Odd charging status - can't use my phone?

[Crunchyhippo]

I believe my phone went dead overnight, as it wasn't plugged in. I noticed that the display was very dim this morning, and when I went to try and up the light level, it went off. So when I got to work this morning and plugged it in, I checked it after 30 minutes or so and saw that it had a battery image displayed with "24%" inside it, while what looked like green bubbles slowly drifted up from the bottom. I've never seen this before, and I also can't turn the phone on to do any function. Can anyone tell me what's going on with this? I'm fairly new to Samsung having come from Apple.

 

[B. Diddy]

Let it charge up to at least 50% without disturbing it. Then try powering on--you might have to press and hold the Power button for 10-15 seconds.

 

[Crunchyhippo]

It finally finished what it was doing, and I still couldn't access my apps. I had to reboot it. It's still a mystery as to what it was doing.

 

[B. Diddy]

What was it doing? Do you mean the charging process? Does it work normally after the reboot?

 

[Rukbat]

What it was doing is ... the first hour you have a dead battery plugged into the charger it's not charging, it's ramping up. So checking it after 30 minutes means that you were checking with a dead battery.

The only time the percentage indicator is actually correct is without the charger plugged in. (Percent of charge is actually calculated from battery voltage, and the charger voltage makes the voltage at the battery terminals higher than it would be without the charger connected. If it didn't, the battery would never charge.)