I don't know if my suggestion is wrong or if I'm a total n00b or what the deal is, but what is up with the battery level issues on this phone? It goes from 100% down to 80% in like a matter of minutes even with no usage, it then drops steadily down to 50%, then it drops suddenly to 15%, then goes down to 10%, then 5%, then 1%. How can it be so hard to calculate a battery level?
Now I bet someone is going to come in here and bash my idea, and I apologise in advance if I look like a moron, but shouldn't the calculation for the battery level be something along the lines of:
((Current Voltage - Minimum Voltage) / (Maximum Voltage - Minimum Voltage)) * 100 = Current Battery Percent
If that would work (even if only a little better than the current method), can someone PLEASE write at least a widget or something that displays the actual battery level, not this inaccurate level that Samsung claims it to be, and if possible modify whatever it is that calculates it and replace it with said formula?
I tried this formula on my phone using a simple calculator (using 4.1V as my max and 3.5V as my minimum and a battery level widget to display the current voltage) and it seemed to work fine for me and it was a lot more accurate. I just wish it could be automated.
I think that's a common issue on Galaxy 3. Sometimes it's accurate, sometimes not.
I unplug it, after half an hour it's at 80%, then drops by 10% down to 50% and after that suddenly to 5%. Then I turn it off and on again and it returns to 50% or 60%.
But as I said, sometimes it's accurate, but I don't know what causes it.
I've tried some battery widgets, but they all display the same information.
That was a common issue that happens more frequently when you flash your phone without a full charged battery, when that happens i try to wait until the batery ends and wait 2 o 3 hours and charge the phone while its off until it shows full charge
Racoen said:
I think that's a common issue on Galaxy 3. Sometimes it's accurate, sometimes not.
I unplug it, after half an hour it's at 80%, then drops by 10% down to 50% and after that suddenly to 5%. Then I turn it off and on again and it returns to 50% or 60%.
But as I said, sometimes it's accurate, but I don't know what causes it.
I've tried some battery widgets, but they all display the same information.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, its the same with my G3.. But it always was like that, with eclair and now with froyo.
These are the files that regulate it (its in c, but you my be able to understand some parts of it without it).
They didnt calculate it like that, but used an if..else if ...else method. and with fixed values of multiples of ten (except for lower battery).
I dunno how to compile from the sources, when I do I'll change it and send it to KARMA.
Also, sometimes when its low it doesnt show it correctly. Try rebooting if you suspect that.
I've noticed that last 20-30% stays for almoust 10h, but first 80% only 1 day.
If it was only the faulty display of the percentage I normally wouldnt even care. There are many widgets that display the actual battery voltage which gives a much better indication of the actual SOC.
BUT: what really gets on my nerves is, that when the calculated battery level drops below some 10%, the G3 reduces the display brightness, doesnt let me use the camera, doesnt let me start my music app... even if the battery voltage is still at 3.7-3.8V.
The problem seems to be (correct me if i am wrong), that the G3 calculates the battery level with the minimum of the measured voltage in that discharge cycle. So if I use some app which consumes more power, or if I have many active downloads or whatever, the voltage of the battery can sag for a short time, which also causes the calculated battery level to drop. When the phone is idle again the battery voltage goes back up, but the percentage is stuck (in worst case at a very low level).
Since a reboot seems to make the phone re-evaluate the actual SOC, the question is, if there is an app (or if someone can make an app) that forces the phone to re-evaluate the SOC without rebooting (and so also reactivates camera etc.). Even better if the firmware was modified in a way, that the algorithm for determining the battery level uses a filtered value of the battery voltage so that a short term voltage sag does not affect the calculated battery level.
Related
i have noticed that the battery metter is completely unreliable
for example it shows 28% left (btw, i installed FInixNOverBattery for percentage indication) and after a soft reset it shows 41%
or it shows 50% and after soft reset it shows 31%
in this way i can never estimate how long the battery will last
does anybody faced this issue? any solution fot it? (i also tryed to calibrate by completely drain the battery followed by complete charge withe the device turned off)
thank you in advance!
noris08,
it is completey normal to experience big jumps in % after a reboot. The battery % is just a representation of the actual voltage of the LiPoly battery, which usually recovers (rises) quite a bit when there is no load on the battery (even for a short time).
maybe what you say it is true, but i never experienced this behaviour with any of my previous phones. and i had a few, including wm for a few years
and variations of 10-15% - i find them too big
I noticed the same thing. Any explanation for this? Or it is just that FInixNOverBattery is not reliable/compatible/accurate ?
Voltage may vary/jump around due to environmental changes and power consumption or voltage sensor may be insufficiently accurate to provide reliable voltage readings for 1% steps. This is one of the reasons why many battery drivers in WM only provide remaining charge percentage in 10% steps.
In this light, voltage on its own is not a sufficient indicator of remaining charge percentage. Other parameters, such as voltage deviation and other factors, such as power consumption and temperature may need to be taken into account to obtain a more accurate evaluation.
Hi,
I wonder if we could have advanced battery charging management on Android in order to minimize wear. The basic idea is to avoid micro-cycles, i.e. don't start charging every time the power supply is plugged in. I find myself plugging in my Nexus several times a day, so I get several charge cycles every day. Instead, the Nexus should draw its power over USB, but not start charging.
The thinkpad_smapi module implements this for IBM/Lenovo laptops. There are two thresholds, start_charge_thresh and stop_charge_thresh. Setting the start threshold to e.g. 40 will not start charging unless the remaining capacity is below 40 %, and stop_charge_thresh will probably (I don't use it) stop charging early. I use a start threshold of 25 % on my Thinkpad, so I always have at least around 1 hour left, which is enough for me. I understand if people want a full battery all the time and rather buy a new battery every now and then. However, my first Thinkpad battery died after 1.5 years (~500 cycles). The second battery is 2 years old and still charges to 77 % of the original capacity (50 Wh of 64 Wh), so this simple measure has a significant effect.
There's a lot to know about LiPo/LiIon-batteries, way more than I know, but the bottom line is that keeping the battery between 40 % and 95 % minimizes chemical wear.
Maybe someone came across battery-related stuff while digging through the kernel sources and can comment on this. Charging is probably not handled in the kernel, but in the radio or by a dedicated circuit, but maybe there's an interface exposed to the kernel that can be used to set those threshold values. That's how it's done on Thinkpads.
Some changes to how charge management (which is done in the kernel in the ds2784_battery driver) is handled in full and near-full situations are under way. Look for them in the .32-test1 kernel sources in the near future. We're not planning on being quite as aggressive as you propose (wait until 40% to begin charging, etc), but reducing discharge/recharge cycling once the battery is full is planned.
swetland said:
Some changes to how charge management (which is done in the kernel in the ds2784_battery driver) is handled in full and near-full situations are under way. Look for them in the .32-test1 kernel sources in the near future. We're not planning on being quite as aggressive as you propose (wait until 40% to begin charging, etc), but reducing discharge/recharge cycling once the battery is full is planned.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i found some unusual battery behavior on the nexus one. i'll charge to 100% when on. then ill delete the batterystats.bin and power off. when off, the light is still orange. takes about a full 5 minutes later then turns green. when i do this and power on, with heavy usage it stays on 100% for 15-35 min, then slowly drops. but without doing this, it just slowly drops from 100%.
100% is not quite the same as fully charged (yes this is a little confusing). If you yank power immediately upon hitting 100% you will typically have a less full battery than if you let it sit until it stops charging. The "power off charge mode" doesn't indicate 100% with the green light -- it indicates "charge complete".
The battery log at /d/battery_log gives a bit more detail as to what's going on (as well as the chatter from the battery driver in the dmesg log).
swetland said:
100% is not quite the same as fully charged (yes this is a little confusing). If you yank power immediately upon hitting 100% you will typically have a less full battery than if you let it sit until it stops charging. The "power off charge mode" doesn't indicate 100% with the green light -- it indicates "charge complete".
The battery log at /d/battery_log gives a bit more detail as to what's going on (as well as the chatter from the battery driver in the dmesg log).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks for the response! i learned something new today
I've used the Battery University to guide me on Li-Ion batteries:
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/partone-12.htm
(scroll down on either page to see some guidelines).
The first page says that multiple partial recharges are healthier for the battery than fewer deeper discharge/recharges due to less heat buildup. Personally I have never fretted about just plugging in my Macbooks or phones whenever I wanted and the batteries have all lasted quite well.
I also use a slightly weaker charger for my G1 and N1 than the supplied chargers (500 to 700mA Blackberry chargers) and they don't get as hot when I charge them, yet charge to full capacity quickly enough for my needs. The second page recommends a 0.5C charge current (1C == 1400mAmps, 0.5C == 700mAmps) for better life.
I've been playing w the 32 test kernel and looks like this commit has implemented the battery management.
I've now noticed that if the battery level is higher than 90%, plugging in the charger will not charge the phone. Once the battery drops below 90, the battery will start getting charged.
http://r.android.com/#change,13342
is this .32 kernel going to be released as an OTA soon? or is it still in dev stages?
*push*
1.8 years later...
Is it finally implemented in Gingerbread? Are there any mods that provide a frontend to that settings?
I have charged my Nexus One yesterday for the first time. I live in holland so i had to use my USB cable, and the power adapter that came with my HTC hero to plug my USB cable in.
After the phone was charged 100%, i disconnected it from the charger and only downloaded + added a widget to my home screen. After i did that the battery was already down tot 97% :O:O
Is it defective ?
i noticed having to complete a few charge cycles.. charge fully, use it till dead, charge again
now it seems to hold out much longer
Hmm ok i'll try that. But did yours also drain this fast?
what setting is your screen on? seriously though, im sure some other battery experts here would know, but i think they take a few cycles to get to maximum efficiency
malicious85 said:
what setting is your screen on? seriously though, im sure some other battery experts here would know, but i think they take a few cycles to get to maximum efficiency
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What do you mean with screen setting, and what should i put it on?
Sorry totally new to the phone hehe
I've noticed this too. However as soon as the battery reaches around 50% it takes a lot more to drain so it evens out in the end I guess
teihoata said:
I've noticed this too. However as soon as the battery reaches around 50% it takes a lot more to drain so it evens out in the end I guess
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm ok so it also went that fast on your phone? i have been using it for about an hour now and its down to about ~90% =\, concerns me a bit.
Found out something else, concering the usage of the screen. When i look here:
Menu -> Settings -> About Phone -> Battery Use
The phone tells what uses the battery the most or something, but the strange thing is that it says:
Display 55%
Isn't that very high? Maybe that is causing my battery to drain so fast
Battery meters are not an exact science. Its using what it knows about the battery's state to guess of how much % is remaining. The battery meter will need to be calibrated once, and then overall battery should improve with your next normal 3-6 full charges.
Again, you do not need to and you shouldn't repeatedly drain the battery to 0, only once is this needed to set the phones battery meter, unless you clear it (possible within amon ra's bootloader).
As for your observation, yes that is completely normal, there is not a whole lot of definition within 3% of battery as far as displaying it. What the real picture? Enter in #*#*4363*#*# on your dial pad and then go to battery information, and you'll see the accurate voltage. (this is also accessible from "spare parts" if you have it)
Nipje said:
Found out something else, concering the usage of the screen. When i look here:
Menu -> Settings -> About Phone -> Battery Use
The phone tells what uses the battery the most or something, but the strange thing is that it says:
Display 55%
Isn't that very high? Maybe that is causing my battery to drain so fast
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
All %'s here are vs the amount of time on battery (shown at the top in h:m). If you just unplugged your phone and you go looking here, you'll see the display % VERY HIGH... because the screen has been on the entire time its been unplugged
Its a % after all of the usage since last unplugged.
i've noticed my battery life is much better since i got the desktop dock.. lots of people charge until the light turns green then immediately grab it and start using..
leave it for another hour or two and it seems to get much better.
dont know if anyone else has noticed this but the top corner indicator light turns green once the battery goes somewhere over 90%, leaving it charge longer will get you to 100
malicious85 said:
dont know if anyone else has noticed this but the top corner indicator light turns green once the battery goes somewhere over 90%, leaving it charge longer will get you to 100
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good point, I did notice this by accident a few times.
Nipje said:
What do you mean with screen setting, and what should i put it on?
Sorry totally new to the phone hehe
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You probably found this by now, but one flick to the left and you should have a widget for WiFi, GPS, etc. The far right one toggles 3 levels of screen brightness. The brightest two settings really suck down battery.
just a tip, when you are draining it to recalibrate the battery, after you get to the point that the phone shuts off, boot into the bootloader and run that thing till it completely dies... i did this for my phone, sat it in bootloader with a bright ass screen for like 15 min before it finally finished off... get every last ounce of juice out of it before you start charging it back up
Hmm thanks for al the reactions guys. I'm going to recalibrate my battery now, and lets see if that helps a bit .
Then i have a other question, its not about my battery but since i already have a open topic i dont want to create another one .
Can anyone of you test the following:
When you are calling with someone, and your calling volume is on the maximum (so the volume of the speaker that you hold against your ear). Can anyone notice a little crack from the speaker when the other person talks a bit loud or make's a loud noise? I'm wondering if there is something wrong with mine. With several tones the ear speaker cracks a little bit, like the sound is to loud or something?
Nipje said:
Hmm ok so it also went that fast on your phone? i have been using it for about an hour now and its down to about ~90% =\, concerns me a bit.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep sounds about the same on my phone, dont worry about it lol
The draining thing is from the old nickel days, the lithium batteries are made for daily use so just treat the phone as you would normally. The battery will get better as time goes by.
Also I am not having that problem with the speaker
Hmm, I have my device since last week (Netherlands) and the battery usage is frightening. Sucking it dry in about 24 hours. I haven't let it die out completely though: I thought lithium batteries were not supposed to be used that way. Ni-Cad batteries were used that way.
Ah, see here:
Guidelines for prolonging lithium-ion battery life
Lithium-ion batteries should never be depleted below their minimum voltage (2.4 to 2.8 V/cell, depending on chemistry). If a lithium-ion battery is stored with too low a charge, there is a risk that the charge will drop below the low-voltage threshold, resulting in an unrecoverable dead battery.[citation needed] Usually this does not instantly damage the battery itself but a charger or device which uses that battery will refuse to charge a dead battery. The battery appears to be dead or not existent because the protection circuit disables further discharging and there is zero voltage on the battery terminals.
Lithium-ion batteries should be kept cool. Ideally they are stored in a refrigerator.[citation needed]
Aging will take its toll much faster at high temperatures.[citation needed]
[edit] Prolonging life in multiple cells through cell balancing
Analog front ends that balance cells and eliminate mismatches of cells in series or parallel significantly improve battery efficiency and increase the overall pack capacity. As the number of cells and load currents increase, the potential for mismatch also increases. There are two kinds of mismatch in the pack: state-of-charge (SOC) and capacity/energy (C/E) mismatch. Though the SOC mismatch is more common, each problem limits the pack capacity (mA·h) to the capacity of the weakest cell.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So, if you want to brick your battery, by all means, suck out all the power.
i have a mytouch but i think the things i do can be used with all androids....first recalibrating is a good way to get a fresh battery...then the brightness also helps along with any wireless things u dont use like wifi gps etc.. they should be turned off an brightness should be low...i have downloaded a app lately called automatic task killer..i think this is better than any other task manager because other task managers dont kill apps wen phone is on standby ..apps r still running wen screen is off an automatic task killer kills them..i think u should download this and also have a task manager to kill apps wen u use the phone..another thing is charging the phone wen its completely off..wait until the the light turns green then leave it on for another hour or two then turn it back on....i have seen an increase in bettery life by doing all this...any one esle have any tips ..let me kno
I was just wondering about the whole deal with wiping the battery stats. To me it seems as if the point of this is strictly to get the OS to report and understand the battery more so than anything to do with the battery itself. I mean, the OS can't actually change the physics of the battery, right?
But the OS needs to understand what a full charge is and what an empty charge is, so that it knows when to shut down and when to stop charging and all that sort of stuff.
What I'm thinking is that if you wipe the stats and it's not at 100%, it will think that the discharge from that point to an actual low level is the full breadth of charging and adjust accordingly.
Is any of this remotely accurate? Or am I just making wild assertions?
Actually...it's the software that can make or break battery life...take for example background notifications. Wifi uses battery power and if you have different programs all polling for updates at x amount of times per hour..even when asleep..it will eat up battery juice...another example is the cm bug that kept the speaker on all the time and the nook never really went to sleep...it used tremendous amount of juice for not doing anything...another example..screen brightness..does not the software control how dim or bright you want it...and say you could not adjust the settings..your right..a battery is just a battery but how the kernel, drivers and loaded programs determine how fast or slow the battery power is to be used. Clearing the stats gives more accurate measurements for the kernel and hence will power down(power saver mode ) or other items for the kernel depending on what type of governor is on the nook..software wise.
I think you misunderstood what I was saying. What I'm trying to say is that the OS can't change the physics of the battery. Drain is drain, no matter what software is running. In other words, say you have two perfectly identical systems, both running the exact same software. The battery capacity is exactly the same on both and they both have the same drain. The battery doesn't actually drain faster on one vs the other, but the OS can *think* it's draining faster. That's why we have all these battery stats and such...right? Or am I wrong?
Oh Ok...you are right in the fact that it cannot and the software..depending on what it's state(charge level) is will determine how to run..it just makes it more accurate.
Wiping the Battery Stats tells the OS to start learning what the new High and Low are.
It doesn't matter what level of charge the battery has when you do this....
- As the battery gets lower the stat keeps updating the level as the new low.
- As you charge the battery it continuously updates the stat as the new High.
Once you have taken the battery to both of these extremes then, in theory, the OS will have accurate info on your battery.
At a certain point in time the battery stats stop updating which is exactly why it is important to do this.
I'm experiencing the following issue:
I discharge the telephone completely and I put it under charge.
I check the phone and it says, for example, that it's charged at 3%. Ok reasonable, I've attached to the charger just few minutes ago.
After a 5/10 minutes I check it back and it's 33% charged!
Today I made a reboot while charged and after the reboot, from 32%, it went up to 66%!
I couldn't charge it to 100%, it stuck at 98%.
I've installed under /etc/init.d/ the script 87calibrator.sh by Brainmaster since I'm using CNA 1.6.0 ROM (with Air Kernel 3.9.5 voodoo standard - gov: lazy; scheduler: deadline - DeepIDLE: on, NO Screen Off Max Freq enabled).
I feel there's something that needs to be fixed... it doesn't behave like this each time... in between the ROM changes I've experienced just a few times...
(Wipe Data/Cache+Wipe Dalvik and if passing from a ROM to another I also format /system).
Is anybody else experiencing this issue?
Android is terrible with actual battery stats, just don't look at it while charging
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA
Issue? I don't see one.
The Nexus S uses a State of Charge method which can be somewhat inaccurate initially, but as time progresses will become more accurate. Often while charging and booting simultaneously, the charge will go up by a fairly large percentage. This is obviously incorrect, but over the next few hours it will settle itself at it's approximate true charge. I'm still unsure if this effects the final charge % as i havn't tested it that much, but it likely does, though it will progressively get better.
Also, it is a hardware restriction regarding charging to 100%. Stock Nexus S only charges to 96% or so without dodgy methods to actually get it up. Anything else that says 100% is purely cosmetic - this cosmetic change can be found in various kernels.
Harbb said:
Issue? I don't see one.
The Nexus S uses a State of Charge method which can be somewhat inaccurate initially, but as time progresses will become more accurate. Often while charging and booting simultaneously, the charge will go up by a fairly large percentage. This is obviously incorrect, but over the next few hours it will settle itself at it's approximate true charge. I'm still unsure if this effects the final charge % as i havn't tested it that much, but it likely does, though it will progressively get better.
Also, it is a hardware restriction regarding charging to 100%. Stock Nexus S only charges to 96% or so without dodgy methods to actually get it up. Anything else that says 100% is purely cosmetic - this cosmetic change can be found in various kernels.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, thank you for your answer. I wasn't aware about the dynamic calibration!! Yes the 100% charge it's not physic but cosmetic, I know. It was just to mention that I don't get to full 100%.
So if the battery calibration is "by design", do you know how Brainmaster's script affects this calibration?
It doesn't. That script deletes the batterystats.bin file (somewhere in the /data directory). All this file does is tabulate human-readable battery statistics for you to view when you look at Settings > Battery, so you know how much power has been drained by each app or service, and the graphing over time. This is all it does. A charge to ~90% or higher will automatically delete this file, as you can see by the battery screen resetting itself.
Harbb said:
It doesn't. That script deletes the batterystats.bin file (somewhere in the /data directory). All this file does is tabulate human-readable battery statistics for you to view when you look at Settings > Battery, so you know how much power has been drained by each app or service, and the graphing over time. This is all it does. A charge to ~90% or higher will automatically delete this file, as you can see by the battery screen resetting itself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah ok, than that's explaining why they all say that the deleting stats it's not useful to calibrate the device
Thank you very much man!! Much appreciated!
You're welcome mate