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I havent gotten a new phone since 09 Hero.....whats the deal with battery charging. Do I need to fully charge the phone before using it? Do you drain the battery fully before re-charging it?
what give the battery the best life possible?
Never, ever, never, ever, never, never, ever drain a lithium based battery to nothing. Very, very bad. Charge it and keep it above 50% for the firstweek.
Swyped from my Atari 2600
overclockxp said:
Never, ever, never, ever, never, never, ever drain a lithium based battery to nothing. Very, very bad. Charge it and keep it above 50% for the firstweek.
Swyped from my Atari 2600
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Thank you. That is the type of advice I need.
kinextions said:
I havent gotten a new phone since 09 Hero.....whats the deal with battery charging. Do I need to fully charge the phone before using it? Do you drain the battery fully before re-charging it?
what give the battery the best life possible?
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Even your Hero should be the same. Most modern cell phones use Lithium Ion which do not have memory effect.
There is no memory for Li-ion batteries so go ahead and just use your phone. You do not have to keep it above or below a certain charge. The phone will not allow the battery to drain to completion so you do not have to worry about that. It is very bad to let a Li-ion battery completely drain but there are fail safe measures implemented in the phone/battery to prevent that. 0% charge on your phone does not mean 0% battery, its just the mA at which your phone thinks the battery has 0% battery remaining.
I wonder if there's going to be a similar procedure to the OG EVO's plug, unplug, turn off, charge, unplug, turn on, turn off, charge method (or whatever it was) to maximize battery life.
mevensen said:
I wonder if there's going to be a similar procedure to the OG EVO's plug, unplug, turn off, charge, unplug, turn on, turn off, charge method (or whatever it was) to maximize battery life.
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Bump charging works for lots of phones to my understanding. Something about how the phone at first doesn't charge to 100% - when it gets to a certain point it just keeps it maintained at that level .
While it is true that lithium ion batteries don’t suffer from “memory” problems such as NiCad batteries they do have a lifespan. For example, the lithium battery in the laptop that I am using right now, and have used for the past year, currently has a 98% charge and is not charging. That’s much, much better than a NiCad battery would be. I can really see the NiCad issue in my rechargeable cordless tools.
But lithium batteries will eventually die. Just ask the first generation iPud owners. Their batteries were failing just after a year of ownership and Apphole wouldn’t do anything about it. They had reached the end of life of their batteries.
Lithium batteries do take a little bit to break in though. You’ll notice a slight improvement as time goes on for the next month. But I would still refrain from draining the battery too much.
Thanks for the input...I too have the hero, and was curios...
...is it Friday yet?
there was a recent article I seen from a link in the g2x forums where they go to actual experts on the lithium who designed the actual cells and ask them how is best to charge them.
the honest answer is for life being your most concern. that means for the battery to keep a consistent charge over the life of the phone without losing actual daily life on the battery,
you have to plug it in when the phone ask at about 20%. then unplug it when the phone says the battery is full. Do not leave the battery plugged in for hours over full. said something about the charge disburst weird or something
anyway it was a link in the g2x forum in general. im sure you can finds it. Ill look if you really want me to,
Lots of info on Li-ion batteries:
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries
Being that the Battery stats are stored on the /Data partition, how is this minimum threshold managed?
One of the worst things you can do to a lithium battery is discharge it completely. They don't suffer from "memory" yet every time someone here in the forums complains that they are getting crappy battery life the instruction to discharge and recharge to 100% before clearing stats pops up.
For those who are interested here is an article that explains in detail.
batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries
My main question- Is there some function in android that looks at the maximum depth of discharge level of the battery or is it that most people don't understand the characteristics of L-ion and confuse them with those of Ni-Mh or Ni-Cad?
I want to know because if I need to completely discharge to get better perfomance, despite the reduction in charge cycle lifetime, I will do it but only infrequently.
I've only let my battery discharge completely once, and it wasn't on purpose. From the posts I see here I think I get above average battery life. About 18 hours miui before I go for the charger and on 2.2 roms I'd get 20 hours and still have 40% or so to go. So no I don't think completely discharging your battery does anything for battery life.
Sent from my T959 using XDA App
I have never run mine down completely. Gotten it to about 6% but that was because I was fighting ROM flashing problems. I usually call 25-30% enough for me and plug in then. I am also getting 30 hours out of my 2.2 with a good deal of use. I used to have a Motorola and their batteries are total crap. If you EVER let it get down below 10%, it took some real work for it to charge correctly and boot up. Even as much as a hardware mod where I have had to cut the wires on a USB charge cord and charge it rigged up with the wires pressed against the battery and prongs in the phone. Very dangerous, but worked for a last resort.
Discharging the battery is not for the sake of the battery,but more so for the ROMs data and how it acquires the battstats usage. I only run it up and down and clear stats when flashing a new ROM, but I do use my phone moderate to heavy daily and have had great success in battery life the way I calibrate it.
The solution I think is to use a larger capacity battery and regulate it to narrower window of operation never fully charging or discharging.
The fastest killer though seems to be heat.
I have read several times that your phone does not fully discharge the battery...that there is still a minimal amount of charge,not enough for the phone to opperate but enough to not damage the battery when it shuts down
Maybe the batterystats file can be saved after being calibrated once and then restored after every wipe oor flash.. that would save some time aabd according to you guys, batt life too
Sent from a cell tower to the XDA server to you.
I've only ever calibrated my a few times and only after flashing a new rom. I never run my battery down after resetting the stats. I just use my phone as I normally do. My understanding of calibration is that it's not about squeezing more life out of the battery despite what most people think but of getting a more accurate measurement of the battery's actual charge. Also while it's true that the phone will shut of before the battery is completely discharged damaging the battery, allowing the battery charge to drop that low shortens your battery's life and decreases the amount of charge your battery can hold.
What gets me is I also read somewhere that for optimum battery life you should keep your battery level somewhere between 70%-40%. Of course that doesn't stop me from charging my phone to 100% everyday. I don't remember where I found that article but I'll post a link if I can find it again.
The reason this bad advice about completely discharging your battery persists is probably the same reason people keep recommending automatic task killers.
batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries
ok, ok ill volunter, ill watch porn till my battery"discharges" At least my log will be interesting
radiohd said:
One of the worst things you can do to a lithium battery is discharge it completely. They don't suffer from "memory" yet every time someone here in the forums complains that they are getting crappy battery life the instruction to discharge and recharge to 100% before clearing stats pops up.
For those who are interested here is an article that explains in detail.
batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries
My main question- Is there some function in android that looks at the maximum depth of discharge level of the battery or is it that most people don't understand the characteristics of L-ion and confuse them with those of Ni-Mh or Ni-Cad?
I want to know because if I need to completely discharge to get better perfomance, despite the reduction in charge cycle lifetime, I will do it but only infrequently.
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Discharging the Battery & Running the Battery Dead is 2 Different things!
We recommend running the battery dead ( Phone Shuts Off ) & recharging while off to train the Android OS from Full > Empty..
Running the Phone until Dead is not Going to hurt the Battery in anyways shape or form despite what you may think or read!
The Reason is, the battery is never fully Discharge & still holds Voltage.. The Calculations of Charged / Dead is at the Kernel Level, so even when dead it still has a 3.4v still or roughly..
As long as the kernel isn't tampered with, discharging the battery via the Phone will never hurt the battery period!
Now, Based on the link you posted you would have to run the battery down past the safe discharge point.. Via some other means of killing the battery, other than using the Phone.
To help ease your mind, Remember this:
~ Charge levels is controlled by the kernel
~ Even when Phone powers off, there is still plenty of charge in the Phone's Battery
~ Battery is never Fully charged, as this also hurts lithium batteries
Roughly every Android kernel does not let lithium battery get below 3.4v and at most 96% charged.
Hope this helps,
~Eugene
If you are still concerned wait until your phone turns off and stick your battery on a meter. You will see there is still power left in it...
My original battery that came with the phone got great life, then couple of months later it was discharging in like 2-4 hrs(froyo), so I called, they sent another one free...5-6 months later that one started doing it as well, so I pulled out the old one from the drawer, it powered on at like 85% ! and I was getting crazy ass life out of it on miui over 30 hrs one time...now that one is acting up again, so I'm going to try to swap again..lol...maybe there's something to not using them for a while...
I've used diff roms and combinations of draining/recharging...calibrating, not calibrating...it's always different results..honestly I don't think there's any rhyme or reason to it other than the fact that many vibrants have diff hardware and there will always be some weird quirk on a per user basis...
As far as hurting it by draining it all the way, I hardly think that's the case seeing as with both batteries I've always let it run down...not on purpose but there has been many many times I've plugged in at 1% or had to power back on because it died...charged it up and got 20-30hrs no prob..usually issues come up when flashing a new rom...
i think it all comes down to luck of the draw. ive had my vibrant since launch day, and i still manage great battery life. my battery is actually stamped 7-02-2010. every 2 weeks or so ill drain the battery completely, turn it back on and allow itself to die again, and finally allow it to fully charge overnight or 4 hours. i usually get a good 7-8 hours of constant use on cm7, or over 24hours if let on standby.
im still debating if i want to grab an epic 4g touch battery as well to increase it even more.
qpinto said:
im still debating if i want to grab an epic 4g touch battery as well to increase it even more.
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what's this about?
Epic 4g batteries are 1800 and fit in our vibes.
Dr.Stainedglove said:
what's this about?
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http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1262035
in there they tested in a store since the epic 4g touch battery fit into a regular epic 4g, if it would fit into a vibrant. only thing is you have to put the battery in facing inside, and it fits and works 100%
Yeah the Epic 4G batteries fit in our Vibrant's. You can buy knock-off one's (that work well) for 19.99$ US! Here's a thread about it...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1316492
Epic touch battery for the win. I've been rocking it for a few weeks. I was on miui and getting 14-16hrs. I recently went back to froyo and yesterday I got 12hrs off of a 67% charge.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using xda premium
dont know if people have seen this article but i thought it was pretty interesting about the battery stats file not actually needing to be deleted...
http://www.androidcentral.com/wiping-battery-stats-doesnt-improve-battery-life-says-google-engineer
jonen said:
dont know if people have seen this article but i thought it was pretty interesting about the battery stats file not actually needing to be deleted...
http://www.androidcentral.com/wiping-battery-stats-doesnt-improve-battery-life-says-google-engineer
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Lol one of the biggest flukes in our forum haha.. people will harm their battery to calibrate it and it doesn't even do anything ...
Thank god I only calibrated once
sent from the xda app on my android smartphone.
I have a extended battery. I usually get 2 days use on a charge. about a week ago I cannot make it thru a day. The battery is only about 6 weeks old. I tried another battery and same thing. I use task killer and app cleaner and have restarted several times. When I look in battery usage is shows the Android OS using 24% Display 26% and phone idle 24%. I did update all my app and this seemed to help just a little. Anyone have any suggestions before I return my extended battery or do a factory reset. tks in advance.
have you tried draining the phone completely till it shuts off, then plugging it in and letting it charge to 100% with the phone powered down?
Battery instructions say NOT to every let battery drain to 0. So not sure I should try that.
cdenloe said:
Battery instructions say NOT to every let battery drain to 0. So not sure I should try that.
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That is about the life that I get on mine on a bad day. Now that you have had the phone for a while, more than likely, your battery has not changed but you have installed more apps which are draining you battery even faster. You shouldn't use task killers either, they screw with the roms built in memory management. However, if you must, then use "Task Manager" the built in stock task manager to end apps. Also i agree that you should completely discharge your battery and then let it recharge completely without turning it on and without using it.
PS: You have a nice avatar. Conservative til i die
cdenloe said:
Battery instructions say NOT to every let battery drain to 0. So not sure I should try that.
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This is not true. The phone has its own power management. When you reach 0%, the battery has still at least 3100mV (on mine it's more than 3200mV).
Li-On and Li-Pol batteries are designed to operate between 4300 and 3000 mV when they reach more or less, than they are damaging.
So you can charge and discharge your phone everyday between 100 and 0%, without any battery damage.
Other thing is Android power management, every time you wipe battery stats or restore backup, or you spend some time in recovery, Android doesn't know, how much capacity is remaining and you need to make more charging cycles, to teach it again and get full capacity from battery. I still don't understand this kind of management in Android.
I've tried all the battery stuff. No dice still discharging fairly quick. In the Battery Usage section It still showing Android OS using around 39 to 40% usage all the time. I have done a full factory reset on the phone 2 days ago and still same.
I noticed, you are using the task killer, stop using it, you have probably loop of killing and starting of some services. Task killer kills, android starts, again and again...
I have uninstalled task killer restarted the phone and still got the high Android OS usage showing.
You won't notice any difference immediately, make one discharge, charge and discharge cycle and you'll see.
Do NOT discharge the battery completely. Over discharging Lithium ion batteries can be harmful to them. Here's a great article going into probably a little too much detail but it gets the point across: http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries
As far as your problem goes it may be an issue with the phone itself I've seen a couple photons that needed to be exchanged due to issues that sound similar to yours. If it's doing the same thing on a different battery I'd take your phone into a sprint repair center, you could also try a factory reset if you have not already done so. If your only seeing this behavior with your current battery then I would return it or request a warranty replacement.
I have a extended battery. I usually get 2 days use on a charge. about a week ago I cannot make it thru a day. The battery is only about 6 weeks old. I tried another battery and same thing. I use task killer and app cleaner and have restarted several times. When I look in battery usage is shows the Android OS using 24% Display 26% and phone idle 24%. I did update all my app and this seemed to help just a little. Anyone have any suggestions before I return my extended battery or do a factory reset. tks in advance.
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root your photon (if not already rooted) and download battery calibration from market, also after rooting go to android development and download th3bill's extended battery mod
schale01 said:
Do NOT discharge the battery completely. Over discharging Lithium ion batteries can be harmful to them. Here's a great article going into probably a little too much detail but it gets the point across: http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries
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Omg... Read that article again, and check, how much voltage is in the phone battery, when it reaches 0% ;-)
peetr_ said:
Omg... Read that article again, and check, how much voltage is in the phone battery, when it reaches 0% ;-)
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Yes, there is an additional reserve that the Smart chip will protect by turning off the battery once it reaches the "0% mark". The Smart chip will also continue to drain the battery further past the 0% mark eating into this battery reserve. Now one full discharge like this probably would not hurt the battery as long as the battery is recharge within a reasonable amount of time. However it certainly does nothing to benefit the battery health whatsoever and it is never recommended to let a battery fully discharge. There are some practices of only charging the battery to 75%-80% that can improve battery life, but individual run time will be sacrificed. My recommendation is if the battery is under 65% than to charge the battery if it is possible to do so.
After doing a factory reset the same problem remained. Sprint exchanged the phone for a new photon. Put my extended battery back in and so far no problems at all with the exception of not being able to join my contacts with my FB contacts.
I have been discharging my Photon and previous phones to 0-5% at least 3 times for a week and did not find any difference in capacity, compared with the new battery. Lasts from the morning to the evening. If I should charge it on 65%, then the phone would be unusable for me.
Like Schale said it could be an actual phone issue, but i highly doubt it. I would try some things before assuming its a problem with your phone. Do this... Also this assumes you are unlocked or at least rooted.
1: Factory reset so to start fresh with no crap applications (task killer apps do more harm than good, as do most battery saver apps)
2: Drain battery till the phone shuts itself off (Dude what right about it reserving a certain amount of juice to not cause damage)
3: Charge to 100% (Dont use the phone during this time.)
4: Use a battery calibrator app (rooted) or recovery (unlocked) to wipe the battery stats.
5: Drain power as fast as possible till phone shuts off
6: Charge to 100% (Again, dont use the phone during this time.)
You can now use the phone how you normally would. If you don't notice a drastic increase in battery after discharging and recharging three or four times over the next few days, I would be comfortable in assuming it's a phone problem. Good luck!
I was told many years ago to fully drain and then fully charge a rechargeable battery or else it would shorten its life span. Is this really true?
Currently, if my battery is at 30% when I go to bed I leave it alone and charge it the next morning when I get to work after it drops to 5% or less and just deal with not having my phone for a few hours during the work day. I would love to charge my phone each night and always have my phone usable throughout the day.
My concern is that if I charge my battery each nigh I will kill the battery before I can get a new phone.
What us the truth?!
There's a lot of confusion on proper battery charging techniques. Lots of people are stuck on the old ways of thinking, where you should let the battery completely die before recharging it or else the battery will get a "memory" and won't last as long. I won't pretend to be an expert on the topic, so hopefully someone else can chime in, but from my understanding you do NOT want to let newer style batteries die before recharging them as it shortens their lifespan.
That used to be true, but doesn't apply to the batteries used in phones today. You can recharge whenever you'd like, but you may need to 'calibrate' your phone from time to time to properly recognize an entire battery cycle.
Recently, my Droid Razr Maxx drained completely, and will no longer take a charge; very frustrating considering it's less than 2 months old! That's the problem with a non-removable battery. Very expensive paperweight.
Sent from my HTC6435LVW using xda app-developers app
The truth...found
Found this....the science of modern batteries. Lets hope it works for our DNA's.
http://lifehacker.com/5875162/how-often-should-i-charge-my-gadgets-battery-to-prolong-its-lifespan
that article applies to our battery chemistry. Personally i still use my phone as a beside clock and keep it charged overnight and discharge it to whatever % it's at at the end of the day.
I recently had my Thunderbolt replaced with a refurb from Verizon. When I got the new phone I removed my old battery, which was working fine, from my old phone and placed it in my new phone. Now in the new phone I fully charge the battery and I get about 45 minutes to an hour of battery life before my phone is down to 2% battery life. However, the phone then has the same battery life as it did in my old phone, it just still says there is only 2% battery life left.
I'd tried completely killing the battery then recharging fully for about a week. The battery stats never reset.
I then rooted my phone, charged it completely and purged the battery stats. The issue persists.
Sounds like an aftermarket, non-oem battery...is it?
If it isn't a stock oem battery and especially if running ICS, it will not read correctly.
It may charge and discharge properly, but may never read accurately.
If it is an oem battery, then you got me.
Well i did this thing on my cousin's Htc Amaze a long time ago
i used die hard battrey calibirator to calibrate the battery. the phone was showing 2 percent supposed to be 170 percent so i pressed calibrate button and it worked for about a week until the battery had the same error
try doing that it might do something... or nothing at all but worth a try
santod040 said:
Sounds like an aftermarket, non-oem battery...is it?
If it isn't a stock oem battery and especially if running ICS, it will not read correctly.
It may charge and discharge properly, but may never read accurately.
If it is an oem battery, then you got me.
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Nope, it's the original battery I received with the phone. I'd understand if it were just time for a replacement but the fact that it stays awake at 2% for so long leads me to believe it's not actually an issue with the battery.
If you calibrate the battery incorrectly it can make the phone display the wrong amount. I did this before using die hard battery calibrator. To manually recalibrate. Discharge the phone totally and then charge it until the green light comes on. Boot into recovery and then wipe battery stats in recovery. That might help you out but I somehow doubt itm
Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk 2
I tried using a battery calibration app and haven't seen any change.
I also looked for my batterystats.bin file in /data/system to manually delete using a file explorer but I didn't see it there. Does anyone know why that may be or if that could contribute to the issue?
I also looked for my batterystats.bin file in /data/system to manually delete using a file explorer but I didn't see it there. Does anyone know why that may be or if that could contribute to the issue?
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Disregard that, turns out I didn't have ES File Explorer with root permission.
Li-on batteries don't actually perform the way many people think they do. They do not discharge in a linear fashion. That's what makes metering them on the phone so complicated. As the battery ages it's non-linear output changes as well, and that's what the statistics are designed to correct for when displaying a charge level.
Here's how you know your battery is a dud.
Pay attention to the voltage. As a Li-on battery discharges it discharges in a very flat way. The battery is fully charged when the voltage curve of the battery begins to ramp up sharply. The battery is technically dead when the voltage begins to drop off sharply. What ultimately renders a Li-on battery garbage is when that fat flat spot in it's voltage/charge curve drops below a threshold that will power the device. If the battery is displaying adequate voltage for a reasonable length of time and the phone still reads inaccurate, then it's the fault of the phone.