Battery charging SLOWLY, almost too slow to be usable

ice456789

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2 nights ago I was laying in bed playing a tower defense game on the bionic. The alert came on saying that I had 15% battery left. Since I was next to my charger, I just plugged it in. A little while later, the alert came up saying I only had 10% battery left, even though it was charging. All the cables were plugged in, and the charging indicator was on. There is NO WAY that simple tower defense game was using battery faster than the charger was filling it. A few minutes later I got the 5% warning. At that point I gave up and put the phone down for the night to charge.

Yesterday I was going through a normal day of use. I had a long car ride ahead of me (a little over an hour), so I let my phone start charging on my car charger. This is a motorola car charger designed for Moto phones, not some piece of garbage. After the entire trip, the phone had the exact same battery percentage (60%) as when I started charging it. Last night I put my phone on the charger at about 11pm. I woke up this morning at 6:30, and the phone was only charged to 90%.

It's sitting on a charger as we speak, and just now after about 9 hours of charging did it just hit 100%. This is a standard battery, not extended.

Anyone else have this issue?
 

Speeding Wheels

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Lets talk about home charging first...
Are you using the brick/cable that came with the Bionic?
Are you plugged into a power strip or are you directly into the wall?
Many people, myself included have found that the brick/cable that came with Bionic works much better at charging the phone and I have also found that plugging directly into the wall rather than into a strip makes charging considerably faster.

As for your car charging.. were you doing anything extensive such as navigation?
My experience is that the car charger puts out only enough power to keep the phone stable if you're doing navigation.. there is no gain.

Hope this helps.
 
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ice456789

ice456789

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On the home charging front, I have 3 places that I charge. The one by my bed is using the charger from my OG droid. I should mention that I've had the phone for a week, and this problem only showed up 2 days ago. I'll swap it out with the Bionic charger tonight to see if that makes a difference.

The car charger has charged the phone just fine in the past, and on my OG droid it charged it very quickly. I was not using the phone at all during the time in question. No navigation, no nothing.

It sounds like an issue with the phone to me (because it was working before, and isn't now) but I just want to know if anyone else is having the issue.
 

tcayton49

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Silly question, but are you making sure it's plugged all the way in? both into the outlet and the phone? I thought I was having problems with charging until I noticed that the plug wasn't in the outlet all the way. I pushed it in and now it charges just fine.
 

JRParsons

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Since y this is happening on multiple chargers it is either a problem with the phone or the battery. If it is a phone problem it would most likely be a hardware issue. You will have to replace the phone. There is the possibility that the battery isn't accepting the charge, if you are able, try a different battery, someone at the Verizon store may let you borrow a battery for 15 - 30 minutes, this should be enough time to determine if it's the battery, and if it isn't your at the store, have them give you a new phone, provided you are within your 14 day window.
 
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ice456789

ice456789

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Ok, this is where things really get weird.

It took forever to charge the battery. Now it's taking forever to discharge the battery. As in the max battery life I've gotten out of the phone in the week since I owned it is 6 1/2 hours, but usually around 5 is what I get. Well today after the 'slow' charge, I've been on battery for a little over 4 hours and my battery JUST dropped to 70%. I've been downloading and listening to mp3s for about 2 hours as well, the phone hasn't just been sitting idle.

So... yay?
 

McGyver777

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It is called "conditioning." LI-on batteries do much better at holding a charge after a few power cycles. The last top ~15% will take as long to charge as from 20 to 80 percent. Blame battery chemistry.

The bionic seems to do better on the cord that came with it and plugged directly into the wall per anecdotal evidence

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using DroidForums
 
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