[AC Question]

I've noticed that after updating my HTC software on the current and last 2 models, the battery immediately dies at 20%. This never occurred prior to a software update from the manufacturer, before a newer model was released. Is it possible that when a manufacturer releases a software update, they can intentionally have the phone shut down at a percentage of their choosing in order for a consumer to buy their next upgraded model that was released? I bought the HTC 9 & 10 and I've noticed that just shortly after the successor model was released, an update would immediately reduce my battery by at least 20% and would shut down my phone at that level. I know with technology & sales quotas, anything is possible. Any opinion on this?

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! This is a perennial discussion with all smartphones (most notably iPhones). There's never been any hard evidence that any company does this on purpose. Sometimes it can be due to glitches in the updates that cause increased battery drain. Sometimes it's due to new features introduced in the update. It can be helpful to do a cache partition wipe after a major update, because that can sometimes help with battery issues: https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-25804

[Rukbat]

There is a setting (which you can change) to set at what percentage the phone should warn you of low battery, and at what percentage it should shut off. If the shut-off percentage is higher than the warning percentage, the phone will shut off before warning you.

However ... letting the battery discharge lower than 40% is asking for a quickly-dead battery. If the phone is set to shut off at 30%, you should never see it, because you should plug the charger in or shut the phone off (if you can't get to an outlet) at 40%.

The points at which you get the warning and the shutoff could change with an update, because they may be cached, and if the update changes the cache locations, the shutoff is being triggered by some value that was saved by some other part of the Android system before the update. Try restarting into recovery mode and wiping the cache (only the cache, not any other part of storage). That's usually not needed, but it was in old versions of Android, and some developers (someone at HTC had to rewrite the stock Google update to work on each HTC phone that gets it) may not realize that moving storage locations in the system messes things up. (You can be a very experienced developer and not know everything about Android.)