Hey everyone, got my Note 5 about 4 days ago and wanted to share a strange issue I had with it battery related.
On the first night I left the phone charging on my nightstand, I used the same old HTC USB charger and cable I've had for years. The phone was at about 15-20% battery left when I went to sleep. The next morning, I awoke to find it had only charged to about 45%, and said it was going to take another 12 hours for a full recharge. This never proved to be an issue for my Nexus 6 which used that same charger all the time every night, but yeah okay, whatever.
When I got to work, I let it continue charging. It reached about 88% at a normal pace recharging from the USB hub on my monitor. Then, suddenly, it shot up to 100% and said it was done. (I noticed it also slowed down, taking a long long time to get from 87% to 88% for instance.) This was a first flag that something was wrong. When I unplugged the phone, it went from 100% down to about 79% in the span off a half-hour while using it briefly only once in that time. Looking at the battery usage history, it was also obvious that the level was falling much faster than it should for such light usage. This was the second flag that something was wrong. That's when I decided "... Okay, let's run the battery down and see what happens." My logic here being, "does the battery have no concept of what it's current charge level is?" And so, I left it on my desk at full brightness watching YouTube videos, never letting the screen turn off just running the battery down as fast as I can. This is where the third flag comes in that confirms for me something was wrong.
As you can see, the phone hit 1% battery at 4PM and then CONTINUED OPERATING until it finally shut down on its own
OVER THREE HOURS LATER at 7:15PM. (The screen was on and I was using the phone during that ENTIRE duration.) If you follow the downward trend into the negative until I plug it back in, you can infer that the true charge of the battery was still somewhere between 30-40% when it was reading 1%. Pretty crazy right?
I shut the phone down after taking that screenshot and let it continue charging in an off-state using the Samsung charger until it hit 100% with a green notification light. (It spent nearly 30 minutes on 100% as well, until it gave the green light it was fully charged.) Last night, after unplugging at 100% and turning the phone on at about 10:30PM, I went to bed shortly after and left it off the hook. It's now almost 5PM the next day and I'm at 58% left after moderate usage all day (listening to music, texting.) This seems much much more normal for what should be expected of this phone's battery.
Above is a screenshot of the battery performance as of writing this post. Looks much more reasonable.
I think if any of you are seeing very unusually short battery performance, you may consider calibrating the battery from 0%. It's worth noting that the phone DOES SHUT-DOWN when it hits it's lowest possible power level. It does not just blip-off like a Game Boy that just had its AA's die. So, if you suspect your phone might be doing something similar, do the following ONLY ONCE:
1) Use your phone until it turns itself off by any means necessary (leaving a game running is one of the fastest ways to do this.)
2) Just after it turns off,
leave the phone off and charge it with the Samsung Fast Charger until it gives a 100% green notification LED.
3) Start the phone plugged in, unplug it once it's booted, and perhaps even restart for good measure.
4) Try to use the phone normally until it reaches a low level between 10-30% before charging again and keep an eye on how long this takes.
(Note: Even though the phone shuts down at true 0%, you want to avoid getting the battery this low whenever you can for the health of the battery. You'll be fine just this once, though. Just be sure to not leave it at 0% for any long period of time after it dies. Start charging it shortly after.)
That said, I'm not going to be using that old HTC charger anymore. It's entirely possible it was responsible for throwing the reading off on my phone. But I also don't know for certain, so this was my story.
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