How do I reset/retrain my battery?

[ModusPwnens]

Hi. I didn't condition my battery properly like many people here are saying (i.e. charge it to full, then run it down once, then charge it all the way to full again with no interruption). Is there anyway to do that process now without restoring to factory defaults or do you have to do it when the phone is fresh?

 

[DF Smod]

Nah, no factory reset needed - just charge it and run it down, personally I charge my phone all night every night and I do a good job of running it down throughout the day

 

[Deron]

I've been reading other post on other sites and there is inconsistent information as far as the need to "train" or calibrate the battery or operating system. Personally I would not recommend doing any kind of factory reset just to train a battery. Instead, why don't you just reboot it doing the power + down volume buttons for 10 seconds. This will not reset anything. Then charge the phone all the way up, and then run it all the way down ... if you feel you have to.

Personally, I don't think any of these little battery training drills we perform do anything positive for the phone. If it was that crucial to getting Max battery life, these instructions would have been included in the manual. What manufacturer would intentionally leave out critical info on training your battery and then risk having all its customers complain about bad battery life? They wouldn't. They would have it in some kind of Black Box warning in the front of the manual.

I suspect these battery training exercises are little more than a placebo effect. But hey, do it anyway. Placebos can't hurt.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk

 

[FoxKat]

Hi. I didn't condition my battery properly like many people here are saying (i.e. charge it to full, then run it down once, then charge it all the way to full again with no interruption). Is there anyway to do that process now without restoring to factory defaults or do you have to do it when the phone is fresh?

As Deron posted above, there is no credibility to the claims of "training" the battery. These Li batteries are equipped either internally or through circuitry in the phone or in the charger, to monitor the charging and discharging rates, the peak or maximum charge voltages and the minimum drain voltages, and there is absolutely NO benefit to the "training" exercises being tossed around here. In fact, it is well documented that these Lithium Ion (and Ion Polymer) batteries actually "prefer" (read perform better) to be charged in shorter interim charges multiple times daily rather than fully charging and fully draining.

All this discussion about "training", "calibrating" (better known as "conditioning") comes from the other rechargeable batteries, namely Nickel Cadmium batteries. These older (or let's say earlier technologies of) batteries had a characteristic known as "memory" where if the battery was repeatedly fully charged, and then only partially charged, eventually the battery would lose the capacity it had originally and would begin demonstrating the ability to only hold the amount of power that was being used each cycle. So, if you only used 50% daily with each recharge to 100%, eventually the battery would only HOLD 50% of its original capacity.

To alleviate this "memory" it was said that in some cases the battery could be re-conditioned by draining it to completely dead, then charging fully and repeating several times. It would often revive a battery that seemed to have lost its ability to hold a charge. This was caused by crystals (dendrites) that would build up on the plates inside the battery and effectively block the electrons from being able to affix themselves to the plates. Eventually technology was designed that pulsed the battery with high voltages repeatedly for short bursts which effectively broke up the crystals and returned the battery to near its full capacity.

If you really want to educate yourself, go to Memory: Myth or Fact? – Battery University.

Now, Lithium Ion batteries work much differently than either NiCad or NiMH batteries. Again, some great information can be found at Charging Lithium-Ion Batteries. There you will find that to properly charge a Li battery, you need very sophisticated equipment which is now incorporated in the batteries or in combination with the equipment they power or the charger itself. What I am saying in a nutshell is to simply use and charge as your lifestyle dictates and pay no attention to the ideas tossed around about "training" your battery. Again as Deron said, if the battery required such training, it would be in the user's guide and it would be explicit.

 

[SallyC]

FoxKat, Thank you for such an informative post. My husband is big into RC helicopters and has had numerous battery discussions with engineers and others and says exactly what you have said. The worst thing you can do for these types of batteries is run them down. Given all the controversy about the RAZR not having a removable battery and if people should avoid it for that reason, I would think Motorola would be out in front of this issue with good advice before poor advice causes poor performance and then poor reviews of the phone.

Thanks for taking the time to not only say what you think, but back it up with solid references. Hopefully you have saved some people from a bad experience.

 

[satarecah]

The only reason to run your battery to 10% is to get the smart actions to kick them selfs in i have one that if it goes below 10% almost everything shuts off

 

[SallyC]

The only reason to run your battery to 10% is to get the smart actions to kick them selfs in i have one that if it goes below 10% almost everything shuts off

I would change the smart action. From what I've heard running it that low is not good for it. I have mine set to 25%.

 

[bullswife98]

I would change the smart action. From what I've heard running it that low is not good for it. I have mine set to 25%.

+1 here. I don't allow my battery go that low either. From what I understood the operating system does a pretty good job of controlling itself and where it needs to conserve juice. I've never calibrated my battery on these cuz it wears down the battery over all then you get posters on here complaining there battery life sucks and had to get a replacement one cuz its discharging all weird. I plug in when needed, always have. Battery draining till it shuts off what the hell for?! I did it the first time I got my Og. Droid1cuz people said to do it and I did it for a while but didn't see any real benefit of it honestly, wasn't till I rooted and installed setcpu till I saw actual change but that was done by me o/c and u/c not calibrating it. Just saying.

Sent from my DROID RAZR

 

[Sydman]

Another for not draining your battery below 20% or so can be bad for these lithium batteries, and there is no reason to "train" the battery it does nothing.

 

[pacman79]

FNG to Verizon and Droid

Hello everyone. I'm very appreciative to this forum...specifically this thread. I've had my Droid RAZR for about a week now and recently experienced a problem with power for the phone. This thread may explain some of what I was experiencing the other day. I had let me phone battery drop below 10%. I then let the phone charge overnight and when trying to poweron the next morning, the phone refused to poweron. I tried different outlets (pretty much all the outlets in my house with working connected devices) and the charger in my car; all no joy in getting the phone to poweron. At that point, I had pretty much called the phone a paper weight and contacted Verizon for replacement. Customer service pretty much asked the basic - Had I tried powering on the device while connected to the outlet; my reply was yes. Later that night, I plugged the phone back into the outlet and the system logo displayed and the phone began charging (showed below 10%). I then tried all the same outlets I initially tried charging the phone with....all worked. So I was baffled at this point. I decided to keep the phone and monitor it. So today, I noticed a problem similar. I had not charged my phone overnight, but my battery was about 35-45%. And again, I could not poweron my phone. I tried plugging it into to several outlets within my house and nothing -- no display, no led indicators. So I changed the socket for the usb power adapter, reseated the power adapter into the outlet, disconnect & reconnected end for phone -- all no joy!! I repeated this process and the bugger finally displays with the red eye and shows 0% battery consumption. I have checked to see if apps or resources are hogging the battery and nothing appears to be doing so. I have used Netflix in both instances where it won't power on the next day, as well as GPS. I have checked to make sure they are not running in the background. This all appears to be too suspicious and quirky. So I'm going to continue to monitor this battery consumption as a lead for now. I will keep everyone posted.

 

[luvdldy]

Thanks all!!!

I was making the mistake of "training" my RAZR and hopefully I haven't done any damage lol. Will NOT go below 20% anymore. I have "trained" it 3X... am I in trouble???

 

[SallyC]

I think you'll be fine. Enough people have done that that if a couple times was horrible we'd know. From what I understand it stresses the battery and will shorten its ability to take and hold a charge over time.

FoxKat has written many good posts on this. I wish Motorola had put info on proper care in the manual or online. What they have is kinda sparse and generic.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk

 

[FoxKat]

I think you'll be fine. Enough people have done that that if a couple times was horrible we'd know. From what I understand it stresses the battery and will shorten its ability to take and hold a charge over time.

FoxKat has written many good posts on this. I wish Motorola had put info on proper care in the manual or online. What they have is kinda sparse and generic.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk

SallyC, thanks for the shout out!

If there's one thing I really don't like, it's when people take instructions for one device and apply it universally for other similar devices. This is especially true of batteries. All batteries are NOT created equal, and furthermore, even the same battery in different devices can act completely different. Chargers, protection circuitry in the battery itself, protection (and charging) circuitry in the device designed to use the battery, and even the chemistry/engineering of the battery to mold it to a specific purpose can all cause improper use/abuse of the battery to be detrimental.

Still, I believe SallyC has it right, people have tried all sorts of "training" of the battery and/or the battery meter, and yet there have been no reports of identifiable damage. The manufacturers know that people are going to use this differently and that some will pump and dump while others will top off frequently (like me). That's why they put limits on the charging and discharging circuity and spend obscene amounts of money on R&D to make it work well under a wide range of usage patterns.

I believe when all is said and done, the phone will revert back to its own chi. This is not unlike my car's MPG gauge. If I reset it when I fill the tank, then take the car out onto the road, it'll read upwards of 24MPG for a while, but by the time I get back to the pump some 300+ miles later, it's a miserable 13MPG. Even if I reset the gauge mid-tank full, the end result is the same. What that proves is that the computer on-board is taking a moving average, rather than an actual average. So too, I believe is to a certain extent the battery meter in these phones. If not, the battery meter would need retraining on a frequent basis.

Also, if there were things you could do to damage the battery, other than taking the phone apart and voiding the warranty, the manufacturer would have likely put disclosures and/or instructions telling you not to do those things. Still, there are warnings (as I have said MANY times) about using non-approved chargers. Here's an example of a new experience I had with a charger done as an experiment:

My wife's phone was left on overnight after a full-day's use. She forgot to plug it into the battery charger, so by morning it was dead as a doornail. So just for my own benefit (and others here), I decided to plug it into a charger that is rated at 700MAh and is manufactured by LG for one of their phones. I let it go into Battery Charging mode. For those who don't know what that is, you can either power the phone off first before putting it on charge, or if you are so unfortunate as my wife to have it shut down due to being discharged, simply plug it in but either way, without hitting the power button. Many people here have been saying all along that using any MicroUSB charger is fine. So I set out to see if they're right. Those who have followed my posts know that nearly ALL non-Motorola or non-Verizon chargers will cause the touchscreen to act like it's lost its mind when plugged in and using the phone at the same time. But this time, I was just looking at charging performance.

So, after 7 hours I came back and checked on the phone. It was at 70% charge. :blink: I allowed it to turn off, left it on charge and came back an hour later...still 70%. :blink: This time, I powered it up, then powered it down again, plugged the charger back in and it still read 70%. Remember, that's 8 hours on charge total. So then I took the cute little RAZR charging cube and plugged it in instead. Came back in 30 minutes and it was already at 90%. :biggrin: Came back 30 minutes later, it was 100%. :hail: Does this prove anything? Maybe not, but one thing's for sure...I KNOW the factory charger can pump the battery to 100%, and I also know it can charge while I use the phone and there is no freakazoid screen issue to deal with. :happy3: As always, YRMV.

 

[JSpinks06]

While I appreciate everyone's perspective on the fact that Li-Ion batteries are not "supposed" to have a memory effect certain companies and high standing members of the scientific community have recently discovered that Li-Ion batteries may indeed suffer from this "memory effect". I am including a link to the research which is done on larger Li-Ion batteries which I know will be a rebuttal however, I would have you keep in mind that the base materials and composition of the batteries are the same regardless of the size.

http://phys.org/news/2013-04-memory-effect-lithium-ion-batteries.html