Develop Bugs

Battery Problem

Hi. I have a Voda branded TP2.
I have installed the 1% battery indicator and have realised that the battery is dropping at an alarming rate. In two hours without any data activity, just two calls of 5 mins each and the battery has already reached 74%. The number drops in front of my eyes. Quite scary actually.
Anybody else faced a similar porblem?

2 things I can advice you (as a TP2 beginner)
-First times: charge up to 12 hours non-stop even when light is green (has nothing to do with phone but with the chemical proces inyour battery) this will prolong lifetime
-This TP2 WWE ROM has a lot (and I mean A LOT!) of background running stuff compared to other WM 6.1 - ROMS. So you thing it is not using any current but it is!
Maybe you could install advance task manager and check out all running programs and processes ...
hope this helps ...
greetz,
Kjoere

Thanks. I have done the 12 hours charging many times - about 6-7 times. Will try the advanced task manager.
Anybody else with a battery problem?
Any application / software is known to be a battery drainer?
Thanks

Had a strange one last night. Went to be, put the phone on charge (was about 16% iirc), and the orange light came on to say it was charging. Then, this morning at about 3am, I hear the phone making bleeps. Check it out, and it's at 5%, with orange light flashing. Take out charger, put it back in, and it starts charging. I went out afterwards, came back about 4.30, and it says it was about 80% complete. Go sleep, wake up about 7.30am, and it's fully charged (green light). Then, I unplug charger, turn on, and it says 96%, and I notice it dropping the amount of charge in front of me (like OP's notice), until it got to about 91%.
Now, about 5 hours later, it reckons the charge is 74%. So dunno why it went down so quickly, and why it didn't actually charge... But will keep my eye on it and see how it goes...

data connection
Another way 2 keep your eye on it: check data connection (start>settings>connections>comm manager) a lot of stuff open this connection which uses power. if it turns on without you knowing .... (especially auto-update plugins (weather?)), sometimes AS also ...
gr
C.

For indo, it says here (amongst others)
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=519673
that it isn't a good idea to do "old style battery cycling"
I really don't know what to think of LiPo battery management, so many different theories.
Also, something that annoys me is that I fully charge the TP2 overnight, in the morning the lights green. If I simply unlug charger and plug in back in it well go back orange and stay orange for a good half hour... and I can start again a few times...

To be honest, I had to hard reset my device couple of times and haven't had time to 'fully' recharge it after the resets.
I guess I will give it a few days of full charging and then check on the battery.
But, I am not joking when the 1% battery meter just drops numbers faster than a meter at the gas station.

vinayaksupekar said:
To be honest, I had to hard reset my device couple of times and haven't had time to 'fully' recharge it after the resets.
I guess I will give it a few days of full charging and then check on the battery.
But, I am not joking when the 1% battery meter just drops numbers faster than a meter at the gas station.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had this problem when I have push mail turn on. If you disable push mail and set it to receive like every 15 mins, it save the power a lot.
Try the advance config to auto disconnect every x mins, this will helps as well.

Hi HaveryR and others,
yep your source isn't to bad. Beginning with full charges (6 to 12 hrs instead of 3 like the manual says) isn't about the old charge-memory story (because Lithium-Ion battery don't work this way, only the nickel-cadmium and nimH do) but about fully charging cells.
I mean the best way to look upon this is like a pile of bricks on top of each other (all different cells if you wish). So the first time it is important to give all the bricks enough time to charge - so even when it says 100% it does not mean that it has (you're indicator is a feedback of a reading by your cpu). So not all the bricks (let's say) have the same quality (yesyes even in this day and age of hight teck).
So you can also take this parallel to discharging: if you discharge fully, you risk that one of these bricks get busted and so will NEVER recover.
So i agree on this with your source a LiOn batter is bettery served with frequent partial charging and must NEVER be drained completely
Greetz,
Kjoere

Guys,
I put the TP2 on for charging the whole night (about 9 hours). In the morning the LED was green and the battery meter said 100%. I took the charger off from the handset and re-inserted the tip in. Guess what? 95%.
AM not sure if it is a battery problem or handset problem?
Its come down to 73% with just one phone call of 5 mins. Mail is on, but its on manual and havent pulled anything since morning.
Any idea?

Battery not recognized by BA

Hi
I'll try to explain my situation.
I have an Imate PDA2k that I wanted to revive.
I bought an extended battery from ebay (item number 360240003003)
When the battery arrived, I placed it in the phone and tried to charge it. Nothing happened. The phone's led did not turn orange or green.
I figured maybe because the battery is over 2x the capacity of the original, the phone may not be able to charge it.
Ok no problem, I'll stick the battery on the separate battery charger.
The light turns on (indicating that it is charging).
After the battery was charged, I put it back in the phone and the phone turns on. Problem is the battery meter does not measure how much power is left and automatically turns off the screen within 30 seconds regardless of the settings i put in.
I've tried increasing the time to turn off the screen to 5 minutes, nothing.
I've tried reflashing the phone with different versions of WM, (I tried wm2003, wm6.1, wm6.5) nothing.
I even tried Qtopia linux. That one did not recognize the battery but it did obey it's own configuration regarding when to dim and turn off the screen. (Then again it locks up after a few hours which is a problem for a different discussion)
So my question / request is: Is there a battdrvr.dll or battery.dll that can report to windows mobile that the battery is full?
At this point, I really don't care if the report is accurate as long as windows doesn't turn off the screen after 30 seconds. I'd be satisfied if the battery reported 100% all the time (hard coded in there).
Thanks in advance,
anubis_2003

anubis_2003 said:
Hi
I'll try to explain my situation.
I have an Imate PDA2k that I wanted to revive.
I bought an extended battery from ebay (item number 360240003003)
When the battery arrived, I placed it in the phone and tried to charge it. Nothing happened. The phone's led did not turn orange or green.
I figured maybe because the battery is over 2x the capacity of the original, the phone may not be able to charge it.
Ok no problem, I'll stick the battery on the separate battery charger.
The light turns on (indicating that it is charging).
After the battery was charged, I put it back in the phone and the phone turns on. Problem is the battery meter does not measure how much power is left and automatically turns off the screen within 30 seconds regardless of the settings i put in.
I've tried increasing the time to turn off the screen to 5 minutes, nothing.
I've tried reflashing the phone with different versions of WM, (I tried wm2003, wm6.1, wm6.5) nothing.
I even tried Qtopia linux. That one did not recognize the battery but it did obey it's own configuration regarding when to dim and turn off the screen. (Then again it locks up after a few hours which is a problem for a different discussion)
So my question / request is: Is there a battdrvr.dll or battery.dll that can report to windows mobile that the battery is full?
At this point, I really don't care if the report is accurate as long as windows doesn't turn off the screen after 30 seconds. I'd be satisfied if the battery reported 100% all the time (hard coded in there).
Thanks in advance,
anubis_2003
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately, if Windows believes it is about to run out of juice, it will turn off, regardless of how much charge you believe your battery has. My advice to you would be to return the battery since it obviously has an issue (my guess is that whoever made it, didn't follow the pin out diagram properly )
Good luck!

and the capacity of the battery should not matter to the charger. i use a 3600mah battery that charges just fine (except that it doesn't go in the cradle, neither front, nor back, because it is too thick)

Thank you for the replies folks.
I've had the battery for too long, so I can't return it (been stubburn trying to figure it out)
Is there a way to hard code a value in the battdrvr.dll file? So that way I could break the battery meter in essence and hard code a value to satisfy windows (i don't care if the power runs out without warning at this point)?
anubis_2003

anubis_2003 said:
Thank you for the replies folks.
I've had the battery for too long, so I can't return it (been stubburn trying to figure it out)
Is there a way to hard code a value in the battdrvr.dll file? So that way I could break the battery meter in essence and hard code a value to satisfy windows (i don't care if the power runs out without warning at this point)?
anubis_2003
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not to my knowledge... I don't know if Chef may have something to add, but rather than messing with drivers, I would simply buy a new one off eBay (much simpler fix). Keep in mind that if it isn't wired properly, it might end up damaging your BA... personally, I wouldn't risk it.

let's assume messing with the drivers would be possible and maybe even easy and you could disable the battery meter and set a permanent number, these are the two outcomes:
1. you'd set the permanent number to 100, device would never switch off (achieved), but it would also never charge! every time you want to charge the battery, you'd have to switch off the device and take out the battery for external charging.
2. you'd set the permanent number to 99, it would never stop charging and so the battery would heat up (remember it is not an original one, even higher risk) and after some time, it could explode! remember the apple battery issues? where users reported, their phones and notebooks would never report a full battery, so it kept charging until it actually exploded, not just breaking the battery (of course) but also the device.
i would agree with egzthunder, that your best choice is buying another battery.

Chef_Tony said:
let's assume messing with the drivers would be possible and maybe even easy and you could disable the battery meter and set a permanent number, these are the two outcomes:
1. you'd set the permanent number to 100, device would never switch off (achieved), but it would also never charge! every time you want to charge the battery, you'd have to switch off the device and take out the battery for external charging.
2. you'd set the permanent number to 99, it would never stop charging and so the battery would heat up (remember it is not an original one, even higher risk) and after some time, it could explode! remember the apple battery issues? where users reported, their phones and notebooks would never report a full battery, so it kept charging until it actually exploded, not just breaking the battery (of course) but also the device.
i would agree with egzthunder, that your best choice is buying another battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow! I personally didn't even think about all that! But Chef is absolutely right, the battery can explode if you charge it beyond its limits.

Well that's exactly what I'm doing now. The phone doesn't charge the battery anyway. I have to pull the battery out of the phone every 4 days to charge it overnight in a separate charger. So option #1 would be ideal for me.
Don't suppose you have any hints on how I could do that?
Although you're right about the 99% scenario. Indeed it would try to charge it past its actual limit.
anubis

[Q] How come the phone does not sleep when charging?

I'm still relatively new to the whole android platform. Evo being my first. Why does the evo not sleep when charging? I have the issue of rapid battery drain when I unplug the phone from 100-90 in a matter of minutes. This bugs me to no end. The only way I am able to get around that is to watch for the phone to ding 100 and immediately unplug it and turn it off.
I believe that, and (correct me if im wrong), if your phone is awake, it is being used to its full capacity all of the time. CPU is running and doing whatever it does that drains the battery like it does when its unplugged and being used by the user.
Since the phone doesn't trickle charge it stops charging at 100% until it gets down to ~90% (all the while still reporting that it is at 100%). It stands to reason that if the phone doesnt sleep while its on the charger, its using this cpu power and this is the culprit of the rapid battery drain, and to that end, the culprit of a lot of people's battery woes.
food for thought i guess. that's my take on it.

There are numerous discussions about the charging thing. Search, or at least Google. The most intriguing answer I ever saw to this was that the charging system was set up to protect the Li-Ion battery from degradation by not cramming it full of charge all the time. (The OP on that was a bit more technical, but you get the idea.)
If it bugs you that much, you could root your phone, flash a ROM that is undervolted and compatible with SetCPU, install that, and then set a profile up so your phone is underclocked when it's charging / charged.

I searched xda prior to posting specifically about sleeping while plugged in. My query isn't neccisarily about charging bit rather the sleep function and awake state of the phone while its pretending to charge.
I'm curious as to whether this is hardware related or not. For example when the phone reaches 100% and stops charge could the phone then actually begin to sleep. Unless its physically impossible for the phone to sleep while there is a usb chord plugged into it.
A little test I did with this over the past two days. At night I charged to full and took the phone off the charge and went to bed. I woke up and only lost about 4% all night and was able to use the phone on the way to work never going below 90%
The next night I left the phone on charge all night. Wake up take it off the charger and within 10 minutes I'm down to 92%
Keep in mind I'm not blaming charging on this. The first night lasted longer off of the charger than the night on the charger simply because the phone was allowed to sleep through the night.
I could be wrong

you can set the options it will say 'screen stay on while plugged up' or something to the like
or when you plug it in, just push your lock button (the top power key)

also you can get a brightness widget and put it on your home screen. that way you can still have your screen on while charging but it will be dimmed or whatever setting you set it too.
hope this helps!

Your screen being on vs off while charging does not factor into the asleep vs awake time of the phone.
for an example of this, a freshly rebooted phone on the charger, with the screen off for 5 minutes, will have an "up" time of 5 minutes and an "awake" time of 5 minutes.
this is true while the phone is plugged in and the screen is on or off.
simply put, your awake time on the phone is always going up as long as the phone is plugged in, double this with the fact that the phone stops charging at 100% and you have constant drain even when plugged in.

the phone shuts off at 100% to protect the battery. If you want your phone asleep then turn it off at night. that is the only way to put the phone to sleep try searching app market. Other then that the only other way is to push the power/lock button at the top

Mobile internet fail. Sorry double post

Is my phone the culprit?

So like everyone else my battery life sucks. No big deal. I bought the extended battery from Sprint, and I can see the battery diminish in front of my eyes. I mean dropping 1 percent per minute. Is there a way to test the phone to see if it is the culprit?
Sent from my PC36100

ther are lots of ways to check things. does it drop 1% a minute all the time meaning you only get 100 minutes? does it only do it when you take it off the charger at 100% where ti will drop to any where from 99-90% in a matter of minutes?
if the later then thats normal and is because the phone doesnt have a trickle charge. this means that the phone charges your battery to 100% then stops however the indicator on the phone will not change it will still show 100% once the acctual power reaches 90% the phone then charges again up to 100%. what this means is once you take your phone off the pwoer if it has been sitting there even if it says it is at 1005 it can be any where from 90-100% which the battery quickly changes to over first few minutes.
If it happens past 90% and all the time then something is wrong and you likely have at least 1 if not more apps running wild on you, you have things set to sync constantly, and you have everything under the sun turned on for your phone.
for apps the paid version of system panel is very nice for monitoring you can go to monitor top and top apps and see which apps are using the most battery/cpu.
witht he information you have given that is aobut the best i can tell you. I would not say everyone has crappy battery life with the evo as i have slowly gotten my phone set up and now with moderate usage i can get 14-15 hours and at least 8-10 with very heavy usage(stock battery) which i dont consider to be crappy battery life.

I appreciate the response, and I forgot to add that I'm running stock unrooted sense. This is not my first Android phone so I know about battery managing. I don't have everything sync every two minutes nor do I have everything turned on. It does drop rather quick even past 90 percent. I think it might be the phone it self. I doubt I got 2 bad batteries, one being extended. I'll see if I could get a device swapped out.
Sent from my PC36100

My first EVO was like that. It drained quickly shortly after charging. I could never figure it out. Till one night before going to bed, I noticed something weird about the bottom keys on the phone. They were " very dimmly " lit. The home, menu, return, search were all dimmly lit. It was I believe a defect in the phone. I got it swapped out. No problems like the 1% drain since then.

Quick charge

Now I hesitated to post this until I was fairly sure.
So after about 8 trials over a few weeks and a 100% success rate, I think I can safely say this.
There is a way to quick charge your phone in 10~20 minutes from 0~10% to 75~90%.
I've a samsung vibrant, stock charger, stock battery, and nextgenv1.
(Not tried on other devices yet)
The trick is simple, when ur phones relatively low on power...
1) turn it off
2) plug into charger
3) wait at least 5 minutes
4) while still plugged in and charging, turn phone on
It should then be charged (not 100%, but 75~90% is usually what I get)
I've yet to test the time you charge vs final output charge, or the effects of starting at different charges.
Weird right? After asking my tech, physics, and biology teacher, the idea is that when the phone charges it fills in each battery cell with power, so while its doing the filling and you turn the phone on, all the cells open up so that a flush of energy can come in. Obviously this doesn't sound too good for the battery, so use this at your own peril. I'm just saying its been working every time, and no problems have come up thus far.
I dont go on here often so if this is already common knowledge, let me know and I'll delete this thread.
If not, try it out and see if it works!

Most phones come with single cell batteries.
The phone has a capacity/voltage map which it uses to work out how much juice is left in the cell, ie at xV it's y% full.
The battery is charged using approx 4.5V, so I'd imagine when you turn your phone on it's getting a false reading of the battery's voltage and that's why it's showing as charged more than it actually is.

use at your own peril indeed--theres gotta be some inaccuracies there

xaccers said:
Most phones come with single cell batteries.
The phone has a capacity/voltage map which it uses to work out how much juice is left in the cell, ie at xV it's y% full.
The battery is charged using approx 4.5V, so I'd imagine when you turn your phone on it's getting a false reading of the battery's voltage and that's why it's showing as charged more than it actually is.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yup, my thoughts exactly. But as it turns out, it lasts for the same amount of time as it usually would at that percentage. 1-2 days.

just get a 2A (2000 mAh) charger, and then you'll charge really fast
i use that in my car every day

So you're saying that letting the phone charge for 5 minutes gives at least 75% charge, then you unplug and run for 1-2 days?
That would take charging the battery with 15A which is 12C (the Vibrant's battery is 1250mAh isn't it?)
That'd be 13.5A down your usb lead from a PSU that should only have a 0.7A output.
I call shenanigans I'm afraid, your phone is fibbing to you

i'm pretty sure that quick charging your phone when it is not made to will decrease your overall battery life/ capacity.

xaccers said:
So you're saying that letting the phone charge for 5 minutes gives at least 75% charge, then you unplug and run for 1-2 days?
That would take charging the battery with 15A which is 12C (the Vibrant's battery is 1250mAh isn't it?)
That'd be 13.5A down your usb lead from a PSU that should only have a 0.7A output.
I call shenanigans I'm afraid, your phone is fibbing to you
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yup. 1500mah.
I'm just saying that's what the phone's saying ya know. I know next to nothing about battery output, storage, etc.
From 0% as in so drained it can't turn on, to plug in, to turn on while plugged in for a few seconds, it said 35%.
So phone's probably lying as u said, but have yet to test how long it lasts.
Theoretically, it should only lasts a few minutes right? Max of 10 minutes r so I'd imagine? (Yes, I'm asking for ur opinion)
Oh, and I use a live wallpaper too, on 24/7. Just a bit more power drain.
*update*
3 minutes later after I restarted it again, just to check if it was a complete dud reading.
Made mistake of not unplugging.
It's reading 51 percent now......6 minutes of charging.
-going to check how long this lasts.
^Least I know how to make my phone think its good^

i have a 1A charger in my car... gets my phone nice and hot and wont even charge my friends olllllddd android phone..

House3272 said:
Yup, my thoughts exactly. But as it turns out, it lasts for the same amount of time as it usually would at that percentage. 1-2 days.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Then obviously when it's reading 10% it's not actually that low. It's more likely that it's a mis-reading and is actually at ~80%. You run through your steps and in ten minutes you have an accurate reading of ~90%
No big mystery, batteries don't always report accurate information. Try flashing a different ROM, use another battery, try a battery calibration app. You'll soon start seeing different results.
Failing that, submit your findings to a Science Journal and wait for the $1m reward that comes with the Nobel Prize that is sure to follow!

DirkGently1 said:
Then obviously when it's reading 10% it's not actually that low. It's more likely that it's a mis-reading and is actually at ~80%. You run through your steps and in ten minutes you have an accurate reading of ~90%
No big mystery, batteries don't always report accurate information. Try flashing a different ROM, use another battery, try a battery calibration app. You'll soon start seeing different results.
Failing that, submit your findings to a Science Journal and wait for the $1m reward that comes with the Nobel Prize that is sure to follow!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
haha yeah! even Samsung still researching how to charge phone faster (trying to use new design battery) and his saying he found a loop hole around it? lol~
obviously not ~.~

As others have stated, the battery information is just probably inaccurate. You can recalibrate it by draining the battery completely and recharging to full.