Database Develop

Froyo FRF85B Battery Life Quirks

I don't know if I am the only one seeing this, but when I had Eclair, I had crap battery life, to the tune of 10 hours or so. (Granted this may not be crap for Nexus One but it is crap based off past phones I have had.) I installed FRF85B last night and discovered some weird glitches.
First off, when it was in my car dock, it wasn't charging yet the battery life kept dropping, I powered off the device, and powered it back on 10 minutes later (still in the dock) and no change stayed at 91%, still wouldn't charge. I then powered it off, took it out of the dock, plugged in the car charger cable directly and powered on my N1, when it turned on, it said I had 100% battery life. I then plugged it back into the car dock, and voila it started charging.
Secondly, originally when I had unplugged my N1 this morning I used it for about an hour at 5AM and it dropped 2% I plugged it back in to top it off expecting the same crap battery life from Eclair, yet so far, my phone has been fully topped off (from the car dock) for the past 40 minutes and I've made about 20 minutes of phone calls on it, yet it still is reporting 100%. So either Froyo can't properly report battery life, or it has the potential to have absurd battery life. Anyone else experiencing anything like this?

First off - you still didn't search this forum, so you're still thinking that an overcharging protection that doesn't allow you to charge unless you drop below 91%, is a quirk. It's not.
Second, wiping battery stats and making battery calibration procedure ONCE will give you a good starting point to measure something.

Jack_R1 said:
First off - you still didn't search this forum, so you're still thinking that an overcharging protection that doesn't allow you to charge unless you drop below 91%, is a quirk. It's not.
Second, wiping battery stats and making battery calibration procedure ONCE will give you a good starting point to measure something.
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Click to collapse
The quirk isn't that it wouldn't let me charge that way, the issue was, my battery reported 91% yet when I rebooted the device with the charger directly plugged into it, it immediately showed 100%. So pretty much over the course of 30 seconds I gained 9% battery life.
I wiped my device to factory settings before upgrading to Froyo, and after as well, since my device is not rooted, my understanding is I cannot wipe my battery calibration log.
I did drain my battery fully after upgrading to froyo last night and did a full charge as well.

What you're describing looks like the statistics of the battery is "lying" a bit. I believe it can be thrown a bit off by trying to charge it when it's in 91-100% range, but I don't know the exact way it works, so I can't say much about it.
Indeed, if you're not rooted, wiping battery stats is not an option. Several times of full charge and long discharge (you don't need to go below 20%, to prevent harming the battery) are helpful in correcting the statistics.
If you get a chance to try, please repeat this again (having the phone at >90%, turning it off, plugging it into the charger and turning it back on). If it shows "Charged" again - it might be a bug worth reporting.

Jack_R1 said:
What you're describing looks like the statistics of the battery is "lying" a bit. I believe it can be thrown a bit off by trying to charge it when it's in 91-100% range, but I don't know the exact way it works, so I can't say much about it.
Indeed, if you're not rooted, wiping battery stats is not an option. Several times of full charge and long discharge (you don't need to go below 20%, to prevent harming the battery) are helpful in correcting the statistics.
If you get a chance to try, please repeat this again (having the phone at >90%, turning it off, plugging it into the charger and turning it back on). If it shows "Charged" again - it might be a bug worth reporting.
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Click to collapse
I'll have to try it again tomorrow morning, first see if it happens under the same circumstances and go from there. One thing I do remember is the widget I was using "Battery Left" reported that at 91% I had 4100 mAh left in it, which was interesting, and when it went back to 100% it had 4120 mAh which makes me think the OS wasn't actually reading the voltage and thought it was just draining the battery instead.
EDIT: Just realised I had my wall charger with me, battery was at 90% figured I would try, real quick to attempt to replicate the problem, I was unable to, with a direct battery connection, but it could be due to a voltage issue or be related to why plugging it in directly to the car charger resolved the issue. My gut feeling is, it has to do with the dock itself and the pins it uses.

my battery often is charging and it hits 93% and immediately jumps right to 100%. it skips the last 7% or so. i think what is happening is you just finally experienced this issue, which many of us have already posted about in battery threads, but it just happens to coincide with froyo so you are thinking its new and related. the nexus ever once in a while battery meter just gets thrown off and will jump up to 100% because it really was full, just had to catch up the meter. you really should pay attention to the voltage more than percentage, using battery life widget. i know my battery is fully charged at 4.172 volts. and sometimes it hits that but still only shows 94%, so it adjusts itself in one fell swoop.

The issue is I did an extra full charge about an hour ago so I can make it till midnight and it went through all the numbers from 89-100 with no issue
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
Addendum: Also it seems to be voltage is not that good of a decider of how much my charge is. Before Froyo, until I dropped below 94% I was always above 4 Volts, now I drop below 4 Volts at 96%.

So this morning I was able to replicate the problem, only it was outside of the car dock, I was able to get this problem to reoccur with the wall charger. I unplugged it from power, used it a little bit and then topped it off for the day, it was at 96%. I saw the green light go on, and thought nothing of it, 20 minutes later I went back to it and it was still at 96% and showed that the battery was fully charged.
I checked the Battery Left widget and it was saying the battery was fully charged even though it said 96% left also. I did make a crappy video uploaded to youtube from my backflip to show as well what I am talking about.

AFAIK, The green LED will light when you're anywhere above 90%. It's not a function of charge being complete. Check it.
Also, if you plugged it in with 96% - this is the behavior to be expected, since the phone won't start charging unless it has below 90% to begin with, and it'll show "Charged" - because it's not charging (to prevent overcharge).
Again, fail to see any problem in what you're describing.

Jack_R1 said:
AFAIK, The green LED will light when you're anywhere above 90%. It's not a function of charge being complete. Check it.
Also, if you plugged it in with 96% - this is the behavior to be expected, since the phone won't start charging unless it has below 90% to begin with, and it'll show "Charged" - because it's not charging (to prevent overcharge).
Again, fail to see any problem in what you're describing.
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Click to collapse
Yet my phone has always been able to charge when above 90% before froyo. This behavior is new to froyo for me at least.
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App

It means that you've never paid attention to that until now. It's working this way since the phone was out (with stock Eclair) and if I'm not mistaken - it's not controlled by OS at all.

I did pay attention to such actually because of the fact that I had been getting piss poor battery life. This has never happened before. In the morning I would use the device a little then top it off because I noticed that works give better battery life.
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App

Well, you had a buggy phone that has now corrected itself. Welcome to the way it was supposed to work from the beginning.
Topping off the battery at 90%+ contributes to battery degradation - heating from overcharging. So you were actually damaging your battery.

[Q] Whats the proper way to wipe battery stats? (i think thats my problem)

So I was running cognition 2.4.1 for a long time, and my battery life was awesome. It would barely go down at all if I didn't use it, and would make it through the day with about half to spare. On normal days I unplug at 630am and at 5pm it would be at ~70% (if i didn't really use it at all). Even if I did use it it would still last a long time.
I finally decided to flash a new/different rom and thats where my problems started. I flashed Assonance 5.0 and the battery life got worse (at 5pm i was at about 45%) so i just assumed it was the rom and that cognition was better on battery life. So my next flash was back to cognition (a newer version, b7 i think), which improved battery life, but it was barely noticeable, and was no where near what it used to be. Next I tried pheonix v1.5 and that was probably the worst yet, as my phone almost died by 5 oclock.
Finally I decided I would go back to cog 2.4.1 even though it was outdated. I figured this would solve all my problems. I was wrong as my battery life is absolutely terrible right now. At one point yesterday it drained 12 percent in 30 mins.
Something else also happened yesterday. As it was almost going to die i plugged it into my car charger for about 10 mins. It was at 15% when i put it on and 19 when i took it off. After that my battery life was almost normal again as it only drained 4 percent over the next 3 hours. Later on that night I charged it back up to 50 percent and about 10 mins after taking it off the charger it said it was at 5 percent. It stayed at 5 percent for the rest of the night and did not die ( about 4 hours).
Theres definitely a problem and I know it was to do with the battery reading. I think i just need to reset the battery stats.
FYI every time i flash a new rom i always flash back to stock jf6, make sure its 100% battery, wipe data and cache, etc etc etc. so im not sure why this is happening.
I also tried wiping stats through clockworkmod recovery, but i dont think it really does anything.

The proper way to wipe battery stats/recalibrate your battery:
Charge up to 100% with the phone on. Disconnect the charger and turn the phone off. Connect the charger; you're now in charge mode. Charge up to 100%, disconnect the charger and turn on the phone. As soon as the phone is on, turn it off. Connect the charger to put it into charge mode again, and charge up to 100% again. Some people also say that before starting this process it's a good idea to kill the battery completely.
That is how you bump charge, or recalibrate the battery. After bump charging is the best time to wipe battery stats.

I can't find batterystats.bin on the phone to delete it. Is the only way via terminal mode or Clockwork?

[Q] CM (and others?) battery meter complete screw-up

My battery never charges above ~76% when plugged in. After rebooting however, it is very much at 100% and lasts for a good amount of time. This is not necessarily a question, but I wonder if others are experiencing this too and if there is a fix? Read below.
I noticed that my battery life got very bad after installing custom roms. I also found out that this happened because I sometimes kept the phone plugged in while flashing, something that totally screws up the battery reading. So, I followed this guide to calibrate my battery and it worked.
Now, whenever the phone is plugged in it NEVER goes to 100% when charging. Maybe 80% if leaving it for a while (10 hours overnight). I'm worried about frying the battery. Is there a fix?

It is only a matter of presentation. It actually doesn't mean your batt is broken. Plug it and charge it overnight. Then discharge only for few percent and plug it back in. It should go to 100%.
Sent from my HTC Legend

Thanks, I'll give it a try.
What I'm concerned about is if the phone "thinks" the battery isn't recharged and keeps squeezing juice into it when in fact it is full (which a reboot will show)? That's not good for the battery. It should go into trickle charge after reaching 100%..

The process described in the desire forum is also known as formatting the battery. In fact most of battery manufacturers (lithium battery manufacturers) recommend doing this in a slightly different way:
Before first use:
1.) Before powering the device on, plug it in and let it charge until the LED is green (fully charged)
2.) Then take the battery out of the device and wait an hour (to make sure all the chemical processes in the battery are as idle as possible)
3.) Then plug it back in, while still off and let it charge untill green LED
4.) use the device....
You can practice this slightly modified with first step being:
Discharge the battery (by normal use)until only few percent are left (1 - 5 % are OK)
I've done these steps with my Mugen extended battery and I was getting around 4 - 5 days on Legend, now I'm getting 2 - 3 days on Desire S, but the ROM isn't very optimized yet, I believe it will be better in time...

Just one thing... Why is this in Development!?

No Idea.....
can mods move this?

BlaY0 said:
It is only a matter of presentation. It actually doesn't mean your batt is broken. Plug it and charge it overnight. Then discharge only for few percent and plug it back in. It should go to 100%.
Sent from my HTC Legend
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Click to collapse
sz1a did this solve your problem? Have the same problem with every firmware i've tried....

peddalion said:
sz1a did this solve your problem? Have the same problem with every firmware i've tried....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Definitely did not solve it but at least the battery performance is ok. It just stays at 78% for a few hours drops from there. Very weird but as long as the battery doesn't get broken I guess it's ok.

Do you have some 3rd party battery installed in your Legend? I have one 1,5 Ah in mine and it is acting the same way. It doesn't bother me too much coz it was cheap... it lasts 48 hrs with data always on and moderate usage. I noticed this that when I charge it overnight and it reaches 80%, unplugging it stays at 80% for several hrs and just after it starts dropping if I plug it again, meter reaches 100%. It's weird but as I said I can live with that

I've got exactly the same issue with stock 2.2 ROM. I've never rooted or CM my phone; I was wondering if CM would do it, but doesn't look like it.
android forums /htc-legend/265545-battery-doesnt-fully-charge.html
(sorry, I can't post links; maybe an admin can fix the link for me?
This seems to indicate it's a phone hardware fault and requires a new Legend to fix! My big worry is, as stated, that the charging light never goes green; therefore is pumping lots of power into a potentially full battery.

Method to improve battery life

Hey guys I just picked up the Thrill the other day, and like others I've realized the battery life is horrible on this phone not to mention when I reboot the phone would take a 10-15% out of the battery. Coming from an Atrix I decided to try the battery fix for the Atrix since it worked for me in the past, well after following all the steps in the guide it seems my phone reports the battery more accurate and battery life is better but your mileage will vary. Reboot doesn't take 10-15% out of the batter percentage either so here is the guide and link to the original thread, all credits go to xploited.
PS.. I followed all the steps except for flashing the jug6ernaut's CWM battery fix since it is for gingerbread roms
Link:http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1198333
Guide:
Standart disclaimer: I am not responsible if you break things by following this guide, though I will be genuinely surprised if you do.
Credits: This fix is a combination of battery management techniques discussed in the Atrix forums + a technique that I originally found in a Milestone forum (I didn't invent it, but I am too lazy to search who originally posted it ).
This worked in fixing the problem for me (the same problem that I see many others are writing about on the forums), but I can't guarantee it will work for you.
Who should use this? (aka your battery problem symptoms are
1. Battery life on 2.3.4 is significantly worse for you than before.
2. Battery stats are jumping and showing inconsistent information.
3. Your phone loses 30%-60% just by sitting there overnight.
4. Phone idle draining 30%-60% of battery just by sitting there overnight.
5. After flashing a couple of roms, your battery stats got messed up and the phone thinks it's at 100% charge while it's not.
I personally started having battery problems after flashing a couple of roms, applying 1% battery mod and despite flashing jug6ernaut's CWM battery fix.
When I went to bed with a 100% charge, I would wake up to a 50% charge, with Phone Idle process showing up as massacring the battery. The steps below successfully fixed the problem for me.
Prerequisites:
1. Atrix on one of the rooted 2.3.4 roms (ideally,- deodexed and with unlocked CWM)
2. Wall Charger
3. jug6ernaut's CWM battery fix (put it on your SD card you will need it later!) I have also attached it to this post.
4. Battery Calibration app from the market
5. Watchdog Lite or Full from the market
Instructions:
It's best to complete this procedure in the evening before going to bed, so you can leave it at 100% overnight and check in the morning if the drainage issue is fixed!!!
The whole procedure along with recalibration might take up to 5-6 hours!
1. Take the case off your Atrix (one of the latter steps involves taking the battery out from the phone while it's plugged in. Make sure your case won't stand in the way.)
2. Install Battery Calibration app from the market
3. Plug in your Atrix to charge while it's on, wait till it gets to a 100%
4. When the charge is 100%, open the BatteryCalibration app and lookup what the charge is in MV while at 100%. (Explanatory pic, needed number circled in red). Write it down.
My Atrix was showing ~3400MV while at 100%, which is definitely not the maximum capacity.
5. Discharge your Atrix completely until it shuts off.
A good way of doing this quickly is by turning on wifi, and a video player.
6. Without turning on the phone plug it into a wall charger and let it get to 100%
7. When it's at 100%, without unplugging it from the wall charger, take off the battery cover, and take the battery out.
Your phone will "reboot" and show a Missing Battery icon.
8. Without unplugging the phone from the wall charger or turning it on, put the battery back in and wait until the phone recognizes the battery.
9. Your battery should now be recognized by the phone, and showing a charge % significantly lower than 100%.
Mine showed only 5%. Back when I used a Milestone, it usually showed 60% after doing this.
10. Let it sit there charging for 2-3 hours.
My phone wouldn't charge past 10%, but yours might. The numbers don't matter much as the phone is definitely getting additional charge that could have been lost while flashing ROMs, etc.
11. After 2-3 hours, turn the phone on while holding the volume down button and get into CWM.
Do not disconnect it from the charger still!
12. Install jug6ernaut's CWM battery fix (even if you had it installed before), do not reboot yet.
Do not disconnect it from the charger still!
13. Wipe battery stats in CWM, reboot.
Do not disconnect it from the charger still!
14. When the phone turns on, go into BatteryCalibration app again and look up your MV numbers
- if you were like me, they should be significantly higher than before. After this whole process I had 4200MV at 100%, comparing to 3400MV before calibration.
Do not disconnect it from the charger still!
15. Before going to sleep - Install Watchdog from the market. Go into it's preferences, set CPU threshhold to 20%, check "Include phone processes", check "Monitor phone processes", check "Display all phone processes", set system CPU threshhold to 20% as well.
Do not disconnect it from the charger still!
16. Make sure your wifi and data connections are off. Now finally unplug the phone from the charger.
Go to bed, let your phone sleep too.
17. Success! Next morning check where your battery % is at and if you followed the instructions correctly / got lucky like me, your battery life should be 90% or more.
I went to bed with 98% and woke up to 94%. So, I consider this mission a success.
(Your general battery capacity should have increased, even if something still was draining the battery, you will be able to find the infringing process in WatchDog with the settings we've set up in step 15 )
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Click to collapse

Not a bad process. I did something similar. Main part is Watchdog and finding out what's draining your battery. On my phone the infringing process is "Suspend". Now, if there were an app that was keeping my phone from suspending and running up the process it would be an easy fix but unfortunately the process with the highest "partial wake" battling my "Suspend" is the "dialer" so unfortunate I'm just gonna have to wait for GB since I have no interest in Rooting or installing roms at this point.

I'll give this a go. Thank you

When I'm killing my phone,
It says:
3% Battery Remaining
2% Battery Remaining
1% Battery Remaining
2% Battery Remaining
1% Battery Remaining
2% Battery Remaining
1% Battery Remaining
2% Battery Remaining
Lulwut?
Sent from my LG Thrill 4G

The Dark Lestat said:
When I'm killing my phone,
It says:
3% Battery Remaining
2% Battery Remaining
1% Battery Remaining
2% Battery Remaining
1% Battery Remaining
2% Battery Remaining
1% Battery Remaining
2% Battery Remaining
Lulwut?
Sent from my LG Thrill 4G
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lol seems like your phone doesn't want to die

nexendz said:
lol seems like your phone doesn't want to die
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It did that for an hour then FINALLY reached 0% haha

Battery showing random charge

I'm not sure if this is a common problem or not but lately I've noticed that when I unplug my phone after it says 100% charged, it immediately drops to a lower number. At first it would stay between 97 and 99, but i have seen it go as low as 45. I've tried several things like not installing the ROM until it is fully charged, calibrating the battery, and a few others but nothing fixes it. Is it possible it's just a kernel glitch or hardware issue?
Darky's 10.2.2 DarkCore 4.1 KG3 modem
Thanks in advance all!
Edit: Spelling error
Sent from my Samsung Captivate using XDA App

Its not a problem its a feature. The phone will stop charging when the battery gets to a certain temperature. So it will say 100% but it can go as low as 90%. I have no idea why your battery goes down to 45%...thats not normal. Try wiping battery stats from recovery or reinstall your rom.

I've had a similar situation. It helped to fully drain the battery until the phone shuts off.
Wait a while, then restart the phone without plugging in the charger. There should be enough charge to load the ROM.
Then plug in the charger and charge to a full charge.
If you are calibrating the battery, wipe the battery stats only after a full charge, and then be sure to run the battery down all the way before recharging.
2-3 cycles helps.

It's strange because the charge is shown accurately when the phone is off and plugged in. Like if it says 100% while the phone is on and I shut the phone off without removing the charger, it will show the actual amount the battery is charged on the battery meter. it's as if the kernel is having a problem reading the current battery state.
Thank you both for the advice though. I was very careful to install the rom with a full charge this time..or the base anyway..
Sent from my Samsung Captivate using XDA App

It doesn't matter what the battery is at when you flash, the "flash at 100" rule is just a precaution to make sure your battery doesn't die mid flash. I flash as low as 20%
That is a well known bug with gingerbread...yes the feature stops charging at 100 and us let drain to 95 and then starts charging again, the bug is that it Bebe starts charging again at 95 it continues to drain, so even though it says charged as Dijon as you unplug it drops to the actual percentage.
it's really random, and not everyone sees it, and those who do can't replicate it consistently, thus no solid fix has been found.
Some have said turning wifi off while charging helps, some say turning it on...

Well that's a relief. You just saved me the tedious task of fully
Charging my phone before flashing back to froyo. Darky's 9.5 seemed a lot easier for daily operations than the reoriented gingerbread roms. I had to remap my softkeys for starters, and was having a lot of force close issues with apps I used a lot, the battery problem was just the most recent headache.
Thanks for all the help. Hopefully I'll have time to start learning development instead of wasting my time fixing my phone.
Sent from my Samsung Captivate using XDA App