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SDA won't power on: How to determine a working battery

I woke up to find my SDA powered off and unable to power on, which was odd considering it was plugged in to a (Motorola) charger.
Since the orange charge light doesn't come on at all, I suspect it's just a dead battery. I've touched the battery contacts to a battery tester with no response - as if the battery is totally dead, which is promising. However, I can't be sure I'm doing it correctly since I've never tried this on a battery I know is working.
There are 4 contacts on the battery, and I'm wondering if there's more to it - like needing to have 2 contacts touching the positive lead and the other 2 touching the negative lead.
Can someone try testing their battery and see which contacts give a live (charged) result?
Thanks

kentchristopher said:
I woke up to find my SDA powered off and unable to power on, which was odd considering it was plugged in to a (Motorola) charger.
Since the orange charge light doesn't come on at all, I suspect it's just a dead battery. I've touched the battery contacts to a battery tester with no response - as if the battery is totally dead, which is promising. However, I can't be sure I'm doing it correctly since I've never tried this on a battery I know is working.
There are 4 contacts on the battery, and I'm wondering if there's more to it - like needing to have 2 contacts touching the positive lead and the other 2 touching the negative lead.
Can someone try testing their battery and see which contacts give a live (charged) result?
Thanks
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Click to collapse
Normally you shouldn't try to use chargers not designed for your phone. What has probably happened is that there wasn't enough current output in the charger, and it completely drained your battery. Your battery is probably fine. Get a proper SDA charger and try charging it again. You can even take it to a store and ask them to plug it in for 15 minutes while you browse the new phones.

Yeah - I lost the original charger, but I've been charging with this Motorola one (output 5V / 550 mAh) and via USB for the past 6 months without problem. I still think it may be the battery because it was at 50% when I went to sleep.
What are the output specs of the original charger?

kentchristopher said:
Yeah - I lost the original charger, but I've been charging with this Motorola one (output 5V / 550 mAh) and via USB for the past 6 months without problem. I still think it may be the battery because it was at 50% when I went to sleep.
What are the output specs of the original charger?
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The stock HTC charger (model ADP-5FH K) has output of 1A at 5V. But if you had no trouble charging before it shouldn't be a issue, unless the charger/battery is faulty.
If you have a multimeter you can verify this. To check if your battery is charged place contacts in (+) and (-) contacts on your battery and it should show ~3.7V. I just tried this.

s!lencer said:
The stock HTC charger (model ADP-5FH K) has output of 1A at 5V. But if you had no trouble charging before it shouldn't be a issue, unless the charger/battery is faulty.
If you have a multimeter you can verify this. To check if your battery is charged place contacts in (+) and (-) contacts on your battery and it should show ~3.7V. I just tried this.
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Thanks, silencer. I don't have a multi-meter, but I was using the battery tester as a way to gauge whether it was putting out any current at all, and it sounds like it's not. You were testing the 1st and 4th contacts?
I have read elsewhere that if your battery goes below 10-20% you won't be able to charge it with anything but the stock charger, so I think that's the problem, but I'll probably order a new battery as well just in case.

Yes I check the voltage between first and forth contact. What sort of battery tester are you using? Is there a digital read out display?
You can also try a USB to mini-usb cable to see if the battery get charged. From what I can remember USB ports are designed to give 500mA at 5V, but I have charged my phone when it was flat using a USB cable.

To follow-up in case anyone has this problem in the future: I ordered a new original charger (ADP-5FH) off eBay and with it, the phone's orange charge light came on right away and after giving it a full charge my phone is back up and running.
I'm inclined to think that it's not the difference in mAh of the original charger (1000mAh) vs USB charging (500mAh), but that there is something unique to the original charger which can "turn on" the charging when the battery is completely dead - perhaps something communicated by one of the extra pins in the mini-USB connection.

[Q] got a generic charger....it says-5v 500mah,original is 5v 1a(amper)is this ok?

it says- output :5v 500mah
the original says-output:5v 1a(amper i guess)
will this screw up the battery?

chances are no, considering it is half what htc recommends you charge it with, either it will charge it very slowly (half the current of the original) or the voltage wont provide enough to kick the phone into charging mode and nothing will happen (i.e. the charger "wont work")

Thanks for the help

It'll work, but as panyan said, it'll recharge much more inefficiently than with a 1 amp charger.

Actually... It will charge the phone exactly as charging via USB, as USB is limited to 0.5A.

Yep, it will charge your phone just fine @ USB charging speed, I have a similar charger.

And some of you forgot to mention that the phone will struggle when for example you will play games or use gps. Charge will be insufficient and instead charging it will slowly discharge while using it.
Sent from my Desire HD uing XDA App

Well yes and no, in normal usage it will charge phone, but when you use your phone the way that you would drain the batty in two hours, then it will discharge.

Hey... Yeah if the charger is a car charger then it may not charge fast enough if using GPS software which can drain the battery fast. 1Amp reccomended for faster charging... other than that should charge fine but just slow like USB charging (which has a max of 500mA).
One question guys... I bought a car charger from ebay listed as for HTC phones. It looks like a cheap knock off product with a glowing blue HTC logo when used in the car. The device is rated at 2Amps. Now from what little I know about electronics I've been told that AC/DC Plug packs with more Amps are ok and the device just only uses what it needs. I'm not however familiar whith battery charing when you have a higher rated Amps charger... Would the battery on the phone just be greedy and "ask" for the full 2Amps? Would this then put strain or be dangerous by charging the phone too quickly?
Secondly while we are on the topic of electronics... I'm trying out a super cheap ebay battery supposedly rated at 1600mAH (I know these rating are usually fake). I've noticed the HTC battery is around 4.17V when fully charged. This battery charged up to 4.2V fully charged... Is that dangerous for the device?

2 amp is better, correct me if i am wrong. So the output is 5V and 2A, is that mean the power is 10W every hour ?

2 A charging current (if the phone takes in that much) will damage the battery in a long term use.

It is incredibly unlikely that the phone will discharge the battery faster than it charges unless you're doing something very wrong, e.g. Running a console emulator while downloading a large file over HSDPA with WiFi enabled (but not connected) and using GPS navigation with screen brightness at maximum!
Screen and background services take approx 150mAh, and I doubt radio will take much more than that combined. That puts drain 200mAh less than USB charging, 700mAh less than direct charging.
FYI: There's a spec for USB charging of mobile phones from supported USB ports which can pull up to 1500mA.

DeathJester said:
It is incredibly unlikely that the phone will discharge the battery faster than it charges unless you're doing something very wrong, e.g. Running a console emulator while downloading a large file over HSDPA with WiFi enabled (but not connected) and using GPS navigation with screen brightness at maximum!
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Hmm... not sure for Desire HD I haven't tested GPS with SatNav software using current widget... I do know that I'm pulling well over 200mA just with basic use at home with Wi-Fi on and GPS & Bluetooth off and I kill all backround apps. I do know that I've been in the car and seen TomTom app on my friend's jailbroken iPhone 3G (or 3Gs) and with the GPS on and not doing anything intensive... we were actually travelling down a long straight highway, the phone was chewing more battery than the car charger could charge, so he switched off GPS.
Ah also guys no need to worry about the 2Amp charger... It sh*t itself on the 3rd car use and no longer works at all. Junk! I also noticed on the 2nd car trip that opening Android SpareParts the charge is displayed as USB Charging not AC Charging so yeah I believe that the car charger was only a standard USB (max 500mA) power output and not 1Amp let alone 2Amps. Annoying how false advertising or labelling is part and parcel with cheap Chinese products.I was meaning to test the charger's output with Current Widget (which is what I'll do for my next car charger) but the charger crapped out and was useless before I got a chance.
One thing I did notice from looking at a log using Current Widget while charging my phone on the A/C charger in standby, the charge tapers off the power output the more the battery is charged. To get an accurate idea of if the car charger is going to be outputting 1Amp I'd be sure the phone battery is down to 40% (or in the 40s) then with all other stuff switched off I'd run a log on Current Widget and turn the screen off for a few minutes. You should have a reading of around +700 to +800mA if the car charger is rated at 1Amp.
Be wary of the cheap Asian knock of car chargers with the coil spring cord and the HTC logo that lights up blue.... Not worth the 3 or 4 bucks they sell on ebay for.
There's a spec for USB charging of mobile phones from supported USB ports which can pull up to 1500mA.
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There's commonly those double USB cables for laptop hard drives so yeah I can see that if the USB ports are actually giving you the full rated maximum of 500mA you can get 1Amp output with this kind of cable but 1500mA?!? The only way I'd see possible for this is either you have a tripple USB cable connected to 3USB ports that are all outputting the full 500mA (and that's if a triple cable even exists or lets say you solder another one onto a double cable) or you have a USB AC/DC charger or some other USB port/hub you've rigged up which provides more than the USB standards of max 500mA per port. How else is this possible?!? Has the max power output of 500mA changed since USB 2.0 standards?

yeah there are usb 2.0 ports with more than 500mA power supply.
some companys give some extra juice to their (or often only one) usb ports.
for example: i've got an Dell Studio XPS 16 Notebook here. it has 3 usb ports, 2 with normal 500mA supply and one with 1A (for charging your phone, etc).
DN41

Discharging while using Navigation

Hey Guys,
So I was recently on a trip this weekend and was using Navigation on my Nexus 5 for a 4 hour drive. I had noticed though after a short while that while I had my Nexus 5 plugged into a charger it was still continuing to drain battery.
With my Galaxy Nexus in the past I was able to run Navigation / Music / Etc.. all whilst still charging so it came as a disappointment when I saw this.
I made sure that I was charging on (AC) mode and it still continued to fall, albeit a little slower than (USB) mode though. When I went to the battery usage navigation had taken up about 59% of the battery drain, I was surprised because I though it would have been the screen but that was only like 14% of the battery drain.
Anyone else run into this issue?

Check the Amp output on the charger. Anything less than 1A will not charge the phone while in use.
I had the exact opposite issue with my G-Nex, the "rapid" charger I was using only output 550mAh as opposed to the 1A that is required to charge while in use. I don't believe it is an issue with the phone, it's probably just the charger. $10 to $20 will get you a nice, reliable one with the proper output, and possibly an additional USB port.
Hopefully this helps

Don't buy cheap car chargers, just not enough power. I use a Verizon car charger that has an extra USB port for charging another device and it charges while the device is in use.

Thanks for the input guys, unfortunately the charger was 1 amp that I was using. I do have another car charger that I use and none of them are the cheap USB ones. I guess I'll have to do some more testing with the other car charger that I have.
I was just mainly concerned, not if there was something wrong with the phone, but with the fact that even when charging in AC it wouldn't keep up with navigation's wear on the battery usage.

Thought I would update to confirm that my Galaxy Nexus car dock charger charged it extremely well after testing while navigating.
Definitely was the other one I was using.

When you switched chargers did you happen to also use a different cable? I couldn't get any of three different chargers that I tried to keep up with the GPS battery drain. Then I realized I was using the same cable with all 3 chargers. The problem was that the cable kept the phone in DC charging mode at nothing more than 0.5 amps. I bought this fast charging cable on Amazon and now I actually gain battery percentage even while using my GPS full time.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0088HTYUE/ref=ya_aw_oh_pit

jalanjkcarp said:
When you switched chargers did you happen to also use a different cable? I couldn't get any of three different chargers that I tried to keep up with the GPS battery drain. Then I realized I was using the same cable with all 3 chargers. The problem was that the cable kept the phone in DC charging mode at nothing more than 0.5 amps. I bought this fast charging cable on Amazon and now I actually gain battery percentage even while using my GPS full time.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0088HTYUE/ref=ya_aw_oh_pit
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Click to collapse
I had exactly the same thing with my old phone and discovered it was the cable not letting more than 380 ma pass through it.
There are apps like this https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ccc71.bmw that let you monitor mah in and out etc so you can test out different leads and chargers
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[Q] Charging Too Slow Now

I have had my Verizon Galaxy S4 since February of this year. I've been using the stock Samsung AC charger that came with it. It's always charged the phone pretty fast if I wasn't using the phone. It would charge about 15% in 20 minutes. Now it's only charging about 3 or 4% in 20 or 30 minutes. Now I didn't do anything different to my phone. I've been on this same ROM for over a month and this is just now a problem in the last week. My wife has the exact phone and charger that I have and when I use her charger it charges just as rapidly as mine used to, so I know it's not the usb port on my phone itself. I haven't dropped or damaged my charger at all in any way either.
Does anyone have any ideas about why this is happening?

If it charges fast on you wife's charger you've pretty much answered your own question.
Try using her cable with your charger, if it still charges slow then get a new charger.

gadget! said:
If it charges fast on you wife's charger you've pretty much answered your own question.
Try using her cable with your charger, if it still charges slow then get a new charger.
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Ok, I'll give that a shot. Thanks.

I had the same problem too ! Did a full battery reset and everything is going good now !
You have to charge it for 12 hours and drain your battery until your phone don't boot. Charge it and here you are !

Yeah these devices act funky every blue moon. My wifes didn't even recognize ANY oem charger for a week. Only detected others as USB devices causing slow charge rate. Removing dust, component cleaner, fresh install, all did no good. Eventually it just resolved the issue itself. All chargers work normally again.

change the usb cables
I also had the same problem before. I'd been using the original charger and usb cable and noticed that charging takes a lot of time than normal.
I found that it's on the usb cable. I accidentally found it when I used gsam battery monitor. It displays the current being received by your phone when charging. Using the original usb cable, it only gets around 600mah. I tried another usb cable (from a previous Samsung device) and now my phone gets 1,900mah (closed to the charger output of 2,000 mah).
Every since I changed the usb cable, my charging is fast now. Hope this helps.

I would try a new cable and Charger that is rated 2.1 amps or better if will be charged real quick

elchingon said:
I would try a new cable and Charger that is rated 2.1 amps or better if will be charged real quick
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Click to collapse
I noticed that using the Pure Nexus rom my charging time became significantly faster. In fact I can get a full charge from nearly dead in just over an hour. This is using the charger and cable that came with the phone.

I had the same problem too ! Did a full battery reset and everything is going good now !
MT tenso

How do you make full battery reset?

The charging rate is based on the output rating of the charger, which is determined by the resistance value between the Data+ and Data- USB pins. If you use a cheap cable with high(er) internal cabling resistance, that will throw off the detected charger output capacity rating, and knock you down to a lower charging current and longer charging time.
Also, one time, even with the original charger and original cable, I couldn't charge at anything more than the default USB 500mA. I ended up having to power off the phone, and power it on again, which fixed the charging current and speed problem.

Install this app & check if it is getting charged at max current; anything less than 1200 mA when screen on & 1900 mA when screen off, you need to change your cable or charger
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.abmantis.galaxychargingcurrent.free
Sent from my GT-I9500 using Tapatalk

I read somewhere that if you activate airplane mode the battery is charging faster.

[Q] Special Charger

Does this tablet require a special charger as i only seem to be able to get it to charge using the charger that came with it. if i try a power pack or any other charger it will not charge

It requires a 3amp or better charger at the standard 5V. I've successfully used battery banks and chargers that have 3amp or more. Most of the newest chargers and battery banks that support quick charging via the orange USB ports should provide 3amps and work fine from what I've experienced.
Sent from my LGMP450 using Tapatalk

What you might find is that the tablet does not report that it's being charged but it is actually being charged, very slowly and there's no indication of it taking place...
The way to check, is to plug in the tablet and note the battery percentage, leave it charging (with no indication that it is!) and then come back and check the battery percentage, you'll see that it's actually climbing up!
It does take a long time to charge on a 5V USB charger but the reason it doesn't show that it's charging is supposedly because the tablet needs to see at least 12 volts...
I've just ordered a 15v charger on Aliexpress for $5 shipped, to see if I can speed things up.
Still need to sort out the dead dock battery and may well get one from Aliexpress too...