My phone charge current is going down while charging

[Android Central Question]

So recently I had some problems with my phone's charging via Micro USB wall charger. I plugged it in at night and the next morning I'd either find it charged just 10-20% or actually find it with a lower percentage. I tried wiggling the charger around in the port a bit and it kept starting and stopping to charge for some reason. I tried cleaning my micro usb port and even lifting the small plastic pin holder inside the port (I verified the charger works just fine on another device btw), but nothing helped. Kept turning off and on when wiggling the cable in the port. So then I found out that it only charges when the connector of the charging cable is pointing a bit forward to the screen (by bending the cable backwards). I decided to stick the charger in this position using a wall and gravity, and it did keep up charging without turning off. I thought I'd had it, but when I came back hours later it hadn't charged even 1% more. I decided to do some more research and ended up downloading and installing Ampere into my phone to observe the charging current. I opened the app while the phone wasn't charging and plugged it in. I saw it measure 1970mA ( it's a 2A charger ) and watched the current slowly go down with a constant rate of fall, each time by 10mA (Ampere's minimum measurement amount). I was unbelievably confused, so I plugged in a 2A 5V raspberry pi power supply to see if the charger caused the issue. I saw it jump to only 480mA and my phone warned me of a low current charger (even if it's 2A). Then I was shocked when I watched the current once again go down constantly. I came back to the app a bit later just to find the current of charging at 0mA.

After that, I decided to post this. I am in urgent need of help. Could it be the charging port? Battery? Charge current control board?

Sent from my Huawei Y6 pro.

 

[Kodak2]

From your description it sounds like your charging port is faulty, it needs to go to the phone repair shop, they can also check to see if the charging circuit is performing correctly.

 

[BudgetRepairGuy]

So it's me the post author and I've realised another very weird thing. I kept my phone on the raspberry pi supply because it doesn't wiggle around as much and I checked ampere... it showed 0 mA but I left it plugged in anyway. I came back 1 hour later to see it charged 20%! I went back to Ampere and it still showed 0mA meaning it could be staying at 1-9 mA, but I doubt it. Maybe Ampere is flawed and it's just bad contact. If problems persist disabling charging to 100%, I will get a new phone or maybe a repair..

 

[Kodak2]

Repairs can be expensive, so depending on the age of your phone and if you are still getting security updates or not will influence you on the best course of action. It's sometimes nice to have an excuse to upgrade.

 

[Mooncatt]

Welcome to the forums. You said you tried different chargers, but did you try a new USB cable? Micro-USB's are prone to going bad when used for phones (mainly because people use them while charging, thus bending the cable more). If not, I'd suggest a new cable before sending to the repair shop. If you did also try a new cable. Then yeah, it's the port itself or something else inside the phone that's gone bad.

 

[Rukbat]

I tried wiggling the charger around in the port a bit and it kept starting and stopping to charge for some reason.

The reason is that one of the charging pins on the port is no longer soldered, so as you wiggle the cable, you move that pin and it makes contact, breaks contact, etc. (The hold is just a bit larger than the pin, and if the pin is sitting dead center in the hole wiggling the port moves the pin to the edge f the hole.)

The fix is to get the port replaced (they don't do "resolder the pins" jobs any more).

(The reason the Raspberry Pi charger only charged at 480mA is because the sense pin isn't properly connected (Pi doesn't use it) to tell the phone that this is an AC charger, not the USB port on a computer - from which it draws only 480mA, since a USB 2.0 port is rated at 500mA max.)

The fact that the current keeps falling off like that, though, says that the battery is bad too.

So, as Mooncatt said, if it's not a fairly new phone, it may not pay to replace the port and the battery. Get a price, then make your decision.

 

[BudgetRepairGuy]

It's been an odd few days of charging my phone. I left it overnight after that time and the next morning it was fully charged. I unplugged it and for the entire day the battery was fine and discharged in a stable manner. I then tried using the normal charger and it wasn't wiggling off that much anymore, as if something had clicked into place. I kept it in the same spot on the normal 2A charger for maybe 10mins and it had charged a bit over 20%! It's faster than the pi supply, but when I tried using the phone while on the charger it didn't charge at all and actually went down. It's hard to get the normal charging cable into place but when I do it charges very fast suddenly.

 

[Rukbat]

If the phone discharges while on the charger, it's normally the sign of a battery that can't hold a charge, but if it worked okay for an entire day, that's not the case. (This is why people who debug electronics have bald patches on their scalps - from tearing their hair out.) I'd still say it's a bad port. (20% isn't in the stable range of the battery - you should try to keep it within 40%-80% - even charging it to 100% shortens the life a bit. But if the phone isn't calibrated properly [and you'd have to root it to do that], that 20% indication could be 10% or even 5%, which is why it discharged so fast. And it sounds as if you're discharging it to 0, which is going to kill the battery all by itself. Lithium batteries are light, they're thin, but they are not deep discharge batteries, and discharging them deeply kills them [to the point that they can't hold a charge]. Also, if you manage to actually drain almost all the power out of the battery, it disconnects from the terminals inside. Charging an almost fully discharged lithium battery can cause an explosion, and not just a small one.)