Battery pull vs power off/on

[gbororats]

OK, so I came from a blackberry and the only way to actually have the phone turn off 100% was to pull the battery. On the Droid X, if you power down and turn off the phone it 100% turns off the phone.

My question/debate is why does everyone here say to pull the battery on the droid. It's my understanding that the only time the battery should need to be pulled is if the device completely locks up and doesnt allow you to power down the phone using the power button. Pulling the battery seems to potentially lead to more problems, like breaking the battery door, ripping the pull tab off etc.

so is there really any difference between pulling the battery and powering the device off and back on that would make the phone more "magical" when it turns back on?

 

[DroidDev]

I believe when you pull the battery it is similar to unplugging a modem completely from a power source when troubleshooting bad connections.

That lack of a power source is more like a, "Well not sure that it will help the situation but it certainly cant hurt it!" kind of thing.

Things just tend to work when you do that I think because when the battery is removed for a certain period of time it helps the device to reboot in a fresh active state.

 

[KB3MMX]

All modern cell phones are potentially on with the battery installed.
The only true way to kill potential tracking or spying access is to pull the battery in any cell phone.

However, the Androids are nothing like dingleberrys and shouldn't ever need a battery
pull, usually a simple reboot will work if you experience a problem.
You won't need to be pulling the battery all the time because of lockups like with a
Blackberry.

 

[myriad46]

OK, so I came from a blackberry and the only way to actually have the phone turn off 100% was to pull the battery. On the Droid X, if you power down and turn off the phone it 100% turns off the phone.

My question/debate is why does everyone here say to pull the battery on the droid. It's my understanding that the only time the battery should need to be pulled is if the device completely locks up and doesnt allow you to power down the phone using the power button. Pulling the battery seems to potentially lead to more problems, like breaking the battery door, ripping the pull tab off etc.

Because they have no idea what they are talking about.

so is there really any difference between pulling the battery and powering the device off and back on that would make the phone more "magical" when it turns back on?

No.

 

[theanswer3]

Powering on off on android is EXACTLY like a battery pull...does the exact same thing no need to pull the battery at all.

 

[Dendrite]

Powering on off on android is EXACTLY like a battery pull...does the exact same thing no need to pull the battery at all.

To the OP: I've wondered this as well.

Reason? My brother also has a DX. Ever since he did the OTA upgrade from 2.1 to 2.2 his X will occasionally hang up on the Moto logo when he powers on from a turned off device. He has tried a factory reset (which eliminated about 90% of the hang ups with powering on) but still has an occasional Moto screen freeze. If he does a battery pull when stuck in Moto logo, it tends to boot up just fine after that.

So I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that doing a battery pull was more of a complete restart based upon his experience. Thoughts?

As an aside, I also did the OTA upgrade with my DX and it's been fine in every way. Strange...

 

[irishguy0224]

Powering on off on android is EXACTLY like a battery pull...does the exact same thing no need to pull the battery at all.

Not true. WHen your phone is off it is still transmitting a signal.

 

[xliderider]

Android os is like a computer os, there are temp files and other system files in use. Just as you dont want to pull the plug on your computer unless you absolutely have to, you shouldn't pull the battery on your Android device. You will end up with orphaned files like the temp files that were in use at the time, but after the reboot, the os wont know what that file was for. So the file sits there taking up space unless it is removed.

 

[Dendrite]

Android os is like a computer os, there are temp files and other system files in use. Just as you dont want to pull the plug on your computer unless you absolutely have to, you shouldn't pull the battery on your Android device. You will end up with orphaned files like the temp files that were in use at the time, but after the reboot, the os wont know what that file was for. So the file sits there taking up space unless it is removed.

That's helpful! So is there an app that scans for orphaned files and deletes them?

 

[m0nti13]

I don't know enough about the chipset on the DX, but is it possible that with the battery still in, the SRAM on the phone used for running applications stays possibly active through a shutdown (at least for a while). While a battery pull ensures that the SRAM loses the resident image (and any currupted bits) and refreshes the OS from the non-volitile memory?

Just thinking out loud... Of course I would power-off before pulling the battery to avoid the previous posters orphaned files issues...

 

[myriad46]

Not true. WHen your phone is off it is still transmitting a signal.

With all due respect, what the hell are you talking about?

 

[goliath602]

I've been wondering this too. So the only time I should EVER do a battery pull is when my phone is completely frozen and I can't power it off?

 

[myriad46]

I've been wondering this too. So the only time I should EVER do a battery pull is when my phone is completely frozen and I can't power it off?

Yes.

 

[gbororats]

This is why i started this thread. It sorta drives me nuts that a lot of people in this forums solution is to pull the battery rather than power cycle the device. For all the little/big issues that Ive had with froyo, all have been resolved just by powering the device off and then back on. I like a good debate every now and then though in case someone has some more insight that i might not understand.

This is kinda in that same area of task killer vs no task killer and how big red installs them on your phone even though they shouldnt be used.

 

[xliderider]

Former Blackberry users developed bad habits.

Battery pulls, obsessing over free memory and running apps, etc....

 

[m0nti13]

I still don't think you can ignore the cold boot vs. warm boot possibilities...

I don't do Android programming, but from my experience, the bootloader of an embedded system will take different paths to restoring the OS depending on the state of internal registers telling them if they lost power or not... Whether that is attempting to reload a resident image or assuming a driver is already initialized... these are time/settings saving activities the bootloader will attempt... if there was issues with curruption in those images, a battery pull could force the bootloader to reload from scratch....

 

[DaRkL3AD3R]

Ok I just want to say, if the device is powered OFF, its OFF. There's no physically-possible way for a powered off device to transmit any signal whatsoever.

All those phony warnings about how your phone can be tracked, even while "off" are bull just to scare lesser tech savvy individuals. When they say off, they mean when you have the screen off, but the phone is still powered on, but in a standby state. In this case yes its possible for your phone to "transmit a signal" while "off" but this is totally different then holding the power button down for 3 seconds, and pressing "Power Off." This is the equivalent to pressing Start -> Shut down on your computer. Its off. Period. I dunno about you guys but when my computers off it can't transmit me any porn so I guess it can't transmit anything else either well guess what the same applies to your phone.

Now as for the debate of whether to pull the battery or power cycle through the OS, its the same end result only the means of getting there are different. Sometimes you NEED to pull the battery, point in case stuck at the M logo. Other times you just want to get a fresh boot. In that case it is not necessary to pull the battery.

For the sake of curing temporary bugs in the system, a power cycle via the OS is more than sufficient.

So glad some others out there share my resent for those who live by these false beliefs (powered off transmitting signals, battery pull doing something more than just turning off the device) lol. Thanks and hope this helps clear things up for anyone still confused.

 

[m0nti13]

Dark Leader:
Please just take this as a heathy discussion...

Using your PC analogy, if you turn off your pc, it CAN still get a signal... Think power on LAN... but it would behave much differently if you also pulled the plug. I agree this is limited, and much different from consperacy "tracking" that people seem to worry about.
And before I go on, I want to make it clear I do NOT believe when a phone is off it still sends signals. In fact I do think that the phone is off and the OS will boot fresh, by just powerring off.
But, my point is that when hardware retains power, it retains settings, that the bootloader will sometimes NOT refresh if it too finds that the power was maintained... In the PC example this is the LAN card staying on and active and on the OMAP chipset this could be the SDIO controller chip that had a register bit flip causing issues writing to the SD card properly. http://www.linuxfordevices.com/files/misc/ti_omap3640_block.jpg

I do think the power down will solve 99% of issues with what's ailing the phone, as most issues will be with poor software development. But don't 100% discount the healing possibilities of a cold boot.

 

[tech_head]

Battery pull == Power Off/On on a DroidX.
The only time to ever pull the battery is if the phone is so wedged you can't power it off.

Unlike a BB, on a DX power of IS power off.

Do you pull the plug on your desktop to reboot? I'm just asking?

 

[carlos31820]

Unfortunately my phone is one if the unlucky phones that seems to always get stuck on the Motorola logo whenever I power the phone off and back on. Pulling the battery always lets me reboot. This is of course, after the froyo update.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk