Database Info

Calibrate Battery thread - This is how you do it!

There have been about eleventeen thousand questions across multiple threads on how to calibrate the battery properly...figured it probably should be a sticky in here if possible.
You have to know how to get into Recovery mode. You can do this with Quickboot when the phone is on, or the powered off phone method:
1. Power off phone or pull battery and replace.
2. Hold all three of these buttons down: Vol-Down, Camera button (lower left as you look at the phone) and Power on button).
3. You will see a small graphical menu come up. Most of us are using Clockwork, so I will focus on that - it will be a green menu.
For the battery wipe, Go to Advanced, navigate the menu with the vol up/down keys, and select using the camera button.
There are three ways so far:
The Drain Way:
1. Drain it down until fully dead.
2. Charge normally to full.
3. Reboot to Clockwork recovery and wipe battery stats (under advanced, on second page), reboot phone.
4. Turn everything on, flashlight, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Pandora, the whole nine, to quickly drain it completely dead.
5. Charge normally to full.
The Powered Off Charge way:
1. Charge your phone 100% while it’s on
2. Unplug it from the charger, power off, then charge it up to 100% with it in a powered off state.
3. Unplug charger from phone. Power it on, and then charge it to 100% while the phone is on.
4. Unplug the charger and then reboot into Clockwork, go to advanced and clear the battery stats.
5. Power on, charge to full, and then enjoy.
Third option (thanks squshy 7), I paraphrased it and wrote it out a bit for ease.
Maybe we can call it the Mr. Miagi Charge way....aka Power On, Power Off, Charge On, Charge Off way lol
(the parentheses are the state of the phone)
1. Start with the phone powered on.
2. (Phone on) Charge battery until the LED turns blue
3. (Phone on) Unplug the phone from the charger, wait until the LED turns off
4. Power off the phone.
5. (Phone off) Plug the adapter into the phone, charge it up until the LED turns blue
6. (Phone off) Unplug, wait until the LED turns off
7. Power the phone on.
8. Wait until the phone is booted back up all the way, and then power it off again
9. (Phone off) Plug the adapter into the phone, charge it up until the LED turns blue.
10. Boot the phone into recovery mode
11. Go to Advanced, and then choose Wipe Battery Stats.
12. Power the phone on and use normally.

Still a noob, but what would exactly need you to have to Calibrate Battery? Also what exactly does it do for the user?
P.S I'm sure I could look this up but it would be nice to see it in your thread for others to see

turtlenator694 said:
Still a noob, but what would exactly need you to have to Calibrate Battery? Also what exactly does it do for the user?
P.S I'm sure I could look this up but it would be nice to see it in your thread for others to see
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well it's really a matter of semantics...you're not calibrating the battery, per say...it's actually calibrating how android is reading the battery. (these phones use Li-ion batteries, which don't use memory, so they themselves never actually need "calibrated" like some older types of rechargeables)
But...as far as what this means to you, its kind of a big deal! It improves battery life in letting android know when your battery is actually at 100%. When flashing new kernels and ROMs, its very likely that the phone will read your battery at full, when in reality its probably less. So it would seem like your phone isn't getting as good battery life (when in actuality it just hasn't been charged fully but you don't know that because android reads it as full because it hasn't been calibrated )
also, without a calibration, you might notice your battery gauge draining oddly...for example, you might see it quickly drop from 100 to 89, then drop steadily to 72, and then hang for a while at 71 (these are all just made up numbers)
so it means alot! but everybody has different methods and i've never seen anything officially released by spring or samsung to confirm methods...
I will say this though...I've read plenty about how since these Li-ion batteries don't have memory, the DRAINING method, while maybe correctly calibrating your battery, actually HURT the long-term life of your battery.
so heres what ive always done:
(the parentheses are the state of the phone)
(phone on) charge battery till LED blue
(phone on) unplug, wait till LED off
[POWER OFF]
(phone off) plug in, wait till LED blue
(phone off) Unplug, wait till LED off
[POWER ON]
When completely booted, power off again
(phone off) plug in wait till LED blue,
boot into recovery, wipe battery stats
unplug, reboot phone and use
it's always worked so try it out

Actually I'm pretty sure it doesn't fully charge to prevent over charge.. and the whole deal with you guys chargings 2-3 times after the light turns blue is just killing the life of your battery.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

My question why is this in devolpment?
Fyi: both methos work but the complete drain does kill battery life. The pluging in multiable times dont. Android nows wheb to stop charging the battery to prevent over charge.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

something must be wrong....
With my battery because I've done the above procedure and my battery doesn't even last 5 hours. Its starting to get annoying. Any ideas?

XtaC318 said:
Actually I'm pretty sure it doesn't fully charge to prevent over charge.. and the whole deal with you guys chargings 2-3 times after the light turns blue is just killing the life of your battery.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If it can stop at 92 percent to prevent overcharging, then it can do the same thing when it reaches 100 percent, no matter how many times you plug it in.
I don't know of many, if any li ion battery packs made today that don't have circuitry in them that prevents overcharging.

I put it in development because when you load roms, generally battery is a big concern. I cant tell you how many times ive searched for the same topic all over, I just figured it would be as helpful to others as it would have been to me had it been here and been a stickie at the top.

I've always thought battery calibration was more of a placebo effect, but I have no data either way. On a related note, here's an interesting article about battery stats and charging that was posted a week or so ago:
Android Police: Your Battery Gauge is Lying to You...

Having a battery keep at a full 100% for a long time is not good for li-on batteries. The 10% between 90 and 100% is basically used as a safety buffer. That's why the charge drops between 100 and 90 is much faster than the drops from 80 to 0. even though there ways to increase the actual capacity of the battery by using the methods above, you will still see a quicker drop from full to 90 almost instantly after unplugging the charger. I am in no way saying that those methods don't work in helping the phone read the actual charge of the battery, but they do help increase capacity a little bit. by rearranging the electrons in the battery. There actually is an article on google and on xda that backs it up. I'll try finding it
Sent from my Samsung-SPH-D700 using XDA App

Thank you a ton for posting this. Ive been trying to find a good thread on this all over the place and there never seems to be one. So thanks again.

will the "Drain Battery" way work with a droid1 with the default battery?

doublea500 said:
will the "Drain Battery" way work with a droid1 with the default battery?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Will work on any android device
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

mysteryemotionz said:
Will work on any android device
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks believed it or not, you really helped me

mysteryemotionz said:
My question why is this in devolpment?
Fyi: both methos work but the complete drain does kill battery life. The pluging in multiable times dont. Android nows wheb to stop charging the battery to prevent over charge.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Lol.. wow alright.
Yes COMPLETELY draining a battery is really bad for a battery; infact if you do so you may end up with a 'bricked' battery.
But the phone also knows not to 'over drain' so with the method of clearing batt stats there's no harm done..actually. allowing your phone to die before charging is healthier than plugging it in before it dies.
I won't argue on the other note anymore; well simply because I don't know enough to continue just know I won't be taking that path
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App

Thanks for the response. But also if you have a separate charger because you have multiple batteries, do you need to have to go through any of this? Or will the charger charge them to their true full state?

It will charge them to 100%. You'll notice it holds 100% for a lot longer.
Sent from my SPH-P100 using Tapatalk

The only thing that needs to be done to calibrate the battery is either flash at full charge or charge to full then delete batterystats, all this drain to dead and charge this way and that is pointless, though u will all argue otherwise, pointlessy
Sent from my Epic 4g

Yes thank you very much! I'm gonna give this a shot probably tonight after the Christmas Eve service and see what happens.

You should definitely add that NONE of this matters if your first usages out of the battery aren't proper. When you get the phone, you need to kill the battery before charging.. charge for 10-12 hours w/the phone off or in a dock, kill battery.. repeat 2 more times to condition the battery physically.

battery only chargers to 95% ?

Is this normal. I did try and do a search in my defence.

Yes. It is like that by design. It stops charging at around 95-98%. Its to prevent you from overcharging the battery.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App

This is a known issue. You can try and reset battery stats in cwm when your battery is charged and/or emptied. It works for some and not for others. I haven't noticed my battery lasting any less when my battery doesn't "charge" past 97%

There have been some discussion on this. I get about 97% myself. From what I've read you may get full charge if you let it drain all the way. I don't do that myself. Very happy with battery life as is.

I used to get 100% before I switched to the Vegan rom.
Sent from my G-Tablet running Vega-Nb5.1

Mrhorology said:
Is this normal. I did try and do a search in my defence.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Either let it drain until it shuts off a few times and then charge it all the way up or if that doesn't work, use CWM to delete the battery stats when it's at 95% (full, with a GREEN light - not charging, with a red light) and then let it drain until it shuts off on it's own.
I did this a long time ago (delete the stats) and it's been perfect since. Charges to 100% and does indeed show battery at almost empty before it shuts off.
Good Luck.

Still no go here but it can get tom 96%... lol

I am sitting a 98% with VEGAn.

I am now having an issue where u can use the device, then I turn it off, and
turn it on the next morning and see about 5 to 10% of my battery was drained.

Confirmed Fix
Confirmed fix for me on Vegan 5.1. Letting battery drain down to zero and shutoff the tablet... reached 100% on next charge. Now the indicator charges to 100% every time.

tried this and still no luck . still get to 95-6% bugger

Vegan here..this is how I fixed it:
1) Drain it till it shuts off, try restarting it a few time to make sure its dead.
2) Once dead, plug it in, boot into clockworkx, and reset battery status (do this quickly)
3) restart, and leave plugged in idling till fully charged
4) use and enjoy a accurate battery level!!
-Red

Mrhorology said:
I am now having an issue where u can use the device, then I turn it off, and
turn it on the next morning and see about 5 to 10% of my battery was drained.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You have to remember that in order to install some apps out there, you have to give them permission to use the internet and to interact with your device autonomously. I have found a few apps that were pulling my tablet out of sleep mode and turning on the wireless to download ads or other updates, and that (along with the length of time to shut back down) was affecting my battery life.
I would say to go back and review what you've installed, and to also check your screen timeout settings. Just doing that saved me quite a bit of overnight battery loss.
BigJohn

When to clear battery stats?

I have done bump charging and everything I can think of to get my battery to top off at 100% when I remove it from a power source. Every single time though it drops to anywhere from 95-97% within a minute.
Do I need to clear the battery stats and hope for the best? Do I need to request a new battery from Verizon?
Also, to clear battery stats do I need to run the phone down to nearly dead, clear stats, then charge it up? I have conflicting info on when to clear or if it's even a wise idea on the Thunderbolt.

htowngator said:
Also, to clear battery stats do I need to run the phone down to nearly dead, clear stats, then charge it up? I have conflicting info on when to clear or if it's even a wise idea on the Thunderbolt.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've been wondering about this as well. Good question

I always turn the phone off, charge to 100% then boot and immediately clear stats. After that let it drain till dead. I like to let it charge back up all the way with the phone off. Then use it normally. Always worked for me.
Sent from my Thunderbolt

ajd88 said:
I always turn the phone off, charge to 100% then boot and immediately clear stats. After that let it drain till dead. I like to let it charge back up all the way with the phone off. Then use it normally. Always worked for me.
Sent from my Thunderbolt
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've only cleared stats once but this is the process I used. Seemed to work well.

htowngator said:
I have done bump charging and everything I can think of to get my battery to top off at 100% when I remove it from a power source. Every single time though it drops to anywhere from 95-97% within a minute.
Do I need to clear the battery stats and hope for the best? Do I need to request a new battery from Verizon?
Also, to clear battery stats do I need to run the phone down to nearly dead, clear stats, then charge it up? I have conflicting info on when to clear or if it's even a wise idea on the Thunderbolt.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you leave it on the charger for an extended period of time it will always drop off a few percent rather quickly. A new battery will not fix that. From what I understand it is a feature that helps prevent overcharging. As for battery stats I only clear them if I switch from a standard to an extended battery or sometimes if you flash a ROM when not already charged to 100% and notice the battery has gotten worse.

dirtyfingers said:
If you leave it on the charger for an extended period of time it will always drop off a few percent rather quickly. A new battery will not fix that. From what I understand it is a feature that helps prevent overcharging. As for battery stats I only clear them if I switch from a standard to an extended battery or sometimes if you flash a ROM when not already charged to 100% and notice the battery has gotten worse.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This. The battery charges to full and then will stop charging to prevent overcharging. Also it's good practice as said above to clear stats after loading a new ROM or switching out batteries.
There is an app on the market called battery calibration which walks you through step by step the proper way to calibrate it. Obviously you have to be rooted but you can clear stats without having to reboot into recovery. Of course you can run the new Das Bamf rom with their toolkit which also has a clear battery stats option in it.

What I do in the mornings when I wake up after charging all night, is reboot and continue to let it charge until I walk out the door.
sent from a sweet paper weight.

This thread: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=871051 explains why this happens.
Basically the battery meter is lying to you when it says 100% right when you take it off the charger, it's actually a couple percentage points below 100%. This is because keeping the phone at 100% while on the charger shortens the battery life.
So basically don't worry it's normal.

Everyone: I know why it happens and that it's normal.
I am talking about why after I do a bump charge and keep recharging it to 100% (i.e. take it off power, let it dip to 95%, put it back on power, charge till green). After it immediately goes green I pull it off and less than a minute later it's down to 96 or 97%, for example.

Really Irritating Battery drain/percentage "jump"

Ever since I have flashed 4ext recovery My battery jumps percentages. For example: If i charge my phone from ~30% overnight with the device switched on, as soon as I unplug my phone it's fine, but after about 15 minutes the battery plummets to about 90% without me even using it! Second thing, if I decide to reboot into recovery to flash a theme or mod or whatever the percentage when in recovery mode shows that it is higher than what is indicated when fully turned on?? And once again, if i reboot from there, when the device has turned on the battery has plummeted even further to 50%! Yes I've deleted batterystats.bin and calibrated the battery, and yet still this happens!
I experienced a very similar issue with my last phone (HTC Desire) and that was linked to it being "USB bricked" and was able to resolve my problem.
Thank you all in advance

Matty Matt said:
Ever since I have flashed 4ext recovery My battery jumps percentages. For example: If i charge my phone from ~30% overnight with the device switched on, as soon as I unplug my phone it's fine, but after about 15 minutes the battery plummets to about 90% without me even using it! Second thing, if I decide to reboot into recovery to flash a theme or mod or whatever the percentage when in recovery mode shows that it is higher than what is indicated when fully turned on?? And once again, if i reboot from there, when the device has turned on the battery has plummeted even further to 50%! Yes I've deleted batterystats.bin and calibrated the battery, and yet still this happens!
I experienced a very similar issue with my last phone (HTC Desire) and that was linked to it being "USB bricked" and was able to resolve my problem.
Thank you all in advance
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wel with my experience (do you have a percentage mod installed?) uot kitchen mods react weird with my device. The battery isn't necessarily draining. The mod isn't representing the actual percentage.
My work.around was as follows
Drain to 2 percent
Turn phone off and charge over night
(this way the battery decides when its full)
Deal with percentage reading being way off for a whole day. When it dies turn it back on and there will be the residual percentage that was skipped over. Let that drain down. Then try and turn it back on (repeat steps)
After phone dies completely then charge once again overnight with phone Off.
Wake up unplug phone, boot into recovery, plug phone back in, wipe dalvik/cache then bat stats. Reboot and unplug.
That's what I do. Sounds like a lot but you get a routine after a while. Ya a lot if people percentage mods do that to me.
Hope this helped
Good luck
I'm mobile right now

I have the same problem with one diference, when battery jump - phone turn off

Moto Maxx never going below 15% battery

My Moto Maxx is never going below 15% battery for quite some time.
I was running CM 12.1 before and I am running the CM 13.0 preview now.
The problem now seems much worse.
This could be my battery dying?

Wait its not going below 15% or above 15%? Also, did you flash the ROM with a clean wipe (no dirty flash)?
Another thing to note is that the CM 13.0 Build is a "PREVIEW" which means that there are a TON of bugs in there. I would advise you go back to CM 12.1 for the time being.

It is never going below 15%.
On CM12.1 it also happened.
When it reaches 15% percent, the phone shuts down and needs to be charged.
After sometime charging, it displays the battery as above 15% and I can turn it on again.

Mine had always done that at 5 percent. Here lately it's closer to 7 percent.

I'm on original 5.0.2 and also facing that issue... I've heard onde it's related to the use of non original chargers, or even QI chargers... Never got rid of it, even after a full wipe/factory reset...

I've had this problem too and made a post over in the Droid Turbo forums but no one ever replied..
At least I'm not the only one that has this problem.

Yeah I've always had this issue between 5-8% on my three Turbos. Stock Rom and other flavors. They all shut the phone down around there.

Solved the problem with this app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.newagetools.batdoc&hl=pt_BR
Now my battery goes down to 1% again, yahoo!!!!

how can that app fix it?? i would think its a placebo effect as i see dificult for an app to read or fix battery info...
maybe it locks out the bad parts (like an old chkdsk on a HD)
anyway i will tryit if i see it tries to go rogue with the Ads it Dies..

Batteries in laptops and phones have a file that keeps track of battery life. They use this to estimate percentage.
Sent from my DROID Turbo using XDA-Developers mobile app

still having this issue

I have the same problem. It started as shutting down at %5, then %7, now it's %15 shuts down.

The same thing on my XT1254. It shuts down near 5%, I will try to charge it with my old i9505 charger, it could be a problem related to TurboCharger.

Hello guys,
My girlfriend's phone had this issue some months ago, what I did in order to fix this issue was:
1) Let the battery drain until phone shutdown. (try to turn on again until you cannot)
2) Fully charge with an original Motorola charger (phone turned off)
3) When it reached 100%, turn on the phone but enter in the fastboot mode and wipe caches
4) Uses the phone normally and let reaches 0%.
Making these steps, the battery back to have a "normal" behaviour

danilobertelli said:
Hello guys,
My girlfriend's phone had this issue some months ago, what I did in order to fix this issue was:
1) Let the battery drain until phone shutdown. (try to turn on again until you cannot)
2) Fully charge with an original Motorola charger (phone turned off)
3) When it reached 100%, turn on the phone but enter in the fastboot mode and wipe caches
4) Uses the phone normally and let reaches 0%.
Making these steps, the battery back to have a "normal" behaviour
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I´ll perform these steps, thank you

Although you see the battery as percentage, the operating system does not see it that way. It uses lower limit voltage of the battery to shut down the device in order to extend battery life. Batteries do not like to get and stay deep discharged (below low level voltage)...if you do this frequently, you will severely hamper your battery's life.