Current battery drain measurment tools? - P3300, MDA Compact III General

I tried Battery Status, but it gave me strange results - for example battery drain with full brightness was less then with screen off (tested many times).
Could you recommend any really working application?

Make a dummy battery with contacts that align with those in the phone, and connect this to the phones battery via lengths of wire about 12" long.
Use a current clamp (I use a Fluke i30 for low current measurement) then sample the current ten times a second for one minute and average the results out to derive the current consumption - its not difficult really, and this method is far more accurate than software running on the phone - Mike

Related

Cooked ROMs battery drain tests

Hi,
I'm making some tests on battery drain in WM6 ROMs: Meshle's Vanilla 3, Fracoon's, B&B and HTC WM6 original (all additional programs closed in all ROMs). It takes some time so I'll let you know later about results.
I have one question for Meshle's ROMs users: did you noticed differences between Vanilla 2 and 3 versions in battery drain?
Thanks and have nice weekend.
unfortunately I cannot tell you anything about the difference between vanilla 2 and 3, BUT am very interested if you already had some (preliminary) info
patrick
Results
Hi,
Finally I've made all the tests.
Procedure:
Every ROM was flashed to device with original HTC WM6, then I swiched all Today plugins, utilities (like pBar) off, so system was clean and not overclocked. Then battery was fully charged.
For every ROM I made following tests (3x every test): first - streaming Internet radio 128 kbit/s with WiFi connection. Backlight was off, sound - 1/4. Test was made with GSPlayer. In table you can see how much it drains battery in % per hour (lower is better). Second test - playing Divx movie (320x240, full screen, no sound, backlight set to maximum) with TCPMP.
Like I said all tests were made 3 times for each ROM so you can see averages in table. I think the results are very similar for ROMs - 32-40% battery drain with WiFi and 16-22% while playing AVI movies so it's not so important parameter when you chose ROM for yourself.
I noticed that changing WLAN power save mode to "Best Battery" lowered power drain while streaming over WiFi from 40% to 10-12% so if you have strong WiFi signal it's better to do this. I haven't noticed differences in power consumption during calls, but I have no time for additional tests.
I've checked also free RAM and Storage memory (clean system with no plugins etc...).
Last impressions - with Bepe ROM I didn't managed to obtain Edge connection, Meshle Vanillas have almost no memory leakages.
I hope it'll be useful for somebody.
varvocel said:
Every ROM was flashed to device with original HTC WM6
...
Then battery was fully charged.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good idea to measure power consumption. Interesting to check WM5 for comparison, as many people think it was a lot better.
However, I'd like to point out several things, which might influence outcome.. or might not.
1. Probably it is absolutely irrelevantl, but still... was there exactly the same version of power meter program used? At least, we would get same errors
2. There were complaints that battery after flashing does not last as long as before. Some kind of recalibration helps: full discharge until device shuts down followed by full charge. It was adviced to flash fully charged device, but still after some flashings I thought that battery drains too fast, so did the trick too.
Suggestion is to measure after discharge/charge cycle.
3. Correct me if I'm wrong, but probably like most gauges, the best precision is in the middle of the working range.
Normal behaviour of my device (while it is on and just sleeps) with fully charged battery: one day number stays at 100%; then gets lower at constant rate; and last few percents almost fly out.
In my opinion it could be right first to discharge from 100% to maybe 75-80%, and only after that start measurements.
Purely hardware power meter could be 'the final answer' to all questions but you need at least to have one.
1. Battery level was checked in System -> Settings -> Power
2. Every ROM was tested 3 times. Because 1 WiFi test takes about 40% of battery power device was fully charged 2 times.
3. First measurement was done when battery was full, but second at about 50%. It's interesting that differences was only 2-3% in both ways, so I think they are not significant because WiFi drain was about 40% like I said.
By the way - I'm using Meshle Vanilla 3 now, device was recharged 5-6 times already and I didn't observed any better or worse battery drain.
I fully agree - the best way to measure power consumption is some kind of hardware, but concerning very similar results for all ROMs I don't think it's really necessary to do further tests.
Thanks for you suggestions.

Battery saving tips

Before we get an update (well if it will sort the problem...) I wonder if we could collect the best tricks and tips how to save battery life on Desire? Some of you have experience of apps and widgets that drain the battery fast, then we have the usual (turn of 3g, wifi, avoid white backgrounds etc).
What you think? Lets share what we found out!
- Turn off any auto-update for anything unless you really (really) need them
- Even if you really (REALLY) need auto-update, set auto-update period to longer interval (why do you want to get weather update every hour? just an example)
- Again, review your auto-update apps/widgets!!!
- Turn off GPS. Turn this on only when you are going to use sat nav app
- Turn off Wi-Fi. It is obvious, turn it on when needed and dont forget to turn off!
- Turn off Bluetooth, unless you want to use it (headphone???)
- Don't use task killer of any kind unless you really (REALLY) know what you are doing. Let Android OS take care of killing those inactive apps, Android is designed for this.
- Set your screen brightness as low as possible your eyes could use. Full brightness is really not necessary unless you want to show off to iPhone users
- Limit your home screen widgets, think if you really want to use to have "quick look". Otherwise you can just put icon shortcut, one click and there you go!
- Choose AMOLED friendly apps. Meaning, avoid any white or extreme bright UI / background colors. For example: The XDA Android app created by Tapatalk is AMOLED friendly compared to browsing via web, because it uses black color background. Find apps that you can customize the color
- Choose AMOLED friendly themes. I would replace the default HTC big clock that uses white color with other that uses black color.
That's for now
The first charge is important for the battery and your device too. The battery has to be charged long time, 12-16 hours first time to use all the chemicals it has. Some says that the polymer batteries don't need the first big charge but specialist's says it's good practise to do it with the LiPoly batteries too.
Note: it's best practise to wait until the battery reaches it's critical level (around 5%) before you start the first big charge. The first charge also calibrates your devices power meter.
Mastoid said:
The first charge is important for the battery and your device too. The battery has to be charged long time, 12-16 hours first time to use all the chemicals it has. Some says that the polymer batteries don't need the first big charge but specialist says it's good practice to do it with the LiPoly batteries too.
Note, that you have to wait until the battery reaches it's critical level (around 5%) before start the first big charge. The first charge also calibrates your devices power meter.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is this really really true? I hopefully will be getting a new Desire tomorrow (for exchange) and when I received my previous one, I didn't drain the battery and then charge for 12 hours. I would not mind doing it if it really improves the battery life but I've seen conflicting articles/opinions about this whole 12 hours charge thing
From HTC FAQ
http://www.htc.com/www/faqs.aspx?p_id=312&cat=80&id=127114
When I first receive my phone, do I need to charge the battery?
Your phone ships with a partially charged battery so it's suggested you charge your battery fully before first use. The battery is fully charged when the notification LED turns green.
It is recommended to charge the battery for 8 hours the first time to ensure that the battery has had time to recharge.
Note: It is recommended that you only use the charger and cable provided in the box your phone was shipped in.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
HoneyBeFly said:
Is this really really true? I hopefully will be getting a new Desire tomorrow (for exchange) and when I received my previous one, I didn't drain the battery and then charge for 12 hours. I would not mind doing it if it really improves the battery life but I've seen conflicting articles/opinions about this whole 12 hours charge thing
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for that although if I remember correctly on the Desire quick quide it says I need to charge it for 3 hours for the first time. Regardless, it insinuates that I shouldn't drain the battery before the first charge
Please try and read about how a li-ion battery works.
NiCd and NiMH need longer (and slow) initial charge(s). Because indeed the battery still needs to form. Usually 5 charges, but cheap ones reach max capacity after eg 15 charges.
This is NOT the case for li-ion batteries. They have max capacity as soon as they roll out of the factory. And they start degrading from that point.
Keeping the Desire charged longer has no use. Because as soon as the battery is full, the internal chip will cut off the charge. So you can just as well plug out your charger.
There are so many voodoo stories about batteries, even from manufacturers. Probably because each battery chemistry need different handling. Whereas li-ion batteries are actually much more easy. They don't last too long though :/
updates
Every now and then you get a notification of available updates to apps... anyone knows how this works and if it does drain the battery? Is there a way to turnthe update check off?
Can you try this:
http://androidcommunity.com/forums/f12/how-to-turn-off-application-upgrade-check-12723/
Let us know the result.
jannen said:
Every now and then you get a notification of available updates to apps... anyone knows how this works and if it does drain the battery? Is there a way to turnthe update check off?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Kaiser-Increasing battery life-easy fix

Additional information I have gained through personal experience:
If you KNOW your battery is good, you can increase the battery capacity to 1500mAH without failure, and increase your usage rate somewhat.
I cannot guarantee this will work for everyone, but in the past I have had no issues running either of my good batteries with 2400 units.
I unplugged my phone this morning at around 5:30AM and only used it for one phone call, some facebooking and some market searching ("Waze"). I am currently at 47% battery with 1156 of 2400 units as of 8:45PM.
Again, I wouldn't try this with a bad battery as increasing this number lowers the actual mAH number that the phone needs to properly display the "please charge your phone" message when the battery falls below 15%. I learned this by watching the phone drop to 0% and stay there an estimated 2 hours and 45 minutes with light use and a good battery. The marked bad battery would say fully charged for a couple hours and suddenly drop to 15% and last maybe 30 minutes in this state before finally dying out. And that was with a standard 2150 units marker. Increasing the number of units increases the "span" of usable power from the baseline of 4.2 volts to below the 3.7 volt limit.
Hope my explanation wasn't too boring and someone has good luck doing this as I have...
Actually, changing the number of units has absolutely no effect on how long the battery lasts. It just makes the meter more or less accurate. Check out this old thread where I worked with several others to figure out how the battery meter works, and how to make it as accurate as possible.
If you are having a hard time believing me, please try measuring the time between unplugging with a full charge and the phone dying: with various high and low numbers of units. You'll find that although the meter changes dramatically, the actually battery life does not. But don't do that unless you really need to be convinced, because such 100% to 0% cycles are really bad for your battery.
I use the standard 1350mAH setting for my battery, which is 2170 units roughly. The please charge your battery appears at 10% everytime, and will drain to 0% and hold for about 10 minutes before dying.
So yes, n2rjt is correct. Changing to mAH has 0 effect on the battery life, but how the battery meter is displaying the current charge.
So the matrix at which the battery charge is displayed is adjusted by the amount of "units" displayed under a "FN-Left Softkey" screen. I understand that the battery is only good for 1350MAh, but that does not explain the findings I have on 2 almost identical Kaisers, which is the shut-off on 2150-2170 units comes much sooner than if set to 2350 or 2400.
Is it possible that, with the newer .32.9 kernels, the processor/radio/GPS/etc. or something else is not drawing as much power with my different unit settings?
I can reflash a new kernel with the standard 2150 unit setting, install a clean Froyo on both and pull the sim and SD cards in an attempt to test my theory if needed, but I find it strange that the actual "daily use" battery levels had increased after using 2400 as a blueprint for the battery.
I trust y'alls judgement on this, and I'm not trying to throw stones in a glass house, I'm just sharing my experience.
Testing is done on both phones. The phones were both set up identically with the only difference being the amount of units used for battery status.
Both phones had no sim card installed, radio 1.70.19.09, 2.6.32.9 kernel flashed theough RUU, identical Samsung 1350mah KAIS160 batteries, and identical 256mb Sandisk microSD cards. No other files were placed on the SD cards other than what would be needed to install Android and updates through replimenu 0.9.
(Luckily I had a spare phone or I wouldn't have been able to do this.)
Parameters for the testing were:
1. Flash L1q1d kernel on both phones, one set to 2150 units, the other at 2400.
2. Install Froyo through replimenu and recharge phones
3. remove both phones from their chargers at the same time and see which dies first.
(2 cheap "PW-1BGT" chargers used and swapped between phones).
Under the circumstances, I did find the 2400 phone to last longer, albeit only a short period (2 hours and 20 minutes average)... Not enough to prove a real leap in battery performance.
It took me almost a week to perform this test but the results were less than great, even after the first result of 3 hours and 10 minutes difference came through. I think one phone may have a better charging system as the results varied more than 1 hour across 2 phones. Once the batteries were swapped I noticed a slightly longer charge time on one phone that swapping chargers did not fix.
All-in-all this was an experience to say the least. I will say that there is a variance in the charging ability of one of the phones in that it seems to provide a slower charge, which could be why it seems to last longer. Although I flashed both phones with the unit count swapped, the "older" Kaiser seemed to be the winner in battery life. There was only a slight (30-45 minute) difference between them in both scenarios, and I don't think this difference would show up had the radios been on.
On a last note, IBM wrote a supplement for their Thinkpad series of notebook computers
www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/PFAN-3QNQJN.html
In this document is stated that Ni-MH batteries should be deep-cycled but not Li-Ion. Our phones never pull the battery down below the 2.8 volt threshold as the phone won't stay on or even start in this condition.
In closing, I think the difference is in what the phone "sees" as a battery voltage and afixes a place marker for when the shutdown should occur. I've had the phone sit at 0% for a couple hours on 2150 units, but not with the 2400 setting; 0% only lasts 45 minutes to an hour @ 2400 units with radio, GPS and data on.
After about 2 weeks of continued use, I have noticed a trend... a good one, I think.
The amount of units displayed to Android through the kernel has increased, apparently on it's own.
I started with 2400 units almost 2 weeks ago; I am now just over 2510 adjusted, with no outside influence by me. I have not changed anything about what I do with the phone on a daily basis.
I noticed this after not paying it much attention because each day of the week is almost exactly the same (up at 4am, phone off charger at 4:45, use it at work and home, plug it back in at 10pm).
Anyone want to bite into this one, or y'all just think I'm full of it?
(I almost wish I could take screenies of the "Fn-left soft key" screen)...
You're too new on this matter. The Kernel, last i remember, was altered to try and detect if the battery is in a better state (or bigger than the stock) than originaly thought. So, it is increasing the units to compensate the max mah it detects when the charging start to get really low.
Go read some threads! you'll find it rejuvenating
daedric said:
You're too new on this matter. The Kernel, last i remember, was altered to try and detect if the battery is in a better state (or bigger than the stock) than originaly thought. So, it is increasing the units to compensate the max mah it detects when the charging start to get really low.
Go read some threads! you'll find it rejuvenating
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed! Try entering that larger amount next time you edit your kernel, and you might find it to be more accurate. That's why it adjusts over time. It does NOT remember the recalibrated number across reboots, because there are too many reasons the auto-calibration can be wrong.
Weird
Well thats weird,
I have Kaiser with uptime for more than 350 hours and my adjusted value is now 3091.
And it last for two days.
Battery is standard 1350mAh
frantisek.sobota said:
Well thats weird,
I have Kaiser with uptime for more than 350 hours and my adjusted value is now 3091.
And it last for two days.
Battery is standard 1350mAh
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
n2rjt said:
It does NOT remember the recalibrated number across reboots, because there are too many reasons the auto-calibration can be wrong.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And you've probably found one of them.
I'm lucky to get a day's worth, lol. Granted I'm running an experimental Kernel that I'm working on for boosting battery life while phone is in use.
Battery info via Spare Parts battery information page:
level 83
scale 100
health good
voltage 4018
temp (always) 36.8º
tech Li-ion
time since boot 2:19:45
I can't remember what the values were with a 1350 setting, but this seems to be working somewhat to my favor at 1500mAH.
2 weeks later and still going well into the 2400s'. 2482 to be exact with one adjusted rate being 2517...
Only difference noted is that the battery light only goes red at 9% or lower remaining.
Battery status update 7/22/11
Phone taken off charger at 5:40am... Facebook, Google+, texting and one 3 minute call so far today.
Currently @ 1:15pm...
70% remaining
3.923v
Battery counter at 2632, does NOT hold across reboots but Scoot's kernel keeps reboots to a minimum.
If anyone cares...lol.

Memory and Battery ... what do you get?

Apparently, the battery life and the low internal memory are some major drawbacks of this otherwise great handset, so I though of putting up some experiences of what users report from their experiences with internal memory and battery life.
(After installing all programs and under normal usage)
ROM:
System 260MB => 32MB free
Data: 150MB =>32.7 free
Strategy: rooted, uninstalled htc stuff.
Battery Life:
24-36 hours
Remarks:
I feel the battery behaves rather strange, think there is definitively room for improvement. Some days, it hardly uses 5% over 12 hours!! Then, on others, without touching it, it looses over 50%!!
I am currently playing around with the Network settings and will see what I find.
Underclocking on demand should further alleviate the problem I hope!
With the original WF I easily got 4-5 days and the battery is only marginally smaller so should be possible to get closer to this range
Here my results:
About 50 MB free of ROM.
About 100 MB free of RAM.
Stock ROM, S-ON (waiting for htc unlock and cyanogenmod)
Battery lasts under normal usage 2 days, light usage 3 days. (When i sleep phone is in fly mode and there's no battery drain)
Normal usage: little browsing, messaging, mailing, music listening, checking news and weather, maybe a phone call.
Light usage: messaging, mailing, a bit music listening, calendar checking, very very little browsing
The biggest battery drain is the screen, especially when playing games (15 minutes dragon fly gives 10 % battery drain) and browsing, market checking/updating.
Everything stock:
free ROM: 47
free RAM: 122
Around 2 days battery use if I don't play too much Airport Mania 2, or else 10 minutes play equals minus 5% battery
UPDATE:
I changed some settings to maximize battery performance, notable
Location => Disable "Use Wireless Networks" (battery eater!!)
Wifi&Networks: Mobile Network Settings:
Network Mode: GSM only (OK I don'T need the fast one)
Enable Always-On: DISABLED
Plus I set it on Flight Mode during night (I used Gentle Alarm to do it before, but apparently there is a bug where it makes it consume engergy nevertheless so do it manually now for the moment)
Results:
For now, 3-4 days!
Will continue trying out (but now it will take a week or two to finish some cycles ;-) )
RAM : 241 free / 160 used
ROM : 70 free / 80 used
Cyanogenmod 7 / 1500mAh HD7 battery
1,5-2 days with fully wifi opened.
Sure you can kill 3G, WiFi etc but then why have smartphone and dumb it down?
Here are a few battery saving tips I've learned from owning a GSM Hero and Desire HD (my gf has WFS which is why I'm lurking here... just ordered a XTC Clip for it).
Unfortunately when the green light says you're phone is fully charged this isn't always the case. The battery is likely to be mis-reporting its capacity and % used, this can cause your phone to die when the battery still has remaining charge. So, we're going to fix that.
Assuming you have already rooted your phone, download Battery Calibration tool and CurrentWidget.
Place a CurrentWidget widget on your home screen and charge your phone until the widget says 0mA. This means it has reached fully capacity.
Once it hits 0mA on the widget, open Battery Calibration and wipe battery stats.
Reboot your phone whilst still plugged in and upon reboot it will recreate a new battery stats file, however now it will know the battery's max capacity and will correctly report battery % used.
I do this about twice a week. Maybe once a month I will also let it completely die and then fully recharge whilst off, before powering on and repeating the above steps.
Other things you can do to increase battery life are:
Change the sync interval of apps like Facebook, Weather etc. I usually set most things to every 3 or 4 hours, with Flickr only being once a day.
Don't run the screen at full brightness if you don't need it. On my DHD I find 40% to be best for most conditions, with only really bright sun making it hard to read... in which case I bump it up to around 75%. Auto-brightness if ok but it tends to be on the bright side on most Sense ROMs so hopefully someone will work out a way to tweak the values for WFS. I had a play about with custom values on DHD but after testing for a while I still prefer to control it manually. It's a personal thing though.
Remove crap you don't need. Stocks, News, eReader, Twitter etc are always the first to go when I install a new ROM. I use Root Explorer to delete them but there are various ways to do this including Titanium Back-up or by using ADB. You can find everything in /data/app & /system/app. Just be sure to do a nandroid backup in case you delete any system critical apks.
Change Wifi sleep policy to Never.
Limit your homescreen widgets to only ones you really need. Having 7 screens packed with widgets and apps will cause battery drain.
Turn off Power Saving mode. I tend to find it doesn't really help and just makes your phone quite useless when you hit the pre-set % where it activates.
Never use Task Killers. This link gives an excellent explanation.
Finally, wait in hope for an overclocked and undervolted kernel, different radios and custom auto-brightness values
If I can think of anything else I'll post it here
don´t know why so mutch people get worried about the battery. for me the only thing that counts is that the battry takes me over the day. i mean i go out an seven am and get bat at 5pm, so thats the time i need my battery to hold. maybe i need some backup to get until 22 pm and everything is alright.
for me i doesnt matter if i´ve to recarge after one day
Yeah, for some people it can become a bit of an obsession. However, it still think it's worth taking a few simple steps to get the best out of your device
For some people 8 hours between charges is fine. For me, I like a phone that can run for 8 hours between charges, but also run for 48 hours between charges (without having to go to dead mode by turning on airplane). I go camping, stay the night someplace else, forget my charger while going on a trip or just want the freedom of not having to find an outlet and drag my charger with me if I want to have a phone run for more than 8 hours. So I get off work, change my clothing and run out the door to my after-work sporting event, then head out for a few beers afterwards with the team and I barely have enough juice left to call my wife or check on a few game scores.
It's important. Not having it be important means your phone is running your life or you just always have the same routine, which is fine for you maybe but I like to head out.
About 7 hours running CM 7. Battery life is very bad at the moment.

[DISCUSSION] Use stock ROM for your battery's health

Hello everybody.
I just want to share with you guys what I found out.
I've been using custom ROMs and custom kernels for LG V30, and I faced a lot of issues. The most common issue is overheating, especially on charging or using mobile data.
I use Anker's adapter that supports Quick Charge 3.0, and an Anker USB-C to USB-3.0 cable. I use Ampere app to see how the battery is charge.
On custom ROMs, the ampere number (mA) changes every few seconds, jumps up and down with big gap, and the phone gets very hot.
On stock ROM (US99820H) in my case, mA number is very stable. It increases or decreases slowly and doesn't jump up and down. On plugging in, min and max mA are equal. The phone is just a little bit hotter than before plugging in.
So I just wanted to share my own experience with you guys. If you want you phone to last long, use Stock ROMs, disable bloatwares and useless system apps.
I'm going to purchase the battery and change it myself for better battery life. I wanted to change to another phone but for now, this is the best phone for music.
Please discuss if you disagree with me or have a solution for custom ROMs.
minhntp said:
Hello everybody.
I just want to share with you guys what I found out.
I've been using custom ROMs and custom kernels for LG V30, and I faced a lot of issues. The most common issue is overheating, especially on charging or using mobile data.
I use Anker's adapter that supports Quick Charge 3.0, and an Anker USB-C to USB-3.0 cable. I use Ampere app to see how the battery is charge.
On custom ROMs, the ampere number (mA) changes every few seconds, jumps up and down with big gap, and the phone gets very hot.
On stock ROM (US99820H) in my case, mA number is very stable. It increases or decreases slowly and doesn't jump up and down. On plugging in, min and max mA are equal. The phone is just a little bit hotter than before plugging in.
So I just wanted to share my own experience with you guys. If you want you phone to last long, use Stock ROMs, disable bloatwares and useless system apps.
I'm going to purchase the battery and change it myself for better battery life. I wanted to change to another phone but for now, this is the best phone for music.
Please discuss if you disagree with me or have a solution for custom ROMs.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I also felt the same...Though the charging speed on custom roms is higher...in terms of stability of current, Stock Rom is the best.
minhntp said:
Hello everybody.
I just want to share with you guys what I found out.
I've been using custom ROMs and custom kernels for LG V30, and I faced a lot of issues. The most common issue is overheating, especially on charging or using mobile data.
I use Anker's adapter that supports Quick Charge 3.0, and an Anker USB-C to USB-3.0 cable. I use Ampere app to see how the battery is charge.
On custom ROMs, the ampere number (mA) changes every few seconds, jumps up and down with big gap, and the phone gets very hot.
On stock ROM (US99820H) in my case, mA number is very stable. It increases or decreases slowly and doesn't jump up and down. On plugging in, min and max mA are equal. The phone is just a little bit hotter than before plugging in.
So I just wanted to share my own experience with you guys. If you want you phone to last long, use Stock ROMs, disable bloatwares and useless system apps.
I'm going to purchase the battery and change it myself for better battery life. I wanted to change to another phone but for now, this is the best phone for music.
Please discuss if you disagree with me or have a solution for custom ROMs.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In terms of stability, I have different results, when I charge using a custom rom the phone tends to stay cool, but when I used the stock rom the phone got a lot hotter then before charging.
Custom ROMs may not be utilizing QC properly. QC 2.0 has few discrete voltage/current steps, while QC 3.0 has many (200mA increments iirc) designed to strike a balance between charging speed and heat. Maybe it's getting stuck in QC 2.0 mode and the temperature feedback isn't working properly?
You could just use a non-fast-charging wireless charger, if you're only charging up at night. 5v/~1A is pretty much harmless, it's just on the slow side of things.
fyi, battery capacity (as tracked by the charging controller driver, I guess) is stored at sys/class/power_supply/bms/charge_full; it defaults to design capacity until a full charge cycle has been completed* and then I suppose is revised each time the driver tracks less energy has been stored after a complete charge. Cycle count, cell resistance and a couple other things are also stored here. I think all values are persistent until the battery is physically disconnected.
Might be worth doing a full discharge+charge (to 100%, then let it sit for a few hours to saturate) to see if your battery is worn enough to warrant pulling the phone apart. Accubattery does seem to be more or less accurate, so you charge while it's on you can get a real-time idea of how much has gone in.
* a full charge might be from 1% to 100%. It might be from 5% to 100%. Who knows! I've charged from 2% to 100% a couple times and not had cycle_count increase.
Also, if you do go shopping, beware of undersized batteries. I bought an "OE spec" battery a while ago that was obviously thinner and lighter than the original; it weighed some 12.5% less and only took a 3000mah charge, more or less lining up with the reduced weight. The seller was "tele*cell", and I very much doubt they're the only ones pulling this crap. Record the contents of power_supply/bms if they're important to you, too, as they zero out upon battery disconnect.
edit: hmm, thinking about it...bms = Battery Management System? (not this one specifically, of course)
Septfox said:
Also, if you do go shopping, beware of undersized batteries. I bought an "OE spec" battery a while ago that was obviously thinner and lighter than the original; it weighed some 12.5% less and only took a 3000mah charge, more or less lining up with the reduced weight. The seller was "tele*cell", and I very much doubt they're the only ones pulling this crap. Record the contents of power_supply/bms if they're important to you, too, as they zero out upon battery disconnect.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is possible that you bought a smaller battery - but you should know that the capacity of Li** batteries increases within the first couple of cycles. Also usually the nominal capacity might be different from the real (typical) capacity. So you would need to meassure a.new original battery against your replacement battery (not take the value LG tells us for.granted)
daniu said:
It is possible that you bought a smaller battery - but you should know that the capacity of Li** batteries increases within the first couple of cycles. Also usually the nominal capacity might be different from the real (typical) capacity. So you would need to meassure a.new original battery against your replacement battery (not take the value LG tells us for.granted)
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Click to collapse
Li-po capacity hasn't really gone anywhere in a while, and I wouldn't expect cheap eBay batteries to be using the newest and best chemistry. It was definitely undersize/weight; I attached some pictures.
Because I wanted to be absolutely sure before I called the seller on it, I purposefully ran it four full cycles, then built up another two during normal use. The best capacity that the BMS ever rated it for was 2980mah, while Accubattery put in something like...3060mah once with subsequent charges in the 2900-3000 range.
While I get what you're saying, I find it unlikely that the BMS would set to the expected design capacity if they were using undersize batteries from the factory.
The reason being that at a guess, the battery "fuel gauge" is probably based on capacity_full, which = capacity_full_design until set. With a new phone that isn't charged to 100% (thus setting capacity_full), if using the phone down to 1% you'd risk either a) the phone suddenly shutting down at ~10% or b) overdischarge damage if the battery is actually less than the phone's design capacity.
Kind of a corner case though, I'll admit, since this would only be on the first run.
Last, I submit my own OEM battery for consideration: prior to taking it out, it had accumulated 537 cycles and had a recorded capacity of 2485mah. That's about what I'd expect from a 3300mah battery that was almost certainly used "normally" e.g. discharged daily, charged nightly and left on the tap at full charge for hours on end.
Like you said, though, the only way to know for sure would be testing a new OEM battery, and we've been fresh out of those for a year and a half now. Maybe someone could nab one from one of their newer models and test for science? I already have too many spare lipo cells laying around.
Septfox said:
Custom ROMs may not be utilizing QC properly. QC 2.0 has few discrete voltage/current steps, while QC 3.0 has many (200mA increments iirc) designed to strike a balance between charging speed and heat. Maybe it's getting stuck in QC 2.0 mode and the temperature feedback isn't working properly?
You could just use a non-fast-charging wireless charger, if you're only charging up at night. 5v/~1A is pretty much harmless, it's just on the slow side of things.
fyi, battery capacity (as tracked by the charging controller driver, I guess) is stored at sys/class/power_supply/bms/charge_full; it defaults to design capacity until a full charge cycle has been completed* and then I suppose is revised each time the driver tracks less energy has been stored after a complete charge. Cycle count, cell resistance and a couple other things are also stored here. I think all values are persistent until the battery is physically disconnected.
Might be worth doing a full discharge+charge (to 100%, then let it sit for a few hours to saturate) to see if your battery is worn enough to warrant pulling the phone apart. Accubattery does seem to be more or less accurate, so you charge while it's on you can get a real-time idea of how much has gone in.
* a full charge might be from 1% to 100%. It might be from 5% to 100%. Who knows! I've charged from 2% to 100% a couple times and not had cycle_count increase.
Also, if you do go shopping, beware of undersized batteries. I bought an "OE spec" battery a while ago that was obviously thinner and lighter than the original; it weighed some 12.5% less and only took a 3000mah charge, more or less lining up with the reduced weight. The seller was "tele*cell", and I very much doubt they're the only ones pulling this crap. Record the contents of power_supply/bms if they're important to you, too, as they zero out upon battery disconnect.
edit: hmm, thinking about it...bms = Battery Management System? (not this one specifically, of course)
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Do you have sleep problem after changing the battery? After changing the battery, my phone doesn't go to sleep when the screen is off, so the battery just keeps draining. I'm using stock ROM. I don't know if this is a software of hardware issue.
minhntp said:
Do you have sleep problem after changing the battery? After changing the battery, my phone doesn't go to sleep when the screen is off, so the battery just keeps draining. I'm using stock ROM. I don't know if this is a software of hardware issue.
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Click to collapse
The only thing notable that happened was the battery stats getting wiped. Otherwise the phone behaved normally.
Try getting BetterBatteryStats, second post has the newest apk attached (2.3 iirc).
Start it up to get it established, Set Custom Ref. from the menu, shut the screen off for...ehh...20min.
Turn it back on, select Custom in the left drop-down menu and Current in the right drop-down menu.
Check Kernel Wakelocks and Partial Wakelocks using the top drop-down menu to see if anything sticks out.
Septfox said:
Li-po capacity hasn't really gone anywhere in a while, and I wouldn't expect cheap eBay batteries to be using the newest and best chemistry. It was definitely undersize/weight; I attached some pictures.
Because I wanted to be absolutely sure before I called the seller on it, I purposefully ran it four full cycles, then built up another two during normal use. The best capacity that the BMS ever rated it for was 2980mah, while Accubattery put in something like...3060mah once with subsequent charges in the 2900-3000 range.
While I get what you're saying, I find it unlikely that the BMS would set to the expected design capacity if they were using undersize batteries from the factory.
The reason being that at a guess, the battery "fuel gauge" is probably based on capacity_full, which = capacity_full_design until set. With a new phone that isn't charged to 100% (thus setting capacity_full), if using the phone down to 1% you'd risk either a) the phone suddenly shutting down at ~10% or b) overdischarge damage if the battery is actually less than the phone's design capacity.
Kind of a corner case though, I'll admit, since this would only be on the first run.
Last, I submit my own OEM battery for consideration: prior to taking it out, it had accumulated 537 cycles and had a recorded capacity of 2485mah. That's about what I'd expect from a 3300mah battery that was almost certainly used "normally" e.g. discharged daily, charged nightly and left on the tap at full charge for hours on end.
Like you said, though, the only way to know for sure would be testing a new OEM battery, and we've been fresh out of those for a year and a half now. Maybe someone could nab one from one of their newer models and test for science? I already have too many spare lipo cells laying around.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What is the full capacity when you put those 2 battery in?
I just bought a battery. This new one has 6 symbols each line (like the one you bought) and 2 lines of manufactured date. The old (original) one has 5 symbols each line and also 2 lines of manufatured date.
When I check "charge_full" after full charging, it shows 3312000 for the original battery and 3230000 for the new one, while the "charge_full_design" being 3312000 for both battery.
minhntp said:
What is the full capacity when you put those 2 battery in?
I just bought a battery. This new one has 6 symbols each line (like the one you bought) and 2 lines of manufactured date. The old (original) one has 5 symbols each line and also 2 lines of manufatured date.
When I check "charge_full" after full charging, it shows 3312000 for the original battery and 3230000 for the new one, while the "charge_full_design" being 3312000 for both battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
All three batteries I've had showed the same 3312000 charge_full_design. But I'm not sure if this is relevant to us, aside from as a reference to compare to.
Out of curiosity and so I don't purposely give outright bad information, I went and looked at the kernel (up on github courtesy of lunar-kernels).
3300mah design capacity is set when the kernel is built (BLT34 battery profile, which is grabbed by the power manager).
I'm not sure where the number "3312000" specifically is coming from. I can't read the source for the BMS well enough to tell why it's coming up with that number, aside from it's a calculated result based on more than just the design capacity.
Based on the above and other behavior, I don't think any permanent information is stored with or retrieved from the battery itself; design parameters are set in the BLT34 profile and then the BMS amends certain things as it takes measurements. It assumes that whatever attached battery is actually 3300/3312mah until proven otherwise (calibrated with sufficient cycling).
Said measurements are stored ~somewhere~ outside of the ROM, recovery and download mode - mine persisted through the LAFsploit process and TWRP on both partitions - and cleared when power is lost. Maybe they're stored in RAM somewhere? Maybe the BMS notices the discontinuity in power and assumes a battery change, resetting everything? I'll try making sense of the kernel source to see...
The labeling difference is curious, and something I hadn't really given thought to. The newer ones have NOM and NYCE marks, which are Mexican safety approval things. It's interesting that the originals don't have them; maybe because LG doesn't make phones for the Mexican market and thus saw no need? I doubt these third-party manufacturers have gone out of their way to actually obtain said approval...probably just stuck them there to satisfy customs.
I bought a battery from another seller and installed it this weekend; it uses the 12-symbol style as well, has date+date code like the original (dated a rather shiny 2019.09.08!), and weighs the expected 48g/has an OE-style "stepped" back making it thicker.
Seems to charge fully and otherwise work as expected. charge_full still = charge_full_design, I'm not sure if this is because the BMS has determined that it's an OEM-capacity battery, or it hasn't cycled sufficiently to update. Gonna keep an eye on it. Pictures attached.
Edit: battery listing on ebay. Note if anyone else buys it: the suction cup that came with mine was 100% useless. Plan accordingly.
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A further note on the smaller battery I bought: it did perform admirably. It had no issues when using the phone as a power supply (~2.5A sustained output), right down to where I stopped it at 5%, which is rather abusive for cells in this form-factor. It was just...well...smaller. It certainly wasn't a bad battery at all, it was just misrepresented. Lighter/slightly-smaller batteries would make great travel batteries, if the V30 were swap-friendly...
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@Septfox
I hope you bought a good one.
The battery I bought lasts long, but also takes long to charge (about 2 hours). The phone shows fast-charging but when I check battery log in Hidden menu, it shows only Quick charge 2.0.
I found a way to reset the battery information, hopefully sellers don't use this to reset the cycle count.
There's a thread on xda that shows a method to reset battery information on HTC phones. That is holding down 2 volume buttons + power button (volume down + power for LG V30) in 2 minutes while the phone is being charged, let the phone restart as many times it takes in 2 minutes. And then charge the phone to full.
I did that and when I check in Hidden menu, the battery information was resetted to 3312000 full capacity and 0 cycle count.
minhntp said:
@Septfox
The battery I bought lasts long, but also takes long to charge (about 2 hours). The phone shows fast-charging but when I check battery log in Hidden menu, it shows only Quick charge 2.0.
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Click to collapse
QC 3.0 wouldn't outright increase the speed any; it exists to help reduce heat and provide more consistent charging.
If it makes you feel any better, mine is also getting stuck on QC 2.0. Judging by the way the Parallel Charging status flickers on and off as I move the cable and put pressure on the connector, I could probably stand to get a new charging port...
This is why wireless charging is a good idea. But now that I think about it, replacement boards are cheap on ebay ($5), so replacing it each time the battery is changed might be a good bit of cheap maintenance to do :good:
Have you tried a different cable and/or charger to see if your charging improves? Maybe you need a new port, too.
minhntp said:
I found a way to reset the battery information, hopefully sellers don't use this to reset the cycle count.
There's a thread on xda that shows a method to reset battery information on HTC phones. That is holding down 2 volume buttons + power button (volume down + power for LG V30) in 2 minutes while the phone is being charged, let the phone restart as many times it takes in 2 minutes. And then charge the phone to full.
I did that and when I check in Hidden menu, the battery information was resetted to 3312000 full capacity and 0 cycle count.
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Click to collapse
I find this slightly alarming, actually...
The normal button combination to hard-reset the phone is power+vol down. This might just be what's happening, and by making the phone do it repeatedly, the firmware might be interpreting it as a bootloop condition caused by something in memory and completely disconnecting power in an attempt to mitigate it (clearing the battery stats in the process). Probably harmless though.
Dunno that a seller would bother trying it, though. What do they get out of it, other than a seemingly-new battery with less capacity than it should have? It would just recalibrate when charged and show the real capacity in the hidden menu, and the game would be up :v
Septfox said:
QC 3.0 wouldn't outright increase the speed any; it exists to help reduce heat and provide more consistent charging.
If it makes you feel any better, mine is also getting stuck on QC 2.0
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All V30 always show QuickCharge 2.0 in Nougat as well as Oreo. Not sure about Pie.
Speculation was it was a script error, that it was really 3.0 -- but falsely shows 2.0.
Can't remember if it was ever proven one way or the other.
I do remember people say it now charges slower on Pie. Again speculative because LG knows batteries are older?
I'm still on rooted Oreo, so I don't care.
ChazzMatt said:
I do remember people say it now charges slower on Pie. Again speculative because LG knows batteries are older?
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I don't notice my phone charging any different. Even when using wired.
Sent from my LG-H932 using XDA Labs
ChazzMatt said:
All V30 always show QuickCharge 2.0 in Nougat as well as Oreo. Not sure about Pie.
Speculation was it was a script error, that it was really 3.0 -- but falsely shows 2.0.
Can't remember if it was ever proven one way or the other.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I read "the display may not be correct, so you should totally use this as an excuse to get a newer charger-doctor that supports QC".
...and you're completely right, I'm gonna go do that :v
ChazzMatt said:
I do remember people say it now charges slower on Pie. Again speculative because LG knows batteries are older?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Or to mitigate further aging by reducing internal heat. I also remember seeing somewhere that it was limited to 12w or 13w, now that you mention it, though that might have been for 15w wireless which has a reputation for slow-cooking the battery (in any phone, not just the V30).

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