Hi,
First time posting on this forum, apologies if I break any rules, but this experience is very recent and just I wanted to share it with everyone. Hope someone finds it useful.
Recently I've had the repeated "moisture detected" warning on my HTC U11, while the phone is completely dry. The warning is a pop-up which cannot be dismissed, and wouldn't stop unless you reboot the phone. (Sometimes the warning resumes right away even if you rebooted the phone) Needless to say, this basically renders the phone unusable.
After some trial and error, I think I've figured out the cause.
So, a short background: I dropped and broke my HTC U11's screen. I went with a shady third-party screen replacement, and asked for a battery replacement along with it. Afterwards, the work done was quite poor, my phone lost its waterproof capabilities, but at least it was usable. Or so I thought.
One of the problems I noticed right away was the battery. The new battery doesn't charge as fast (usually at approx. <1000ma), and the battery temp is always locked at 27-28C, no matter the actual temp of the phone. I suspect this is due to the third-party shop using cheap batteries with no actual temp sensors to save cost. (The new battery life is also less than what I got with my older used battery, so yay, shady third-party vendors...)
After a while, I started getting these moisture warnings, with absolutely no way of stopping them other than rebooting the phone. I know the phone is definitely not wet, but that didn't help me. Sometimes the batteries weren't even charging, even using safe mode / reboots and such. All of my research pointed to dead threads, which were unhelpful, to say the least.
Long story short, I realized that it was somehow linked to the temperature of my phone. Once, I literally put my phone in a freezer when the moisture warning was up, and lo and behold, the warning stopped after the phone has cooled down sufficiently.
I suspect that in my case, the battery temperature sensor was always giving off 28C, while other auxiliary temperature sensors were giving off other actual temperature readings. So when the phone heated up sufficiently enough, The phone might see:
> Battery Temp: 28C
> USB Port: 40C
and freaks out, thinking there's a short at the USB port of some kind.
Now, to be clear, this is only a hypothesis, and I have no way of actually knowing if this is correct. I have tried looking into how the algorithms to determine "moisture" worked in android to no avail; and my experience with this case tells me that the sensor isn't getting tripped by actual moisture. So the only logical explanation is that android triggers moisture warning based on other means: voltage, resistance, temperatures, etc. (Experts, feel free to correct me)
And so far, the only thing to have reliably stopped / caused the moisture warning is the temperature. I don't actually know the temperature which it starts warning (since the battery temp sensor is broken), but generally the phone would be warm to the touch, just not gaming-on-a-phone-warm, so I'm guessing it would be around ~40C. A long enough reddit session on my phone usually is enough to trigger the moisture warning. Meanwhile 1-2 minutes in the freezer always stop any moisture warnings.
Hope someone finds this useful.
Any insights into the moisture warning algorithm would be great.
First time posting on this forum, apologies if I break any rules, but this experience is very recent and just I wanted to share it with everyone. Hope someone finds it useful.
Recently I've had the repeated "moisture detected" warning on my HTC U11, while the phone is completely dry. The warning is a pop-up which cannot be dismissed, and wouldn't stop unless you reboot the phone. (Sometimes the warning resumes right away even if you rebooted the phone) Needless to say, this basically renders the phone unusable.
After some trial and error, I think I've figured out the cause.
tl;dr I suspect a broken moisture warning is due to a thermal issue. The temperature of the usb port not matching that of other temperature sensors. Try cooling your phone down to see if it stops the moisture warning. Worked in my (fringe) case.
So, a short background: I dropped and broke my HTC U11's screen. I went with a shady third-party screen replacement, and asked for a battery replacement along with it. Afterwards, the work done was quite poor, my phone lost its waterproof capabilities, but at least it was usable. Or so I thought.
One of the problems I noticed right away was the battery. The new battery doesn't charge as fast (usually at approx. <1000ma), and the battery temp is always locked at 27-28C, no matter the actual temp of the phone. I suspect this is due to the third-party shop using cheap batteries with no actual temp sensors to save cost. (The new battery life is also less than what I got with my older used battery, so yay, shady third-party vendors...)
After a while, I started getting these moisture warnings, with absolutely no way of stopping them other than rebooting the phone. I know the phone is definitely not wet, but that didn't help me. Sometimes the batteries weren't even charging, even using safe mode / reboots and such. All of my research pointed to dead threads, which were unhelpful, to say the least.
Long story short, I realized that it was somehow linked to the temperature of my phone. Once, I literally put my phone in a freezer when the moisture warning was up, and lo and behold, the warning stopped after the phone has cooled down sufficiently.
I suspect that in my case, the battery temperature sensor was always giving off 28C, while other auxiliary temperature sensors were giving off other actual temperature readings. So when the phone heated up sufficiently enough, The phone might see:
> Battery Temp: 28C
> USB Port: 40C
and freaks out, thinking there's a short at the USB port of some kind.
Now, to be clear, this is only a hypothesis, and I have no way of actually knowing if this is correct. I have tried looking into how the algorithms to determine "moisture" worked in android to no avail; and my experience with this case tells me that the sensor isn't getting tripped by actual moisture. So the only logical explanation is that android triggers moisture warning based on other means: voltage, resistance, temperatures, etc. (Experts, feel free to correct me)
And so far, the only thing to have reliably stopped / caused the moisture warning is the temperature. I don't actually know the temperature which it starts warning (since the battery temp sensor is broken), but generally the phone would be warm to the touch, just not gaming-on-a-phone-warm, so I'm guessing it would be around ~40C. A long enough reddit session on my phone usually is enough to trigger the moisture warning. Meanwhile 1-2 minutes in the freezer always stop any moisture warnings.
Hope someone finds this useful.
Any insights into the moisture warning algorithm would be great.
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