Tried and true fix for battery issue

[aug0211#WN]

Interesting note, been doing the fix again today (my 2nd day), except this time I'm just keeping the phone off the entire time: no turning on whatsoever. Charged it while off the whole night, and been unplugging for about 10 seconds when green, then plugging back in. Amber, then goes to green. Time to get to green from amber has been decreasing all morning. I think I have "bottomed out" the time it takes at 68 seconds: the last 4 amber to green charges have taken 1 minute and 8 seconds EXACTLY, zero fluctuation. Very interesting, especially because just yesterday, it was taking me roughly 20 minutes for amber to green charges...

Could it be that tomorrow will be far less than 68 seconds - and so on and so forth, until it is an immediate thing, thus having fully calibrated my battery?

It definitely seems as though the calibration has been way off, and that we haven't been fully charging our batteries at all - and we keep pushing them to the max each time we do this, and as we do so, they devices are learning about where the 100% mark REALLY is. That's my theory (fully uneducated), for now. Can someone with a chemical (battery) background attest to this? Or, tell me how wrong I am?

 

[aug0211#WN]

WTF? Figured I'd try one last charge for the heck of it, to see if I could beat that 68 seconds. I'm at 2 minutes 22 seconds now, still amber. What is going on here, I seriously had exactly 68 seconds 4 times consecutively... coincidence? Doesn't seem like it... yet this seemingly random long charge throws everything off...

 

[VZWBB]

From my experience with this type of battery, coming from rc electric experience anyways, the method used to charge is as follows (this may or may not be what the phone is doing, just my experience with electric rc):

Plug in said pack and charge at whatever the specified rate is (1amp 5 amps..whatever).
Unit charges the pack to a certain amount, and then starts leveling off, lowering the current automatically as it goes.
After pack reaches a certain "voltage" the charger shuts off and pack is "fully charged".

So basically it charges as quick as it can until a certain voltage is reached, and then lowers the current by itself until it reaches the specific voltage level its looking for. I assume this is to avoid overcharging and fire. I don't know if our chargers or the phones circuitry (or battery circuitry if there is any) is doing the same thing or not, but it seems reasonable it could be.

Would it be crazy to think that while on it limits the current for charging to protect the phone and uses the battery meter to determine full charge but while off its a different method? Maybe the theory that our meters don't quite understand what a "full charge" is yet holds some water..

 

[Chondog]

With all of this talk about charging the phone overnight while off, is there any danger in overcharging? I know that it was recommended by the Verizon folks (yeah, I know, they don't know anything) to only charge until it gets to full then unplug (approximately 4 hours according to the charger specs). Just wondering what the downside was to leaving the phone on the charger overnight. Thanks.

 

[howarmat]

i have always charged my phones overnight if it needs it, storm 1 and 2 and inc. I assume all battereies these days have overcharge protection and it shouldnt hurt them. I have never had a phone overheat and fry itself or have a horrible battery life either. Hell my storm 2 just went 30 hours and was at 20% when i plugged it in last night on the 1600 battery from seidio.

 

[aug0211#WN]

tpc, thanks for that info. Interesting to read. For others, my time is now back down to 68 seconds after just a few repeated cycles.

Finally had to power up... we'll see how it goes this AM.

 

[TBolt]

If you are able to turn your phone off while charging then do so. It is the answer to all your battery problems.

I suggest you use caution before you sell anything a cure-all. I bit the bullet twice and turned the phone off while charging -- even added some elements of the other fixes. No improvement. Obviously, whatever clicked and started working for you is not guaranteed for others.

 

[pheatton]

For the last two days I have been charging this way. I have noticed that I charge it on till its green. Then unplug and power it off then plug it back in. Light is orange and it does not change for almost 20min. Then unplug then plug back in and it charges for another 10-15min till its green. After that it is green everytime I plug it in.


Very strange. Im going to wait for the 2150 battery. Im hopping that it only pushes the thickness out to be flush with the camera lens. I can live with that.

 

[Charmed Juan]

It's working for me

Normally I would be down below 30% by 12:00. I start my day at O:God thirty
Today I turned off my phone at 4:00 am, charged it to 4:20, Still red light and went to work. At 12:00, I still have 71% charge.

It's working for me

 

[nightfishing#AC]

It's very simple to prove whether this has any effect at all. I know someone out there has a multimeter and has actual done some testing.

I won't give away the ending, but...

 

[YourMobileGuru]

This is upsetting to hear from everyone. It seems like a fix that we shouldn't need to perform in order to get the best performance from our phones. I hope something is done by HTC to allow our phones to charge properly without needing to play with charging cycles. If its a hardware issue I hope they replace the defective phones.

I'm not sure why you say that, it's fairly common knowledge that you should turn your phone off while charging. It's only in us in our seeming need to stay always connected that we have forgotten this. Even in the Incredible owners manual on page 6 it says that "It is important to fully charge the battery before powering on your wireless device." Eve though these phones shipped with batteries 3/4 of the way full. And I have seen other phone manuals that it is recommended to charge the battery with the phone powered off.

There is nothing wrong with the phones, we have just never used phones that used this much juice before. Incredible is more like a netbook than a cel phone.

 

[howarmat]

I'm not sure why you say that, it's fairly common knowledge that you should turn your phone off while charging. It's only in us in our seeming need to stay always connected that we have forgotten this. Even in the Incredible owners manual on page 6 it says that "It is important to fully charge the battery before powering on your wireless device." Eve though these phones shipped with batteries 3/4 of the way full. And I have seen other phone manuals that it is recommended to charge the battery with the phone powered off.

There is nothing wrong with the phones, we have just never used phones that used this much juice before. Incredible is more like a netbook than a cel phone.

that is for the FIRST charge only

 

[Kratzer]

Not to add to the battery voodoo, but I tried this and it worked pretty well. But even further, I tried it with a USB computer charge. It seemed to work even better. I don't know if its the slow, trickle type charge or what, but it took a long time to charge and held it a long time too.

 

[kev83202]

Just wanted to point out that there seems to be no point in plugging the phone back in several times. Just turn it off plug it in and when it's green again your good to go. The little charges after that take longer to do then any battery gain your getting.

 

[slinky317]

The Incredible's battery is compatible with the Eris, right? So does anyone have an Eris that we can test something out in?

Try putting the battery in the Eris, and then charging it up. After it's charged, take it out of the Eris and put it back in the Incredible, and see if that impacts the battery life. That way we can see if it's a problem with the battery, or how the Incredible charges the battery.

 

[kmully]

Just ran through the unplug/plug/unplug thing this morning at my desk. Sitting at 100% at 9:30AM CST. Will update this later on in the day.

I will say that even 3 minutes later it is still sitting at 100%, while normally I would be down to 97-98% by now.

I did use Advanced Task Killer to kill several background apps, for what it is worth.

Update: 10:36AM and still at 100%. This has literally never happened (1 hour and no loss of % on the display).

 

[Adiliyo]

I'm not sure why you say that, it's fairly common knowledge that you should turn your phone off while charging. It's only in us in our seeming need to stay always connected that we have forgotten this. Even in the Incredible owners manual on page 6 it says that "It is important to fully charge the battery before powering on your wireless device." Eve though these phones shipped with batteries 3/4 of the way full. And I have seen other phone manuals that it is recommended to charge the battery with the phone powered off.

There is nothing wrong with the phones, we have just never used phones that used this much juice before. Incredible is more like a netbook than a cel phone.

i have yet to turn anything off during it's normal charging period, the incredible is the only device i have owned that has any issue with charging while it's still on.

that includes various cell phones as well as netbooks, laptops, and mp3 players. all hold charge and drain in a far more linear fashion.

hopefully this is fixable by software.

 

[bandit4]

Ok, so I tried what the OP said and this is what happened so far...

100% battery

1 Hour and 7 minute phone call with speaker on.
2 walking programs, Journey Tracker and SmartTraining, running in the background using GPS to track my walk and plot it on a map. I walked for 1 Hour and 14 minutes.
Both the phone call w/ speakerphone and tracking programs were done at the same time.

End of walk. Battery 60%

What do you think?

Tomorrow I will walk the same route and use the tracking programs and talk on the phone for an hour without charging the battery like the OP did and see what happens.

 

[Adiliyo]

that sounds reasonable, active GPS drains the heck out of the battery

 

[kmully]

I'm sitting at 93% 3 hours and 21 minutes since I did the trick. Looked a few webpages, no phone calls, several emails came in.

Unheard of for me. Much happier with the battery life.