Huawei P9 battery goes from 40-50% to 0% and shuts down

[Android Central Question]

I bought the huawei P9 about a year ago, and for the past 2 months, it has this strange often occurrence which is the phones battery is 20-50%(has happened between the range) where for an example i open my camera, take a photo, the phone freezes, and shuts down in 10-20 seconds and restarts with 0% battery, and then completely shuts down, and when i put it on my charger it shows 20-50% battery life immediately.
It has also happened with other applications like chrome, music, clash royale etc. So it's not app specific, could use some help.
Thank you in advance.

 

[belodion]

See whether it persists in Safe Mode.

 

[Ivan Hirman]

Um, mind helping me enter safe mode?
I've tried turning it off and holding volume down but im obviously doing something wrong since it's not starting in safe mode
Oh and i forgot to add im running the 5.0.1 emui and 7.0 android
And the battery problem is sometimes just complete drain or really fast draining like a percent or 2 per second.

 

[belodion]

I'm not sure about your phone, but Safe Mode is normally entered by holding Power as if to power off the phone, then long-pressing on the 'Power Off Phone?' box that appears.

A Power Off & Restart is the normal way of exiting Safe Mode.

Bear in mind that your problem may simply be due to a bad battery or other hardware fault, but it's worth trying Safe Mode first.

 

[fourG]

I had a similar problem with p9 - phone got in my pocket, can't detect wifi at home, need to charge the phone twice a day, battery drop from 60% plus to 1% in a few minutes, camera freezes when taking a photo while the only solution is to restart the phone......

I called the customer support and was advised the need to repair. I was prompted that I updated the OS not long ago. I recall that the problem seemed to correlate well with the system update. The only way to get back to my older version of operation system is a factory reset. With quite a bit of reluctance, I backed up the phone with HiSuite to my PC and did the factory reset!!!

My phone is back alive as new. The battety problem has gone completely. Please note though, don't use the internal memory option for phone back up. it doesn't work. It is safe and quick to use HiSuite to back up your data, apps, contacts etc. to PC. It is easy to restore your data from HiSuite but you will have to log in again to all your app accounts.

In short, a factory reset will do the trick to revive your Huawei p9.

 

[Rukbat]

A factory reset doesn't give you back the older version of the operating system, it just removes additions you made to the phone (like pictures, apps, settings, etc.) The only way to "get back" an older ("original") version of the operating system is to flash one.

 

[richieferia]

I have the same issue with my P9. Even after a factory reset, and turning the unit over to my daughter, she is now the one complaining. Unit is about 2 years old.

 

[Mooncatt]

I have the same issue with my P9. Even after a factory reset, and turning the unit over to my daughter, she is now the one complaining. Unit is about 2 years old.

Your battery is probably bad and should be replaced.

 

[Hannah Shachar]

I have exactly the same problem. I use my camera, the phone freezes, then turns off and says it has no battery when previously it did. When I connect it to the charger, it suddenly remember that it has 46%.

 

[bubu333]

The dual camera system in P9 is extremely power consuming. My battery is 2+ years old and I have similar issues.

 

[khaifieda]

same problem with my huawei p9 plus.. i have made hard reset/wipe cache but it still happens. my camera still keep freezing and automaticly restart/shutdown.. it happens when the battery is below 65% .. please help me..

 

[OPACNIYsputnik]

Just recently encountered this problem, exactly the same, you could cope with it?

 

[mick rayner]

I had exactly the same issue, tried everything people mentioned above. Eventually I downloaded an app to analyse battery performance. Turns out the battery was only holding 16% of its original charge. The phone was less than 2 years old. Now got a pixel 3, won't get another Huawei.

 

[Mooncatt]

I had exactly the same issue, tried everything people mentioned above. Eventually I downloaded an app to analyse battery performance. Turns out the battery was only holding 16% of its original charge. The phone was less than 2 years old. Now got a pixel 3, won't get another Huawei.

To be fair, you shouldn't completely blame Huawei on this. Every manufacturer can have an occasional bad battery. There's not a lot of battery cell manufacturers, so it's possible Huawei and Google source cells from the same manufacturer. Most battery problems are due to user abuse, albeit often unintentional due to the lack of info supplied and Li-ion batteries. It's very possible to kill a perfect battery in months due to abuse.

If you were draining it to zero or charging above 80% (especially if overnight), then you may want to reconsider your charging habits. These batteries like a happy medium of 40-80%.

 

[mick rayner]

Yeah when I was researching the issue it said leaving on charge overnight was bad so keep mine 40-80ish now. Still though 16% was bad as it didn't get particularly heavy use. I've had android phones since 2009 and never had one drop that much charge. From my looking into the problem when I had the phone it's very common.

 

[B_mer388]

Have the same issue with my P9 that I had for 2 years now, I have replaced my battery as well. Issue still occurs. I would say every time the battery is lower then 40 -50% and I attempt to take a picture the phone shuts down. Powers back up to 1% power, then if I plug it into a power source it does show at 24 - 32% and charging.

After reading this and several over forums with the same issue (note my Mate 7 had a similar issue which is why I upgraded) I plan on getting the battery replaced again. This time I will attempt to 1. never let it get to 0% (power off when it's low). 2. not charge overnight or charge over 95% when possible.

Was planning on getting the Mate 20 Pro, but this issue gave me second thoughts.

 

[salindal]

I'm having the same battery problem with my Huawei P9 as well. I'm a careful user, never plugged the phone overnight and never allowed it to drain completely. However, this started happening couple of weeks back. I'm going to try factory reset, if not bye bye Huawei.

Reading this thread, it occurred to me that all these users bought their Huawei P9 when it was introduced in 2016 as same as me. So does it mean Huawei phones have only 3 year life expectancy? More points not to buy another Huawei.

My preference also would be a Pixel for my next phone. I loved the Huawei P9 because of it's handy size and camera. But features and capabilities offered by Pixel is far more superior. Also I don't won't a Huawei that doesn't have Android and Google apps.

 

[Mooncatt]

Reading this thread, it occurred to me that all these users bought their Huawei P9 when it was introduced in 2016 as same as me. So does it mean Huawei phones have only 3 year life expectancy? More points not to buy another Huawei.

3 years on a stock battery is actually quite good for a smartphone. They usually wear out in about 2 years or less in phones, regardless of manufacturer.