Help!

[monsterifik]

This is my first time here so I thought I'd start out by saying hello my name is Lisa, and I'm a 21 year old from Minnesota.

Now, I have a Bionic. It's seen its better days.. it has a cracked screen and I've gotten it wet a few times. I'm not the carefullest with phones so if there's no fix for this, I understand. The other night I was in my friends car and my phone died, so I used his charger. All of a sudden the phone would turn on, then immediately turn off. I figured it wasn't charged enough, so I let it charge until 20%, then turned it on again. It did the same thing. It does this whether it's plugged in or not. I've also noticed that it says 'no service' the whole time. I've already tried switching batteries - my boyfriend has the same phone. Any solutions?

Thanks all in advance!

 

[FoxKat]

Dear Lisa, it sounds like you've deep-discharged the battery. This happens when you allow the phone to use all the power to the point of shutting down on its own. It is not supposed to be a problem, but with a phone whose battery and metering system are not in proper sync, it can result in the symptoms you experienced.

The only thing I am not sure about is that you mentioned switching batteries with your boyfriend's phone, yet you didn't indicate what the results of that test were. Did your phone still act the same? Did your boyfriend's phone exhibit any issues while using your battery and vice versa?

 

[monsterifik]

Oh, sorry. The results were the same. Both batteries work perfectly fine on his phone, yet both batteries make the same issues happen to mine.

 

[FoxKat]

Excellent troubleshooting work...

OK, so if it's acting the same with both batteries, and both batteries are fine in the other phone, then the phone is at fault - not the battery, and then I suspect it's your phone's metering system. There is an inherent error or divergence from actual battery levels to levels that are not a true representation of the battery's capacity or state of charge. This happens not as a result of anything you are doing wrong, but more as a result of the way the meter is designed and has to essentially "guess" iteratively (I know, not a true word, but...), what the battery's level is at any particular time in the charge and discharge cycles.

The phone can only know for sure what the battery has (or as closely as possible), when it reaches 100% charge, and when it reaches NEAR fully discharged (or 10% - 15%). It uses these high and low points as points of reference since they are more reliable. Then it uses the battery's voltage during the charging and discharging, combined with those reference points to provide an estimate of where it is in the charge/discharge cycle.

If the phone is frequently discharged to either levels not near "Low Battery" but rarely to the "Low battery" warning, or if it's frequently discharged to levels below "Low battery", and also frequently given partial charges rather than full charges to 100%, it builds up an error rate of those values that result in it reporting battery levels which are in some cases extremely inaccurate over time. Some have reported phones that would show 50%, and then within minutes it would shut down with 0% available. Others have reported phones that would continue to operate for 8 hours with only 5% showing the entire time. Obviously both extremes are far from accurate and can have considerable impact on the user experience.

The best way to resolve this error in the battery's metering circuit is to "re-train" the meter by giving it the points of reference that it needs. This is accomplished by following the basic 3-step meter training...charge with power off for at least 3 hours (or until the phone says 100% charged - whichever is longer), then power on and use as normal but only until the phone says "Low battery", at which point you turn the phone off again and charge to 100%. If you do this about every 2-3 months, you shouldn't run into what you are dealing with now.

One thing to avoid...

NEVER allow the phone to discharge to the point where it shuts itself off. Yes, it is SUPPOSED to be safe to do that in theory, but in practice it can be a very difficult problem to overcome.

 

[monsterifik]

Awesome!! Thank you so much for all the information! I'll be sure to try that since that seems easy enough

I'll let you know how it goes!

 

[FoxKat]

You're welcome. Just two things...One, make sure you power the phone OFF before charging to 100% in each of the 2 charge cycles...and Two, only discharge until the phone tells you to charge, at which point you power it down again before charging the second time.

Three steps...charge to 100% with power off, discharge to "Low battery", charge to 100% with power off.

 

[lloydstrans]

and welcome to the forum.

 

[JSM9872]

Welcome to Droid Forums Lisa!!

 

[94lt1]

Welcome Lisa, seems that FoxKat has this in hand

 

[smalltowngirl13]

Hello and welcome to the forum Lisa!

 

[monsterifik]

Thanks everyone!

Unfortunately that didn't work..it still continues to turn off and back on. I forgot to mention that my phone died as it was doing a software update. Could that be messing it up?

 

[SFGate]

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