Battery went from 80% to 0%

[billyidle]

Android automatically kills tasks for you. 3rd party task killers are not going to help save battery in this situation.

 

[titans]

Android automatically kills tasks for you. 3rd party task killers are not going to help save battery in this situation.

Completely false. Open up your web browser, navigate to a page which isn't your home page, press home to exit the browser. Click on the browser icon again, the same page shows up, because the task was never killed.

 

[ViciousCircle]

Android automatically kills tasks for you. 3rd party task killers are not going to help save battery in this situation.

Completely false. Open up your web browser, navigate to a page which isn't your home page, press home to exit the browser. Click on the browser icon again, the same page shows up, because the task was never killed.

Not false, just that it doesn't kill processes right away. The OS's built in task manager kills processes depending on several factors and the processes 'rank' depending on what it is doing and the amount of free memory. Here's a good read on how the built in memory manager works (and when it kills tasks).

How to configure Android's *internal* taskkiller - xda-developers

 

[hookbill]

Going for 80% to 0 is a bug and it's not a true reading of the battery. This been discussed many times.

If you reset your device the battery should jump right back to where it should be, or if you put it on a charger you will see it fully charged within 10 minutes.

This bug doesn't occur frequently. I've had it happen only one time but just about everybody gets it at least once.

 

[MacGyverS2000]

See the recent battery thread... it has happened to me twice now in less than a month.

 

[hookbill]

See the recent battery thread... it has happened to me twice now in less than a month.

lol, we have new battery threads daily. Which recent thread?

 

[lhfarm]

Going for 80% to 0 is a bug and it's not a true reading of the battery. This been discussed many times.

If you reset your device the battery should jump right back to where it should be, or if you put it on a charger you will see it fully charged within 10 minutes.

This bug doesn't occur frequently. I've had it happen only one time but just about everybody gets it at least once.

Hmmm.... Saturday, after an overnight charge, my phone was dead - wouldn't come on - by 5 pm when I wanted to make a call. I was using RadioTime app early in the morning to stream CarTalk and assumed that was the culprit. I didn't try pulling the battery, but when I plugged it in, it just showed about 5% charge after 10 minutes or so. So I assumed the battery was totally discharged.

Haven't had time to test out the RadioTime theroy, but will do so today.

Barry

 

[jsh1120]

A few points.

() Occasional misreading of battery strength is not uncommon. If it happens frequently you have a problem with the battery or the app you're using to monitor the battery. But if it happens only occasionally, it's a pita but nothing more. (It happened to me once in the last five months.)

() It's possible to "seat" a droid on the multimedia dock without fully plugging in the charger. This is a fairly common error. That, too, happened to me once.

() Trying to charge a Droid via the usb cable from one's computer can be problematic because the power supplied is much less than with the wall charger.

() The notion that a task killer is needed because the web browser reloads the last page viewed is a misunderstanding of how the software works. If you don't empty the cache, a browser may well return to the last page viewed. Furthermore, there is a common confusion between "running" and "in memory." Applications that are "in memory" are not necessarily "running." They are simply sitting in memory because the memory they're occupying isn't needed.

 

[MacGyverS2000]

These comments apply only to my situation, should not be construed otherwise, and are placed here only to point out that more is going on at the lower levels than sometimes believed.

() Occasional misreading of battery strength is not uncommon. If it happens frequently you have a problem with the battery or the app you're using to monitor the battery. But if it happens only occasionally, it's a pita but nothing more. (It happened to me once in the last five months.)

What if that battery reading app is the stock DROID app? Sounds like an issue, particularly when the only way to get a good reading is to plug the phone in to a charger, sometimes more than once.

() It's possible to "seat" a droid on the multimedia dock without fully plugging in the charger. This is a fairly common error. That, too, happened to me once.

Don't have a dock.

() Trying to charge a Droid via the usb cable from one's computer can be problematic because the power supplied is much less than with the wall charger.

Never used a PC to charge, only the wall wart.

It has bitten me twice in less than a month of ownership, and it bit my brother once within the first month or two of ownership (but not since). So far it hasn't left me stranded, mainly because I was near a charger when it happened, but I worry about the day the phone decides to shut down on its own because of a faulty read, and I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere with barely enough reception to get a text message through.

 

[MacGyverS2000]

See the recent battery threads... it has happened to me twice now in less than a month.

lol, we have new battery threads daily. Which recent thread?

Fixed.....

 

[jsh1120]

These comments apply only to my situation, should not be construed otherwise, and are placed here only to point out that more is going on at the lower levels than sometimes believed.

() Occasional misreading of battery strength is not uncommon. If it happens frequently you have a problem with the battery or the app you're using to monitor the battery. But if it happens only occasionally, it's a pita but nothing more. (It happened to me once in the last five months.)

What if that battery reading app is the stock DROID app? Sounds like an issue, particularly when the only way to get a good reading is to plug the phone in to a charger, sometimes more than once.

() It's possible to "seat" a droid on the multimedia dock without fully plugging in the charger. This is a fairly common error. That, too, happened to me once.

Don't have a dock.

() Trying to charge a Droid via the usb cable from one's computer can be problematic because the power supplied is much less than with the wall charger.

Never used a PC to charge, only the wall wart.

It has bitten me twice in less than a month of ownership, and it bit my brother once within the first month or two of ownership (but not since). So far it hasn't left me stranded, mainly because I was near a charger when it happened, but I worry about the day the phone decides to shut down on its own because of a faulty read, and I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere with barely enough reception to get a text message through.

Believe me, I'm not discounting other sources of problems. Sorry if my post seemed dismissive. I, too, had an experience early on where it appeared that the battery would not charge overnight. Happened once and never again. I concluded that I probably did not properly connect the charger to the phone, but who knows.

My only point was that the sources of apparent battery problems are numerous, ranging from malfunctioning monitoring software to true hardware issues and everything in between. If you experience a problem, it's worth checking off the common sources (as you did) before concluding you have a long-term issue.

As an aside, as I read this forum I sometimes think that people are making inappropriate comparisons between the Droid and other (usually "dumb") phones. A more appropriate comparison is with a computer running a full-fledged o/s. Personally, I've never owned a computer that didn't require rebooting every week or so and powering off at least every couple of weeks. But perhaps my tolerance is based on years of running Microsoft software.

 

[New2u]

Android automatically kills tasks for you. 3rd party task killers are not going to help save battery in this situation.

Completely false. Open up your web browser, navigate to a page which isn't your home page, press home to exit the browser. Click on the browser icon again, the same page shows up, because the task was never killed.

Not false, just that it doesn't kill processes right away. The OS's built in task manager kills processes depending on several factors and the processes 'rank' depending on what it is doing and the amount of free memory. Here's a good read on how the built in memory manager works (and when it kills tasks).

How to configure Android's *internal* taskkiller - xda-developers

Unfortunately it doesn't kill ones based on battery usage, if an app is stuck in any fashion (i've had it happen quite a few times) it will not automatically shut it down. Memory managers only work based on memory, my droid usually always has around 60+ MB of memory at all times, so it's not going to close anything. You already said it yourself it doesn't kill it right away, because as you open new programs up, those programs get priority in your memory pool, so if you opened up a web browser and then opened up 20 other programs, chances are (you are right) that the web browser will be killed, but if the web browser is sucking up battery like noone's business, and you don't open up enough programs for your internal memory manager to kill it, then it stays open, sucking up your battery. Program managers are really useless "IF" your only using them to secure more memory, but if your using it to kill apps that are not working or, possibly sucking up tons of battery, then it is one of 2 ways to kill the process. I know most people usually don't use them because they say "well i can just go into the menu > apps area and close it down from that menu", and that's all fine and dandy, but some people like to have an app that's there to do it for them. I use one, not for memory management, but for battery management, it's easier for me to kill all the apps i don't want running, due to battery, at once, rather then going through a menu and having to kill them all one by one.

 

[anewday]

Anewday, it seems that you don't know what a Task Manager/killer is. There are some free on the market, I'd highly suggest downloading one of them. You can choose to kill apps running in the background, thus saving you memory and sometimes battery too.

I know what it is but I've read mixed reviews so I didn't install it yet.

Going for 80% to 0 is a bug and it's not a true reading of the battery. This been discussed many times.

If you reset your device the battery should jump right back to where it should be, or if you put it on a charger you will see it fully charged within 10 minutes.

This bug doesn't occur frequently. I've had it happen only one time but just about everybody gets it at least once.

By reset, do you mean take the battery out? I didn't do that but plugged it into a wall charger and it was near full after an hour.

On another occassion, the stock battery meter shows 5% and when I plugged it in a wall charger, it almost instantly went to 90%.

These comments apply only to my situation, should not be construed otherwise, and are placed here only to point out that more is going on at the lower levels than sometimes believed.

() Occasional misreading of battery strength is not uncommon. If it happens frequently you have a problem with the battery or the app you're using to monitor the battery. But if it happens only occasionally, it's a pita but nothing more. (It happened to me once in the last five months.)

What if that battery reading app is the stock DROID app? Sounds like an issue, particularly when the only way to get a good reading is to plug the phone in to a charger, sometimes more than once.

() It's possible to "seat" a droid on the multimedia dock without fully plugging in the charger. This is a fairly common error. That, too, happened to me once.

Don't have a dock.

() Trying to charge a Droid via the usb cable from one's computer can be problematic because the power supplied is much less than with the wall charger.

Never used a PC to charge, only the wall wart.

It has bitten me twice in less than a month of ownership, and it bit my brother once within the first month or two of ownership (but not since). So far it hasn't left me stranded, mainly because I was near a charger when it happened, but I worry about the day the phone decides to shut down on its own because of a faulty read, and I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere with barely enough reception to get a text message through.

All those apply to me too. I was fortunate to wake up before the alarm and noticed the phone went dead so there was time for it to charge before going to work...

 

[aminaked]

then it stays open, sucking up your battery.

Something sitting in memory doesn't really suck up battery power. The memory takes up the same amount of battery power if there's something stored in it or not. It's all 1's and 0's. It "costs" the same amount of battery power to store either one.

However, if the program is using CPU then it is using battery power. So, if the browser is stuck loading a page forever then it is a problem. A task killer itself is a problem. It uses CPU to kill idle tasks. Those idle tasks were using hardly any CPU but now that they need to start up again, they will use CPU.

The bottom line is don't install stuff that runs on startup if you can help it. This includes automated task killers, antivirus, widgets, etc. Don't worry about stock programs that run on launch. Don't worry about programs you use sitting in memory. Automated task killers treat the symptoms, but the real problem is programs that people install that run in the background for no good reason.

Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about any of this.

 

[Crystal995]

Completely drains battery while it is off

I have the same similar problem...
The other night I had a good charged on the phone when I went to bed I shut it down for the night. When I woke up it would not come on so I plug it in and after a few minutes it came on then a red light started blinking and then Findley the battery indicator came on that it was charging. I thought this was weird since it had a charge before I turned off but I figure just maybe I really did not shut it down all the way. Last night I again may sure it had a charge and check to made sure it was shut down all the way but then again this morning I woke up and the same thing. Ok so what make a phone completely drain itself when it is off???