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I recently bought a BA battery advertised as 2400 mAh for around $20 US.
However, it only charges up to 58%. I've tried charging it for 8 hours or more, discharging it a little bit, and recharging it, but the indicator never goes above 58%. I am charging it from inside the BA, with USB power.
The battery says:
Replacement for XDA III/MDAIII
Model: PH26B
Rating: 3.7 VDC == 2400 mAh
Rechargeable Li-ion Polymer Battery
...
Made in China
Researching some more, I notice that the "PH26B" part number is used on both 1500 mAh batteries and 2400 mAh batteries, by different sellers. It can't be both, can it?
The sites which list it as 2400 mAh tend to be less reputable sites from places like eBay, with deals which seem too good to be true.
And yet the battery I bought says both PH26B and 2400 mAh on it, so it is not simply the seller misrepresenting the product (i.e. if it's a scam, it extends to the manufacturer).
My questions are:
1. What exactly is the PH26B designation, if it is not a unique part number?
2. Are there any model-specific compatibility problems between certain batteries such as PH26B, and certain models of Blue Angels, or are all BA batteries interchangable between all BA models?
3. Is there a scam going on where BA batteries are being sold as 2400 mAh, even though they are only 1500 mAh? The 2400 mAh battery I have, is not much thicker than most 1500 mAh batteries, which makes me suspicious. (It is only about .5 mm deeper than the BA case where the "Windows Mobile" logo is printed.)
4. Why does my battery indicator stop at 58% with the 2400 mAh PH26B? (I've tried it in both my SX66 and PPC6601, with the same results.) 58% is approximately 1400 mAh / 2400 mAh, so if the charge indicator is a measure of the true charge as compared to the claimed capacity, then 58% would be what you'd expect from a battery which is only 1500 mAh but claims to be 2400 mAh.
5. I've often heard that you must be careful when first charging BA batteries, or else permanent damage could result. I did everything "by the book" -- backed up my data, changed the battery in my BA to the new one, and left it charging in the BA for hours -- but it still only goes up to 58%.
6. Do I need to do a more severe hard reset, such as leaving the battery out for 30 minutes, and/or completely draining the battery before recharging it, in order to get the charge cycle fixed?
I know I can trust Lion Battery (whose 2400 mAh Mugen batteries cost around $72 US instead of $20 US). I've already done business with them before. I am not in any immediate need for a BA battery. I just recently bought a spare one as a "deal" which was apparently too good to be true, and I'm trying to figure out the origins of it, since it's apparently very widespread -- simply search Google or eBay for 2400 xda, and you'll see hundreds of deals for these 2400 mAh BA batteries for under $20 US. It's so widespread that I don't think it's bad resellers trying to rip people off, but a bad manufacturer misrepresenting their batteries (and spoiling the good ones), or some kind of mass confusion about BA battery types and their true capacities.
Or maybe I'm too cynical, and I simply got one defective battery out of a normally good lot.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?t=35333
mark1316 said:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?t=35333
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Already read that. No help there.
There are 2400 mA batteries out there that do NOT work correctly. We worked with our mfg for 3 mos and six different revisions before we could get a working battery.
Chances are the $20 battery is some of the early batteries that did not have the microcontroller on the battery programmed correctly.
16 hours after charging with an AC-adapter-powered cradle, the battery has gone down from 58% charged to 9% charged. The backup battery is down to 75% charge.
The cradle is being supplied 5 VDC at 2A (USB current is not usually enough to charge batteries -- only to sustain their charge).
The battery is not being charged in the auxiliary slot, but is inside the PDA, which is docked in the cradle.
I have removed the battery for 1 minute, then reinstalled it. The main battery indicator still says 9%. The backup battery has gone up to 100% in less than 5 minutes. I may need to remove the battery for longer than 1 minute to force a hard reset.
The indicator LED is blinking red-orange every three seconds.
I will leave it to charge some more, but I expect it's a DOA battery that should be returned or trashed.
Is it the capacity they write it ??
I think they can also said the battery with 8000mAh... it's very simple
reprit the label and mark it as 8000mAh with the same battery..... 8)
MugenPower said:
Is it the capacity they write it ??
I think they can also said the battery with 8000mAh... it's very simple
reprit the label and mark it as 8000mAh with the same battery..... 8)
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They say 2400 mAh. There does not appear to be any evidence of tampering with the label, which means it's not some amateur glueing or writing "2400 mAh" on top of a 1500 mAh battery, but something more sinister.
Without being sarcastic, could you please tell me whether there really is such a "reprinting" scam going on, and what the true capacity/designation of a PH26B is? What other signs to look for, and how to determine the true capacity (by special charging methods, by physical examination of the battery, etc.)?
I'm guessing it's some Asian scam, where some manufacturer is printing look-alike labels, and overstating the capacity of the batteries, and selling them at a very cheap price to resellers, who then go online and sell it for 50-100% profit, while still looking like a "bargain" to the real 2400 mAh batteries, such as Mugen's. (BTW, do you really work for Mugen?)
How can we tell the fake 2400 mAh's from the real ones?
Mungen Power HLI-XDA2SSL 3.7v 2400mAh Lithium Ion Battery fo
Mungen Power HLI-XDA2SSL 3.7v 2400mAh Lithium Ion Battery for XDA IIs Battery PH26B £19 From M Jefferie, eBay 30 Nov 2005
Tested this battery and satisfied myself that it operates for days passed the 1500mAh replaced
I know about Mugen batteries and their reliability. I have some. I'm talking about cheap knockoffs which claim to have 2400 mAh capacity but which don't. It's a widespread scam going on right now.
It may not necessarily be a scam, just very, *very* shoddy goods. As you said probably asian and very cheaply made. I suppose you get what you pay for...
Here's a pic of the bad 2400 mAh battery. It uses the same part number which I've seen on many 1500 mAh batteries.
PH26B is likely just to be the shape and connections... so you know any PH26B will fit a BA (or any other device which might take a PH26B)
leek said:
MugenPower said:
Is it the capacity they write it ??
I think they can also said the battery with 8000mAh... it's very simple
reprit the label and mark it as 8000mAh with the same battery..... 8)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They say 2400 mAh. There does not appear to be any evidence of tampering with the label, which means it's not some amateur glueing or writing "2400 mAh" on top of a 1500 mAh battery, but something more sinister.
Without being sarcastic, could you please tell me whether there really is such a "reprinting" scam going on, and what the true capacity/designation of a PH26B is? What other signs to look for, and how to determine the true capacity (by special charging methods, by physical examination of the battery, etc.)?
I'm guessing it's some Asian scam, where some manufacturer is printing look-alike labels, and overstating the capacity of the batteries, and selling them at a very cheap price to resellers, who then go online and sell it for 50-100% profit, while still looking like a "bargain" to the real 2400 mAh batteries, such as Mugen's. (BTW, do you really work for Mugen?)
How can we tell the fake 2400 mAh's from the real ones?
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leek,
yes..I am from Mugen Power. You can check it out from my post.
Actually....smart guy should know that.....how can they make profits if they use good quality of material to make the battery pack and sell it at this kind of cheap price....
if they write the capacity is less than 2400mAh, do u think u will buy their battery .... I don't think u will spend money on a battery with capacity lee than the original..
reply
Hi, I have it now for 6 month now and its workingOK for me.
regards,
Silver
Can anyone recommend a faster charger? The wall charger still takes upwards of 3-4 hours to charge, was hoping there was something that puts out some more power.
How many amps does the stock charger put out/how much can the phone 'handle'? (Sorry, I've never messed around with circuits and electronics like that, I'm not sure what the correct terms are)...
For example, http://www.amazon.com/Scosche-reVIVE-Dual-Charger-iPad/dp/B003N7NO4Q that car charger has a 2.1a socket, meant to charge the ipad, would that, in theory, charge the sgs2 quicker than a standard car charger, putting out ~1amp?
edit: realized this is better suited for the accessories forum, feel free to move.
I believe the wall charger is the fastest charger that we have available. I could be wrong, but I haven't found anything faster.
If you turn off your phone and throw it on the wall charger, it will charge faster as the phone is not on to use any battery... but thats probably not what you're looking for.
Your best bet would be to buy an extra battery and external charger and just swap the batteries when they are low. Thats what I do, and its much better than keeping your phone plugged in most of the day.
Our phone has an internally set 650 mA charge current limit - adding a beefier charger won't do anything.
It doesn't help that Samsung put in a crippled charger chip in our device with nonadjustable current, instead of using the more capable one already present in the MAX8997...
and even if the phone lets it charge faster, you really dont want a charger that charges too fast. I'm pretty sure that will murder the battery.
Thanks for the answers, all.
penguinlogik said:
Your best bet would be to buy an extra battery and external charger and just swap the batteries when they are low. Thats what I do, and its much better than keeping your phone plugged in most of the day.
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This is fine for "emergencies," but swapping batteries will throw off your battery stats.
Rrryan2 said:
This is fine for "emergencies," but swapping batteries will throw off your battery stats.
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How would swapping batteries thow off battery stats? It seems like everything resets once you boot up with the new battery, and isn't battery charge read off the raw voltage?
Lithium Ion batteries require a very particular two-step charging procedure. The battery has to be charged at constant current until the voltage rises to 4.2V, and then it needs to be charged at constant voltage (4.2V) until the charge current drops to about 10% of its starting value.
The amount of current allowed in the CC phase is a function of the battery's chemistry and capacity. It's expressed as some multiple or fraction of "C", the capacity of the battery. A 1C charge rate on a 1000mAh battery is 1A. The large LiPo batteries I use for my RC Heli and Airplane fleet will charge at 5C, for some of them this is better than 10A. But Li-Ion batteries usually can't tolerate more than 1C (and they usually charge at half that rate since this makes them last longer).
The harder you push the charge rate, the faster you wear out the battery and the more likely it is to fail. If you exceed the maximum charge rate, the battery is very likely to fail catastrophically (failure = fire). I charge my big LiPo batteries in a fireproof box for this reason.
My advice is, leave the phone's charging circuit alone unless you know what you're doing.
penguinlogik said:
How would swapping batteries thow off battery stats? It seems like everything resets once you boot up with the new battery, and isn't battery charge read off the raw voltage?
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Sure, it reads raw voltage. But the top end and bottom end worsen as the battery ages, and batterystats.bin doesn't know where those values are for a given battery until it's seen them. The system wasn't really designed to take into account the user swapping in multiple batteries.
Rrryan2 said:
Sure, it reads raw voltage. But the top end and bottom end worsen as the battery ages, and batterystats.bin doesn't know where those values are for a given battery until it's seen them. The system wasn't really designed to take into account the user swapping in multiple batteries.
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Huh... I'll let you know in a year how this battery swapping thing goes then. But wouldn't wear be the same on both batteries if I just swap them daily?
penguinlogik said:
Huh... I'll let you know in a year how this battery swapping thing goes then. But wouldn't wear be the same on both batteries if I just swap them daily?
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I did this with my captivate where I would swap batteries everyday. Much better than charging if you ask me.
To get the best battery life, when should I charge my phone? When the phone almost runs out of juice, or whenever I can (below 80%) ? Please help!
Deep discharges are bad, but so is spending lots of time at maximum charge.
I'd consider charging around when you hit 80% if it's convenient, but if you're expecting to be on battery for a while soon, top off whenever you want.
Discharging to 5-15% is bad for your battery longterm.
So to get the best battery, I should charge when it is $80 right?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using XDA App
kvl19 said:
So to get the best battery, I should charge when it is $80 right?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using XDA App
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There's no hard fast rule about 'exactly' when you should recharge it. Simply try and keep the phone from running < 20% a lot and never keep it always charged at 100%. If you get in the habit of charging in the 30-80% range, that would be best.
Basically throw out the old mentality of always using it as much as possible before recharging as lithium batteries simply don't work like the old nicad batteries from years past.
This phone uses a Li-Ion battery, and these batteries do NOT have any kind of "memory." Charge it whenever you want to. However, it's not really good to always keep it "topped off." (Deep discharges are also not good.)
If you are going to store the battery, drop it to 75%-50% charged first.
There are some things to consider, however:
If the phone's power circuit bypasses the battery when the battery is fully charge (instead of constantly pulling power from the battery while the battery is recharging), then leaving the phone plugged in is better than constant charge/discharge cycles. Based on the fact that this phone will work properly with NO battery attached when plugged in, this is probably a true statement (but I can't know for sure.)
Second, the phone itself might like to see the battery charged/discharged once in a while to calibrate the battery monitoring circuitry. (You never calibrate a li-ion battery - only the circuitry that monitors the battery.)
Here's a link with some interesting information:
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries
Take care
Gary
Got it. Thanks for all your information
A small note to add why you shouldn't 'keep' it above 80% (constant top offs and being left on the charger). In general when above 80% it's been found that lithium ion batteries have a 'higher state of activity'.
What that does to the battery is what it sounds like. Higher state of activity means higher wear and overall shorter lifespan.
That wear is easily seen in laptops. Many people have the habit of leaving them always plugged in while using and through the night, so they're always 'ready to go'. People who consistently do this to their laptops usually find after 1 year the battery life is noticeably shorter, 1 1/2 years 50% or so of 'new' capacity, and after 2 years looking at replacing the battery.
And I usually find a cheap deal on eBay for them, plus $50-75 for me. At least phone batteries are a bit cheaper.
Sent from my páhhōniē
Just gonna review some of the accessories I have used and what i think about 'em
First up is the 3500mAH extended battery by HHI
This battery came in at a cost of $9.99 with free Shipping! It showed up with an 80% charge which is in the acceptable range of where they like to sit. The battery performs just as one would expect it too. I am currently running MeanRom, and can easily get 16-20 hours of use with some really heavy gaming. However I recently went on a vacation and wanted to run the battery through a couple different variations of "discharging". So with the phone in Airplane mode(no radios connected) and very little use i easily can get a week out of the phone without charging. Again this is without any radios on, not connecting to anything.The stock battery cant touch these numbers. i would be lucky to get a full day out of the stock battery with no gaming and normal use.I didn't do a sticker pull to run the numbers. So I'm taking HHI's word on the 3500mAH being just that.
To conclude on this battery the $10 investment turned out to be a good choice, although it might not be a seidio or something it does more than i expected it to do. I will continue to use this battery till I get rid of the phone. The battery can be found here.
To continue on the batteries,
I also bought some of the Galilio "2000mAH" batteries, I got 3 of them with a wall charger for $13.99 on ebay, as reviewed by many others.
This is my experience with them. So they showed up in the mail and upon opening them i discovered one of the batteries look like it got dropped or skipped accross the cement, im not sure what happened, but who is gonna put a messed up battery in their phone.. So i really only got 2 batteries. I brought it up to the seller he offered me $3.00 back, it wasn't worth my time even dealing with that any further at this point. Anyways the batteries Are nice little backup batteries i take with me on trips.They make for easy backup batteries. The batteries have been suspected to be somewhere along the lines of 1000-1200mAH. I would have to agree, even with no testing with any type of tool, besides my phone. They last a most couple of hours. The wall charger that came with them actually surprised me. Everyone was reporting that it may overcharge your stock battery, which can cause some issues. This charger(as pictured below) will charge the Galilio batteries to 100% with no problems. I put my stock HTC battery into the wall charger and with repeated attempts the charger will not charge the battery past 85% even when i left it on the wall charger for 2 days. I do believe that the stock HtC charger that came with the phone gives the batteries a "better" charge, but the wall charger seems to not charge the batteries past a safe range as everyone seems to be reporting as a possible issue. My issue is it doesn't charge it well enough.
I've attached some pictures of the battery results and of the batteries.
Reserved for more... case reviews coming up next
i got the 3500 mAh from HHI. great battery, even better price.
Yea that battery is awesome!
Sent from my PG86100 using Tapatalk
Going to try this battery out. Thanks for the review.
The 85% is charge limit is what a cheap charger do,
The "charger" that come with the phone is simply a power supply, the charging circuit is actually "built in" to the phone. You can connect the OEM HTC charger/power supply into one of those cheap aftermarket dock that charge a 2nd battery and it will never charge the battery past 85% either.
To make it short and sweet
There's 2 stage of Li-ion charging
1) charge to 4.2v at constant current which is 85% when it first reach/near 4.2v
2) saturation charge, once the battery reach 4.2v, continue charging but at gradually reducing current until it reach about 3% of default charge current
Cheap charger have a simple/cheap circuit and cannot do stage 2 charging, where the charging circuit built into each phone would do stage 2 charging
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries
bitslizer said:
The 85% is charge limit is what a cheap charger do,
The "charger" that come with the phone is simply a power supply, the charging circuit is actually "built in" to the phone. You can connect the OEM HTC charger/power supply into one of those cheap aftermarket dock that charge a 2nd battery and it will never charge the battery past 85% either.
To make it short and sweet
There's 2 stage of Li-ion charging
1) charge to 4.2v at constant current which is 85% when it first reach/near 4.2v
2) saturation charge, once the battery reach 4.2v, continue charging but at gradually reducing current until it reach about 3% of default charge current
Cheap charger have a simple/cheap circuit and cannot do stage 2 charging, where the charging circuit built into each phone would do stage 2 charging
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries
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im just saying its not gonna over charge your battery like everyone warns you about all over the place lol
Makis709 said:
Going to try this battery out. Thanks for the review.
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Awesome!!! its well worth it!!
So I see that they make a G3 slim battery that does 3900 MAH.
This one is a 3850
and this one is the 3900
I've been wanting an extended battery but dont want to mess with the form factor and have and ungly back, anyone know if this is a good battery?
I never trust slim bigger MAH
2SHAYNEZ
It is just a lie.
Until new technologies arrive (and we will hear about it, trust me), the capacity of a battery is directly proportional to its size. If the battery has a similar size, then it will last for the same time, regardless of the label or how you measure capacity...
I've tested for years a ZeroLemon slim battery for my Galaxy S4 that was supposed to be higher capacity (going back and forth between this one and the official battery), and they were exactly the same.
And I wouldn't trust any brand you can find on eBay or Amazon marketplace, unless you want to risk some explosion in your pants
There are a couple of ways to get additional capacity out of a battery the same physical size, all of them bad. You can make the insulating layer between cells thinner, allowing for more of the battery to contain chemistry to generate power. At the risk of leakage and fire.
The other way is to play with the circuitry in the battery that reports charge levels to the phone. All name-brand Li batteries leave some margin for error, so that when it reports 100% it's not really quite fully charged, and it reports 0% before it's totally drained. It's possible to build a battery without that safety margin, so it will last a bit longer on a charge. But overcharging Li batteries is very bad for battery life, and draining them completely is also bad. So a battery that uses this technique will wear out a lot sooner. If you've ever seen a battery swell, so the sides aren't flat, that's probably a sign of overcharging.
But I think most of these aftermarket batteries don't use either technique, and the capacity claims are just flat out lies.