Can't calibrate battery meter - Droid Razr

[SammyQ2]

My wife's Razr has been plagued with short battery life since day one. I think she's had it for about six months. Reading other threads, we have learned about using Smart Actions to stretch out battery life, and the recommendation that we calibrate the battery meter. From the discussions, the calibration sounds like a real good thing to do.

So, we turned her phone off, then charged to 100%. So far, so good.

We turned it back on, with the intention of draining the battery to 10%. The phone doesn't not seem to allow us to drain it that far down. It seems around 50% the phone just shuts itself off, we can't get near the 10% level. If we press the power on button, we can revive it momentarily, but then it just shuts itself off. The only way to revive it at this point is to plug it back into the charger.

Another screwy thing, it seems to come back to the 100% level pretty quickly.

This seems to be the usual modus operandi for this phone, nothing new about this behavior. So yes, it seems the battery meter needs re calibrating, but the phone won't let us do it.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

Sam

 

[FoxKat]

When you say you turned the phone off, and then plugged the phone into the charger, did it go through the initial power-up red circle logo, and then display a large animated battery? If so, then how long did you leave it to charge, and how did you know it had hit 100%, did you press the volume buttons to see the levels?

If it won't go to below 50% before shutting down, that's a BIG problem and we have to get it calibrated. I would suggest if the answer is yes to the above, that you do the power-off charging again and leave it on charge for at least 3.5 hours. ALSO, use ONLY the STOCK MOTOROLA CHARGER & CABLE that came with the phone. A third party charger may provide different results and since this is a MOTOROLA specific meter training, there's no benefit and potential drawbacks to imparting any outside stimulus.

Can one of the RS team jump in here and help these folks?

Thanks.

 

[SammyQ2]

When you say you turned the phone off, and then plugged the phone into the charger, did it go through the initial power-up red circle logo, and then display a large animated battery?

Yes.

If so, then how long did you leave it to charge, and how did you know it had hit 100%, did you press the volume buttons to see the levels?

Charged overnight, with a Motorola charger. Didn't know about the volume buttons to determine charge.

We have a road trip today, so we'll see if her phone shuts off again at 40-50%.

If it won't go to below 50% before shutting down, that's a BIG problem and we have to get it calibrated. I would suggest if the answer is yes to the above, that you do the power-off charging again and leave it on charge for at least 3.5 hours. ALSO, use ONLY the STOCK MOTOROLA CHARGER & CABLE that came with the phone. A third party charger may provide different results and since this is a MOTOROLA specific meter training, there's no benefit and potential drawbacks to imparting any outside stimulus.

Can one of the RS team jump in here and help these folks?

Thanks.

We did a full charge with her phone off last night, but before I turned it off, I did a Power/Volume boot/reset. I figured if that doesn't do it, we would do the dreaded factory reset and if THAT doesn't work we'll call Verizon for a replacement phone.

Still scratching for ideas.

 

[FoxKat]

OK, so we'll hope that things get cleaned up with this charge tonight. There is NO good reason (other than a hardware failure), why the meter would display 50% one minute, then the phone powers off the next. This can only be due to the meter being completely confused as to what the battery's true capacity is. This happens over time as the phone is charged and used for different percentages of the total capacity and the phone is never given the chance to "see" the upper and lower limits of the battery's true capacity. The error rate is small initially (after the first few charges), but over time that error rate gets exponentially larger. It's sort of like driving down the street in a straight line and never touching the steering wheel. At first, you'll travel nearly straight, but eventually you wind up in the plate glass window of a convenience store. :icon_eek:

Or perhaps an even better analogy is driving blind-folded. If you "peek" out the blindfold every so often to get "points of reference", you could manage to keep the car between the lines (though to anyone else you may appear as though you're driving drunk), but if you never looked out, well...here comes the sound of glass crashing, people screaming and shelves of Herr's Potato Chips and Frito's flying in all manner and direction.

Without either constant or at least infrequent "re-calibration" of the battery's metering (giving it that new set of reference points every so often) that error rate eventually overtakes the system and leads it into a plate glass window (not really, but you get the idea)! So we have to set those reference points...100% full (sets the "Full" flag), and 10% for ICS or 15% if you are on Gingerbread (sets the "Low" flag). Once the meter has the two extremes, it then uses the charging and usage patterns to "guesstimate" the battery levels in percentages between those limits. This is the main reason why I am not a big fan of 1% battery level hacks or widgets/apps. They show too fine of a precision and cause people to "watch" the battery levels too closely. Imagine if they watched their gas tank levels to 1% increments like they do their phones..."What, you mean it takes 3% of my gas to go to the WAWA (<insert your local dairy convenience store name here), for milk? Honey, the kids are going to have to starve!" :blink:

 

[FoxKat]

I also just caught something you wrote in the original post. You said it comes back to 100% pretty quickly after during down at 50%? That's a sign that the meter is definitely far out of calibration. Getting it back in calibration may take several attempts.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

 

[SammyQ2]

Sending it back.

The end resolution? We could never complete the battery calibration process. In recent days the phone kept shutting off and was about impossible to use for anything. I don't know if it's truly the battery meter calibration or something else wrong with the phone.

Last night I managed to get things backed up enough and tried a factory reset. It wiped everything off the phone. After I did that, it seemed to function okay, with very light usage, for the evening.

Intending to re-calibrate the battery meter, I shut the phone off and plugged it into the charger overnight. When I tried to start it this morning, it booted up okay, but when I touched the unlock button on the home screen, it suddenly went dead. Now, long press the power button and it tries to start again.

We give up, throw in the towel, I know when I'm licked. The phone is going back.

Sam

 

[TisMyDroid]

I agree Sammy, sounds like you have done everything possible. For some reason, it seems that either your battery will not take a full charge or maybe it is just a plain bad battery. When you call vzw for the replacement, let them know all you have done to fix the phone including the fdr.

When you get your replacement, before turning it on, charge it to 100%. Then turn it on and activate it. It may already be on ICS but if not, I would install the ICS update before doing anything else (this will ensure that ICS is on a clean setup with no GB conflicts). Once on ICS, you can start adding apps and setting the phone back up. Then do the battery meter calibration process.

Sent from my DROID RAZR Maxx using Droid Forums

 

[SammyQ2]

When you get your replacement, before turning it on, charge it to 100%. Then turn it on and activate it. It may already be on ICS but if not, I would install the ICS update before doing anything else (this will ensure that ICS is on a clean setup with no GB conflicts). Once on ICS, you can start adding apps and setting the phone back up. Then do the battery meter calibration process.

Sent from my DROID RAZR Maxx using Droid Forums

You think I should upgrade to .215 at this time? Are there ANY drawbacks to doing that?

Sam

 

[TisMyDroid]

Yes, I think you would be happy with 215. I have had absolutely no problems with it and am very confident that I will be able to get the OTA update when it finally arrives. Let us know if you need any help with it.

Sent from my DROID RAZR Maxx using Droid Forums

 

[SammyQ2]

Follow-up

As I think I said, we called Version to get a replacement phone. By the time it arrived, the old phone was practically useless and would barely stay on. We found we had better luck keeping it running if we kept it plugged into the charger. I was able to do that just enough to do another factory reset to clean everything off before we returned it.

Three days into the replacement phone and it seems to be fine. I will start the battery meter calibration this evening. I am going to hold off on .215 and see how it does just using other measures that have been suggested in these threads, like using some of the Smart Actions selections.

Thanks all.

Sam