Smarter power plan via USB - Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General

When connected to a computer via USB, there are two options, one is charge the battery one is not. But frequent plug in/off Kaiser with USB will frequently switch charge/uncharge status. Will this harm battery life?
Is there any smarter power plans, like whatever USB is connected, charge when battery level is below 2%.
Is there a setting/software could do this?

electronixtar said:
When connected to a computer via USB, there are two options, one is charge the battery one is not. But frequent plug in/off Kaiser with USB will frequently switch charge/uncharge status. Will this harm battery life?
Is there any smarter power plans, like whatever USB is connected, charge when battery level is below 2%.
Is there a setting/software could do this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's an idea for an application there. It shouldn't be too hard to cobble together either (famous last words). But the important factor is:
"Will this harm the battery life?"
If this is the case I will try and create an app, if there isn't one out there. If there is no harm to the battery, an app would be useless.
Dave

Related

Disable USB charging

Anyone has any idea why do we need to turn on "disable usb charging" ?
Settings -> Power -> Advanced
[ x ] When device is turned on, do not charge the battery when connected to the PC
In what situation?
One thing that I can think of ... is to preserve the battery to have a good condition by only charging if you have "enough time". That means, to charge until 100% and beyond.
Any more valid / good reason?
Thanks.
gogol said:
Anyone has any idea why do we need to turn on "disable usb charging" ?
Settings -> Power -> Advanced
[ x ] When device is turned on, do not charge the battery when connected to the PC
In what situation?
One thing that I can think of ... is to preserve the battery to have a good condition by only charging if you have "enough time". That means, to charge until 100% and beyond.
Any more valid / good reason?
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In my case, i thin is better to make three or four completes cycles of charge/discharge, so for the moment i use this option to prevent charging while i connect to PC to install or trasfer something....after complete discharge, i charge full...
Regards.
Hi,
It's probably to preserve Laptop/Notebook battery when on the go...
alexxo said:
Hi,
It's probably to preserve Laptop/Notebook battery when on the go...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, this is another one.... i don't have a laptop so i don't think in it
I reckon its so you can plug it into a unpowered USB hub which is near its limit of how much power it can supply...
g
charging
i think it might have something to do with the amps/volts, i'm not a scientist as you could already tell, but i do know that you shouldn't use a motorola charger to charge an htc product. i used a razr charger to charge my dash once and it killed the battery pretty well. so i figure you shouldnt use a non-approved charger to charge your device, be it via laptop or any other charger that didnt come in the box
My bet is that this is about battery life. I think that these batteries do best (live longest) if they go through complete charge-discharge cycles at least every 30 days.
I plug my TyTn into my computer when I am in the office and, unlike ACtiveSync, the charge always works!
I vote for the portable use theory as well, so you don't drain the battery on a laptop or unpowered hub that can't supply the additional current.
RemE said:
I vote for the portable use theory as well, so you don't drain the battery on a laptop or unpowered hub that can't supply the additional current.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm with you on this one. Current gen batteries don't need to be cycled so much for optimal performance. However, charging your phone via USB will drain your PC's battery more quickly if you are on the go.
The Kaiser draws a lot of current. Even when charging by USB I have seen the battery level dropping.
I have seen quite frequently USB ports being disabled due to too high current draw, making the connection unstable. If this was a problem this option would prevent it.
Surur
quite a few posts here about li-ion batteries and how best to look after them:
http://www.modaco.com/Warning-Battery-Chargin-t233233.html
That's good stuff especially the Wiki on them. I use a lot of lithiums at work and play. Bottom line, don't run them flat, ever, that's the only thing that will ruin them quickly. Most devices have protection circuitry to prevent this by shutting down. When you get to this point the battery should be charged ASAP because the small amount of drainage in the device will take the battery past the critical low point if left in this very low state for any length of time (say more than a few days).
Cycling really doesn't do much for lithiums, their total capacity decreases from date of manufacture slowly over time, weather you use them alot or not. This is unlike other batteries.
Best storage state for lithiums is 50%, not full. But in a phone, best rule is to just top them up whenever possible, plus you never know when you are going to get that marathon phone call
As a few others have alluded to, this is used when you're tethering on the go. WM5 / 8525 doesn't have this switch, so when tethering via USB on the 8525, it will literally suck the life out of my laptop battery.
Glad to hear that this switch was added in WM6 / Kaiser.
The best battery information I found is here: http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm
Summary (for li-ion batteries, as in Kaiser):
1. Avoid full discharge; partial discharge/charge cycle is better. However, a full charge/discharge cycle once every 30 times is useful to keep battery gauge calibrated correctly (doesn't really help longevity, but prevents erroneous gauge from forcing early retirement of the battery).
2. Avoid prolonged storage at full charge and/or high heat (optimal charge is ~40%).
3. Avoid high rates of charge or discharge. Presumably the charge rate is already set at an acceptable rate by the manufacturer; as for discharge, it probably can't be helped if you need to run some ultra-high load applications on the phone. One thing this confirms: it is good to charge the battery using the USB; the possibly lower voltage available during the USB charge is helping, not hurting, the battery. So definitely, the "do not charge when plugged in" option is only to save your laptop battery, not to help the phone battery.
As said already in this thread, its so you can connect to a non-powered usb hub or a laptop usb port that can't supply enough.
WM devices normally detect supplied power and go into charge mode before they are polled by the PC/Laptop via Activesync for data transfer. If the charge system pulls the port down then data transfer is disrupted.
When tethered to a laptop and the laptop is running on battery, you may want to disable charging to conserve the laptop's battery.
This is the answer I got from batteries4less where I bought a replacement battery for my 8525.
You should generally charge your battery every night. It is not good to do
it continually during the day. It will wear it down faster. Thank you
Alix Kane
CBW Customer Service Rep.
Cellphone Battery Warehouse
www.batteries4less.com
1800-300-9993
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
By the way.....shameless plug: I ordered a battery late on thursday afternoon and received my replacement battery on saturday and installed it in the phone. On monday I bought the Tilt 8925 and then emailed that I bought a new phone and asked them if I could exchange it for a Tilt 8925 battery and the next email I received from them about an hour or so later said the new battery was on the way and to send the 8525 battery back in that package.
These guys will get my battery business from now on.
Years ago i had a t-mobile dash also known as an htc excalibur, and i would use it to tether to my computer for 6 to 8 hours a day as a high speed modem and low and behold, it burnt out the battery. I bought a new battery and switched to Kaiser OS that had an option to disable usb charging and never had a problem after that... Now if you only connect to a computer to transfer a few files back and forth every onle in a while then there probably wont be a problem because that is not going to drain your battery very fast so it will only charge every once in a while and that is ok. But when you tether to a computer to use your phone as a high speed modem it takes ALOT of battery power. I saw a post in a different thread here on xda that said that when your battery reaches 100% that it stops charging. Yes that is correct. But even though the battery will stop charging at 100%. As soon as it drops 5 or 10 % is starts charging again and when you tether your phone as a modem it will drop 5 or 10% within minutes so your phone will basically be charging nonstop which is defiantly not good for a battery and that my friends is what the disable usb charging is for.
Just as an added statement for those of you that disagree with what i have said. Try it yourself and see what happens. Tether your phone to your computer as a modem and surf the net, and play games, and download stuff for 6 or more hours a day. I bet in just a few weeks or months you will be replacing your battery too.
Reason to turn off phone charging when connected to PC
I installed "Syncois iOS & Android Manager FREE" to back up my Android phone data to my PC. The program would not work if my phone was charging when connected to my PC, it told me. So, I had to turn that charging option off. Outside of that, I will always have my phone charge when connected to my PC. Hope this helps!

Strange Power settings Option

Does anyone know what the new setting in the Power settings mean, and I am talking about:
"When device is turned on, do not charge the battery when connected to PC"
Either I do not understand what it menas or this is a totally useless feature... Why would I not want to charge my device while connected to USB?? Save the battery of your LAPTOP ??
yep. or keep pda's battery in better condition and charge only when it is almost empty...
Yes, when portable, or connected to a non powered USB port or hub, the phone won't be tapping power. Not bad to have a choice.
Lithium batteries do not need or like to be deep cycled.
With Li-ion batteries I think the best thing to do is top them up all the time. There is even some talk that running to empty doesnt do them any good.
Matt.

How to prolong battery life?

after upgrading to wm6.1 my xda's battery runs out comparatively faster then when it was running wm2003.
any tips to prolongs it battery life?
many thanks in advance
1) Minimize the use of wireless components: turn InfraRed (receive beam) and BlueTooth off when not using them.
2) Camera and full-screen graphics (games!) are a battery drain.
3. The OK button doesn't kill programs, use a taskmanager that doesn't allow them to stay alive in the background
4 animated gif's drain the battery, even when running invisible in the background
5 himalaya's are relatively old devices, lots of us still use the original batteries. Buying a new battery can make a world of difference
6 personally I have no problems with my battery, although it's still the original one, quite the contrary. It takes me an awful long time even when I deliberately drain it. When I'm working on my desktop computer, the Hima is always connected. During a 2 week holiday I had to recharge twice.
7 use a battery meter software to show you if it's fully charged.
couldnt agree more
the himas are very old devices, probably the second ever made Pocket pc, we should be happy they can run WM6.1 and hopefully WM6.5 too
btw Nice to See you Maggy
Thanks!!
thanks a lot to all of you for your quick replies.
i usually do all the things that you suggested in your posts like closing all the programs using a task manager and disabling the infrared beam recieving option etc.
but i guess the problem is i play a lot of heavy usage games.
my battery usually drains out in max 3 days of normal usage.
one more question: does it make any difference if i charge the hima when my pc is turned off? does it cause any harm to the battery or is the same as charging it when pc is turned on?
the hima wont charge if the Pc is off, to Charge it better, connect it via your Wall charger
Sorry Ather, for a change I have to disagree with you. Of course, when you turn your computer off using a mains switch, there's no 5V on the USB ports for more time than needed to drain the capacitors. But when you turn it off using the Start > shutdown or the "power" button on front of your computer (actually doing the same thing) lots of computers still leave 5V on the USB ports.
The "hardware" power button is software configurable, mine is configured as hibernate. After pressing it, Windows still responds by shutting down programs and processes and storing settings. So this same "hardware" power button needs to have power to understand you when you want to turn your computer back on. Lots of USB keyboards have an "on/off" button. That wouldn't work if it was a real on/off switch.
In the DOS era all power switches were still real hardware. In the early days of multitasking this has lead to lots of disasters by people forgetting to save their day's work that was still active in the background.
It is however good to watch the charge led on the Hima carefully. My Dell only keeps power on the on/off switch, the two PS2 ports, the two primary USB pots and the ethernet connector. The HP's I know give power to all USB ports all the time, no brand clones have different approaches.
sidxda said:
... my battery usually drains out in max 3 days of normal usage ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is a relatively long battery life. My own hima, now five years old, only lasts one day. It still runs on the original battery.
Same here...
kinderenh said:
That is a relatively long battery life. My own hima, now five years old, only lasts one day. It still runs on the original battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here... My battery also last for only one day. In addition it turns off when the battery is 20%. Earlier it was 5%. Is it because the battery is bad or Is it possible to configure this level in the registry?
Unfortunately, i dont have a wall charger for my hima. and therefore i can only chrage it via pc. i have lots of spare chargers though, so if someone can please specify how many volts and amps (the important details) the charger is, it would be great.
and with normal usage my xda runs for about two days.
thanks to all of u for ur input
5volts
and amps is not something pushed into a charging device
it's drawn a device will draw amps and it's a matter of how
much the supply can provide
the output voltage is 5V
the output amperage is 1 ah or 1000 mah
if you charge ur device with usb that mean 5V and 500 mah
this not enough this take 4 hours to charge ur device
but if u use 1 ah u can get 1 hours and a little
thanks
i'll try it out

Anyway of disabling usb charging on Galaxy S I9000?

Hi folks,
Been searching for a hack or tool to disable usb charging while connecting device to laptop usb port to prolong battery life. But to my disappointment, there's none at the moment
Aren't there any solution for this at all from the developers?
So far, the only tool that I've googled is USB Charge Commander but that doesn't work on Galaxy S
It's designed for ZTE Blade/Orange San Francisco handset only.
Appreciate for any tips given. Thanks!
Sassy,
there is no need for such a tool. Since you are using a Lithium-ion battery this would NOT prolong your battery life. This type of battery has no such thing as a memory effect. The battery will take no damage if you charge it every time. You don´t have to wait till it is fully empty. Actually, if you discharge your battery completely every time, it may cause shorter battery life in the end...
Have Fun
Chris
How about this for a reason:
I don't want the phone to charge off of my laptop which itself is running off of a battery, but I do need a USB connection for application debugging. My laptop's battery does not last nearly as long as my phone, so I would prefer that the phone does not charge via USB when my laptop is running on batteries.
No solution?
USB charging shortens battery life
Indeed, I've been looking for such a solution of USB connection without charging for my Galaxy S. I also came across a suggestion of clipping the power +5V wire of the USB cable which I believe would not work as that would disable the detection of USB connection.
Back to the battery life of lithium battery, we know that partial discharge is fine as there is no memory effect. However, every discharging cycle matters and counts if we believe the info from the Battery University page, Table 2 (batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries). According to the test and assumptions, if we charge the battery at 10% of Depth of Discharging (or approx. 90% of capacity), we have 4700 cycles before the battery is worn out. Yeah, 4700 seems a big number. It is not that big if we connect our phone via USB to a PC very often.
We don't know the exact no. of discharge/charge cycles a li-ion battery on our mobile phone can tolerates before its end of life. If you believe EVERY CYCLE COUNTS, you'd better find a solution.
Franky
You can try using File Expert https://market.android.com/details?id=xcxin.filexpert&feature=related_apps for accessing the files via WIFI or connect your phone via Bluetooth.
rustamabd said:
My laptop's battery does not last nearly as long as my phone, so I would prefer that the phone does not charge via USB when my laptop is running on batteries.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Typical laptop batteries are around the 4.4Ah mark, the phone draws 95mA from the USB port while charging. This means you could charge your phone continuously for 46 hours off a typical laptop. You won't notice the difference in practical usage at all. This is about the same amount of power as your laptop CPU doing actual work for a few minutes. There are many other factors that have a far greater impact on your laptop battery than charging a phone.
pistachia said:
We have 4700 cycles before the battery is worn out. Yeah, 4700 seems a big number. It is not that big if we connect our phone via USB to a PC very often.
...
If you believe EVERY CYCLE COUNTS, you'd better find a solution.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you look at the table in detail you'll find that 4700 cycles at 10% recharge is roughly 10 times the 500 cycles at 100% recharge. It's an almost linear relationship and there's nothing to be gained by letting your phone discharge further rather than putting it back on charge when it drops to 10%. The cycles aren't a counter after which suddenly everything stops.
Also they are hammering their battery pretty hard. A 1C charge is roughly 4 times higher than what the SGS battery experiences. The faster the charge the lower the life, so expect your phone to last longer than 4700 cycles.
On top of everything with replacement batteries costing a whole $5 it's not worth losing sleep over.
Yeah, you're right. If a replacement battery costs that little, even my quoted analysis really matters, it does not worth 'counting' at all! Just use the way you want and make sure you got one replacement before it's out of market.
garbz said:
...the phone draws 95mA from the USB port...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you sure about this? Where does this info come from? The info I have is 500mA for a USB 2.0 port...
The option is available in MIUI

Quick question about charging a mobile battery

Quick question. If you leave your phone plugged in and its fully charged and your using it, is the phone just leeching off the charger for power or is the charger pushing out small bursts of power to the battery. The context of my question is i'm starting to use webtop alot and I leave my phone on all day plugged in. Is continuing this behavior going to impact my battery or does the phone just leech directly off the charger without using the battery?
It's fine to leave it plugged in all the time. The phone has a "smart circuit" that use what is called trickle charge to just continually top off the battery as it drops below full charge. The phone is designed such that it doesn't receive power directly from the charger or USB cable, unless the +5v DC current is on pin 1 like a factory flash cable.
Bottom line is there is no damage or shortening of the life of the battery to leave it charging all the time while in the dock or any other means and Li Ion batteries no not have memory problems.
On a related note, is there any damage in using low-power chargers?
I have an external solar-powered battery charger that also supports USB-out, and I find that it doesn't put out enough power to really charge the battery, but it can keep the battery at its current charge level (whenever it is plugged in) for the equivalent of one charge (so the phone could theoretically last 2ish days).
I'm wondering whether this is constantly charging/discharging the battery (bad thing), or just providing enough power to run the phone (good thing).
I've also seen a similar behavior when charging over USB. If I'm using the phone a lot, sometimes a usb port doesn't supply enough juice to charge the phone.
I also saw this in some (rarer) cases with my OG Droid, but I didn't pay it much mind because I had 3 batteries for that thing and you could pick them up for a few dollars off of Amazon.com.
Thanks!
cellzealot said:
It's fine to leave it plugged in all the time. The phone has a "smart circuit" that use what is called trickle charge to just continually top off the battery as it drops below full charge. The phone is designed such that it doesn't receive power directly from the charger or USB cable, unless the +5v DC current is on pin 1 like a factory flash cable.
Bottom line is there is no damage or shortening of the life of the battery to leave it charging all the time while in the dock or any other means and Li Ion batteries no not have memory problems.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you so much for your response. I had a feeling it was something like this. Good old "smart circuit".
podspi said:
On a related note, is there any damage in using low-power chargers?
I have an external solar-powered battery charger that also supports USB-out, and I find that it doesn't put out enough power to really charge the battery, but it can keep the battery at its current charge level (whenever it is plugged in) for the equivalent of one charge (so the phone could theoretically last 2ish days).
I'm wondering whether this is constantly charging/discharging the battery (bad thing), or just providing enough power to run the phone (good thing).
I've also seen a similar behavior when charging over USB. If I'm using the phone a lot, sometimes a usb port doesn't supply enough juice to charge the phone.
I also saw this in some (rarer) cases with my OG Droid, but I didn't pay it much mind because I had 3 batteries for that thing and you could pick them up for a few dollars off of Amazon.com.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To my knowledge, there is no reason a low power charger should present any problem, but charging from the USB on a PC is limited to 350mA and will definitely not push enough current to charge the phone while it is under heavy use like Mobile Hotspot tethering with LTE or even 3g.
The standard wall charger is 850mA and even that can sometimes only keep up or charge very slowly under heavy load.
USB spec is [email protected] not 350mA. But yes, a dedicated charger probably will charge faster. Some may go as high as 1A output...
Sent from my DROID4 using Tapatalk

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