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Is it necessary to charge my phone for 8 hrs?

Is it really necessary to charge my phone for 8 hrs before the first use? I just got my phone and i dont know whether or not charge for 8 hrs or just use it right out of the box. thanks guys!

It's not 'necessary', your phone won't brink if you don't do it.
However, if you condition your battery - charge for 8 hours on first use and then drain it until it's dead, and repeat 2 or 3 times, the battery will have a much better life and useage time (in my experience). This is because all batteries have memory, even ones that say they don't.

xconradx said:
It's not 'necessary', your phone won't brink if you don't do it.
However, if you condition your battery - charge for 8 hours on first use and then drain it until it's dead, and repeat 2 or 3 times, the battery will have a much better life and useage time (in my experience). This is because all batteries have memory, even ones that say they don't.
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Are you sure what you are talking able? Li-ion don't have memory effect. And if fact "A stand-alone Li-ion cell must never be discharged below a certain voltage to avoid irreversible damage." (quote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_ion_battery)

so its not necessary? im confused what did everyone else do when you first received your phone?

I work in the business... I'm sure.
First off, wikipedia is not the most reliable source. Second, your phone won't let you discharge your battery that far, it will shut off long before the battery gets that dead. Lithium Ion batterys can lack the 'memory effect' (effect being the keyword), but they do have memory.
Either way, no need to get up in arms about it. Just charge your phone up all the way, use it till the kaiser tells you to recharge, something like "Replace or recharge your battery to avoid data loss". It's like 10 or 15 percent. When you get there plug it in and charge it all the way up.
You arnt going to hurt your battery as posted above. Correct, if you get way too low you may have issues (why batteries go dead when they sit for a long time), but your kaiser won't let that happen. It will shut itself off first.

xconradx said:
I work in the business... I'm sure.
First off, wikipedia is not the most reliable source. Second, your phone won't let you discharge your battery that far, it will shut off long before the battery gets that dead. Lithium Ion batterys can lack the 'memory effect' (effect being the keyword), but they do have memory.
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Thanks for the info. If they don't have the effect, then what's that memory going to hurt us?

jackleung said:
Thanks for the info. If they don't have the effect, then what's that memory going to hurt us?
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I'm not completely sure what you are asking... but...
The memory won't hurt you. True, you could probably take it right out of the box and use it however you wanted. The memory just helps tell the battery know when it's completely full (to switch to trickle charging if supported by the application), or when it's dead and in danger.
I'm too lazy to try and explain it, so I copied this... I should have refered to it earlier as "digital memory" earlier because it's not at all the same as NiCAD memory which is what most people understand - hope this clarifies.
From - http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm
"Although lithium-ion is memory-free in terms of performance deterioration, batteries with fuel gauges exhibit what engineers refer to as "digital memory". Here is the reason: Short discharges with subsequent recharges do not provide the periodic calibration needed to synchronize the fuel gauge with the battery's state-of-charge. A deliberate full discharge and recharge every 30 charges corrects this problem. Letting the battery run down to the cut-off point in the equipment will do this. If ignored, the fuel gauge will become increasingly less accurate." ...
"Batteries with fuel gauge (laptops, *cell phone {added by me}) should be calibrated by applying a deliberate full discharge once every 30 charges. Running the pack down in the equipment does this. If ignored, the fuel gauge will become increasingly less accurate and in some cases cut off the device prematurely. "
Hope this helps. There is a reason why the manufacturer recommends this. Battery performance as well as the accuracy of your gauge can somewhat depend on this sort of conditioning. This is the reason you may see your battery gauge go up after a restart, or when you charge your phone it may say 90% one second and 100% a few later.
Regardless, this is a crash course in batteries.

[Q] Sudden decrease in battery life

Hello guys.
I know you're all tired of people QQing about battery life, but I've yet to find a thread that addresses my issue.
Anyways, I'm running cog 4.2.2, and recently I've seen a drastic decrease in battery life with no change in the way i use my phone, no new apps, and no new roms. I've calibrated my battery about 5 times now, and the same for rebuilding my batterystats.bin. I used to be able to make it through a full day without charging with battery to spare, now it dies sometime in the evening even after bumping the battery charge several times. I charge it every chance I get (between classes, when I'm adding files to it via usb, etc) and it STILL dies. at one point, I observed that my battery dropped 15% in 30 minutes. I used os monitor to check if any apps were running using a lot of cpu, but nothing uses more than about 1% (most things usually show 0%) except the operating system itself, which is at about 7%. Should I just cave and buy a new battery from amazon, or is there something else I can try, short of flashing a different rom?

iamtheculprit said:
Should I just cave and buy a new battery from amazon, or is there something else I can try, short of flashing a different rom?
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Yes 10 char

maybe your batterystats are ****ed up? i deleted the file once before with sgs tools and then wiped dalvik cache and it for some reason seemed to fix my battery issues, and sped up my system somewhat

Don't bump charge so much. Lithium ion batteries aren't designed to go to 100 so often and over charging can result in decrease longevity of the battery itself. The phone has a feature to prevent over charging. When it's on the charger the second it reaches 100 it will stop charging and let the battery trickle down to 95 or so and starts that cycle over again. Too much bump charging can actually damage the battery.
After deleting the batterystats.bin do you let it go through a few full drain and charge cycles before making a judgement on the battery life?

studacris said:
Don't bump charge so much. Lithium ion batteries aren't designed to go to 100 so often and over charging can result in decrease longevity of the battery itself.
After deleting the batterystats.bin do you let it go through a few full drain and charge cycles before making a judgement on the battery life?
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I realize that, and I can't make it through the day without charging it. I only charge it when it's at less than 10% though.
Also, I have deleted the batterystats.bin and let it go through a full drain and several charge cycles. It didn't help at all.
Also it's worth noting that today I left it on the charger powered off after it reached 100% while powered on. I left it plugged in for three hours, and it never indicated 100% while powered down. It stayed at about 90% full, more or less.

replacement oem batteries are relatively cheap, cause it sounds like you got a lemon. Sorry man.

studacris said:
Replacement batteries are relatively cheap, sounds like you got a lemon. Sorry man.
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For 8 bucks, it's worth a shot. The most perplexing thing is that it won't max out while the phone is shut off. Tell-tale sign of effed up battery?

iamtheculprit said:
For 8 bucks, it's worth a shot. The most perplexing thing is that it won't max out while the phone is shut off. Tell-tale sign of effed up battery?
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Yeah that would raise a big red flag for me.
Try a different rom see if that offers any better battery life, I doubt it but It's completely free to try. Something to mess with while you wait for a replacement. And if it turns out to work then you will have 2 batteries.

simbill said:
maybe your batterystats are ****ed up? i deleted the file once before with sgs tools and then wiped dalvik cache and it for some reason seemed to fix my battery issues, and sped up my system somewhat
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Click to collapse
going to try wiping the dalvik cache before I order the battery. Wiped batterystats.bin while I was at it. Maybe it'll help.

I got about 11-12 hours today, but I did nothing but text really. This is after full charge, deleting dal cache, and deleting batterystats.bin and then restarting. I mean I recieved a few pics but I really didn't do anything on my phone today other than that. That's just pathetic, since before I was getting through a full day (8:30-2am roughly) with battery to spare and I was using it a lot more heavily than I did today.

[Q] Battery capacity/ calibration problems

Hi there. New here.
I have a Galaxy S I9000 running CM7.1.
Recently, I have bought one of these fat batteries from here:
dealextreme.com/p/3-7v-3500mah-high-capacity-battery-pack-with-back-cover-for-samsung-i9000-galaxy-s-54276
I did not have much expectations, but the reviews were pretty positive, so I went for it.
To my "surprise", the thing did not work much better than the original battery. Obviously I went around looking for what could be the issue (I did not give up on it just yet), and I found all sorts of data about "battery calibration" techniques and such.
I charged the thing to 100%, and used the "battery calibration" APP from the Market. Did a reboot, and took it for a spin (day of avg. usage). Nothing changed about the performance of the battery.
I gave up and returned the old battery. Re-did the calibration procedure from above ("just in case").
To my surprise, all these games apparently "damaged" the battery life of the original battery somehow!
I got down to 50% charge after 10hrs of *no usage* at all (The battery stats show 40% for "cell standby"). No CPU intensive processes were running during this time.
Now, it's obvious that the battery itself did not get damaged in any way. What this does show, however, is that this "calibration" procedure did have some unexpected "persistent" impact.
One thing for sure, is that I do not understand what actually happens during this "calibration" procedure. From what I read, it deletes some "battery stats" file that is later regenerated by the OS over time.
My questions are as follows:
1) Any one seen anything like this before?
2) Will the "life" of the original battery "improve" as time goes by (as the battery stats are collected), or am I screwed without doing something about it?
3) Is there still hope for the fat battery I bought? Seeing that there are significant "energy losses" dues to some software calibration issues.
4) Is there a "right" way for switching between batteries with different capacities?
4) Anyone can recommend some APP that shows better stats about the battery? For instance, a representation of the contents of this "battery stats" file? How many MAHs the battery "has"? Any kind of interesting "debug" data?
I'd really love to have my (battery) life back.
Thanks.

Bump.
Anyone?

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1283316
Sent from my GT-I9000 using xda premium

keyme said:
Hi there. New here.
I have a Galaxy S I9000 running CM7.1.
Recently, I have bought one of these fat batteries from here:
dealextreme.com/p/3-7v-3500mah-high-capacity-battery-pack-with-back-cover-for-samsung-i9000-galaxy-s-54276
I did not have much expectations, but the reviews were pretty positive, so I went for it.
To my "surprise", the thing did not work much better than the original battery. Obviously I went around looking for what could be the issue (I did not give up on it just yet), and I found all sorts of data about "battery calibration" techniques and such.
I charged the thing to 100%, and used the "battery calibration" APP from the Market. Did a reboot, and took it for a spin (day of avg. usage). Nothing changed about the performance of the battery.
I gave up and returned the old battery. Re-did the calibration procedure from above ("just in case").
To my surprise, all these games apparently "damaged" the battery life of the original battery somehow!
I got down to 50% charge after 10hrs of *no usage* at all (The battery stats show 40% for "cell standby"). No CPU intensive processes were running during this time.
Now, it's obvious that the battery itself did not get damaged in any way. What this does show, however, is that this "calibration" procedure did have some unexpected "persistent" impact.
One thing for sure, is that I do not understand what actually happens during this "calibration" procedure. From what I read, it deletes some "battery stats" file that is later regenerated by the OS over time.
My questions are as follows:
1) Any one seen anything like this before?
2) Will the "life" of the original battery "improve" as time goes by (as the battery stats are collected), or am I screwed without doing something about it?
3) Is there still hope for the fat battery I bought? Seeing that there are significant "energy losses" dues to some software calibration issues.
4) Is there a "right" way for switching between batteries with different capacities?
4) Anyone can recommend some APP that shows better stats about the battery? For instance, a representation of the contents of this "battery stats" file? How many MAHs the battery "has"? Any kind of interesting "debug" data?
I'd really love to have my (battery) life back.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1) You're running CM7 which is known to be a battery hog so dont expect phenomenal battery life with it. Also a lot of the aftermarket batteries are fakes with their actual mAH being even lesser than that of the original samsung battery the i9000 ships with. And the battery you bought costs $15 which is way too cheap for a 3500mAH battery which basically means the battery is a fake and you were ripped off.
2) After deleting the battery stats during the calibration process it takes a few charge-discharge cycles for the battery 'life' to improve. Give it a week to settle in.
3) there is no hope for the battery you bought, unless you can return it for a refund maybe? if you cant return it, you might want to take off the battery label and see the actual mAH of the fat battery (as this is sometimes printed on the plastic shell of the battery underneath the label).
4) When switching batteries you simply run the battery calibration after you've fully charged the new battery in your handset and then you drain it until the phone fails to boot. Then you charge it to 100% without turning the handset on
5) Battery Monitor Widget is an app you might want to take a look at but it does not have the exact battery capacity for each phone pre-fed into its databases since the battery capacities vary with the manufacturer and model of each handset. It relies on you entering the exact battery capacity from your battery label into the application before it can function properly.

Thanks for the response.
I'll do a few charge / discharge cycles, and see if it improves over the week.
Just for science, I peeled off the label of the fat battery and found no useful data there. Only some kind of S/N which did not show any results on Google.
Shame. I guess I'll just leave a negative review for the battery and be smart enough the next time.

battery calibration is useless

it was revealed by "Dianne Hackborn" from google android team a while ago. i'm posting it here because some of p970 users still doing this calibration thing.
here is the post:
"The battery indicator in the status/notification bar is a reflection of the batterystats.bin file in the data/system/ directory."
No, it does not.
This file is used to maintain, across reboots, low-level data about the kinds of operations the device and your apps are doing between battery changes. That is, it is solely used to compute the blame for battery usage shown in the "Battery Use" UI in settings.
That is, it has deeply significant things like "app X held a wake lock for 2 minutes" and "the screen was on at 60% brightness for 10 minutes."
It has no impact on the current battery level shown to you.
It has no impact on your battery life.
Deleting it is not going to do anything to make your more device more fantastic and wonderful... well, unless you have some deep hatred for seeing anything shown in the battery usage UI. And anyway, it is reset every time you unplug from power with a relatively full charge (thus why the battery usage UI data resets at that point), so this would be a much easier way to make it go away.
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Click to collapse

murrun said:
it was revealed by "Dianne Hackborn" from google android team a while ago. i'm posting it here because some of p970 users still doing this calibration thing.
here is the post:
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Click to collapse
lol you got it all wrong. he says that the battery indicator has nothing to do with tje battery stats app and then explains whar battery stats app does. this has nothing to do with calibration and if you still think calibration is useless then do a simple check. after a period of not calibrating your battery and using your phone heavily (2-3 hours of gaming for example), or even better after using your phone extensively while charging, let it go to full 100%. At that point when the phone thinks that it is full it stops charging cause the integrated safety tells it that it is full. turn off the phone remove battery for a couple of minutes and then insert it and plug it on charger. you will notice that it is charging again. turn it on withou unplugging and see the battery level. can be as low as 80ish %. which means that if you hadnt done that all that juice would not charge and be left unused. try it...

jimakos29 said:
lol you got it all wrong.
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Well, no, actually you did. What she said was that deleting the batterystats.bin does nothing more that resetting the battery usage tracking. She also said what's in the file and it sure looks like it could not even be used for anything else. You could check the code to see. Otherwise, just trust her.

1aca said:
Well, no, actually you did. What she said was that deleting the batterystats.bin does nothing more that resetting the battery usage tracking. She also said what's in the file and it sure looks like it could not even be used for anything else. You could check the code to see. Otherwise, just trust her.
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yeah but calibration is not about battery stats. is about geting your phone to understand that it is not fully charged yet even though it thinks it is. try what I suggested and you will see. the apps for calibration do nothing as they say when it is fulmy charged leave it for some more till the program tells you it is ok. actually when phone perceives itself as charged it stops charging so those programs do nothing. It is all about forcing it to fully charge once in a while (I do it once a month) by removing battery once it says it is charged and reinserting after a few minutes and recharge it and then repeating until the time that i plug it and it wont charge anymore. wiping battery stats is NOT calibrating never was or never considered calibrating. and the thread was about how calibration doesn't work (which does) not about how battery stats wiping doesn't work (which it doesnt)... so if op doesn't distingush between calibration and battery wiping and refera to the latter as the former then it is not my fault. To sum up,what the op said was that we shouldnt do calibrations because wiping battery stats doesn't work and what I said was that battery stats has nothing to do with calibration.

i'm not android veteran. but when i came across "batery calibration" term, it means "removing batterystats" at this community. so, i gues my point isn't that wrong.

murrun said:
i'm not android veteran. but when i came across "batery calibration" term, it means "removing batterystats" at this community. so, i gues my point isn't that wrong.
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well unfortunately it is not. by all means try what i said and you will see that although your battery appears charged it will charge some more and again and again before it stops charging and is really full. if i doesnt then it is calibrated if not it getsvcalibrated when after inserting it, it wont charge anymore. then after some time again (maybe a month maybe less) you will see it happening again. trust me batteries is what I make a living from.

I don't see how calibrating could hurt so if you think it helps do it. If you don't, then leave it. I did it after flashing and no ill effects.

jimakos29 said:
yeah but calibration is not about battery stats. is about geting your phone to understand that it is not fully charged yet even though it thinks it is. try what I suggested and you will see. the apps for calibration do nothing as they say when it is fulmy charged leave it for some more till the program tells you it is ok. actually when phone perceives itself as charged it stops charging so those programs do nothing. It is all about forcing it to fully charge once in a while (I do it once a month) by removing battery once it says it is charged and reinserting after a few minutes and recharge it and then repeating until the time that i plug it and it wont charge anymore. wiping battery stats is NOT calibrating never was or never considered calibrating.
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Click to collapse
That's just plain wrong. Shall I link to a few respected "battery calibration" tutorials that revolve around deleting the batterystats.bin? Heck, there's even an option for it in CWM Recovery.
jimakos29 said:
and the thread was about how calibration doesn't work (which does) not about how battery stats wiping doesn't work (which it doesnt)... so if op doesn't distingush between calibration and battery wiping and refera to the latter as the former then it is not my fault. To sum up,what the op said was that we shouldnt do calibrations because wiping battery stats doesn't work and what I said was that battery stats has nothing to do with calibration.
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Click to collapse
So what do you think happens when you remove the battery from your phone for a few minutes then put it back?

Battery Stats myth
1aca said:
That's just plain wrong. Shall I link to a few respected "battery calibration" tutorials that revolve around deleting the batterystats.bin? Heck, there's even an option for it in CWM Recovery.
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Click to collapse
I have done and still doing a lot of reading in this regard. The battery stats can only be held responsible for calibration if it holds amperage and voltage values set for the phone stock battery. That myth is currently considered debunked as this file is considered only to be linked for UI purposes. It all comes down to how actually does the phone measure the battery level. If there were in-built values for voltages and current, the concept of plug and play extended batteries would be doomed and they would have been accompanied by a detailed calibration process. Then there is also the discussion of Max 17042 (I am a SGS2 user), the fuel gauge chip and how it works. Frankly, I think we first need to understand how the phone measures the battery and against which parameters, are they preset or change on the go and what are the limits.
1aca said:
So what do you think happens when you remove the battery from your phone for a few minutes then put it back?
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Click to collapse
I was trying this method just now and what happened was after i got the 100% signal, i unplugged the battery and after giving it a rest of few minutes, plugged it back in (a new 2000 mAH extended battery by Samsung). When i l plugged in the charger again, it start charging back showing that there was either power leakage or that is what calibration is all about. Did that two three times and when finally switched the phone on, it was 100%.

samurai jacko said:
I was trying this method just now and what happened was after i got the 100% signal, i unplugged the battery and after giving it a rest of few minutes, plugged it back in (a new 2000 mAH extended battery by Samsung). When i l plugged in the charger again, it start charging back showing that there was either power leakage or that is what calibration is all about.
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Click to collapse
You are doing what is needed to reach real 100%, a second charge cycle, see article.
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries/
As stated there it will reduce battery life but increase runtime after charge...
There's nothing good without evil ;-)

murrun said:
it was revealed by "Dianne Hackborn" from google android team a while ago. i'm posting it here because some of p970 users still doing this calibration thing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if you got clockworkmod recovery charge your phone to 100% (8-12 hours charge should do) then go to your recovery then select advanced then there should be option for wiping battery. Hopefully it'll work!!!

Consistently Incorrect Battery Percentage

Hey all,
I have had terrible misfortune in the realm of battery stats. Ever since CM7 (and maybe even before) my phone is unable to figure out how much battery is left. Here is a common scenario:
Charge phone overnight, use phone throughout day, battery dies after 6-7 hours of moderate-heavy usage. I plug it in, reboot, and then it reports ~60% battery left.
Another common scenario is that it will dwindle around 5% battery or less and go up and down until it finally dies.
I know that this is a misreading of the battery and not battery drain or a rogue app because when I flash a new ROM the battery life is amazing for 1 day. The day after I flashed Team Hacksung's ICS rom, I got almost 17 hours of battery life with 2.75 hours of the display being on and 30 minutes of Google Music. I was blown away! But even then it was dwindling around 5% not knowing when it would actually run out. The day after, it was back to its old tricks of misreporting the battery percentage.
Today I charged it to 100%, unplugged it, and shut it off. Then I plugged it in while it was off and let it charge to 100% again and wiped battery stats in Clockwork mod. I'm getting ok-ish battery with that, but it's not even close to how good it was when I first flashed ICS.
Anyone have any ideas what I could try?
Thanks!

When you wiped the battery stats did you let the battery fully discharge and shut off before charging again?
After wiping battery stats it is recommended to let the phone fully discharge to the point where it will automatically shut off.

Keep in mind with the age of our phones, it could just mean your battery is dying. Try the above method, but in my experience uncalibrated battery only last a few days. The phone will "fix" it by itself the longer you use it.

j.curtis.369 said:
When you wiped the battery stats did you let the battery fully discharge and shut off before charging again?
After wiping battery stats it is recommended to let the phone fully discharge to the point where it will automatically shut off.
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Click to collapse
That's what I'm doing currently. Battery life seems improved, but we'll see what happens. It's nearing death now, ~6%. At this point it will probably misreport it for a few hours until it finally dies. I left it unplugged overnight, so now it's at 19.5 hours uptime with 1.75 hours display time.
Definitely improving! I hope that it successfully recalibrates.

Battery stats have nothing to do with how the os calculates remaining battery...they are what is displayed in settings>about phone> battery use and are reset each time you charge to full.
You're just giving it a good bump charge...wiping the stats is just a placebo effect.

studacris said:
Battery stats have nothing to do with how the os calculates remaining battery...they are what is displayed in settings>about phone> battery use and are reset each time you charge to full.
You're just giving it a good bump charge...wiping the stats is just a placebo effect.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seriously? Wow I didn't know that. Is there a way to actually reset how the OS calculates the battery?
Does this app do anything?
https://market.android.com/details?...xLDEsImNvbS5uZW1hLmJhdHRlcnljYWxpYnJhdGlvbiJd

Nope...that app is just perpetuating the myth of what the batterystats.bin file does.

Don't hate me for this but, Then how come Roms usually give me better battery life after a full cycle? not bump charging or deleting battery.bin just running it?

Because the system for tracking the remaining power is getting to know your battery. once it gets a feel for it, it's more accurate. In theory anyway

So the "give it a day" is still true, at least in theory?

Sure
10 char

battery gauge temporarily fixed by removal and replacement of battery
Ever since I rooted my phone, I've noticed that the battery gauge/meter is way off. I keep an eye on the charging voltage and try to pull the plug around 3.92 volts. Problem is, the gauge is always reading low until I pull the battery, wait a few minutes, and then reinsert and boot up. Then it's fine for a while, but I notice it creeping down even though I keep topping it off with a charge to keep it around 3.92 volts.
What's going on? Do I have to fully deplete the battery and charge to full to have an accurate (or somewhat accurate) battery gauge? Do I have a bad battery (this battery has been used only a couple months)? Is something else going on here? Recommendations, studacris? Doesn't the os use battery voltage to calculate state of charge (%)?