are best for lithium batteries.

The charging circuitry in the phone should protect the battery from over discharge. It also protects the phone from overcharging. However, just like a spring, it's the constant charge/discharge that damages a battery. I would not run it down every day but it should not damage the battery, only cause it to wear out faster.
Source: I'm an electrical engineer.

Try to avoid frequent full discharges. Occasional full discharges are okay.

Lots of uncertainty here, lol.
A new Li-Ion cell will output ~4.2V when fully charged and ~3V when it is totally discharged. Every single smartphone I've owned would shut down before the cell dropped below 3.5V. Draining your phone's battery until it dies will not hurt the battery or your phone. No worries about batteries catching fire.
Repeated or frequent full discharges will wear your battery out much faster, though.

Bad battery, wake issue or usb port/cable?

So after some time I've been battling with my battery life through the day. Few months back it was great, Id easily get a day no problem! Then I found I had a wakelock issue and had that fixed.
I now suddenly have almost multiple things going on at once but first a small back story.
Went to bed one night and had it plugged into the wall. Went to bed at 60% and woke up and my phone was down to 6%. I thought, well the usb port is bad or the cable. Took it into the sprint store, they of course say "it looks like its charging just fine, the light is coming on" (the light was on during the night too).
They checked the battery and they said it was bad. Im wanting to take it to another store and have them check, because either: they didnt want to replace me with a new phone or replace the usb port if thats bad.
1) Bad battery- in a matter of 30minutes (during my lunch break at work) my battery dropped from 63% to 14%- only used 3g for facebook and sent 2 text messages. And my phone is undervolted and underclocked
2) Possible bad usb port- I plug my phone in all day at work, and 90% of the time the screen is off. The % of the battery doesnt increase, but maybe decreases slightly (I have data and everything turned off while at work because I get no data signal).
3) wakelock- so suddenly I'm getting a huge percentage of system usage of 54% in my battery stats. A few months back it was maybe 1%? I flashed the .img that sets the wimax, PRI, NV, etc to what fixed the issue back then. Im just confused how this has come back now when I havent even updated anything related only my rom (MIUI 1.8.26).
So I've ordered 2 2000mah batteries off ebay- I wasnt going to pay $40 from a battery story across from the sprint store (as they didnt have any stock, only extended batteries).
If anyone has had a similar experience, or would know what is the culprit would love to get feedback. Hopefully I can get this fixed soon. Maybe just a trial and error.

Something really strange just happened. I checked my phone just now and the battery is at 98% and just maybe 30minutes earlier it shut off because of low battery
What I explained before about using my phone on my lunch break was only 2 hours ago and showed 16%.
I always wipe my battery states when I update my ROM or install a new kernal.

tlxxxsracer said:
Something really strange just happened. I checked my phone just now and the battery is at 98% and just maybe 30minutes earlier it shut off because of low battery
What I explained before about using my phone on my lunch break was only 2 hours ago and showed 16%.
I always wipe my battery states when I update my ROM or install a new kernal.
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Don't wipe battery stats if you don't have a full battery, it'll keep your battery from charging fully.
It may be the battery, but since you're getting new batteries you'll know then. If you didn't get an external charger, I'd suggest doing so. That way you can guarantee that your extended batteries get a full charge, and you can switch out a dead battery with a fully charged one if you keep having problems. The usb port on the Evo is crappy anyway, but if the light comes on and stays on & you can transfer data through the usb port then I doubt that's the problem.
It could be hardware failure, but wait until you get a new battery and have properly calibrated to come to that conclusion.
In the meantime download Battery Monitor Widget, that should show you your true battery capacity even if the system will not. You don't have to use the widget, you can just open the app. Once you see that your battery is fully charged, calibrate your battery properly. Wipe battery stats at 100%, let it drain until it shuts off, charge to 100% without breaks, and you should be good to go.
Good luck!
Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

Thanks for that!
I just bought a battery from BB to hold me over (50$ for a 1750mah battery?! )
when it charges to 100%, should I go into recovery, or use battery calibrator (app)?
Ill install that battery monitor too

BMW has the feature to wipe stats. I also recomend to look at the reports and judge when the battery is full by looking at mV. 4200mV is full charge. Then wipe stats FIRST, then unplug and run down completely, then recharge fully with out unplugging.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

Ya just noticed BMW had that feature. Forgot I had a menu button. LOL!
This battery I got at BB is a "1750mah".
You know what I realized what might be the issue? Back a few weeks ago, I bought an extended battery to use to take videos at a concert. At that point I wiped the battery stats at 100% of the 2500mah or so battery..

[Q] Huge Battery Drain after Phone reparation

I've brought my Desire Z back for reparation (Mainboard died and replaced by an official repair center).
I've bringed it with my stock Battery fully loaded (I took it from the charger and 30 minutes later it died). When i picked it up, the battery was totally empty. Nothing in it. The Phone didn't even turned on!
It taked a while on the charger, but finally it turned on and was charged to 100% in normal time.
Since that, I experience a huge battery drain. When I release my phone from the charger on 7.30AM, it is dead on 4.30PM with no use! No SMS, phonecall, nothing. Only Gmail sync.
I've tried different ROM's (With- and without sense) and did restore my phone to stock. It doesn't solve my problem, the drain still stays huge, even with no apps installed!!!
I've tried another battery > same problem!
What can this be? Normally, my Desire Z last about 1,5 days oder 2 days when nothing happens. Why it's draining so fast, even if it's not used?
What can I do to resolve this ??

JassyNL said:
I've brought my Desire Z back for reparation (Mainboard died and replaced by an official repair center).
I've bringed it with my stock Battery fully loaded (I took it from the charger and 30 minutes later it died). When i picked it up, the battery was totally empty. Nothing in it. The Phone didn't even turned on!
It taked a while on the charger, but finally it turned on and was charged to 100% in normal time.
Since that, I experience a huge battery drain. When I release my phone from the charger on 7.30AM, it is dead on 4.30PM with no use! No SMS, phonecall, nothing. Only Gmail sync.
I've tried different ROM's (With- and without sense) and did restore my phone to stock. It doesn't solve my problem, the drain still stays huge, even with no apps installed!!!
I've tried another battery > same problem!
What can this be? Normally, my Desire Z last about 1,5 days oder 2 days when nothing happens. Why it's draining so fast, even if it's not used?
What can I do to resolve this ??
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try a new battery? Reset battery stats and give it a few days to actually get accurate readings? 8 hours isn't unheard of especially if your battery is giving up the ghost. give those thigns a try and maybe turn off sync and/or data to see if that makes a differance.

killj0y said:
try a new battery? Reset battery stats and give it a few days to actually get accurate readings? 8 hours isn't unheard of especially if your battery is giving up the ghost. give those thigns a try and maybe turn off sync and/or data to see if that makes a differance.
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Thanks! I've already tried a new battery, but that makes no sense.
I'm now draining it to zero, i.e. when it's fully dead, and then charge it to 100% for 8 hours. When it's charged, i'll wipe battery stats. Let's see.
When anybody has more tips, i'm pleased to hear them!

Here's a tip: don't drain your battery to zero. This is a great way to shorten the life of the battery, or completely ruin it.
For purposes of battery meter calibration, draining to 10-20% is plenty sufficient.

There should be no problem draining a battery to zero as shown by software. There is a myth/misunderstanding that this is a bad thing because people confuse it with the fact that Lithium Ion batteries can be permanently damaged if they are drained too low.
BUT any device using such batteries will have its circuitry setup to have 0% set to a point above this damaging threshold.
So the "too low" point in hardware is likely to be below the zero point that the phone's firmware and software will let you go to.
Sent from my Desire Z running CM7.

redpoint73 said:
Here's a tip: don't drain your battery to zero. This is a great way to shorten the life of the battery, or completely ruin it.
For purposes of battery meter calibration, draining to 10-20% is plenty sufficient.
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x2 I concur with this. No need to fully discharge the battery, one it probably doesn't even fully discharge because I'm pretty sure the software is saving you from yourself, plus when the battery stats are uncalibrated I'm fairly certain it reads as discharged but in fact is only partially thus the calibration is off. Lastly I'm if the opinion that throwing different charge levels works better because it more closely resembles real life charging situations. Also letting it charge for that long does nothing because the phone charges only a trickle when full in order to not ruin the battery, similar to a laptop. Overcharge protection....

Thanks again!
Now I did charge it to full and wiped Battery stats.
After 1hour 30 minutes, it lost 10%. Did only send 2 short mails with Gmail.
Here is the usage chart:
- Screen 54% (Time active 4m 51s), Brightness ~20%
- Mobile Stand-By 20% (Time active 1u 26m 13s)
- Phone inactive 18% (Time Active 1u 21m 21s)
- Gmail 5% (CPU Total 31s, CPU Foreground 25s, enabled 51s)
- Android OS 3% (CPU Total 21s)
CPU is on idle ~10%, as always. I don't see any apps that are burning my battery.
s there something abnormal here?

just compared it with my statistics (running virtuous affinity)...
Mobile Stand-By seems to be very high... i have 4% (time active 2 h 30 m)
maybe radio related?

hoffmas said:
just compared it with my statistics (running virtuous affinity)...
Mobile Stand-By seems to be very high... i have 4% (time active 2 h 30 m)
maybe radio related?
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Click to collapse
This stats come from Virtuous Affinity also. I'd had never had any problems with such a drain with my 'old phone'. As soon as I got it back from the repair center, the battery drain is huge.
I've reflashed the latest radio for my phone, made a Superwipe and made a fresh install of Viruous Affinity. Let's see.

I think that 'Cell Standby' is killing my battery. It is at the top of the usage list with 38% and it's all time active. My phone was left it's charger at 7.15AM, now at 9.00AM it lost 20% of it's battery on idle use only. On 9.00AM, I've turned my phone on airplane mode. Let's see if that works.
I will recover the phone to stock tonight. If this isn't working, I'll return the phone to the store.

Even with the phone on airplane mode the battery is heavily draining. My last escape is to remove the SD Card. If the draining continues, then I will bring my phone back.

Does the battery came hot? Like more than normal?
With temp+cpu app you can monitor your temperature.
Because if on idle the temperature's around 25-28 C, you should be alright.
And then you can consider what steviewevie said; lithium battery can be damaged if you go on a too low voltage. Even if the phone as his ''protection'' to not get the battery to a critical level, the battery can loose power even if its not used.
Lithium ion, its cool but not perfect.
Try a OEM brand new battery.

steviewevie said:
There should be no problem draining a battery to zero as shown by software. There is a myth/misunderstanding that this is a bad thing because people confuse it with the fact that Lithium Ion batteries can be permanently damaged if they are drained too low.
BUT any device using such batteries will have its circuitry setup to have 0% set to a point above this damaging threshold.
So the "too low" point in hardware is likely to be below the zero point that the phone's firmware and software will let you go to.
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Click to collapse
I've seen plenty of people on XDA with this phone and others that have rendered their battery unable to charge by letting it discharge to zero. Yes, there are failsafes meant to prevent over-discharge, but they apparently do not always work. The damage is not "permanent" in that its just the protection circuit of the battery kicking in. But the only way to bring the battery back from "sleeping" is with a special battery meter with boost function, which most people do not have access to. So for all practical purposes, its cheaper to just buy a new battery.
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/low_voltage_cut_off
Yes, over-discharge will not LIKELY kill your battery in this way. But there is no point in taking the risk. The battery meter is far from accurate in the best of conditions. So there is zero benefit to letting the battery drain to zero, as opposed to 10 or 20 %, just for the benefit of calibrating the battery meter.
Also, even if over-discharge does not instantly "kill" the battery, running full cycles at the least will shorten the overall life of the battery. Its best to avoid full cycles and charge often.
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/do_and_dont_battery_table
Now this is just my experience from reading the experiences of others on XDA. I know there are hardware techs that can give much more first hand experience with batteries and may disagree. But as I figure, better safe than sorry. Especially when you consider there is no real benefit to letting it drain to zero on purpose.

oVeRdOsE. said:
Does the battery came hot? Like more than normal?
With temp+cpu app you can monitor your temperature.
Because if on idle the temperature's around 25-28 C, you should be alright.
And then you can consider what steviewevie said; lithium battery can be damaged if you go on a too low voltage. Even if the phone as his ''protection'' to not get the battery to a critical level, the battery can loose power even if its not used.
Lithium ion, its cool but not perfect.
Try a OEM brand new battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The temp of the battery don't exceed 28 degrees, I test this with Battery Indicator Pro. When discharged, the Voltage is around 3,6 (Which is normal behaviour). When charged, it,s 4,2V which is normal also.
I have already tried a new battery, and it doesn't make sense. Same behaviour.
I'm really clueless, because it drains the battery always. Airplane mode an removal of the SD card makes no difference.
I will return to stock tonight, charge again, and see if it behaves the same. When yes, then I will return the phone as I don't accept such behaviour (Normally, my Battery last 30+ Hours on idle).
Thanks for your tips and help for so far! I will report.

[Q] Why does my GSIII keeping showing leftover charge after the battery runs out?

I am not here to complain about battery drain or anything of that nature, but rather leftover charge after the battery drains out.
Whenever the battery runs its course and runs out of juice, if I wait anywhere from a minute to 5 minutes after the battery has died the phone will turn back on briefly, displaying 1% again before draining out maybe 30 seconds after. The battery will usually have enough juice to do this twice before I have to plug in my AC cord to charge the battery back up. My concern is that because the battery is draining out before it actually runs out of juice, I am missing out on anywhere from 1 to 5% of battery. I calibrated (I use the Battery Calibration app) my battery and do so per ROM, I have tried 100% to 0% drains, as well as going through cycles of not letting the battery drop below 20%. This problem has been present on everything single ROM I have used (stock included; now on CM10.1 March Experimental)
Is anybody else having this problem or know of a solution? Is it just my battery specifically or is this a common problem? I do realize that a battery cannot completely have a true 0 charge in order to still function or it would not re-charge, but I don't think it should have enough backup juice to briefly re-boot the phone twice after a displayed 0%.

Lithium ion chemistry prefers partial discharge to deep discharge, so it's best to avoid taking the battery all the way down to zero. Since lithium-ion chemistry does not have a "memory", you do not harm the battery pack with a partial discharge. If the voltage of a lithium-ion cell drops below a certain level, it's ruined.

rquiett said:
Lithium ion chemistry prefers partial discharge to deep discharge, so it's best to avoid taking the battery all the way down to zero. Since lithium-ion chemistry does not have a "memory", you do not harm the battery pack with a partial discharge. If the voltage of a lithium-ion cell drops below a certain level, it's ruined.
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Ok, so ideally it's best to keep the phone from deep charging and deep drains. That said, if it happens that there is not an outlet around or I don't have my AC cable on hand, should the phone not be shutting off without leftover charge still available?

iBricearoni said:
Ok, so ideally it's best to keep the phone from deep charging and deep drains. That said, if it happens that there is not an outlet around or I don't have my AC cable on hand, should the phone not be shutting off without leftover charge still available?
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It is designed to shut off when the battery is low but not to the point of damaging it. By turning it back on multiple times after that point you may cause damage to the battery

rquiett said:
It is designed to shut off when the battery is low but not to the point of damaging it. By turning it back on multiple times after that point you may cause damage to the battery
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Click to collapse
Alright, it's all by design then. Thanks for taking the time to provide me with that bit of knowledge.

In that particular case try to have the phone last as much as you need it.
Either turn it off or leave it charging whenever you are not using it if battery is below ~half.
Also deep charges will not harm the phone, as the circuit opens when it reaches a full charge.

Slazur said:
In that particular case try to have the phone last as much as you need it.
Either turn it off or leave it charging whenever you are not using it if battery is below ~half.
Also deep charges will not harm the phone, as the circuit opens when it reaches a full charge.
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Click to collapse
Sure, I will try out this recommendation and see if it makes any difference.