D2G won't start up without wall charger and keeps going to bootloader

[seventieslord]

File this one under the "annoying but not critical" category.

When my phone is at 5% or higher, anything will charge it... car, wall, USB, solar. Wall's definitely the fastest, but they all work.

When it gets down below 5%, it's almost like it goes into a downward spiral that can't be stopped by a mere USB cable. It HAS to get plugged into the wall or it WILL die.

Once my phone is dead, it will not start for even a second. Screen won't even light up. At this point it is in a state where only the wall charger can save it. Once I put it on the wall charger, it's up to 5% in a few minutes, then 10%, then 20% within 15 minutes, but try charging it via USB and I get nothing.

What does happen occasionally when plugged in via USB is it will just start up when plugged in via USB and go to "Bootloader D0.11" and continually flash "Battery Low: Cannot Program". it does this at random intervals, and also when I turn it on manually. The only way around it? Plug it into the wall.

Also, not sure if this is related or not, but on about one in three reboots it goes to clockwork mod recovery. (it does it when not plugged in, plugged into wall, or plugged in via usb, there is no pattern) I have to just hit the camera button to reboot and then usually it boots up fine. It's just weird that this seems to happen for no reason. Any ideas how to make it stop?

 

[Byakushiki]

You really shouldn't be draining it so low. Lithium ion batteries don't have a memory unlike some conventional rechargables. Draining it that low can cause damage to the cells. There is no real fix for that by the way, since the phone doesn't have the power to boot normally. As for the usb, it's just pathetically slow usually.

Sent from my cyanoblurred D2G

 

[seventieslord]

You really shouldn't be draining it so low. Lithium ion batteries don't have a memory unlike some conventional rechargables. Draining it that low can cause damage to the cells. There is no real fix for that by the way, since the phone doesn't have the power to boot normally. As for the usb, it's just pathetically slow usually.

Sent from my cyanoblurred D2G

It's not just pathetically slow, it's nonexistant.

let's say the phone needs to get to 5% to start. The wall charger does that in 3 minutes... USB has never done it. Well, it did once, but it took about 6-7 hours and suddenly it was at 60% when it rebooted.

it's not like it has a problem at higher battery levels. If I'm at 50% it might take just 5 minutes to get up to 60% with the wall charger and 15 minutes with the USB, but it at least does it! Getting from 0% to that critical 5% is simply not possible with USB... "slow" is too generous.

 

[Byakushiki]

It's usb from a computer, you're not charging a crappy iPhone battery y'know(900mah vs 1390mah)! These batteries have more kick, so they need more power to charge! :laugh:
Separate note, my Droid 1 does something quite similar at 5% battery. It just dies, literally. And I mean DIES.

Sent from my cyanoblurred D2G

 

[leobg]

Battery requires higher current to be able to kick in charging when deep discharge occurs. Wall charger provides 850mA current while the USB port cannot supply more than 550mA. Since charging process involves phone OS running in background (yes - phone boots almost fully before charging procedure kicks in, no matter all you see on the screen is just a battery charging animation - phone is fully booted, just radios are disabled), this draws certain amount of power too and when connected to a low current power source, it is not enough to supply the necessary initial current to "wake up" the discharged battery. This is not abnormal.
D2G is not the only phone that behaves like this. Most newer smart phones "suffer" from the same effect.

Sent from my DROID2 GLOBAL using Tapatalk

 

[Gasai Yuno]

It's actually not as simple as that.

USB provides 100mA current unless the device correctly initialises the USB protocol and tells the controller to increase power output.

Of course, to initialise USB the kernel should be started and the USB modules loaded.

 

[Khiraji]

Plug it in, plug it in!

A couple of months ago I embarked on a quest to find some way of having a percentage readout for my D2's battery. The phone apparently is capable of determining the remaining charge in the battery with considerable accuracy, but only at an extremely deep level; virtually everything else battery-charge-related is measured in 10% increments, until you get to 20% (I think... haven't run mine that low in a long time) where it switches to reporting at 5% increments. There are a few really long threads buried somewhere on the xda-developer forums where smarter people than I have done considerable research into this... but I am too lazy and tired to find them.

Anyways, there's an app on the market called Circle Battery Widget that seemingly does the impossible - it reports the exact percentage remaining in your battery, with surprising accuracy. Not sure exactly how it works, but I think it compares the current performance of the battery to when the battery is full. Anyways, not only is it cool (earned a permanent place on my home screen) but it's helpful for watching your battery.