100% Charged - 1 hour battery?

[Revan256]

Hi everyone - new here and new to flashing, so I'm prepared for the pitchforks and torches

So I just rooted and flashed my Droid 3 to Steel Droid 5.6 ICS, and everything is working as expected (what is supposed to work works, and what doesn't...doesn't!). However; my big problem is the battery life. When flashing my phone was plugged in. It went from 100% to 33% after the flash, then after that 2 things stuck out to me as odd:

1. When plugged into the computer, phone will slowly discharge (not getting enough juice)
2. Fully charged, I will only get about 60 minutes of battery

This morning I charged it to 100%, downloaded a battery calibration app and am running the phone all the way to discharge now. I should also note that during the flashing process I had to clear cache, restore to factory settings...and I have also cleared out the battery information. So...anyone run into this? Something just seems out of sync here.

Thanks in advance for the help! Excited to be a part of the community

[linuxgator]

When it is showing 100%, unplug it then go to the dialer and enter *#*#4636#*#* that should bring up a menu, select Battery information, and what does the battery voltage say? It should say something around 4200 mV. If not, plug it in to the wall and let it charge for a few hours and check again. Just make sure to unplug it when you check it, or it may give a false reading from being charged.

[Revan256]

Thanks for the quick reply. When I have it plugged in and charged all the way, I can't remember where but I have seen the mV amount. I believe it was around 4204mV. Since being unplugged 2 hours ago, it's at 89% and shows 3935mV (screen has been off the whole time). I'm actually thinking this calibration might be doing the trick...

[linuxgator]

Thanks for the quick reply. When I have it plugged in and charged all the way, I can't remember where but I have seen the mV amount. I believe it was around 4204mV. Since being unplugged 2 hours ago, it's at 89% and shows 3935mV (screen has been off the whole time). I'm actually thinking this calibration might be doing the trick...

The plugged in part is the problem there, when mine is plugged in and charging, even if the battery is only at 30%, it still shows 4200mV, but when I unplug it, it'll show around 3900mV.

[Revan256]

Ah, okay. So with my phone being unplugged showing ~3900mV, I should not be concerned? The battery will even itself out?

[linuxgator]

Ah, okay. So with my phone being unplugged showing ~3900mV, I should not be concerned? The battery will even itself out?

Pretty much. The only thing that can really be done to let it calibrate is to leave it on a wall charger for a long period of time, suggested is overnight, then run it down until it runs out of juice, then recharge to 100%. The battery stats file doesn't actually have anything to do with calibration, it just stores stats about what has been using the battery. Though if you install a new ROM with the phone plugged in, it might see the 4200 mV generated by the charger and assume that it's at 100% and then whatever the actual charge is, it'll tell you that its full. All in all, it's best to just charge it to 100% before installing a ROM and make sure you do it with a full charge, and you likely won't have issues like that. In the end, things tend to work themselves out over a couple of complete charge cycles.

[Revan256]

Sounds like a plan. Thanks for your help.

[linuxgator]

Good luck.

[FoxKat]

The charge to 100% should be done with power OFF if you want to assure a fully saturated charge and no effect of the phone pulling down the voltages artificially (parasitic load) which results in inaccurate calibration.

You also DON'T need to discharge to 0%, but instead only to the point at which the phone posts the "Low battery" warning. There is no need to use a "calibration" tool. The phone will do the calibration properly if the calibration charge/discharge/charge sequence is done with power OFF during charge. The reason these calibration tools are popular and therefore marketable is that it's not very well known

Dump the calibration tool and do this VERY SIMPLE procedure, and I virtually guarantee this will resolve your issues.

First, power off the phone!!!
Then plug in the STOCK charger and STOCK cable and allow the phone to boot into Charge Only mode.
Let it charge until the phone reaches 100% (Motorola specifies 3 hours from the factory to full charge, so 3 hours should be the minimum considering the battery comes partially charged).
Power the phone on and use until the phone displays the "Low battery" warning and TELLS YOU to charge the phone.
Then power off and repeat the 100% charge with power off.

You're done. Nothing more is needed, no utility to calibrate anything. The Android operating system and the Motorola charging system and metering system don't need any help from outside sources to do their job, you just have to do the above process which allows the systems to work with real numbers and "see" the actual 100% battery level and 10/15% battery level at what they really are in order to set the flags properly.

Visit our Smartphone Battery Discussion forum for additional advice and real-world proof that this works. My Droid RAZR is right now at 22 hours of use, with 70% remaining. There are PLENTY of examples of similar successes on that forum and you will become a believer yourself.

Good luck!

Disclaimer; This is a custom ROM, and so there is the possibility (though I have no indication of such), that the Developer has changed portions of the battery maintenance system to "enhance" battery performance, and in doing so, it is also possible that normal calibration techniques would not work. If someone is more familiar with this ROM and can provide definitive information that the above does not work specifically for the Steel Droid ROM, I will revise this posting.