Battery dead? This is for all you naysayers...

[justin82]

This process has been the norm with Apple products..........

Good information that should be followed. Li-ions are not supposed to have a "memory" but flushing them is good time to time. I do it monthly.

I wish one of our members "skull one" would give us his analogy on it. He is likely the most knowledged here on this forum when it comes to batteries and power usage.

is skull one back?,, i think he bought an iphone .. i remeber seeing him in the iphone forums ( sister site )
either way i pm'd him over at the iphone forums ..

 

[ultra09hd]

Maybe with old nicads. Not with lipos

 

[FoxKat]

Maybe with old nicads. Not with lipos

Your comments are vague... What, exactly is "with old nicads. Not with lipos"?

 

[Dave12308]

I agree with you. but we all could gain a little knowledge from this . and search the forums see how many threads pop up for battery .. it does not look like it will happen anyway. no one votes thread been open for 36 hours or so and 7 poeple have voted . not much of a response. just trying to help community .

Definitely agree, my comment was more about how it seems to me that by now, battery care would be common knowledge.

As for your Battery forum idea, I think the problem with that is we need LESS threads about batteries, not more. A decent writeup about batteries, touching on all of the things you mentioned in your forum idea, could be handled in one sticky post at the top of the forum. We need to get all of this good information into an organized place to read up on it.

 

[dfcfu342]

Plug in your phone when you get down to the 70-80% range daily and do a full drain of the battery to phone shutdown followed by a continuous charge to 100% once every 30 days (I do mine the first of every month since its easy to remember) and your battery will last you a long time and the phone will stay synced to the voltage parameters. Battery care is that simple

Your goal is to minimize deep discharges as much as possible but doing it occasionally is expected as part of everyday use and is not life threatening.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using DroidForums

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using DroidForums

 

[FoxKat]

Plug in your phone when you get down to the 70-80% range daily and do a full drain of the battery to phone shutdown followed by a continuous charge to 100% once every 30 days (I do mine the first of every month since its easy to remember) and your battery will last you a long time and the phone will stay synced to the voltage parameters. Battery care is that simple

Your goal is to minimize deep discharges as much as possible but doing it occasionally is expected as part of everyday use and is not life threatening.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using DroidForums

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using DroidForums

I disagree with the above. You should avoid a full discharge if at all possible. There is NO benefit to fully discharging and considerable risk if the meter has skewed from an accurate representation of the true capacity of the battery. This was the entire reason for this post.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk

 

[dfcfu342]

But how can the meter have a true eye for the capacity of the battery if you do not show it that the capacity is decreasing by never fully discharging the battery?

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using DroidForums

 

[Skull One]

This process has been the norm with Apple products..........

Good information that should be followed. Li-ions are not supposed to have a "memory" but flushing them is good time to time. I do it monthly.

I wish one of our members "skull one" would give us his analogy on it. He is likely the most knowledged here on this forum when it comes to batteries and power usage.

Oh yeah, drag me into this debate so you can throw me under the bus You do remember I switched to the dark side right? They promised cookies. I will tell you all right now. It is a lie. Just like the cake. *prays everyone gets the jokes*

Alright, lets set a framework.

*nix based phones, which Android and iOS are, have a similar process for determining percentage of battery life left. They take regular readings of full load to determine if the battery has enough voltage to provide proper operating conditions for the device. In between those samples they rely on an algorithm to calculate the percentage left. The reason for this? Full load testing actually eats enough power that you don't want to do it every minute. Heck, you don't even want to do it every 15 minutes. And you can't rely on testing it based on phone usage because at one millisecond you could be at full load and the next millisecond you could be at 1/4th load. So the reading could and would be worthless.

Under Android there is a file that is maintained named batterystats.bin (I am not aware of the file name for iOS). This file is created the very first time you turn on an Android phone. It maintains the history of discharge rate over time to help determine the predicted battery percentage remaining. Now this data is collected over the life of using the phone. Or in other words, your usage pattern is collected as a series of data points which are then used by a curve fit algorithm to predict what the battery life will be. While that is happening in real time, the OS also compares the data to the full load sampling at whatever rate the phone manufacture sets it to. It works fairly well.

Now this data can become biased. The two most likely scenarios are repeated short charges and a sever set of usage runs (IE you go hog wild on LTE data while the screen is at 100% and you are playing a 3D game). To help get the data back on track it is recommend you run the battery from 100% charge down to the phone dying every 30 to 60 short charges. This does two things. It sets the data point for top charge and for bottom charge. This is critical for maintaining the proper percentage over time. That is because all Lithium-Ion batteries have a life span. They can be anywhere from 300 full cycle charges to 500 full cycle charges depending on the variation of chemicals used. Now, this life cycle is based on a simple premise. The first full charge sets the 100% mark. At the end of the 400th full cycle charge, the battery should still be able to maintain 80% of that first charge level for usage. IE if you get 10 hours of usage the first time, if all things are equal at the end of the 400 cycles you will still get 8 hours of usage out of the battery. So by "doing a conditioning run" you are showing the OS how healthy the battery currently is.

Now consumer grade Lithium-Ion batteries usually operate in the range of 2.7v to 4.2v. They tend to average 3.7v over the life of the discharge. Getting above 4.3ish volts and you risk starting a chemical reaction that will plate the anode very quickly and you will also start overheating the battery rapidly, which can then cause a thermal runaway condition. Trust me, you don't want that. The battery will literally explode. Also since the plating is already occurring naturally I don't suggest we help it along. Below 2.5v and a circuit breaker in the battery trips and renders the battery useless till a special charger can reset the circuit. This is done to avoid a overly long charging cycle. IE as you charge the battery it heats up, the longer it is in the primary charge state, usually referred to as Stage 1 charging, the more chance of damaging the battery. In fact it is recommend you short cycle charge starting at 40%. That number is used for two reasons. The first; 40% is the industry recommend charge level for long term storage of consumer grade Lithium-Ion batteries. The second; Stage 1 charging usually ends at around 85% charge. So going from 0 to 85% is almost twice as long as 40% to 85%. And if you have high ambient temperature around the battery or the battery is also under load due to usage things can heat up pretty quick. Which again is bad, because the more heat, the more chance of plating the anode and making the battery a paper weight. Also be aware of the batteries temp when it is very cold or very hot. If the battery itself is below 32F, don't even bother plugging it in. Your average charger doesn't have the current level to overcome the chemical reaction to cause a charge. Above 120F and you risk hurting the battery permanently and yourself if you are holding the phone.

Now I just rattled off a lot of technical crude but lets put this in to perspective so no one panics.

Q: Can you hurt the battery by going from 0 to 100% every single day?
A: Technically the answer is NO. You will simply guarantee that the battery will reach its predicted 80% charge level very quickly

Now the funny part, most of us swap out our phones every 2 years or even less. The battery should last under the worst case scenario based on that device swap out average.

Q: If I never do a "battery conditioning run" and I short charge the phone every day will that hurt the battery?
A: Nope. All it does is train the phones data over time that your 100% to 0% is shorter than a full cycle charge from the manufacture. No harm in that at all.

Q: Can I induce a thermal runaway by accident?
A: The odds are very very remote. But if you wanted to try, yes you could.

Q: Where can I get more information like this?
A: You could read the patents as well as some VERY DRY manufacturing white papers. Or you can read Basic to Advanced Battery Information from Battery University

Q: Are you a nut job?
A: Yes. That is why I read VERY DRY manufacturing white papers and spent 14 months studying the Android OS inside out.

 

[Skull One]

I disagree with the above. You should avoid a full discharge if at all possible. There is NO benefit to fully discharging and considerable risk if the meter has skewed from an accurate representation of the true capacity of the battery. This was the entire reason for this post.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk

That is technically incorrect. A full discharge is the only way to reset batterystats.bin's data to show what the lowest voltage is before full shut off. And there is no risk since the battery doesn't hit lockout till 2.5v. Which is way below the average cut off implemented by phone manufacturers.

 

[Dave12308]

Q: Can I induce a thermal runaway by accident?
A: The odds are very very remote. But if you wanted to try, yes you could.

Well, this is splitting hairs - BUT, if you were TRYING, it wouldn't be by accident *LMAO*

 

[Dave12308]

That is technically incorrect. A full discharge is the only way to reset batterystats.bin's data to show what the lowest voltage is before full shut off. And there is no risk since the battery doesn't hit lockout till 2.5v. Which is way below the average cut off implemented by phone manufacturers.

If you use the "Reset battery stats" option in Clockwork recovery, does this simply delete and recreate this file? And is there any benefit to doing so?

 

[Skull One]

Well, this is splitting hairs - BUT, if you were TRYING, it wouldn't be by accident *LMAO*

LOL! You have a VERY GOOD point

 

[Skull One]

If you use the "Reset battery stats" option in Clockwork recovery, does this simply delete and recreate this file? And is there any benefit to doing so?

DOG GONE IT!!! I meant to put that as the second to last Q/A and totally forgot.

Thank you for asking that question. Because it is a VERY GOOD ONE!

CWR will delete it and the Android OS will recreate it for you. And yes there is a benefit to doing this AS LONG AS you follow this very simple rule. Make sure the battery is full charged and then use the phone normally till it dies. This will develop a new usage profile for the curve fit algorithm.

And when I say to 100% - I mean go to 100% and then wait an extra 5 minutes for everything to settle out.

BTW, if you are rooted, you can charge the phone over night, delete batterystats.bin live and then pull the charger. I still do that on my Droid A855 when I want to mess around with the OS.

 

[FoxKat]

That is technically incorrect. A full discharge is the only way to reset batterystats.bin's data to show what the lowest voltage is before full shut off. And there is no risk since the battery doesn't hit lockout till 2.5v. Which is way below the average cut off implemented by phone manufacturers.

Skull One, I respect your knowledge and from the perspective that you are speaking (that of one who knows how to properly maintain a LIPO battery), the information you present is accurate. In other words, is it safe to discharge to 0%? Sure IF you have practiced "save charging", or in other words, if the battery and the phone are on the same track, if the battery is REALLY AT 3V when the phone reads 0%.

The problem is that is not the actual experience for many on the threads, and probably even more who aren't. There have been plenty of examples of people who have discharged their batteries so low, by relying on levels indicated by the meter when in fact the meter is out of calibration, that they've pushed the batteries to near protection mode, at worst, and under the levels needed to sustain a proper boot sequence while connected to the charger at best.

So to say empirically that it's safe to discharge to 0% is to assume that everyone's phones and batteries are properly in sync and the level readings are accurate. This is simply not the case.

I don't disagree with your information, and God knows I've read all the same information you put up here previously, and some on the threads know I've put up similar, perhaps less technical information which says the same. But to say to everyone it's OK to drain to 0% is to invite a lot of unresponsive phones.

In response to your disagreement of my comment about discharging to the low battery flag, rather than to 0% ("That is technically incorrect. A full discharge is the only way to reset batterystats.bin's data to show what the lowest voltage is before full shut off. "), please se the following from BatteryUniversity.com (whom you also quoted and I would bet have gotten at least a portion of your knowledge from)>

Manual calibration is possible by running the battery down until “Low Battery” appears. This can be done in the equipment or with a battery analyzer. A full discharge sets the discharge flag and the subsequent recharge the charge flag. Establishing these two markers allows SoC to be calculated by tracking the distance between the flags. For best results, calibrate a device in continuous use every three months or after 40 partial cycles. If the device applies a periodic deep discharge on its own accord, no additional calibration will be required. Figure 1 shows the full-discharge and full-charge flags.

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You will note that the full discharge flag is at 10% by the illustration above, and is described as "until “Low Battery” appears". For Motorola Droid RAZR phones, that indicator appears not at 10%, but at 15%, which is why I maintain that 15% should be considered the low threshold for most users. Will I let my phone go below 15%? Sure, I've done it. Will I let it go to 0%? Not if I can help it, however I know that my battery is properly calibrated to the phone's meter, so even if I do accidently let it go to 0% (*as did last night*), I will still be able to get the phone to start the charging process properly and will successfully charge and not get stuck in a boot loop due to depressed battery voltage. Would I recommend that for ANYONE else? Heck no.

To summarize, I believe we're both in agreement generally, but where I choose to differ is in the advice given. Although the advice may be technically right, sometimes it's wise to err on the side of caution - especially where it involves the masses. I don't want to be held responsible for someone essentially killing their phone due to following my advice, so I will remain convinced that 15% should be the signal to start looking for a charger, if for no other reason than because that's what the text on the phone says.

 

[Trash Can]

I went to public skool, so most of this stuff is way over my head. That said, this is a very interesting discussion. Thanks!