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Battery life problem.. Has anyone notice the same thing?

Not sure has this been raised before but i searched and couldnt find any results so here it is
I normally can use my Atom exec for around 2-3 days per charge (stand by mode most of the time)
Yesterday I upgraded to the latest ROM. And installed new Pocket Plus Application and 2-3 other new softwares. After that, I only can use the phone for nearly a day per charge. (and i got nothing running on the background)
So im not sure that it is the ROM update (not likely) or the Pocket Plus theme software (most likely) or 2-3 other software that i just installed. I'll figure this out and let you know if i can confirm it. Just wanna know has anyone notice this problem? Might not only for the Atom or Atom exec?
And of course for those just bought an Atom or Atom Exec, the battery drains so fast might not a problem from the battery itself so don't rush out and get the new battery just yet (of course you can )

I have the similar problem
My battery on my O2 XDA Orbit would work for 2 days and after running some software on it, namely BatteryStatus it just dies within a day.. I set some overclock settings -247 MHz- and enabled talk timers.. Whats wrong here..

srramasu said:
My battery on my O2 XDA Orbit would work for 2 days and after running some software on it, namely BatteryStatus it just dies within a day.. I set some overclock settings -247 MHz- and enabled talk timers.. Whats wrong here..
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Found this posting of Jwright in on of the foura. It worked for me:
Everyone,
Just to let you all know...
Rechargeable batteries are prone to what is referred to as the "memory effect". What this means is that if a battery is repeatedly only partially discharged before recharging, the battery "forgets" that it has the capacity to further discharge all the way down. To illustrate: If you, on a regular basis, fully charge your battery and then use only 50% of its capacity before the next recharge, eventually the battery will become unaware of its extra 50% capacity which has remained unused. The battery will remain functional, but only at 50% of its original capacity.
The way to avoid the "memory effect" is to fully cycle (fully charge and then fully discharge) the battery at least once every two to three months. Simply leaving the device in the ON position and letting it run can discharge batteries completely. This will help insure your battery remains healthy. Once discharged, recharge the battery completely according to the manufacturer's instructions.
How I restored my HTC Universal battery
1. Fully charge the device with the "wall charger" not USB.
2. Put device into bootloader mode (backlight+power+reset) and run until device goes dead.
3. Charge the device completely with the “wall charger” not USB again.
4. Set screen brightness to MAX and turn off ALL power saving features.
5. Unplug the device from charger and run until completely dead again.
6. Repeat step 3, then restore custom screen brightness and power saving features.
7. Finished.
Some will say that this only applies to NiCad and NiMH batteries and that Li-Ion is exempt, but THIS IS NOT TRUE. Li-Ion batteries do suffer the memory effect! (Especially cheap batteries)
Just thought I would try and help....

be careful doing that, I've read about the wizard not charging after being left on until power failure

Most of my manuals say to plug the device in where ever possible (ie not totaly discharge). I have had a lot of device and the best advice i can give for improving overall battery life is to turn it off when you seep if you can, and if you get a lot of messages have a short time for the backlight to go off.
Also.. different versions of os seem to behave differently with regard to today screen messages. A today screen item is supposed to get a message from the os every 2 seconds while the today screen is visible (and non when its not). I have found that my dopod 838 pro sends these messages to the items regardless of whether the today screen is visible or not (under some circumstances). If something similar is happening to you the today pluggins could be doing a lot more than intended and draining the battery. I have an atom and this dose not happen on it, it could be the rom upgrade in combination with the pluggins.

Phone dies at ~45% battery with WM6

Before you suggest i change the battery.. it's just fine.
the problem started the day i flashed WM6 (over a month back) and has only started to bug me lately as my phone died on me 3 days in a row.
basically the moment the battery level gets down to 40-50% the phone just dies.. i could reset it and it powers up for a second or so then it dies again.
i flashed WM5 back.. and the phone was working fine even if the battery level reached 10% (i get a warning bubble but it doesn't just die on me!)
i've searched around and noticed the only suggestions were to change the battery, which seemed kinda useless as i'm almost sure the problem is somewhere in WM6 power management/battery handling.
any comments?

Try another WM6.
If you used Helmi's/Jwright's try DarkForce's/PDAVIET, or vice versa.

Mate I can get mine to die at 90% battery just by switching WIFI Bluetooth and opening a CPU intensive app (Google maps/Tom-Tom).
I’ve ordered a new battery and its coming next week so I will see if this is any better.
This is more than likely a Current problem, an in the battery cant supply enough amps for the phone to function properly, im almost certain that the WM6 ROMS do cause more current to be drawn from the battery but it is most likely that this is just highlighting that the battery is on its last legs.
Ill post back when the new one comes, If its doesn’t fix my problem I will be flashing back to the standard WM5 ROM to do some tests.

its probably the battery
i had the same problem. a new battery fixed it. it would die at 45% but now works all the way down to 5%.
new batt or borrow one from a friend to test.

I have seen the same thing on the BA fora as well: It's not that the whole batery is dead, but some of the cells in the battery are.
There it was also fixed with a new(er) battery...

I had to add a comment
I use a Exec with WM6 and i have a MDA Pro that i keep trying different roms on so i can use and mess with it and at the same time keep my sort of stable exec for work.
i do swop batteries between phones and so on, i cant say what roms i am useing when this happen but i have the same problem on the MDA Pro 40-45% it shuts off, reset and it starts for a second then shuts off, so i then put the battery from the exec ( charged ) in the MDA and away it goes my exec happly sits there at 40 or so % and will go down to 0 flat.
So its not the battery its the phone, but as said by someone else it could be dependent on what rom i am useing at the time

It is the battery..100%...pls buy a new one or try exchange from yr friend..nothing wrong with the Phone..

I tested every wm5 and wm6 roms and i have two batteries: one dies at 35% while the other never dies but gives warnings on the red side.

tailazoom said:
I tested every wm5 and wm6 roms and i have two batteries: one dies at 35% while the other never dies but gives warnings on the red side.
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I still think the main problem is the battery.
But I think WM6 just uses more power intensively then WM5 does. That would be the reason the phone dies.
Mine always goes back on again but then dies booting the OS.

Had the same problem with old PDAVIET rom
Hi, had the same problem with the old PDAVIET ROM 2.08 somethign or other, but since upgrading to 2.10.02, everything is back to normal, and lightning fast.
Try the newer ROM, and then see if the same happens, and if it does, then it is the battery which is definately causing the problem.
Kevin

I have read somewhere in these forums that when the Networks release their official ROMs for upgrades they all clearly state that you should ensure your battery is at 100% charge as when you run the ROM upgrade the battery management resets its self to the level of the battery.........ie it assumes 100% but if your battery is at only 50%, then 50% becomes what it believes to be 100% therefore half the battery life.
I have to kind of agree with this because my first WM6 upgrade I was so eager to do my M5000 had only been on charge for 10mins or so and after the upgrade battery life was awful, however since then I upgrade only after my M5000 has been at 100% for about 30mins and since have not had any issues wahtsoever with battery life
Hope this helps

Shaunfarris said:
I have read somewhere in these forums that when the Networks release their official ROMs for upgrades they all clearly state that you should ensure your battery is at 100% charge as when you run the ROM upgrade the battery management resets its self to the level of the battery.........ie it assumes 100% but if your battery is at only 50%, then 50% becomes what it believes to be 100% therefore half the battery life.
I have to kind of agree with this because my first WM6 upgrade I was so eager to do my M5000 had only been on charge for 10mins or so and after the upgrade battery life was awful, however since then I upgrade only after my M5000 has been at 100% for about 30mins and since have not had any issues wahtsoever with battery life
Hope this helps
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I thought it was because when you put your device into BL and flash it to a new rom, during the upgrade the phone won't charge.
So if you update with only 10% battery the device could turn off during the flash, and that would be a bad thing.
So they state (advice) to charge it to 100% before flashing.

Viper® said:
I thought it was because when you put your device into BL and flash it to a new rom, during the upgrade the phone won't charge.
So if you update with only 10% battery the device could turn off during the flash, and that would be a bad thing.
So they state (advice) to charge it to 100% before flashing.
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Wrong. The previous poster is 100% correct. Better charge your battery to 100% before flashing.

What should I do if I had ROMed my Uni not in 100% bat.?

Your PDA needs to be fully charged because during the flashing the battery is not charging. So if your phone runs out of battery before the upload has finished you are screwed.
I never believe that the state of the battery is been used as the 100% level of your battery during flashing. I make elektronics myself, the battery level is always measured elektronically.

I had the same issue. I fix it with a new battery and works fine since then.

A bit of both
WM6 does use more current compared to WM5 and most of us have been torturing our Uni's with all the flashing we do (We don't use them as a phone much more of an intellectual playfield) . Also most of us have had the Uni for a year and some longer. My XDA Exec is 2 years and T-Mobile MDA Pro a year in sometime. The batteries are a bit older and unable to supply the increased power as before. I do have this problem if I use the older batt on WM6 and the newer batt works just fine. But then again the older batt works fine on the MDA pro (unchanged with original MDA Roms).
Cheers

Battery
Hi,
i was suffering from the same batery issue in the last 10-12 months, and let me share my experinces. After my original battery started to die first at 20% and finally at 50% i bought a new one. I read tonns of articles about LI-POLymer batteries and tried o follow as it was written. The result : after 4 months my new battery is in the same state. I bought 2 other. When i started to use the first, i had always recharge it between 10-20%. Now this battery dies at 12-15%. I let my latest battery to go down to 3 % ALWAYS and after 5 months NO PROBLEM AT ALL!.
So my experience:
-let the bttery go down. I don't care what other experts say about the characteristic of Li-Polymer. For me it seems that practice is different.
-NEVER,NEVER,NEVER cahrge the battery if it is not empty. In my car if I want to use my UNI for listening music or GPS then i REPLACE MY GOOD BATTERY with the old one, and then i use the car charger. With my laptop i use only BLUETOOTH connections
-ALWAYS USE original charger. No laptop, no car charging
-If i do an upgrade for any ROM i ALWAYS DO THE UPGRADE WITH THE OLD BATTERY.
-USE at least 2 batteries, one is always charged fully, and if the other goes down you can replace it quickly
I am sure that there are many experts, who can tell me why i am wrong, but the pratice seems to work for me. And i have not found any experts who could explain these strange situations with UNI. Now I have 3 batteries. All is about 10 months old. One dies between 30-50%, the other dies always at 10-12% and the last always at 2-3%.

crikey, the device is big enough as it is without carrying around more batterys. Mine's starting to die at 70% now. When it reboots it seems to die when the radio stack is activated. Had it for 13 months now my stylus falls out too had to put cellotape around it which has sorted it.
Just waiting for three(uk) to bring out the tytn so i can move over with their x-series stuff!!! woohooo!

I've had mine about 13 months now and it started dying at 40% left then 60% then 85% (of battery left!). I bought a new battery and 3 days later without charging it's still on 65% left

battery problem solved?

Maybe this depends on the batterys but mine was having that problem of going dead at higher and higher % it started at 10 than 30 then 50 and up to 70 I think.
I've tested all the solutions in the wiki (yes the freezer too ) but with no improvements, then I did the opposite, instead of draining the battery fast I drained the battery slowly and when the Universal shuted off I pluged it to the electricity until it boots ok and the cpu returned to 0/1%, then take it from electric power again and wait until it goes dead again and did this over and over again until I reached the minimum battery of 9% i think. Great improvement since I was already looking for battery replacements... Then I charged it over night.
Conclusion I have the Universal alive for 3 consecutive days (and nights) now at 52% waiting to check when it dies again
By draining the battery slowly I mean no light in the screen, no running programs and universal in closed state, flight mode and just one thing to check if it was alive or not, play some music in WMP in repeat mode, when it stoped playing it was time to have a litte more eletric juice until I could boot it up and start the music playing again.
When I have the final results -> when the universal goes down I will post the solution in the wiki
Again this may depend on the batterys but since there are so many people buying new ones you maybe want to try this solution too.

Oh and by the way I solved an "other" problem while trying to solve this...
Besides the tests on the battery like freezing it over night, taking the power level pin etc, I've started to think it was a problem from the rom so I cleaned the Universal doing that "task 28" thing and the result was solving the problem that I was having with the battery status (now home screen plus plus) it was not getting the cpu using percentage when in the past it did. Now with the cleaning reg whatever It is showing again the cpu using %
I don't know if you use this but it has a cool functionality, posting the cpu using % at the top bar of your universal can tell you how much the universal is working all the time, enabling you to notice when it is working when it shouldn't, normally some stupid background program that didn't go off...

hi there. I have two same unis, and three batteries. two standard, one big capacity 3200mAh (personally I dont believe it have such capacity, it is some china crap). but all three had that issue (uni shut down when capacity still showing more as 30% or more %). tried to deplete the battery completely (when it wont boot, I put device to bootloader mode and wait untill died completelly). now it show again 0% on all three batteries. I dont want to say, that your method is bad . no, I am just a lucky one, where the "wiki" methods worked correctly. and I think it is also important sometime charge the battery completelly, not only for couple of minutes, but until you see green light. when you deplete the battery completelly to zero (it is never zero, electronics integrated on the batter doesnt allow that) charging to full take much more time as before.

powerdetect
one more thing, you can test, how much capacity your battery have. it is simple utility called power detect. you can find it in THIS thread or as attached file. just copy to device and run. the test will suspend itself after one hour, so set all settings as needed. it will automatically create file, where you can find all important information. before you use it first time, charge your battery to full.

Thank you for the reply, My battery still dies at 30% but no more at 70% and 50% and it lasts 3 days/nights in a row.
I tried the boot loader mode but it seemed it had a timeout, instead of dying from battery losse it died from some kind of time out :/ because I was still capable of juicing some more battery if i went again to boot loader...
I will check that app, thnks again

wat i did..
well my battery used to shut off at 95 above present...wat i did was drain the battery with a 12 volt motor, took me a complete day for it to discharge, then i put it in the freezer, was suppose to put it for one night but i actually forgot bout me putting the battery in the freezer n i remembered after 2 days. then i charged it which also took around 18 hours to charge now my batter shouts itself at 70% n i can listen to music for 1.5 hours. which is a lot from a battery which was shutting at 95%

Battery Level

I know there are a few threads on the battery levels being a bit random at times, but mine is really hacking me off.
It will stop at say 75% and just stay there, when I reboot its down to like 50% or less. Twice now its gone dead because I though it had plenty of charge but just wasn't moving.
Is it the phone or battery thats the problem or drivers or something - ps this is on a standard rom, no tweaks etc.

same here.im using romeos rom but it seems to be a problem with another roms to.the battery % stay (for example) 10 hrs 68 % and after reset dropt 5,10,15 % down . is it hardware problem or software ?

And quite same here... The case is a bit worse even. When I charge it from lo-bat warning to full, it sort of overcharges itself and might hang up even! I noticed this in two phases - 1) when I left my TP to charge during night, it was hanged in the morning 2) when charging from lo-batt and restarting at ~85% bat level, after boot up the battery reports something at 98% or something!

I have the same (all posts) some time I have 78% and make reset and now i have 89%. Which is real 78 or 89%!??
when I charge all night I have only 70-92% after 6 hours, and after reset 100%

For me this is unusable as I cant trust it without constantly rebooting which is not good enough.
Lucky for me its a second phone, so I'll flog it and think of something else.

Hi there!
I have the same problem, after charging over night. The battery indicator shows, that a battery is not fully charged. After short removing battery and rebooting it shows 100%. With another HTC battery it is the same. When I use another spare battery (not original HTC), it works correctly. But I dont like the spare battery, because it is hard to remove from device because of its sharp edges. I think, it is a HW problem of battery, or a problem of device.

[Q] Battery recalibration issues - G1 on CM 5.0.8

My apologies if I am here with the same complaint, but I tried searching this forum and found nothing that works for me.
Basically, I rooted and flashed CM 5.0.8 and I have been having battery issues. Now its not that my device is draining battery at a very fast rate (seems it is indeed doing that), but I suspect there is some problem with the battery meter.
So from all the stuff that I read, I decided to recalibrate the battery. I charged it up to full, until the green light went off, until the status showed 100%(full) and then some more. I then restarted into recovery(Amon-RA 1.7.0) and wiped the battery stats and rebooted back into CM, while having the charger connected at all times. Its worth noting however that during the time the phone was booting itself into recovery or into the ROM itself, the charging indicator stayed off. Thanks to that, when the phone booted into CM, the indicator was red for a few mins before it turned green (charge had dropped 99%)
Now I've done this 2-3 times, including letting the phone die due to an empty battery, but I am still getting very little life from the phone. For the record, I have the end button set to sleep and I don't have any continuously running widgets and my syncing apps (twitter) are set to sync only every 1 hour.
Anyway, again I don't think these apps are draining much battery, since once the battery dies down and the phone switches off (after light to moderate usage as compared to the life 1.6 Donut gave me), when I put it back to charge and turn the phone on after 5-10 mins of charge (while the phone is off), the meter shows a charge level of around 65%. So I suspect that the battery charge is at around 50-60% during when the meter reads it as around 1% and forces the phone to turn off.
I also tried switching on the phone after it had turned off, but it switches off immediately after booting (at least on 1.6, I could reboot it a couple of time on a 'dead' battery)
Are there any other tips that I can use to recalib my battery? Any idea will be much appreciated as my phone dies out each day before I can get back home and put it on the plug. Should I consider upgrading to CM6-RC1? Has it been proven that the battery performance is better on that?

Have u tried swapping out the battery with another one to isolate it to possibly the battery itself? Isolation is key, that way could it be ur extusb isn't charging correctly or is it the battery?

Well, I do have a spare - the one I saved from my bricked G1, but I haven't tried it out yet. The battery was working perfectly well just a few days ago when I had a stock Donut. So, I suppose it isn't a battery problem, but no harm in trying out the other one.

i had issues with my lithion battery and found out it happened to be on its last breathe. And with my spare i had it worked good. did u drop the battery at all? with lithium ion batteries can be as delicate as expensive china or porcelain. And to be honest the batteries that came with our g1's aren't really that good. If you can I would suggest getting an ext. battery from ebay. ive heard that fully discharging a lithion battery isn't the best practice either. I'm no expert just experience Best of Luck!

well...
reading the Cyanogen 5 thread I noticed at least 5 people with a broken battery...
for the record mine is broken too...
it's all swollen up... I mean, I can use it but it doesn't last a full day and it doesn't fit perfectly anymore in its slot inside the phone...
I'm starting to think that maybe for some reason flashing cyanogen 5 caused this issue, since so many people had this problem at the same time...
or maybe it's just a time defect of some stock htc batteries... who knows...

@GigiSpligi: Nono... don't blame CM for the swollen battery. Batteries tend to swell up after a lot of usage (charge discharge cycles). The battery on my old Nokia phone had swollen up after about 2 years of use. Similarly my friends E51 battery. Also my G1 batt seems to have swollen a little bit already. So nothing to do with the ROM.
Of course, if the ROM is making you charge frequently, then it is indirectly causing the effect on the battery.

geekoo said:
Should I consider upgrading to CM6-RC1? Has it been proven that the battery performance is better on that?
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The exact same thing happened to me ... actually on all ROMs now ... i'm gonna look into getting a new battery and sdcard which kinda sucks, but oh well. when i think about it, i wasn't have any problems till i started flashing sense based ROMs, especially Slide ROMs. so i must have done something wrong. i can't even make a phone call for longer than 10 mins before the phone shuts off and have to plug it back it into a charger just to get it to boot to the home screen
... hope there is a solution ... haven't read through this thread yet. just wanted to let you know you weren't the only one with the exact same problems

GigiSpligi said:
well...
reading the Cyanogen 5 thread I noticed at least 5 people with a broken battery...
for the record mine is broken too...
it's all swollen up... I mean, I can use it but it doesn't last a full day and it doesn't fit perfectly anymore in its slot inside the phone...
I'm starting to think that maybe for some reason flashing cyanogen 5 caused this issue, since so many people had this problem at the same time...
or maybe it's just a time defect of some stock htc batteries... who knows...
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Click to collapse
geekoo said:
@GigiSpligi: Nono... don't blame CM for the swollen battery. Batteries tend to swell up after a lot of usage (charge discharge cycles). The battery on my old Nokia phone had swollen up after about 2 years of use. Similarly my friends E51 battery. Also my G1 batt seems to have swollen a little bit already. So nothing to do with the ROM.
Of course, if the ROM is making you charge frequently, then it is indirectly causing the effect on the battery.
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hahaaha well that didn't take long to read ... yeah my battery is somewhat swollen and i did drop the phone once ... time for a new battery i guess ... sucks

[x-posted from Cyanogenmod forums]
Ah well... gonna have to pull out a new battery and see if that helps in anyway. I will have a look at the device usage stats to see if anything is causing unnecessary drain. Since there has been a drastic change in the battery life after the upgrade, I do not want to blame the battery itself yet. Guess some app is driving the phone nuts.
Ok, I was just seeing the battery usage history in spare parts and I there are some interesting usage stats there.
Network usage - While Market, Android System, Google, Calendar are around 1% - .5%, almost 100% of the usage has come from Media. I think this has been trying to keep the network alive throughout the time. I dunno if network means Data or just the voice network. The packages listed under Media are Camera(twice), DRM, Download Manager, Media Storage. Is there any reported issues with Camera or Media Player?
Also, Spare Parts says my Battery Health is Good. Is this a reliable indicator of the battery life?

I believe spare parts receives the battery info via "Testing" which comes stock on android. Let me know how the new battery works out cuz I want to research further when it comes to phone environment versus the actual battery itself.

I have same problem with my battery. I guess maybe battery life since it already use 1 half year. Anyway, who knows.

new battery
just picked up a brand new battery today. gonna leave it charging overnight. will report later on whether it fixes the problem with the random shutdowns
... on a side note, i think there has been a battery issue since CM5 correct? in my sig there is a recalibration method by xda member 'my_former_self' for those who have not read it and if your battery is still good to go ... worth a try

new battery
so it turns out my battery issues was in fact the battery. the new battery is working awesome. phone hasn't randomly shutoff on me all day with heavy texting, some youtube vids, mild internet browsing, and several apps ... 17+ hours later about 2% charge remaining. gonna run the battery through its conditioning cycle.
fyi i turned airplane mode on when i was in class ... approximately 2 hours

New battery it is
After spending over 4-5 days with the battery, I pulled out the spare that I had (with a couple weeks of usage) and installed that on my phone. Just to be safe, I drained the battery after some initial charging and ran it through this battery recalib method.
I did this yesterday morning after it being charged fully. I also installed SetCPU after recalibrating. Its run 2 full days of regular usage and I still have over 50% charge left. Ain't that cool or what? I think I will leave it uncharged tonight also and I guess it should last the whole of tomorrow as well. I don't think even the stock cupcake or donut lasted this long on a single charge. So in that case CM 5.0.8 has actually managed to up the battery life a lot (with SetCPU and, sleep on end).

Exactly how long does your battery last? It's no secret that CM5 (and any Eclair ROM) is just plain poor on battery life in these devices, even on my in-warranty Magic it chews through the battery about 25% faster than any Donut ROM such as Dwang, SuperD or CM4.
Seido sell extended batteries which fit in the original phone housing (unlike those ridiculous ones on eBay which have an extended back and turn your phone into a 2001-era brick), they seem to get good reviews, maybe give one of them a go.

Super Jamie said:
Exactly how long does your battery last? It's no secret that CM5 (and any Eclair ROM) is just plain poor on battery life in these devices, even on my in-warranty Magic it chews through the battery about 25% faster than any Donut ROM such as Dwang, SuperD or CM4.
Seido sell extended batteries which fit in the original phone housing (unlike those ridiculous ones on eBay which have an extended back and turn your phone into a 2001-era brick), they seem to get good reviews, maybe give one of them a go.
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Co-sign. I'm using one of their batteries and they work well.