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Hello, guys. I know this post is awfully long, but please, bear with me
I am fairly new to Sammy, as I just got the S2 (I9100, not some other variant... it's the very original) three days ago. I rooted it, flashed CWM, and already tried a few ROMs. I'm sticking to MIUIv4 (WIUI, actually) for the moment, as I loved having MIUI on my previous devices.
There's just one thing that makes me wanna throw rocks at this phone... and that's not the Super AMOLED+ screen that has stains / ghosting effect... it's the CHARGER.
I believe the charger I'm using is original - it was in the package, so... it can't be a copy, lol. It says it can output 700mA at 5V, which is pretty standard... but it seems like it just doesn't do its job!!!
I've had three HTC devices before, and the HTC charger is just a brick that you plug into the socket, and then plug a USB cable in it (just like Motorola's and Apple's recently). It outputs 1A at 5V.
The Motorola ATRIX I previously owned had a charger that was outputting 850mA at 5.1V. Charging that 1900 mAh beast battery would take just a little over 3 hours!
I no longer own the ATRIX (sold it to get the S2, actually), but I did borrow a HTC charger (with a HTC USB cable) to see if I could charge my S2 faster. Nopes. The charger barely gave the S2 0.5 amps... which is normal, since I hear two pins must be connected in order for the Samsung phone to draw maximum power.
My Galaxy S2 is charging painfully slow with this original charger. I installed Battery Monitor Widget and let it log the battery charging overnight - the log file is attached below this post.
At the very first line of that text file, you can see the charging began. I let the phone turned on, with the screen off, to charge overnight. Wi-Fi, Mobile Data, BT, GPS, Auto-sync was off. It was just in auto 2G/3G mode. That hardly matters!
It looks like the phone is drawing 641mA constantly. It doesn't top 700mA, but that's okay - neither did the HTC phones reach more than 900mA, when the charger was able of 1A output.
It took the SGS2 exactly two hours and 50 minutes to fully charge. Given the fact that the charger outputs 700mA, and the battery is 1650mA, I'd say that's right. A 1900mAh battery was completely charged in 3 hours and something, with a 850mA output charger.
Still, that's painfully slow. I had the HTC EVO 3D, which has a 1730mAh battery. Charging that (@1A) would take little over two and a half hours. I could even browse the web via Wi-Fi or do something else on the phone and the battery would still be completely charged in less than three hours (unless I play a game on 3G with max brightness on, of course).
Also, when the battery was at 1% at lunchtime, I plugged in the charger. I continued to send text messages and browse the web via Wi-Fi (screen brightness was on minimum). The battery level did not rise from 1% even after 5 minutes! You can see that in the battery log. Yes, the phone's battery was almost dead in less than three hours.
Oh, also, the first day I got the phone, after I finished rooting and flashing MIUI and everything... I was playing Dark Legends, over Wi-Fi (screen was at lowest, again). Battery got down to 6%, I plug it into the charger. Ten minutes later, battery was down to 2% ! ! ! So, the charger cannot keep up !
I did my homeworks and did a "bit" of Google searching... it turns out the charger is just as it is. But this is just ridiculous.
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I remember seeing something on Twitter several months ago... an article regarding an app that would let you adjust how much power the Galaxy S2 can draw from the charger it's connected to, simply by dragging around a slider. I'm not wrong, I DID see such an article - I just can't find it anymore!
Anyone... any suggestions, please?
Also, please note that I am in Europe, Romania, so I can't just go to a shop and find the most awesome charger that outputs 2A for $5 like you guys can (there, in the US)... It's not really at hand for me, lol.
So, conclusion is the phone can consume more amps during usage than the stock charger can supply.
Either reduce the power usage (lower brightness, disable WiFi/BT) when you're using the phone during charging or get a more powerful charger (although I remember the latest stock ICS kernels don't like charging at a higher voltage than the stock charger supplies, so you'll probably have to install a different kernel which doesn't have this limitation).
Oh, and please stop the non-sense about being in Romania and not having options to buy, the market's full of all kinds of chargers. Get out of the house and search, "lol".
This is not uncommon.
In fact, with my PREVIOUS phone, the SE Mini Pro (the original one), it was actually possible to drain the battery till the phone shut down, even on it's original charger.
With some modified power settings, mostly in CPU voltages, it is quite possible to have the SII charge properly even while in use, but bear in mind, it will take longer to charge if you are using it.
VAXXi said:
So, conclusion is the phone can consume more amps during usage than the stock charger can supply.
Either reduce the power usage (lower brightness, disable WiFi/BT) when you're using the phone during charging or get a more powerful charger (although I remember the latest stock ICS kernels don't like charging at a higher voltage than the stock charger supplies, so you'll probably have to install a different kernel which doesn't have this limitation).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Playing Dark Legends, via 3G this time (so the power consumption would be higher, right?), screen at FULL BRIGHTNESS, Bluetooth and GPS activated. Battery Monitor Widget tells me the current being drawn is 641mA. Looks like the phone draws 641mA when charging, ~80% of the time.
The only problem seems to be when the battery level is LOW. Then, no matter what you do, the power level just doesn't rise.
With HTC / Motorola, the power draw was maximum when the battery was at its (almost) lowest level, and would decrease as the battery was filling. With the SGS2, it looks like it draws 640mA from 0% to 70%, THEN it begins to slow down.
VAXXi said:
Oh, and please stop the non-sense about being in Romania and not having options to buy, the market's full of all kinds of chargers. Get out of the house and search, "lol".
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh, but trust me, I have. You know, in our country, even cheap Chinese copies are over-rated. It's hard to find stuff like what they have in the US .
I've seen some sort of a digital charger, so-to-say, which would allow you to set the amperage and voltage that was being outputted. It was able of throwing out anything from .5 to 2 amps, at 3.7 - 5.5V (given your choice). Guess what : friend got it from the States...
You don't see such stuff here, in Romania.
Oh well...
Sideromelane said:
This is not uncommon.
In fact, with my PREVIOUS phone, the SE Mini Pro (the original one), it was actually possible to drain the battery till the phone shut down, even on it's original charger.
With some modified power settings, mostly in CPU voltages, it is quite possible to have the SII charge properly even while in use, but bear in mind, it will take longer to charge if you are using it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On the HTC EVO 3D and Motorola ATRIX, it was yet to be proven whether undervolting the CPU would increase battery life or not. Undervolting as much as 200mV only reduced the ammount of heat that was generated (especially during gaming sessions). Although current = heat... the power consumption didn't seem to change a bit!
I even tried to downclock the CPU to 400 MHz - power draw would still not be sufficient in order for the phone to charge (when the battery level was under 10%). Everything was turned off, light on lowest, CPU pretty low... still going down, lol.
I have also experienced this in the past.... which was rather annoying if I must say however, recently I haven't had this issue, although it still charges quite slowly, it's slightly faster than before. I noticed this difference after I decreased the voltage from the cpu in each step, yes my phone is heavy undervolted thanks to magic config, might want to check that out, but it's still as smooth as ever without a hint of lag props to the hyperdroid team...they are the best in my opinion, I use their rom since the hd2 days recommend their rom to all galaxy s2 users.
Anyway, my point is, I can have my screen in full brightness and still use the phone as is when off charge and it will continue to charge. Also, battery life isn't an issue for me anymore after undervolting, I can live with 15 hours battery life under extreme heavy usage with full screen brightness of 4-5 or more hours of screen on time....and that's with 1650mah battery. I plan to get an official 2000mah battery which will increase it's life more
Samsung Galaxy SII Xtreme ED
Xtreme Energy-Xtreme Power to Live
Impossible made Possible
shadyr25 said:
I have also experienced this in the past.... which was rather annoying if I must say however, recently I haven't had this issue, although it still charges quite slowly, it's slightly faster than before. I noticed this difference after I decreased the voltage from the cpu in each step, yes my phone is heavy undervolted thanks to magic config, might want to check that out, but it's still as smooth as ever without a hint of lag props to the hyperdroid team...they are the best in my opinion, I use their rom since the hd2 days recommend their rom to all galaxy s2 users.
Anyway, my point is, I can have my screen in full brightness and still use the phone as is when off charge and it will continue to charge. Also, battery life isn't an issue for me anymore after undervolting, I can live with 15 hours battery life under extreme heavy usage with full screen brightness of 4-5 or more hours of screen on time....and that's with 1650mah battery. I plan to get an official 2000mah battery which will increase it's life more
Samsung Galaxy SII Xtreme ED
Xtreme Energy-Xtreme Power to Live
Impossible made Possible
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's... impressive.
I'm using MIUIv4 (WIUI) wth Siyah v3.2.6.3 kernel. For some reason, if I undervolt even -50mV, the phone freezes :/
Formhault said:
That's... impressive.
I'm using MIUIv4 (WIUI) wth Siyah v3.2.6.3 kernel. For some reason, if I undervolt even -50mV, the phone freezes :/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's.... weird. I thought siyah kernal was more undervolt friendly :/ besides, I read somewhere that not every galaxy s2 can handle undervolting whilst some can. Rather, it could be the kernal too, I use the redpill kernal provided from the hyperdroid team, it's not the best in benchmark wise but what the heck... it doesn't stop to lag, it's extremely fast and responsive, great battery life, undervolt support for further improvements... you won't even notice any slowness compared to high benchmark devices. Red pill kernal is well optimised. I use noop scheduler and conservative governor, it's amazing how redpill handles this. Try it some time. Could solve your problem.
Samsung Galaxy SII Xtreme ED
Xtreme Energy-Xtreme Power to Live
Impossible made Possible
Formhault said:
The only problem seems to be when the battery level is LOW. Then, no matter what you do, the power level just doesn't rise.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just like your 48x CD burner doesn't write at 48x from start to finish, that's how the charging current is not constant; it depends on the remaining capacity, charging algorithms, etc. You're using a special case and asking too much, the solution has been given already (powerful charger and modified kernel to allow a higher charging current and voltage).
Formhault said:
You don't see such stuff here, in Romania.
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Click to collapse
Yes you do. I got a 1A Energizer charger which really gives 1A for less than 10$. The variable supply you're describing can be found in any proper electronics shop, try "Maica Domnului" street
VAXXi said:
Just like your 48x CD burner doesn't write at 48x from start to finish, that's how the charging current is not constant; it depends on the remaining capacity, charging algorithms, etc. You're using a special case and asking too much, the solution has been given already (powerful charger and modified kernel to allow a higher charging current and voltage).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I know that. That's exactly what I'm saying. The algorithm is different on the S2, it seems.
On all HTC devices I had, the current draw was at its highest (~900mA) when the battery was near depletion, and as the battery was filling up, the current draw was slowly decreasing. On the S2, it looks like it's the other way around. When the battery is nearly empty (1%), barely 100mA are being drawn. As it fills up, near 10% or so, the current draw remains steady at ~641mA, and decreases only past the 70% point.
Good thing is, the current draw remains steady at 641mA, no matter how much I stress the phone! That's astonishing - the other day, the battery was LEAKING 600mA instead of GETTING 641mA when the simplest tasks were done (no stress, that is), during charging...
Guess the guy who had this phone before me didn't really ever charge up the battery properly He said he had an iPhone charger back at home; I told him "nevermind, keep it".
shadyr25 said:
That's.... weird. I thought siyah kernal was more undervolt friendly :/ besides, I read somewhere that not every galaxy s2 can handle undervolting whilst some can. Rather, it could be the kernal too, I use the redpill kernal provided from the hyperdroid team, it's not the best in benchmark wise but what the heck... it doesn't stop to lag, it's extremely fast and responsive, great battery life, undervolt support for further improvements... you won't even notice any slowness compared to high benchmark devices. Red pill kernal is well optimised. I use noop scheduler and conservative governor, it's amazing how redpill handles this. Try it some time. Could solve your problem.
Samsung Galaxy SII Xtreme ED
Xtreme Energy-Xtreme Power to Live
Impossible made Possible
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The benchmarks are simply amazing; even with the CPU downclocked to 800 MHz...
I'll look for that kernel, hope it's MIUIv4-compatible. Thank you!
VAXXi said:
Yes you do. I got a 1A Energizer charger which really gives 1A for less than 10$. The variable supply you're describing can be found in any proper electronics shop, try "Maica Domnului" street
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Everyone's talking about a specific shop down that street... and I never got to actually go there. Guess I gotta look for it... Was kind of doubting it was much of a big deal.
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I thought posts made within a specific time range were supposed to merge... That obviously didn't happen. Sorry for the multi post
[Q&A] Teclast x98 air The still ongoing problems (and an ongoing hardware investiga
Q&A for Teclast x98 air The still ongoing problems (and an ongoing hardware investigation)
Some developers prefer that questions remain separate from their main development thread to help keep things organized. Placing your question within this thread will increase its chances of being answered by a member of the community or by the developer.
Before posting, please use the forum search and read through the discussion thread for Teclast x98 air The still ongoing problems (and an ongoing hardware investigation). If you can't find an answer, post it here, being sure to give as much information as possible (firmware version, steps to reproduce, logcat if available) so that you can get help.
Thanks for understanding and for helping to keep XDA neat and tidy!
thanks, can't belive there is no solution
Sorry to bother you, but after a week looking for a solution to the battery drain in windows I've just found +-10 people like me. It's a nice tablet but useless with this issue.
Please ¿Have you find a solution, how?
Thanks in advance!
motoi_bogdan said:
So... like most of you, i have at least one problem with my teclast x98 air tablet, version C9J8, running only windows (8.1 pro/10 preview).
At this time i've constantly encountered the following problems:
- not turning on after being shut down. Pressing the power button doesn't do nothing. Sometimes it does this while charging, at the end of the charge, othertimes it... simply won't power on.
- huge battery drain in stand by. I've flashed ALL (yes... all) dual boot/single boot air/air 2 BIOS files i could get, in all versions. If it's got a .bin extension... yes, i've flashed that too. No change AT ALL!
- huge batterty drain... when powered off !?!?! Yes, that's the next level of awsomeness. You know your tablet is special when it sometimes discharges faster when turned off compared with it turned on. (@XDA, guys .. can you please add some facepalm smiley/emoji.. i wanted to use it about 30 times since i got this tablet)
- sudden shutdowns. Like when you use your tablet it simply dies in your hands with no apparent reason.
- battery meter stuck at 7% and only 1 cell reported. NOT fixed by the methods already known (flashing BIOS and letting it discharge then recharge with tablet turned off).
So.. i'm pissed off. I've disassembled the damn thing in search for some answers. I'll by posting some photos with the guts of this thing (c9j8 version).
First of all, I wanted to check the power draw directly from the battery, so i've desoldered the positive wire from the battery and inserted an amps meter to check the current flow.
For example, the stock charger will supply around 1.5-1.9 amps to the battery when charging (tablet off). For comparison a small 5V 1A, samsung charger supplied 1.1 amps in the same setup. Some other interesting facts, when on and booted to windows - the tablet draws about 1.1-2.2 amps (mostly depending on screen brigtness and cpu load). That's a total of 4-11 watts. If you lower the brigtness from full to low (bottom third of the slider) you effectively half the power consumption. As usual the display consumes more then 50% of the total power being drawn. Those who complain about huge power drain on standby will be surprised to know that the tablet draws 0.3-0.8 amps (it fluctuates) in standby. That’s HUGE. It should be 0.03-0.05 amps at MAXIMUM. 0.3 amps multiplied to a 3.8volts cell is 1.14Watts draw per hour at minimum in my case.
Leaving that aside, let's return to the above problems. The battery is connected to the motherboard by using a 3 wire connection (positive, ground and data bus/i2c or similar). The motherboard itself doesn't feature ANY protection/power management chip aside from a single ROHM controller located under a metal shield. Even if some data is passed between the battery and motherboard, you can simply decouple the battery and power the tablet with regular 18650 lithium cells or 3 AA alkaline batteries in series. The tablet is stupid enough not to notice any difference.
Let's go more deep in the start-up sequence.
When you press the power button, a half a second 500mA ramping to 800mA load is registered. The power management chip measures the voltage drop under that load and if it deems it to be "acceptable" it passes power to the rest of the motherboard. BIOS/firmware takes over from there but does a measurement of its own. If it results in an "ok" the boot sequence can the follow. If not, the BIOS would then power off the tablet. Here lies the first problem. The power management chip and BIOS thresholds for a "low voltage" battery are different. Very different. The chip itself considers the battery voltage to be ok if it's above about 3.45-3.5 volts and not dropping lower then 3.3v under a 500-800mA load. The BIOS/firmware (or whatever software part does this) won't accept a measurement below 3.65v. volts. So, when you pass the BIOS stage and boot to windows, the data you get when checking your battery comes from the power management chip. If you fully discharge the battery in windows (down to 2-3% or similar) and you are able to shutdown the tablet by yourself (it doesn’t cut power by itself) you could find that it cannot power back again because even if the power management ic gives the go ahead, the bios/firmware side refuses to go any further. The battery must be charged for some time before the bios will allow for booting.
The problem is that both power management IC and BIOS readings should be taken in same way and be of similar value. They are not. It’s not that Teclast couldn’t do this, but for whatever reason they decided to write the BIOS in that way. The 7% problem could originate in the fact that a what the BIOS considers a dead battery (0%) is actually charged to a degree and is different from 0% measured at the power management chip level. Overall the power readings are inconsistent in both measurement and reporting. It doesn’t seem to be a hardware problem.
Another problem is how „dumb” is the battery management hardware. In any modern portable computer (laptops, tablets, even phones – excluding some chinese products) you cannot simply disconect the data bus from the battery and simply feed some random 3-4 volts to power the thing. It’s like you would remove the battery from your laptop, check the label on it for the voltage rating and stick a bunch of wires on the contacts (2 of them) and expect the thing to boot. It won’t. Firstly because IT’S NOT SAFE. The battery or motherboard can’t report one to another if a fault is occuring and can’t accurately measure voltage/current consumption.
Yet another problem is that the same power circuitry does not compensate for large voltage/current swings. A simple experiment for you folks to try. Get a aa battery (a battery in general) measure it’s voltage as it’s sitting still then connect a small lightbulb/motor/led/whatever load runs on that battery and measure the voltage WHILE the battery suplies current to the load. You will find a voltage drop at the battery level. It’s normal, is how these things run. A complex electronic device must take that into account in it’s design. At idle/browsing web/viewing picture, the tablet draws about 1.1 amps from a battery that’s registering 3.87volts (at that test’s time in my case). Running a benchmark/video game produced a series of spikes to 2 – 2.1 amps and an aditional voltage drop to around 3.61 volts. Remember that some power rails require exact voltages (cpu core, main bus, 5volt usb bus etc). The power circuitry must provide those exact voltages regarding the input voltage swing. Noup... and that’s the main problem untill now. THEY DONT! I was shocked to see how the chinese engineers are pushing it right on the edge. If you desolder one battery pin and insert an ampere meter in series, that’s enough to induce the little voltage drop needed for the tablet to freeze under load or shut down alltogether. The ampere meter leads were rated to withstand 10 amps under load – and they do, yet the simple fact you inserted a piece of wire along the track is enough to disturb an already delicate balance. The thing is only barely capable of whitstanding it’s own battery voltage swing. In my opinion you can try to reduce the load by disabling turbo modes on cpu/gpu or whatever (and teclast tried with some bios/models of the x98 air) but you cannot fix this by firmware. It’s just bad hardware design. They cut costs on the power management side.
Those are my finds untill now. I’m thinking of adding some capacitance over the power rails to take the load over from the batteries when a large amount of current is drawn (spikes that occur under load). Other then that, there is not much to do about this.
Even so, i don’t know why the tablet still draws power while turned off. I wasn’t able to make it do that while measuring. Aditionally i don’t know why only one cell is reported in windows. More tests are required.
This is still an ongoing "project". Some of my conclusion could be wrong at this stage. Like i've said it's still a work in progress. It would be quite a thing if anyone with some knoledge about the BIOS code (or how it runs on this tablet) could step in and direct me to the right hardware to examine.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Anom7832 said:
Sorry to bother you, but after a week looking for a solution to the battery drain in windows I've just found +-10 people like me. It's a nice tablet but useless with this issue.
Please ¿Have you find a solution, how?
Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i don't think a simple bios flash will fix that in our cases. Could be that some tablets have defective power management ic's. in fact all bios versions tried by me lead to a similar voltage drop across the battery in stand by. I'm now tracking where is all this power going to since something has to use it. At this time i can rule out the camera and the touchscreen controller since i've disconnected them from the mainboard with no noticeable effect. Since the power drop seem related to the cpu area i suspect the cpu itself not being able to go to a lower power state but i must access the core voltage pins to check this. Yet normally this should be corectable by a bios update but for whatever reason teclast isn't providing any.
Still...more testing is needed
Fellow Note 8 users, I recently got to replace my 1.5 yr old battery with a new bigger capacity one. 3500mah from Polarcell... Once I get a few charge cycles going with this one I'll post results!
I had 255 charge cycles on the old one and fg_asoc was 92, fullcapnom 2890.
Evidently as I'm a very curious person, I had to test the capacity of the old battery with a high tech hobby charger/discharger from Junsi, the 4010 DUO. As it stands out, fully charging the battery to 4.4V and then doing a deep discharge to 3V netted me 3273mAh. Be aware that this is a way deeper charge/discharge cycle than the phone would ever do. In order to prolong lifespan, Samsung is not using the full capacity of the battery.
Whether there's an algorithm tied to battery aging and fg_asoc, or the battery is actually a bit higher capacity than spec, it remains to be seen. I'll conduct more tests, and keep everybody posted.
Ask away any question the you may have and don't be bummed out it your Galaxy battery is reporting lower capacity from the start. It may not be the case.
Cheers,
Andrei.
daffster21 said:
Samsung is not using the full capacity of the battery.
Whether there's an algorithm tied to battery aging and fg_asoc, or the battery is actually a bit higher capacity than spec,
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Click to collapse
I've notice DJI doing the same thing with my Phantom 3 drone batteries whenever I use a hobby-grade charger connected directly to the terminals of the battery itself. I say this is a good design by Samsung if it is as you are suggesting.
Good thinking, I have a ph3 battery lying around wi5h no more than 50 cycles on it. I could measure that too!
You need to remember that your Phantom 3 batteries have a nominal 4.35V per cell as opposed to the usual 4.2, so you would need to factor this in to your hobby grade charger. I have a Hyperion EOS.... model. I've used this to "revive" several phone and laptop cells in the past (once the cell isn't internally damaged).
I don't think one needs to be concerned about fg_asoc or fg_fullcapnom once there isn't too much deep discharging of the cells.
Yes, I'm aware of that. Sometimes I undercharge my ph3 batteries by 0.05v to make them last longer. The 4010 duo is one hell of a charger and I love it!
Back to the note 8 battery, I'm getting spectacular battery life with the new bigger cell and the One UI update. Currently at 60% remaining with 24h of use and 3h of SOT. Stellar!
Cheers!
Just a question, did they reseal the back cover for waterproofing after?
There's no they, I did it myself. Bought some original Tesa double sided tape from ifixit.com and it worked great.
I have a pixel 6 and noticed that my voltage figure on AccuBattery is high. Its reading as 4.3mv ??
I have no idea what ths means or if its something i should be concerned about?
I would like to know this also. I'm only observing it when I use my Motorola quick charger. It's the quickest, just powerful charger I have at the moment.
Those apps only measure battery voltage, not charger voltage.
With that said, is the number we are seeing for battery voltage something to be worried about?
chrisnewton said:
I have a pixel 6 and noticed that my voltage figure on AccuBattery is high. Its reading as 4.3mv ??
I have no idea what ths means or if its something i should be concerned about?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That does NOT say 4.3mv (which would indicate a bug in the program, since the phone would not power on at that low of a voltage)
That says 4,318 mV, as in four thousand three hundred eighteen milli-volts, or about 4.3 V. That's a reasonable value for this kind of battery.
Nothing to worry about, move along.
4.318V (which is what it is) is indeed high if you read about the max voltage Lithium Ion cells should be charged to, to maintain reasonable service life. However I have found my previous Pixels do a similar thing and Lithium chemistries can vary quite a bit so I wouldn't be too concerned.
Having said that, have a look at the 'battery' thread here if you want to get maximum service life from the battery. In that case you should probably keep the charge levels in the 40-65% range in an ideal world. But at the end of the day, many folk don't care or obsess about this stuff, especially if they're replacing their phone every couple of years and/or are happy to get a battery replacement when capacity drops too far.
Different chemistry tweaks can affect the the voltage of a cell. My battery also goes that high, so I assume this is normal performance for the particular cell Google chose.
With credit to VR-25 from Github:
If you edit these files and put you own values in then your phone will start charging when it drops below 75% and stop when it gets to 80%. (put your own values in, etc.)
I have only tested it briefly but it seems to work for AC and USB charging for me so far. No other apps or tweaks needed.
/sys/devices/platform/google,charger/charge_start_level:75
/sys/devices/platform/google,charger/charge_stop_level:80
EDIT: You need to be rooted to do this, and you need to reapply the settings after reboot.
I have a Tasker action that does this automatically 5 minutes after rebooting.
If only there was a way to use that without root :-S
What would be the purpose for this.
I always charged to a 100% and never had issues on my devices.
I use the adaptive charging overnight and think that will help with battery life.
vandyman said:
What would be the purpose for this.
I always charged to a 100% and never had issues on my devices.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you do some reading you will see that charging over 80% and draining under 20% will significantly shorten the lifespan of your battery. This is important for those of us that have devices not sold in our country so getting replacement batteries would be very difficult and expensive. I have phones that are more than 9 years old and still going fine if charged like this.
Galaxea said:
If you do some reading you will see that charging over 80% and draining under 20% will significantly shorten the lifespan of your battery. This is important for those of us that have devices not sold in our country so getting replacement batteries would be very difficult and expensive. I have phones that are more than 9 years old and still going fine if charged like this.
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Click to collapse
If you would have read the correct information on this subject. You would know that this not true for today's battery technology.
This is nothing but a myth.
You will have a better chance looking for Bigfoot.
Why waste 40% of your battery use....
vandyman said:
If you would have read the correct information on this subject. You would know that this not true for today's battery technology.
This is nothing but a myth.
You will have a better chance looking for Bigfoot.
Why waste 40% of your battery use....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On the contrary. The most recent phones attempt to limit the time that they spend at 100% exactly because it's so bad for battery longevity. Having options like the OP's approach just gives users more flexibility, should they want more control than, in this case, Google's adaptive/AI approach.
And it's not 'wasting' 40% of the battery. Keeping between 80% and 20% just optimizes battery service life during those days you only actually only need 60% of it's possible capacity. When working from home that's often the case for me. I actually tend to use ~30% of the battery in a day. Better to charge it up daily to about 70% than all the way to 100% and let it go down to 10% over 3 days. If it's easy to do, why not?
Not quite the same, but EV design also has their batteries normally operating in the middle range so as not to compromise their service life...
Definitely not myth. The only myth is that lithium cells exhibit a memory effect and need to be deep discharged and fully recharged periodically to maintain their capacity. It's actually bad for them to do this! The only reason to do this would be in an attempt to recalibrate the software for the battery level gauge (at the cost of a little damage to the battery each time you do that).
vandyman said:
What would be the purpose for this.
I always charged to a 100% and never had issues on my devices.
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Most folk don't notice reduction in battery capacity until it becomes severe. For example, a friend claimed it wasn't a problem charging his iPhone to 100% ritually. When he checked the OS, it said his battery capacity was 80% of what it was when new. He said he hadn't noticed it affect how long the phone lasted.
If your usage is such that you can predict how much capacity you need, you can choose to charge to 100% only those times you will actually need that capacity. Other times you can look after the battery so it's able to actually give near on 100% for longer, those times it's important to you.
Others who keep their phones a short time or are comfortable with the cost & inconvenience of a battery replacement, or simply don't care, don't have to worry....
WibblyW said:
On the contrary. The most recent phones attempt to limit the time that they spend at 100% exactly because it's so bad for battery longevity. Having options like the OP's approach just gives users more flexibility, should they want more control than, in this case, Google's adaptive/AI approach.
And it's not 'wasting' 40% of the battery. Keeping between 80% and 20% just optimizes battery service life during those days you only actually only need 60% of it's possible capacity. When working from home that's often the case for me. I actually tend to use ~30% of the battery in a day. Better to charge it up daily to about 70% than all the way to 100% and let it go down to 10% over 3 days. If it's easy to do, why not?
Not quite the same, but EV design also has their batteries normally operating in the middle range so as not to compromise their service life...
Definitely not myth. The only myth is that lithium cells exhibit a memory effect and need to be deep discharged and fully recharged periodically to maintain their capacity. It's actually bad for them to do this! The only reason to do this would be in an attempt to recalibrate the software for the battery level gauge (at the cost of a little damage to the battery each time you do that).
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This all maybe good if you are planning on keeping your device for a few years.
Most people buy a new device every other year. If not once a year.
... and if you really want to knacker the battery, heat it up too!
Worst case scenario - using a sat nav app on your phone in the car on a hot day with the phone plugged into a car adaptor. It's going to be sitting there at elevated temperatures, possibly with the sun shining on it, whilst being kept at 100% battery....
I'm only a customer (and have no other affiliation) and like to tinker, so I got one of these for use in the car to limit temperature when charging and limit max charge. Not cheap, but ok compared with the cost of the phone https://chargie.org/
I'm sorry, but at the snails pace this phone charges I'd be very surprised if charging it to 100% every night will make any noticeable difference in the long run. I had a Xiaomi Mi10 Ultra with 120W fast charger. That phone used to charge from 0% to full in like 20 minutes. Now that's one way to quickly kill your battery.
The Pixel uses your alarm to adaptively charge the battery so it should never overcharge it anyway. I'd much rather us all of my battery than use it only between 20 and 80% just for it to last a little longer.
The files are overwritten on reboot so I created a Tasker task to write the values on reboot each time.
Biggenz said:
I'm sorry, but at the snails pace this phone charges I'd be very surprised if charging it to 100% every night will make any noticeable difference in the long run.
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On what basis? All the research and tests are based on charge level not charge rate. Fast charging potentially just makes it worse...
But at the end of the day it's your phone. You'll charge it in whatever way works for you.
I feel like this post sort of misses the point. It clearly is aimed at those intending to keep their phones >1yr, it is stated explicitly.
I'm not rooted right now, so I've been using the AccuBattery app. One of the things it does it gives a notification every few minutes when the battery is at 80% or above so that you can physically unplug the phone from the charger. Obviously having this done automatically would be better, but I've been surprised at how well the notifications have worked in my case. Plus, I can always leave the phone plugged in if I know I need a full battery for some reason (ie a long day away from any charging source).
Galaxea said:
With credit to VR-25 from Github:
If you edit these files and put you own values in then your phone will start charging when it drops below 75% and stop when it gets to 80%. (put your own values in, etc.)
I have only tested it briefly but it seems to work for AC and USB charging for me so far. No other apps or tweaks needed.
/sys/devices/platform/google,charger/charge_start_level:75
/sys/devices/platform/google,charger/charge_stop_level:80
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Dumb question but what did you use to write values into those files? Did you use a text editor (with root access) or just termux or something? I tried with the built in MiX text editor but it seems to choke once I open up the file.
Gibsonflyingv said:
Dumb question but what did you use to write values into those files? Did you use a text editor (with root access) or just termux or something? I tried with the built in MiX text editor but it seems to choke once I open up the file.
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I used FX File Explorer (root option). Look for the #. SYSTEM (Root).
I was wondering if changing the file permissions after writing to them to read-only would make the changes stick, but I am sure the OS could still overwrite them...??
I wonder if there's a similar variable to tweak at what temperature the phone considers the battery is too hot and stops charging?
Galaxea said:
With credit to VR-25 from Github:
If you edit these files and put you own values in then your phone will start charging when it drops below 75% and stop when it gets to 80%. (put your own values in, etc.)
I have only tested it briefly but it seems to work for AC and USB charging for me so far. No other apps or tweaks needed.
/sys/devices/platform/google,charger/charge_start_level:75
/sys/devices/platform/google,charger/charge_stop_level:80
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did a bit of testing and it works fine. A few things I noticed:
1. Doesn't survive reboot. Now that I've set up MiX with pinned folders, I can make the change in seconds. Need to sit down and read through the acc documentation because AccA doesn't work. Would love to have an automatic solution. Miss my old Battery Charge Limit.
2. charge_start doesn't seem to matter. After all, if charge_start is set to 75 and the phone is at 70%, it shouldn't charge. But it does. I've kept mine at 0.
3. Point #2 is kinda beside the point, though, because charge_stop will stop at the set value and stay there. No noticeable increase in temperature from what I can see. Definitely less than when charging.
4. Still shows as charging rapidly when it hits the level. Is it rapidly cycling charging on and off? Or in a kind of micro-current state? Or this may be a true battery idle situation where all power is drawn from the adapter. Ampere and AccA just show "not charging".
Edit: With a bit of use today, it does seem to act like a normal min/max charge deal, so I set it at 75 start/76 stop. Not sure what was happening at first...maybe something to do with the adaptive charging since I still have that on. Either, way, no complaints. With my use case working from home, I have it plugged in most of the day and it'll only take me about a minute to change charge_stop to 100 when I'm planning to go out all day somewhere away from chargers. Not ideal, but still a big improvement. Changes my rating of the thing from maybe 3.5 stars to 4.5.