Weird battery shutdown...

**xtn** · 08-07-2012, 02:52 PM

So... my phone just shut down on it's own, while I was reading Engadget, with about 0.5 seconds warning via the low battery / plug in now warning pop-up.

I thought that was weird, since it had only been off the charger about two hours and only had about fifteen minutes of actual non-sleep usage during that time. So I fired it back up, and it got only past the 4G splash screen before it shut down again.

So I plug the charger in, wait a minute, and boot it up. Goes through the process as usual. 66% battery. Well if it friggin had 66% battery, why did it warn me and shut down? I unplugged it to see what would happen, but it's rock steady now like nothing ever happened.

Same battery I've always had. Normal, air conditioned office temperature. What gives?

xtn

**PanchoPlanet** · 08-07-2012, 10:37 PM

Sounds like the ics special. Try gingerbread, its flawless.

Pp.

Transmitted from the future using gingerbread infused plasma conduit injectors.

**androidpirate** · 08-07-2012, 11:45 PM

i've had random restarts on ics, just browsing the internet and bam! reset.

**maybein09** · 08-08-2012, 01:18 AM

I encountered the exact same thing, but it was just before ICS update. Turns out my battery was going and started to get a bulge in it. Take it out and see if it spins on a flat surface. You may need a replacement battery.

**PanchoPlanet** · 08-08-2012, 08:26 AM

Make sure you spin it clockwise, very important, if you spin it counterclockwise you'll do a factory reset on your phone.
Pp.

Transmitted from the future using gingerbread infused plasma conduit injectors.

**Nonja** · 08-08-2012, 11:53 AM

Originally Posted by maybein09

I encountered the exact same thing, but it was just before ICS update. Turns out my battery was going and started to get a bulge in it. Take it out and see if it spins on a flat surface. You may need a replacement battery.

I had the same problem, but I think the root cause was a charger I bought on monoprice would charge my battery too quickly and keep trying to charge it even after it reached 100% capacity. I determined this via Battery Spy.

The Sprint tech pointed out the bulge in my battery after he replaced it with a new one. I'm currently at 22h 8m on battery, 2h 12m or screen time, brightness at lowest setting, wifi on for 11h 47m, FF18, and I still have 31% battery left!

**xtn** · 08-08-2012, 12:34 PM

I've had a couple of the 'ICS related' shutdowns also, and this wasn't the same. Definitely got the low battery warning, and then when attempting to restart it wouldn't complete... just like a low battery. It wouldn't restart normally until I plugged it in, at which point it showed to still have 66%

Anyway, my battery was slightly bowed out. Enough that it would spin like a top on a table. But it's been that way for a long time and still worked. This was some kind of weird fluke involving the phone's software deciding there wasn't any battery juice even though there was.

By the way, the counter-clockwise-battery-spin-factory-reset doesn't work anymore in ICS. Have to go back to GB for that feature.

Anyway I've just put in a brand new OEM battery and charged it up. I'm curious to see if it has any beneficial effect on the ICS crazy fast battery drain problem, but it will take me a few charge/discharge cycles to evaluate that.

**arwild01** · 08-10-2012, 10:00 PM

I'm experiencing the exact same thing with my phone. Frankly, ICS actually improved several things for me (Bluetooth in particular is working much better) and I definitely like the features. Today my phone was only actually on for all of about 5 minutes when it decided to turn itself off and refused to start up again. I was too busy to get it "charged".

**dante32278** · 08-11-2012, 02:32 AM

Originally Posted by PanchoPlanet

Make sure you spin it clockwise, very important, if you spin it counterclockwise you'll do a factory reset on your phone.
Pp.

Transmitted from the future using gingerbread infused plasma conduit injectors.

Sounds about the same as the 1950s wise tails of don't lift anything over your head or you will miscarriage

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Android Central Forums

**Lord_MiL** · 08-17-2012, 11:04 AM

My wife and I have both seen this in the last couple weeks on our E4GTs. With both phones, it has only been since upgrading to ICS, though she's stock non-rooted and I'm on CM9 Alpha 6. It's not always a shut down, it's just a severe drop in battery. Once I went from 70% to about 10%, prompting the phone to give me a low battery warning. In that case, I just waited it out and sure enough, the battery % started steadily climbing back up into the 60's without plugging it in.

It can be super frustrating when it drops low enough for the phone to shut itself down. You then have to wait until it sorts itself out enough to turn the phone back on. If this happens at an inopportune moment, when you were extra careful to make sure you had plenty of charge (waiting for an important call/text, navigating somewhere new, using phone for shopping list) it really makes you question the value of having a smart phone at all!

Neither of our batteries have the bulge issue, so it seems like it must be a bug in the h/w or s/w that reads the battery level. The weird part is that it drops immediately but then takes quite a while to get back to the real level. Almost as if there is a built-in limit on how large of an increase it will report but no such limit on how large a decrease it can report.

A couple times it has happened to me, I've noticed the phone was quite warm. At the time I thought maybe some process was stuck in a loop or continuously retrying to download something, so I did a reboot to clear everything out. When the OS finished booting, the battery level dropped. Doesn't always seem to happen this way, so I'm not sure if it's valid evidence or not.

If nothing else, the battery graph is entertaining. Battery slowing decreasing, then a steep cliff and gradual rise that looks like the battery charging, but the bar for charging at the bottom is empty the whole time.

If someone figures out how to fix this, please let us know!

**dj ozone** · 08-18-2012, 11:31 AM

ive had a few steep battery drops and phantom charging issues also...

**Zhara** · 08-18-2012, 01:44 PM

This kinda happened to me last night, except it didn't shut itself off per se. I had about 10% left and was browsing the web when my phone decided to freeze up. I pulled the battery and restarted it and I magically had 47%. :sly:

Sent from my SPH-D710

**Chris_B** · 08-19-2012, 12:57 AM

Originally Posted by xtn

So... my phone just shut down on it's own, while I was reading Engadget, with about 0.5 seconds warning via the low battery / plug in now warning pop-up.

I thought that was weird, since it had only been off the charger about two hours and only had about fifteen minutes of actual non-sleep usage during that time. So I fired it back up, and it got only past the 4G splash screen before it shut down again.

So I plug the charger in, wait a minute, and boot it up. Goes through the process as usual. 66% battery. Well if it friggin had 66% battery, why did it warn me and shut down? I unplugged it to see what would happen, but it's rock steady now like nothing ever happened.

Same battery I've always had. Normal, air conditioned office temperature. What gives?

xtn

I am definitely having issues like this recently. The last 2 days, the phone will not stay on for more than 2 minutes if not plugged into something. More if fully charged, and down to 30 seconds or so if less than 70%. When plugged in, the phone runs fine. Went to ICS almost two weeks ago, but the battery problem was just starting 4 days ago.

Just before shutdown, the screen will start to slightly flicker and go a little darker for about 5 seconds, then it abruptly shuts down. When starting back up, the battery could be at 10 - 50% less charge. Also, the automatic screen brightness is usually switched off.

For a quick experiment, I (sort of) plugged in a battery from an Epic 4g (not Touch) and the phone worked fine for 15 minutes without shutting down. Then I put my original battery back in and it hasn't shut off for 20 minutes -- so far! The Touch battery in the non-Touch also works fine. Weird!

I'm picking up a new battery tomorrow if I can get to a store. I'm in a weekend training event and might not get out until the stores are closed. Not the most convenient time for this device to have issues, so I hope the battery change fixes it.

**xtn** · 08-19-2012, 01:45 PM

Well this is only one data point, and I don't know if it's only coincidence or not, but my phone stopped acting up a soon as I put a new battery in it.

**VWEBBJR** · 08-20-2012, 09:58 AM

Yep, same issue. I was on a leaked version of ICS when it started and I recently unrooted and got the OTA, and I'm having the same issue. Sucks, but my S3 will arrive either today or tomorrow, so I'm just going to stick it out.