[Solcved] My phone died last night.

[powermad]

My phone keeps shutting down and won't power up.

I went to bed last night and the battery was at 90%.
I went to check my phone a bit ago and it was off. I tried to power it up but nothing happened.
It was like the battery died.
I plugged it into a good charger and after a bit it still won't power up.
It hasn't been dropped or dunked and has been working well till now.
It took an update the other day and a few things vanished but it has been working.

Has anyone else had this happen. The phone has been in use since March and pretty much never gets shut off for any length of time other than rebooting once in a while.
It has never been run till it dies and I don't let the battery get below 25%.

Had to switch back to my old Commando till I get another one.

 

[powermad]

Well after holding the power and vol down button down several times it rebooted.

 

[jpcalhoun]

Well after holding the power and vol down button down several times it rebooted.

Good to hear.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

 

[charliez916]

My phone did exactly the same thing yesterday

 

[powermad]

This keeps happening and it's getting old.
I need the phone to be on in case I get called in and I use it as an alarm.
I uninstalled all recent apps since this started and it's still happening.
Is the phone screwed or is there something that can be done to correct this other than a different type of phone.
My wife has had the Razr M longer than mine and has never had an issue with it and it has all kinds of stupid apps on it.

 

[mike4410]

I had this issue after replacing 2 phones I was told its a common problem.

 

[FoxKat]

I went to bed last night and the battery was at 90%.
I went to check my phone a bit ago and it was off. I tried to power it up but nothing happened.
It was like the battery died.
I plugged it into a good charger and after a bit it still won't power up.
It hasn't been dropped or dunked and has been working well till now.
It took an update the other day and a few things vanished but it has been working.

Has anyone else had this happen. The phone has been in use since March and pretty much never gets shut off for any length of time other than rebooting once in a while.
It has never been run till it dies and I don't let the battery get below 25%.

Had to switch back to my old Commando till I get another one.

Ok, this is a common issue and the solution is relatively easy. The problem arises from the fact that you never let the phone run down below 25%, and never power it off. The phone's charging circuit needs to see the bottom range of the battery (10%), every once in a while in order to maintain accuracy with the battery level meter.

A battery is not like a car's gas tank where it always holds the same amount of gas with each fill up. A phone's battery ages and gets weaker over time. As a result, the amount of charge (current) it can hold when 100% full actually diminishes over time. After about 2 years a phone's battery will only hold about 80% of it's rated capacity when new, but will always display 100% when fully charged. The difference is it's displaying what percentage of the ACTUAL capacity it is charged to, not at what percentage of it's RATED capacity it's charged to.

For this reason, the phone must set and keep two "flags" (markers), updated to identify the battery's charged level and it's discharged level - essentially monitoring the battery's age or health. It's from these two flags along with monitoring the voltage during use that it calculates and displays the remaining charge for you. If the flags are not re-calibrated, over time the meter becomes miss-aligned or falls out of calibration with the battery's true capacity and charge level, and begins to display inaccurate levels.

Eventually it can result in what you are experiencing where it appears to have plenty of charge one minute, and then is completely dead a very short time later. If this out-of-calibration state is not corrected by the following procedure, it can eventually result in the phone becoming completely unresponsive to the power button, and eventually even to the charger.

In order to resolve this, about once every two or three months you should completely power off the phone, then connect it to the charger it came with and allow it to charge completely with the power off. To see the progress, you can briefly press and release either one of the volume controls, but NOT the Power button. In a couple seconds it should display a large battery icon and percentage of charge for about 10 to 15 seconds and then the display will go black again. Allow it to reach a full 100% before powering it back up again.

This initial 100% charge with power off sets the "charged" or "full" flag. It's important that this is done while powered off because while the phone is on it's using power. When charged with power on, even with the screen off the meter can get confused about exactly how much power the battery is pulling during the charge in order to determine when the battery is full. The meter can see a surge in power use by the phone such as while background syncing email or Facebook, and the subsequent drop-off in power consumption once the syncing stops and mistake it for the characteristic drop in current draw white charging that happens when a battery approaches 100% full. This can cause the charger to interrupt the charging process far too soon and this results in the meter setting the "full" flag at a much lower charge level than the battery's true capacity. That's the start of the disconnect or divergence between the battery's true capacity and level of charge versus what the meter believes it to be and displays as the level.

Ok, so then once fully charged to 100% (about 3 hours for the typical phone, or up to 5.5 hours for large capacity batteries such as the MAXX), remove it from the charger, power it up and use it normally, but in this first usage period after the full charge you want to allow the phone to reach a nearly complete discharge level. The phone will tell you when it is discharged and that you need to connect it to the charger. This is usually 10% - 15%, depending on the phone or operating system version. We DO NOT want the phone to reach 0% under almost any circumstances, as this can cause it to become completely unresponsive.

When it reaches that discharged state and the pop-up window telling you to charge appears, that is when the phone's meter sets the "discharged" flag. We're almost done. The last step is to repeat the first step where you powered it down and charged to 100% with the power off. Once you complete the second charge to 100% with the power off, you're done. If you perform these three steps in that order and as instructed, you will have successfully re-calibrated the phone's meter to the battery. You can now power the phone back up and use and charge in your normal patterns, but don't forget to perform this three step process again in about two to three months.

From there on, you shouldn't suffer the sudden and unexpected complete discharge and automatic shut-down you experienced, or the failure of the phone to respond to the power button or charger. In the future if you should ever find the phone won't respond to the power button, first try plugging it into the charger. If it begins charging and displays 0%, just let it remain on charge to 100% and follow the three steps above and you should be fine.

If the phone should ever fall to respond to the charger as you experienced, there are several ways to regain control...one of which is the hard-shutdown method you used by pressing and holding the power and volume down buttons together until it begins to boot. If you are forced to resort to that method of recovery, make sure to plug into the charger immediately upon the phone showing signs of life...you may only have seconds to react before the phone shuts down again and the next time it may not respond to the same recovery method.

Good luck!

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

 

[powermad]

Wow, thanx for taking the time to write that.
That's the best explanation I've seen yet on this.
dancedroid

 

[mountainbikermark]

Ok, this is a common issue and the solution is relatively easy. The problem arises from the fact that you never let the phone run down below 25%, and never power it off. The phone's charging circuit needs to see the bottom range of the battery (10%), every once in a while in order to maintain accuracy with the battery level meter.

A battery is not like a car's gas tank where it always holds the same amount of gas with each fill up. A phone's battery ages and gets weaker over time. As a result, the amount of charge (current) it can hold when 100% full actually diminishes over time. After about 2 years a phone's battery will only hold about 80% of it's rated capacity when new, but will always display 100% when fully charged. The difference is it's displaying what percentage of the ACTUAL capacity it is charged to, not at what percentage of it's RATED capacity it's charged to.

For this reason, the phone must set and keep two "flags" (markers), updated to identify the battery's charged level and it's discharged level - essentially monitoring the battery's age or health. It's from these two flags along with monitoring the voltage during use that it calculates and displays the remaining charge for you. If the flags are not re-calibrated, over time the meter becomes miss-aligned or falls out of calibration with the battery's true capacity and charge level, and begins to display inaccurate levels.

Eventually it can result in what you are experiencing where it appears to have plenty of charge one minute, and then is completely dead a very short time later. If this out-of-calibration state is not corrected by the following procedure, it can eventually result in the phone becoming completely unresponsive to the power button, and eventually even to the charger.

In order to resolve this, about once every two or three months you should completely power off the phone, then connect it to the charger it came with and allow it to charge completely with the power off. To see the progress, you can briefly press and release either one of the volume controls, but NOT the Power button. In a couple seconds it should display a large battery icon and percentage of charge for about 10 to 15 seconds and then the display will go black again. Allow it to reach a full 100% before powering it back up again.

This initial 100% charge with power off sets the "charged" or "full" flag. It's important that this is done while powered off because while the phone is on it's using power. When charged with power on, even with the screen off the meter can get confused about exactly how much power the battery is pulling during the charge in order to determine when the battery is full. The meter can see a surge in power use by the phone such as while background syncing email or Facebook, and the subsequent drop-off in power consumption once the syncing stops and mistake it for the characteristic drop in current draw white charging that happens when a battery approaches 100% full. This can cause the charger to interrupt the charging process far too soon and this results in the meter setting the "full" flag at a much lower charge level than the battery's true capacity. That's the start of the disconnect or divergence between the battery's true capacity and level of charge versus what the meter believes it to be and displays as the level.

Ok, so then once fully charged to 100% (about 3 hours for the typical phone, or up to 5.5 hours for large capacity batteries such as the MAXX), remove it from the charger, power it up and use it normally, but in this first usage period after the full charge you want to allow the phone to reach a nearly complete discharge level. The phone will tell you when it is discharged and that you need to connect it to the charger. This is usually 10% - 15%, depending on the phone or operating system version. We DO NOT want the phone to reach 0% under almost any circumstances, as this can cause it to become completely unresponsive.

When it reaches that discharged state and the pop-up window telling you to charge appears, that is when the phone's meter sets the "discharged" flag. We're almost done. The last step is to repeat the first step where you powered it down and charged to 100% with the power off. Once you complete the second charge to 100% with the power off, you're done. If you perform these three steps in that order and as instructed, you will have successfully re-calibrated the phone's meter to the battery. You can now power the phone back up and use and charge in your normal patterns, but don't forget to perform this three step process again in about two to three months.

From there on, you shouldn't suffer the sudden and unexpected complete discharge and automatic shut-down you experienced, or the failure of the phone to respond to the power button or charger. In the future if you should ever find the phone won't respond to the power button, first try plugging it into the charger. If it begins charging and displays 0%, just let it remain on charge to 100% and follow the three steps above and you should be fine.

If the phone should ever fall to respond to the charger as you experienced, there are several ways to regain control...one of which is the hard-shutdown method you used by pressing and holding the power and volume down buttons together until it begins to boot. If you are forced to resort to that method of recovery, make sure to plug into the charger immediately upon the phone showing signs of life...you may only have seconds to react before the phone shuts down again and the next time it may not respond to the same recovery method.

Good luck!

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

Long story short,a bug with the battery sync was introduced with Honeycomb (Android 3.0) and has yet to be rectified as of Jelly Bean (4.2). Not sure if they fixed it in 4.3.
To keep the bug from affecting your device do as described above by Foxcat to resync your battery meter.
If the bug does hit you the easiest solution is hold the power button for about 30 seconds to do a soft reset of the device. Most times the bug shows up when the battery meter reads full but does a brain freeze then the device freezes in sleep mode, acts like it's dead though it's not.

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<><
A Rezound phone was used for this Tapatalk post

 

[powermad]

Many thanx. It finally got down to 10% (went into a coma again)
Good lord this thing has a ridiculous amount of battery life.
Started a nav program and played streaming video for over 12 hrs to get it from 85% - 10%
I'll do this again when it's fully charged and charge again.
Hopefully this takes care of it.

 

[djspy]

Don't mean to hijack this thread but I have a question for FoxKat, I just got a CLNR phone and when it came it was 100% charged. The next night I let it run to 14% at which point the low battery pop up appeared. I turned it off and plugged in the charger. Now it said I had 8% battery left. I didn't give much thought other than “it needs calibrating". The next day I did the same thing and when it was off and plugged in the charger it registered 8% again instead of the 14% it had when I turned it off less than a minute ago. Why is this happening? Also, after it reaches to 100% can we turn on the phone while it's plugged or is it better if we unplug it and then turn it on?

Thanks.

 

[GoCliffGo05]

Not sure why but my phone does the same thing. It read much lower when off then it did when on...

As for unplugging it, I always reboot then unplug.



Sent from my Droid Razr HD using Tapatalk 4

 

[bweN diorD]

im sure the answer will be something like:
when the phone is on, its using multiple variables to determine the remaining battery, which isnt an exact science as you see.
however, when its off, there are no variables to determining the level of charge. so its the most accurate way to see whats left.