Extended Battery Calibration

[TatDroid]

The good news: I got a great deal last week on Meritline.com for a 3100mAh extended battery for just $14.99 (free shipping, no tax). And more good news: it seems to last two full days under moderate to heavy use.

The bad news: For the first 14 hours or so the battery usage will show as if the OEM battery were still installed - it will go from 100% all the way down to 1%. Then, for the next 24 hours it will continue to operate, showing 1% the whole time.

I've been through two complete cycles - 100% down till the phone shuts down, then full charge back to 100%. Still doesn't track battery usage correctly.

I'm bone stock. Anyone have any suggestions how to calibrate?

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[FoxKat]

The good news: I got a great deal last week on Meritline.com for a 3100 extended battery for just $14.99 (free shipping, no tax). And more good news: it seems to last two full days under moderate to heavy use.

The bad news: For the first 14 hours or so the battery usage will show as if the factory battery were still installed - it will go from 100% all the way down to 1%. Then, for the next 24 hours it will continue to operate, showing 1% the whole time.

I've been through two complete cycles - 100% down till the phone shuts down, then full charge back to 100%. Still doesn't track battery usage correctly.

I'm bone stock. Anyone have any suggestions how to calibrate?

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This is exactly the same way my D2 responded to the 3100mAh battery. The solution is to not let it drain to 0% but instead to drain only to the low battery indicator. You will also need to charge to 100% with the phone powered off, so it's charge to 100% with phone off, use to 15%, charge to 100% with the phone off, and you should be good to go.

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[AdamPA1006]

I would recommend rooting and getting the battery stats calibration app. It will delete the battery stats from your old battery!

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[FoxKat]

To suggest rooting to someone who is "bone stock" is potentially a recipe for disaster. Also, wiping stats leaves you with no top or bottom levels set. You then still have to train the battery meter to the capacity of the battery which requires the same process I described, and the end result is the same, so why root to accomplish the same goal if it doesn't save you anything or provide any different results?

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[TatDroid]

Interesting, so FoxCat you're saying I should shut down when it says 15% remaining? (when actually it has over 24 hours of life left?) I have been charging it in "power off" mode, but I've been intentionally waiting until it drains all the way and shuts off - which is a pain, since I never know exactly when or where that will be, since it reads 1% remaining for a full day of use. I took it off the charger at 8:00am Sunday morning, and it just shut off at 8:30 tonight (Monday), so that's 36 hours. (which is why I'm writing this from my Transformer - the Bionic is on the charger) And that's with some pretty heavy use. Loving the battery life - just need to get this battery usage indicator thing figured out so I'll actually know how much battery I have left!

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[Tillers_Rule]

Battery monitor widget let's you manually input the battery specifications.

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[TatDroid]

It's been over a week now. I've cycled this battery every way I can think of. No change. Battery meter goes from 100% to 1% in the first 14 hours. Then goes another 20 - 24 hours, showing 1% battery left the whole time.

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[lykofos]

The good news: I got a great deal last week on Meritline.com for a 3100mAh extended battery for just $14.99 (free shipping, no tax). And more good news: it seems to last two full days under moderate to heavy use.

I've been through two complete cycles - 100% down till the phone shuts down, then full charge back to 100%. Still doesn't track battery usage correctly.

I'm bone stock. Anyone have any suggestions how to calibrate?

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using DroidForums

I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's an an issue with the discount battery itself that you bought. I have the official moto extended battery and have swapped it back and forth with the regular battery multiple times and it has read the battery usage correctly without any superstitious snake oil battery recalibration techniques needed. The whole battery calibration needing to be done when swapping batteries is a complete myth.

Battery Calibration is a Myth - xda-developers

No Need to Calibrate Android Battery | TweakMyDevice

 

[aaf709]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's an an issue with the discount battery itself that you bought. I have the official moto extended battery and have swapped it back and forth with the regular battery multiple times and it has read the battery usage correctly without any superstitious snake oil battery recalibration techniques needed.

There may be some truth in that. When I had the OG Droid I got the Seidio extended battery. The battery indicator was always off. It would say I needed to plug in when I still had hours left. At that time I used the Battery Left widget. It gives you 3 lines of information and the first line I had was voltage. I knew that ~4200mV was charged and ~3500mV I should find a charger. Even so you can see that Battery Left didn't do a real job with that battery (and it even had a setting for the Seidio) because it too said the battery was dead long before it was.

When I got the Bionic, and the Moto extended battery, I didn't need that. I chalked it up to Gingerbread vs. Froyo, but it may be more than that.

It's possible that the Moto extended battery plays well with the Bionic circuitry and any other is iffy.

 

[TatDroid]

Yes, I'm beginning to realize this must just be a problem with a non-Motorola battery not reading correctly in a Motorola phone. I have no problem with the battery itself (36 hours under medium use), so I guess I'll just have to deal!

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[FoxKat]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's an an issue with the discount battery itself that you bought. I have the official moto extended battery and have swapped it back and forth with the regular battery multiple times and it has read the battery usage correctly without any superstitious snake oil battery recalibration techniques needed. The whole battery calibration needing to be done when swapping batteries is a complete myth.

Battery Calibration is a Myth - xda-developers

No Need to Calibrate Android Battery | TweakMyDevice

This information is correct with respect to the battery, but we also need to take into consideration the fact that batteries lose capacity over time whether used or not, and the expected usable lifespan of a LIPO battery is about 3 years from date of manufacture. At that time, the battery will only be able to take a charge of about 70% of original capacity. So if you are expecting 100% of original capacity 3 years later, and charge to 100% of capacity for that time in the battery's life, when you reach 30% of original capacity and you haven't "trained" the battery meter to what is the acutal (now lower) capacity, the meter may in fact say there's 30% left when in fact you are approaching 3V (effectively 0%). Using it much longer could result in a voltage that is too low (2.5V-2.9V) to start the phone (bootlooping), and also too low to start the charging circuitry (BSOD on boot), and even possibily low enough that the battery goes into protection mode (around 2.5V - 2.7V).

BatteryUniversity.com disputes some of the information contained in those threads, and I would rather rest my head on the opinion of the world's expert on battery testing, CADEX, rather than on any forum or web publisher. The truth is the battery meter can not maintain 100% accuracy to the capacity of the battery and so needs to be "trained" to quote BatteryUniversity, to the actual reduced capacity of the aging cell.

 

[FoxKat]

Interesting, so FoxCat you're saying I should shut down when it says 15% remaining? (when actually it has over 24 hours of life left?) I have been charging it in "power off" mode, but I've been intentionally waiting until it drains all the way and shuts off - which is a pain, since I never know exactly when or where that will be, since it reads 1% remaining for a full day of use. I took it off the charger at 8:00am Sunday morning, and it just shut off at 8:30 tonight (Monday), so that's 36 hours. (which is why I'm writing this from my Transformer - the Bionic is on the charger) And that's with some pretty heavy use. Loving the battery life - just need to get this battery usage indicator thing figured out so I'll actually know how much battery I have left!

Sent from my Transformer TF101 using DroidForums

TatDroid, the very fact that it says 1%, but lasts MUCH longer than it should proves the battery and battery meter are out of sync. I have a D2 and bought an extended battery (3,300mAh knock-off) for it as well. I experienced the same results with that battery. However once I ran it through the cycles I mentioned, it now represents the battery capacity nearly accurately.

The charging circuitry needs to learn what the max and min are, so it can then stretch its range to fit the battery's new and much larger capacity.

 

[TatDroid]

Yep, I have cycled several different ways - including the charge to 100%, drain to 15%, power off, charge to 100% method that you suggested. No luck yet. I'm learning to live with it, though. It doesn't bother me so much anymore.

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[lykofos]

This information is correct with respect to the battery, but we also need to take into consideration the fact that batteries lose capacity over time whether used or not, and the expected usable lifespan of a LIPO battery is about 3 years from date of manufacture...

BatteryUniversity.com disputes some of the information contained in those threads, and I would rather rest my head on the opinion of the world's expert on battery testing, CADEX, rather than on any forum or web publisher. The truth is the battery meter can not maintain 100% accuracy to the capacity of the battery and so needs to be "trained" to quote BatteryUniversity, to the actual reduced capacity of the aging cell.

The person quoted in the article I posted is an Android Framework Engineer for Google. I'm guessing she also knows what she's talking about in relation to battery circuitry interfacing with the Android platform. The BatteryUniversity site seems to be a good general resource for batteries, but there are intricacies depending on what the battery is interfacing with.

The CADEX testing on that site simply described the results of how a battery change slowly decreases after many cycles till the end of it's life. It says absolutely nothing about the fuel gauge monitoring algorithms that motorola implements to determine the battery life / time left in their batteries in motorola phones. I'm betting that none of us here are google engineers either, so chances are we will never now the specifics of the fuel gauge monitoring on the motorola manufactured batteries and how the phone reads that information. This could very well explain the issue the OP is having though.

As stated earlier I've swapped out my moto regular and extended battery w/o doing any calibration. If this fuel gauge information was stored somewhere that needed to be calibrated, my battery meter should have been way off once I put the extended battery in, but it wasn't. It was still accurate. Whatever algorithm / battery life left methodology moto is using (whether it's in phone, in the battery circuitry or a combination of both) probably compensates for battery life decrease over time as well. On previous phones, when the battery was dying, the battery meter was still fairly accurate. Sure, any battery with the same general specifications / maH rating will work in the phone, but as we clearly see in the case of the OP, accuracy may be way off b/c the battery gauge on the moto phone isn't interfacing the same way with the generic battery as it does with the moto battery.

Here's an interesting article on battery fuel gauges: Battery Fuel Gauges: Accurately Measuring Charge Level - Maxim

 

[b00mb00mchuck]

Glad I noticed this thread... I've done a bunch of experimenting on my own with battery swaps and the bionic adapts quickly... wiping battery stats makes no difference at all as the links described... one thing happened to me yesterday though... I flashed axiom ics rom and swapped to my extended battery when I was done flashing... the battery drained down to 1% in less than 6 hours but then stayed on 1% till this morning before it finally died... I charged it fully before turning it back on at 10am... it's now 9pm and I'm at a normal 70% with medium usage... something in this device needs to "see" where the top and bottom of the battery is and then it's fine... it's not the battery stat file but there is a regulator in the device that "learns" what is accurate at 0 and 100%... my thought is... let your battery die once in a while and charge fully ... then your meter is more accurate... but it doesn't give you any better battery life... battery life is what it is based on your abusive charging methods and wiping a file doesn't fix any of that

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