Battery - Very weird behaviour - Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

After my stock battery started dying and not holding the charge anymore I bought two new aftermarket batteries (2300mAh) everything went fantastic for some time, then from one day to the other the battery I use daily started draining crazy (even 2% at time) I tried a lot of roms with no luck. Bad battery you say, here is the weird fact, the other battery which used maximum 4-5 times at month keeping it at half-charge, has the EXACT same drain that the other has. Is it possibile that something in the phone has gone nuts and is indicating wrong values? I also ran a full charge-discharge cycle preventing the low battery shutdown through xposed, and it shutdown some minutes after hitting 0%, at full charge indicates 4.300mV is it correct, isn't it?
Also using the *#0228# code (I can't recall now if it's correct) the charge level drops a lot like 30-50% and I noticed that the phone later stays at that % for quite a bit and also the heat from the battery draining stops and the phone stays very cool also while gaming, until it starts draining again

No one?

You can look at the simple battery-statistics in setting to find abnormal consumption by an app.
Otherwise buy a battery from Samsung's e-store: I bought several 'original' batteries (not for S3) from Amazon and mentioned too early wear after 1/2 year.

Replacement batteries are a waste of money. I had 2. 1 bloated and the other dies in a few minutes. Upgraded my phone instead.
I wish I stole my HTC M9.

Related

[Q] Two issues - sudden battery % drop, battery % increasing when not charging

Hi,
I have been facing these two weird issues:
1. Sudden drop in battery percentage: I have found that this occurs only when i reboot my phone (not every time though). So when the phone restarts, the battery is down by 20-30% or sometimes even more. And its not a one time issue. I have seen it happen at least 3-4 times in the last 5 months.
2. Sometimes when I am not charging the phone, the battery % keeps increasing slowly. This has been happening lately since the time I have rooted and flashed my phone. 2-3 occurrences that i know. I don't recall seeing this when I was on stock. Just this morning I plugged my phone off the charger at 52% and I left for work. And right now at this moment when I am writing this, the phone is at 58% charge!!
Just FYI.. I calibrate the battery every time I flash a new ROM.
Thanks,
Sam
sammy.samsung said:
Hi,
I have been facing these two weird issues:
1. Sudden drop in battery percentage: I have found that this occurs only when i reboot my phone (not every time though). So when the phone restarts, the battery is down by 20-30% or sometimes even more. And its not a one time issue. I have seen it happen at least 3-4 times in the last 5 months.
2. Sometimes when I am not charging the phone, the battery % keeps increasing slowly. This has been happening lately since the time I have rooted and flashed my phone. 2-3 occurrences that i know. I don't recall seeing this when I was on stock. Just this morning I plugged my phone off the charger at 52% and I left for work. And right now at this moment when I am writing this, the phone is at 58% charge!!
Just FYI.. I calibrate the battery every time I flash a new ROM.
Thanks,
Sam
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think that Entropy can answer this better but I'll still give a try.
[Q] Why these sudden battery level drops after reboot?
[A] The sudden battery drops is a known 'issue'. It's not a bug, it's the way the fuel gauges are designed for i777.
[Q] How to avoid these sudden battery level drops?
[A] Try not to reboot while it's on battery if the battery level is <50%. In that case, if you need to, make sure that the phone is plugged in for charging and then do the reboot. That should prevent those random battery level drops.
[Q] Will using battery calibration apps help?
[A] No, the way the i777 fuel gauges are designed, there is no need of battery calibration apps. The best way to get accurate battery level readings is to allow the battery to go through full 100%->0% battery discharge cycles for atleast 2-3 times. After each full discharge remove the battery, keep it out for a minute or two and reinsert, recharge the phone.
PS: The weird battery charges that violate E=MC^2 law might have to do with your battery not having been through proper discharge cycles (and thus not having been properly calibrated) after flashing a new ROM.
@Mod These questions are asked many times, how about adding them to FAQs (not sure if that will help though )
@Entropy Please review this post.
Pretty close.
Calibration does nothing on our device - the fuel gauge is designed so that it will always converge towards truth instead of diverging. Also, the "wipe battery stats" method of "calibration" has been proven to do NOTHING on ANY device whatsoever - https://plus.google.com/105051985738280261832/posts/FV3LVtdVxPT - The "charge battery to full" and "discharge/recharge" battery are valid tactics on some devices, but NOT any Galaxy S or S II device (maybe the ****rocket and T989, but not the I9100 or I777.) - There's a slight chance this may change with ICS on the I9100/I777 but not likely.
The advantage of this is that it never needs funky calibration cycles other than "just wait"
The disadvantage is that the gauge will get thrown off in a few limited corner cases - and the "two" issues described are one widely documented one. The gauge gets confused and falseley reports low by heavily battery load immediately following a reset, and takes a few hours to converge back to normality (during which the estimate creeps upward, because it was lower than reality initially).
And yeah this should probably be in the FAQ. I'll work on submitting it this weekend.
Thanks guys..
So looks like the sudden battery drop issue can only be prevented but not fixed!
sammy.samsung said:
Thanks guys..
So looks like the sudden battery drop issue can only be prevented but not fixed!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's pretty much the characteristics of putting a battery under load and using voltage to dictate battery level. when you draw a lot of current from a battery you'll usually see the voltage level drop, more so as the battery is discharged. Booting up the phone consumes quite a bit of power, substantially more than the device at idle. So upon start up the device reads the voltage level to dictate battery level. Since the device is under a relatively high power draw, it sees a lower voltage than would be at idle. It in return thinks the battery is lower than it actually is, or would read under idle load. the battery level will actually creep back up slowly because it will read a higher voltage, than it did upon start up.
The only way i could think of to get a more accurate reading would be to delay the initial voltage reading/recording upon start up, or to use the last voltage reading to help dictate the battery level. But i have no idea if that's even possible, or if it would conflict with some sort of other operation.
I just don't get it!!!!!!!
I was playing multiplayer in bombsquad today morning wid my friend .My battery was @ 86% at that time
suddenly my battery came down to 15% then in the other moment it went to0% and mt phone got shut down. I plugged my phone in charge through the power bank and rebooted it and I saw my phone was @52 % I started using my phone and it again suddenly sut down this time without even a battery low message
it's been happening regularly wid my phone since then.
What could be the reason? And what can I do to make it right?
MY PHONE INFORMATION
MODEL:SAMSUNG GALAXY CORE GT I8262
ROM:USING STOCK ROM(ROOTED) (CWM RECOVERY INSTALLED)
avijeetpandey87 said:
MODEL:SAMSUNG GALAXY CORE GT I8262
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is the wrong forum. Even though the thread is about a problem similar to yours, we don't know anything about your phone.
If you have a removable battery, you might try purchasing a new battery, but that's just a guess.
The forums for you phone are here.

[Xperia U] Li-Ion battery life deteriorates after incident

Hello everyone. First off, I have read this - Things You Should Know About Lithium Ion Battery. Secondly, I know this smartphone has a weaker battery than most, which combined with a dual-core 1ghz CPU makes it drain in about two days on average (I am an entry-level user). However, I've managed to optimize battery life through various options and by staying on factory Android (2.3.7) so now it can last to about four days, so I was very happy. Now more about the 'incident'.
Usually I charge my phone at home on an unused wall socket. But this time I charged it at my friends place on an extension cable which was literally packed with cables and his PC stuff. First thing I noticed is that it took a lot longer to charge my phone. It took nearly two hours to charge my phone from around half capacity to full, while at home this is usually accomplished in 30 minutes.
After this I've noticed that battery life deteriorates much quicker, it now lasts about a day and that's when just idling and not doing anything (!), so I'm back to the state before I managed to prolong battery life and even worse.
So what happened? Did my phone suffer irreversible damage to the battery?
As much as I can tell from a layman point of view, the AC flow on that extension cable felt 'unstable' so maybe it means the battery was charged with 'lower quality' current?
Now every subsequent charge I do at my home improves battery life for the first few hours, but after a point it still deteriorates rapidly and that's while my phone is not even awake. I get the feeling I should let it discharge completely (even though this is not advisable for Li-Ion) and charge it fully from zero to full capacity? Kind of letting the battery format again in normal conditions maybe?
Much appreciated. Luka from Serbia.
Here are the screenshots (cant post full links)
imageshack.us/f/706/wt9e.png
This is how my battery life looks after 22 hours. As you see, most of it was when the phone was not awake.
imageshack.us/f/545/5flx.jpg
Here I drew a green line to indicate how my idle battery life looked like before.
Luj1 said:
It took nearly two hours to charge my phone from around half capacity to full, while at home this is usually accomplished in 30 minutes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Even using 2.3.7 that's not normal... your problem it's not from that "episode". It's from the past

[Q] Battery acting really weird, is it time for a new one?

Hi all, thanks in advance for your help.
I've been having crazy drain trouble with my stock battery for about six months now (the battery is currently 15 months old). It's draining like crazy, it goes from 100% to dead after two hours of browsing/reading an ebook, even less if I'm playing something like Candy Crush Saga or Asphalt 7. I tried going through several apps such as Wakelock Detector, Better Battery Stats, tried recalibrating the battery and haven't found an obvious culprit - other than the screen, which alone uses up something between 40 and 60% of the battery.
Is this normal?
Sometimes, when the battery is at 30% or less, it will just drop by several percent in the matter of seconds, for example if I switch on mobile internet. If I'm using the phone at <10%, the screen will sometimes start flickering, and the phone will freeze and remain like that until I switch it off manually.
In addition, if I connect the phone to charge, in about 70% of times, it will incorrectly show something like 45-55%, even though it's depleted. Then it remains like that until it's charged up to that point and then the percentage starts rising again.
Honestly, I'm tired of having to bring my charger everywhere and ending up with a dead phone whenever I need it for a longer period of time. I don't remember the last time my battery didn't die by the afternoon
I'm facing exactly the same issues and yes, honestly I believe it's time for a new battery.
After 15 months, assuming daily charging, you would have approx. 450 charging cycles. Lion batteries are known to age and to lose capacity after so many cycles. Try a new battery, if the problem persists, have your phone checked.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

[q] htc battery acting weird

i am havin HTC AMAZE 4G
when i used to charge it before
phone used to come to 90% from a full in approximately 1 hour.
now it comes very quickly like 10-15 minutes
& also the major problem is my phone gets switched off at any battery percentage like 65% & when it gets restarted it comes to around 8% or sometimes even 4%.
if i pull out battery again restart the phone then sometimes it comes to around 30% back or any random increase in battery or sometimes even decreases to 4% & then the battery gets drained in 5 minutes & i have charge it again
battery takes more time to even charge
sometimes using DATA & charging it even takes 10 hours to charge
i dont know what is the problem
i have been thinking about battery problems
but i googled & in some blogs it shows as circuit problems too
the problem is i am living in INDIA
this phone is not official here so the service center guy wont touch it & i dont want to waste money on the battery if it isnt the problem
USING HTC ICS OFFICIAL ROM
NOW BATTERY LASTS with normal data on maximum 4 hours
help me out guys
thank u
How old is your handset? Battery life decline is normal as it ages. Without being able to inspect and test yours out all I can tell you is the most likely explanation for what you're describing is battery wear.
The original HTC battery that came with my phone only holds 2/3 of the charge it once had when new, which is why I invested in a pair of Anker batteries and an external charging station (I purchased them together in a package on eBay for under $30 US shipped). Having the extra batteries has been an excellent addition. I alternate them every few days to more evenly balance how they are wearing and to prolong the remaining life of my original battery. Plus it's great to have an extra battery to use for those times when I really need my device, but don't have the ability to plug in.
Check out the best battery thread in the Amaze accessory section for more details and comparisons.
I hav been using this phone for 1.5 years
tried using battery of my dad he uses same phone.
It showed 56% in my fathers phone
Wen i switched the battery &; started my phone it showed 15% at start
So what could be the problem then?
patelaquib said:
I hav been using this phone for 1.5 years
tried using battery of my dad he uses same phone.
It showed 56% in my fathers phone
Wen i switched the battery &; started my phone it showed 15% at start
So what could be the problem then?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're getting the different results because the batteries aren't calibrated to each phone. If you put your fully charged battery in your father's phone it shows 56%, correct? What happens when you put your father's fully charged battery in your phone? Keep in mind that when switching around the batteries neither with be calibrated to the device, but will instead show a percentage vs the battery that was properly calibrated.
Example: the battery in my phone shows as fully charged, but is worn and no longer charges to the maximum. If I place it in my brother's Evo 3D which uses the same size battery but is newer. It will show as only partially charged because his device is calibrated to his newer stronger battery. Conversely, if I put his newer battery in my phone which has been calibrated to my older worn battery it will appear to be fully or nearly fully charged for a long time before it begins to show it's draining with use.
The only way to properly test your battery would be to either try a known stronger one in yours for several charge - discharge cycles as your phone calibrates to it, or to try your battery in another device for several such cycles. Then you need to compare if there was an improvement in up-time or not. Short of taking it in to be checked on diagnostic equipment it's the best method I can think of.
Good luck!
Thank you very much for the reply
Goin to a local mobile repair guy for a hardware check
Will tell you the results tommorow
Thanks once again
Maybe you just need to wipe battery stats. One trick that works is let it drain completly and let it be drain over night and charge it again keep doing a couple of days it may just get better. But think is just battery problem not hardware related.
My Original HTC battery worked its way down to 2 hours of usable talk time. Eventually, got so bad that it barely charged on anything but a high current wall charger. Technically it was under warranty at the time...
Ordered 2 Anker Batteries w/ charger for $30, and not long after that the charger broke. It quit charging batteries.
I then just stuck with one Anker battery in my phone and the other as backup. The battery I used the most is now down to about 4 hours of life on a full charge. The least used is about 8. I try to keep the worse one charged up as a backup in a pinch and now use the good battery full time.
Just how life goes sometimes...
sam_conrad said:
My Original HTC battery worked its way down to 2 hours of usable talk time. Eventually, got so bad that it barely charged on anything but a high current wall charger. Technically it was under warranty at the time...
Ordered 2 Anker Batteries w/ charger for $30, and not long after that the charger broke. It quit charging batteries.
I then just stuck with one Anker battery in my phone and the other as backup. The battery I used the most is now down to about 4 hours of life on a full charge. The least used is about 8. I try to keep the worse one charged up as a backup in a pinch and now use the good battery full time.
Just how life goes sometimes...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah that Anker charger is the weak-spot in that 2 battery package deal. The damn thing is flimsy and fragile. I'm so paranoid about breaking it I treat it with kid gloves. The batteries are pretty good though. The package was one of the best investments I made since owning the Amaze. Using indelible marker I labeled them 1 and 2, and rotate their usage with my original HTC (which is easy to distinguish). This way when I'm on the road I always have one fully charged spare handy, one charging at home, and one in my handset.
g-nigh said:
Maybe you just need to wipe battery stats. One trick that works is let it drain completly and let it be drain over night and charge it again keep doing a couple of days it may just get better. But think is just battery problem not hardware related.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed!
But When I was using official ICS from T-mobile, I had the same problem, even after wiping. I even faced a funny thing. Percentage of battery in bar was different from percentage shown in lock screen!!!
After flashing custom rom, All problems GONE!

Question How critical is it to just charge to 80%

I keep reading that you should try and just charge your phone to 80% to help keep the battery healthy, as going to 100% can shotren the life span of the battery.
How ciritcal is this?
I know letting your phone run down to 0% is bad as it takes a fully clylce then to get back too 100% and this is not good for the battery long ter, but i must confess i usually let my battery get to around 50/60% ish then charge back up to 100%
I've always charged my phones fully and never noticed any issues. Maybe if you plan on keeping a device for 10 years, but for the usual lifetime of a phone it's just fine. My OP7 is 2 and a half years old now and still has 86% battery health. I've seen others in Telegram groups say that they never charge to 100% and when they post their battery health it's not much different from mine, sometimes even less.
I think modern batteries are fine being fully charged ... otherwise the OEMs or battery manufacturers would limit them to 80 or 90% by default.
Nimueh said:
I've always charged my phones fully and never noticed any issues. Maybe if you plan on keeping a device for 10 years, but for the usual lifetime of a phone it's just fine. My OP7 is 2 and a half years old now and still has 86% battery health. I've seen others in Telegram groups say that they never charge to 100% and when they post their battery health it's not much different from mine, sometimes even less.
I think modern batteries are fine being fully charged ... otherwise the OEMs or battery manufacturers would limit them to 80 or 90% by default.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I guess I have some buffer
mosio said:
I guess I have some buffer
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hehe yea, I guess they all show 102% then because I have that as well
I like the adaptive charging, set up your bedtime and alarm for getting up (or turning over) After bedtime, phone gets trickle charged to achieve 100% at morning alarm. No excess heat etc. Phone then lasts me all day till bedtime when put on airplane mode, switch off Wi-Fi, & sleep. Works for me.
I'm showing 106%
I always charge to full, using adapting charging over night. Charging slowly and keeping temperature down is more important than keeping it to 80% from my understanding.
I just lay my phone on a slow charge Qi pad every night and when I get up it is at 100%. Nexus 6, Pixel 3, now Pixel 6. Perhaps my battery life went down a bit on my Pixel 3 after 3 years, but not enough to notice. I think 100% charge (at least slow charging) is safe for 3 to 5 years of battery life.
Li's like frequent midrange power cycling; it can extend the lifespan hundreds even thousands more full charge cycles.
Voltage and temperature are the Li's biggest stress factors. Low or high temperature charging can cause Li plating.
The higher the cell voltage, the faster it degrades.
The same is true with temperature.
Personally I just replace them every year or so as a failed Li can severely damage a phone. They tend to swell during a failure which can easily damage the display.
My Samsung S10+ is 27 months old now. I'm charging it to 80% mainly daily. Had maybe max 20 full charges and only once or twice to zero. I'm at 86% battery health (according to 146 sessions). Was 92% six months after buying brand new.
I think it helps. Also since the battery is OK (4100mah), dont need that extra 20%.
EDIT: 15W Samsung "fast" charging. As fast as that is ...
Zakelinho said:
My Samsung S10+ is 27 months old now. I'm charging it to 80% mainly daily. Had maybe max 20 full charges and only once or twice to zero. I'm at 86% battery health (according to 146 sessions). Was 92% six months after buying brand new.
I think it helps. Also since the battery is OK (4100mah), dont need that extra 20%.
EDIT: 15W Samsung "fast" charging. As fast as that is ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A Li is considered degraded when it reaches 80% of it's initial capacity. This signals the end of its useful service life.
Degraded Li's are more likely to fail.
Trust me it's better to replace it before it fails...
I think Better Battery Stats made that reco back in the day.
Charge to 80% and plug in at 10%.
Not so sure that really matters anymore though.
Both my 2 XL and Pixel 5 were plugged in before bed, unplugged when I got up, plugged back in when I hit 10-15% or when I went to bed.
If you plan on keeping your device for a long time (like 3-4 years) doing the unplug at 80% and plug in at 10% might make a diff.
Az Biker said:
I think Better Battery Stats made that reco back in the day.
Charge to 80% and plug in at 10%.
Not so sure that really matters anymore though.
Both my 2 XL and Pixel 5 were plugged in before bed, unplugged when I got up, plugged back in when I hit 10-15% or when I went to bed.
If you plan on keeping your device for a long time (like 3-4 years) doing the unplug at 80% and plug in at 10% might make a diff.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
10% is too low. It causes a lot of stress on the battery as it drops below 20% to charge from that starting point or lower.
Worse there's little usable energy after 20% because of the lower voltage. The phone uses the same wattage which is determined by V×A=W, so as the voltage drops it needs more milliamperes to make the same wattage. The discharge rate increases as the cell voltage drops.
A better low cut off is 30-40% or even higher and a high cutoff of 80% although 62% is optimum.
The Li likes frequent midrange power cycling. Charging beyond those parameters is for your convenience at the cost of battery lifespan.
Batteries are cheap and most are easy to replace... so I don't sweat it.
I expect a service life of 1-2 years on a heavily used N10+ battery.
However charging in the 40-72% range yields the most rapid fast charge in the shortest time so it makes sense to use this whenever convenient.
Well, I know things have been updated within Googles code itself.
"Adaptive Charging" / "Adatptive Connectivity" additions.
This was a real big problem for me with my HTC 10, (2016)
Battery degradation threads starting popping up.
I installed Accubattery after 1.5/2 years of owning the device and the battery was degraded to about 77% capacity at that time, IIRC. I was charging to 100% at that time, also.
So, I began charging stricly to 80%.
Compared to my HTC One M8 that to this day still has 90% capacity, and I used that device from the day Verizon released (3/2014) it until the day Verizon released the HTC 10 (5/2016).
I somehow managed to use the HTC 10 up until I bought the Pixel 5 on release day (10/2020).
I was charging the HTC 10 like 3 times a day just get through, and even went back to the HTC One M8 at one point because I had enough, but was waiting for the P5 to drop.
So to answer the question, I do believe it helps.
I do think that Adaptive charging/connectivity help, as well.
I take the view that if I don't need all the capacity on a particular day I charge no higher than 70%, which lands me around 30% end of day. Otherwise I'll guestimate what I need. Off to take some photo's tonight, so will probably charge it to 90% or so.
If you like fiddling around you can use something like Tasker to switch a smart plug that your charger's plugged into on and off at what you consider appropriate battery levels. Makes it all painless once set up. Or you can buy some extra hardware too. I use this in my car to limit the phone's max charge and temperature as, for me, I think most and fastest damage is done in a hot car float charging the phone at 100%.... https://chargie.org/ Not cheap but ok in my mind to hopefully extend the service life of the phone's battery. Less than the cost and hassle of replacing a battery anyway! (I'm not associated with Chargie other than as a customer)
OK, admittedly off-topic, but, this kind of sounds like a variation of the guidance I use for charging my electric car. Don't charge it unless it drops below 80% (so don't keep topping it up), but don't let it go below 20% regularly either. I mostly plug it in at around 60% and let it fully charge. Given the cost of a replacement battery would be more than the total value of the car, I hope this gives me 10 year of life.
Note10.1Dude said:
OK, admittedly off-topic, but, this kind of sounds like a variation of the guidance I use for charging my electric car. Don't charge it unless it drops below 80% (so don't keep topping it up), but don't let it go below 20% regularly either. I mostly plug it in at around 60% and let it fully charge. Given the cost of a replacement battery would be more than the total value of the car, I hope this gives me 10 year of life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
EV metering is set up differently. What shows as 100% is likely a conservative 80% charge. Research for that variant.
A 35-40% low cut off is probably better as going lower generates more heat causing needless stress... unless you need that capacity.
Just downloaded the accubattery app and then fully charged but it’s estimating 6,401mah. Must be wrong and needs to calibrate over a few days.
I’ve never had any problems charging to 100% before so I’m not stopping now. I’ll be deleting this app if it keeps warning me like it has done.
Andyzurbs said:
Just downloaded the accubattery app and then fully charged but it’s estimating 6,401mah. Must be wrong and needs to calibrate over a few days.
I’ve never had any problems charging to 100% before so I’m not stopping now. I’ll be deleting this app if it keeps warning me like it has done.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Turn it off then.
Andyzurbs said:
Just downloaded the accubattery app and then fully charged but it’s estimating 6,401mah. Must be wrong and needs to calibrate over a few days.
I’ve never had any problems charging to 100% before so I’m not stopping now. I’ll be deleting this app if it keeps warning me like it has done.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Accubattery just provides a guide. See here:
battery drain
Hello, I'm using a pixel 6 with two cards sim. When I go to sleep the phone is fully charged and internet/wifi is turned off. When i wake up i have 88% battery (I lose 1,5% per hour). In battery use i see Ims Service. I did a test and in...
forum.xda-developers.com
I used to cycle from full to empty on my Pixel 2 before recharging, at about 3 years the battery couldnt last until lunch anymore. This meant more cycling, and I could fully discharge/recharge it 3 or 4 times a day. Within 6 months the battery only lasted 5 minutes, it was stuffed. Phone always hot and needed to stay on a charger 24/7, would turn off if I opened the camera without usb power connected.
Held out about 6 months on a permanent usb battery bank, was such a slog to wait until the Pixel 6 was released.

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