This Amazon Fire phone has been around almost 5 years, and its just started to get buggy on me. The battery will keep switching from whatever I have currently to 50%, so something like going from 78% to 50% or from 32% to 50%. In addition to this, my phone won't charge. It keeps switching to charged and not charged.
Not only is it this, but at the same time i've been getting "Invalid SIM" in place. I'd have to restart it once or twice to get my data back and all, and it would happen frequently. All of this started about two or three days ago, and now I can't turn on my phone because it's not charged but also displays 50%.
Any advice on what to do? Is this the death of my phone? I'd be more descriptive but I'm not too familiar with anything around here nor am I very educated with phones, I've just been told to post here in hopes for help.
sl0rg said:
This Amazon Fire phone has been around almost 5 years, and its just started to get buggy on me.
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Must be because you have a VERY early prototype considering it didn't announce to the rest of the world until July 2014.
Seriously though, batteries die. If you've been a heavy user for 3 years, it's time to hold a wake and then move on.
Plonko said:
Must be because you have a VERY early prototype considering it didn't announce to the rest of the world until July 2014.
Seriously though, batteries die. If you've been a heavy user for 3 years, it's time to hold a wake and then move on.
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I replaced the battery in January and its been holding up, but you're right. Looks like I better start looking for a new phone haha.
sl0rg said:
I replaced the battery in January and its been holding up, but you're right. Looks like I better start looking for a new phone haha.
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For all the phones I have owned over the years, this usually happens if the battery is going bad. You say you replaced battery in January, so, I am guessing the replacement battery was not original but rather a cheap made in China oem replacement because an original battery for this phone is suppose to give you around 750 charge cycles.
Install the app called 'Charge Cycle Battery Stats' from Google Play, which among other things, will show you how many cycles your battery have on it currently. Other than that, I would suggest buy another battery, or buy one of the defective Amazon fire phones on eBay (sometimes a phone with broken screen goes for almost same price as you would find a cheap, not original battery for) for parts, take out the battery from it and use that. At least this way you will be putting an original battery in your phone. Besides, while this phone was really good, it is pretty old by today's standards and on its way out especially due to outdated software, and it may not be worth spending more than $25 to fix it.
The battery that Amazon chose was made by a third party for them and it's different from other devices - it has a chip on it that literally reports the full capacity of the battery (from what I've been able to tell) to the battery charging circuit in the phone itself. When it reaches a point of about 30% - again from what I've been able to gather based on reports - meaning the lifespan capacity of the battery aka 30% of the full original charging capacity and not the daily "per charge" run time the battery charging circuit literally just shuts off the phone even though there's actually enough charge on the device to make it work even for short periods of time.
It's a pretty lame thing to do, it's basically killing the use of the phone even in spite of it being perfectly functional but with the reduced overall capacity to stay running for long periods of time. It's crappy business really but since Amazon didn't care then and doesn't care now it doesn't matter at all to 'em but to those of us that own Fire Phones (as I now do) I still say it's a pretty shoddy thing to force upon unsuspecting owners.
Anyway, once it gets to that point the battery charging circuit will shut the phone off and that's what the Amazon logo bootloop is caused by from my research. As noted above in another post, Li-Ion and even Li-Po batteries are generally considered to have overall lifespans of roughly 18 to 24 months based on people charging them at least once per day (it's not a perfect science since people plug in at various times). If you've had that Fire Phone since it came out that was literally 3 years ago (June 2014) and sold through AT&T stores in July 2014.
So, I don't know where that 5 year thing came from but it's not technically even 3 years old - that happens near the end of June so another 2 weeks to go. I know some folks are bad with dates and periods of time but there's a rather huge difference between 3 years and 5.
Fire phone battery indication
My Dad have been using this phone for a year and a half. The battery indicator doesn't move, it sticks to 100 percent and stays the whole day and suddenly it dies. Basically the battery indicator is not working, any ideas?
Related
Ok, this is just plain frustrating and I have no clue about what to do.
The lifetime on my phone is dropping ridiculously fast. I replaced the original batery (that used to get ran down pretty quickly, about half a day, without using the phone much) with a spare battery a friend gave me (it's from a different model, but a minor modification it fit perfectly. For a while, it worked somewhat more decently (although should I have used the phone, I'd lose about 1% for every 30-45 seconds of usage). But for a couple of days, it started wearing down a lot quicker as well.
For instance, just charging the phone and then leaving it without actually touching it on the desk will leave it at 88% battery life within about 30 minutes.
I've checked the processes to see if there's anything out of the ordinary, but everything seems fine. I'm thinking maybe the battery may have gotten damaged in the meantime since it wasn't the designated model for this phone, but I'm having serious doubts.
Also, I've ordered a new battery which should ship any day now. Hopefully it will solve the issue, although I'm considering getting a new phone.
Any ideas?
Also, the old Asus that I used to have (WM 6.0, standard keyboard) still has an amazing battery life, at least compared to the HTC (it can do about 3-4 days in standby, and 2 days with normal usage. Also, it's able to run for 12 hours while playing music and occasional web browsing. I can barely squeeze two hours of usage from my HTC)
mtranda said:
Ok, this is just plain frustrating and I have no clue about what to do.
The lifetime on my phone is dropping ridiculously fast. I replaced the original batery (that used to get ran down pretty quickly, about half a day, without using the phone much) with a spare battery a friend gave me (it's from a different model, but a minor modification it fit perfectly. For a while, it worked somewhat more decently (although should I have used the phone, I'd lose about 1% for every 30-45 seconds of usage). But for a couple of days, it started wearing down a lot quicker as well.
For instance, just charging the phone and then leaving it without actually touching it on the desk will leave it at 88% battery life within about 30 minutes.
I've checked the processes to see if there's anything out of the ordinary, but everything seems fine. I'm thinking maybe the battery may have gotten damaged in the meantime since it wasn't the designated model for this phone, but I'm having serious doubts.
Also, I've ordered a new battery which should ship any day now. Hopefully it will solve the issue, although I'm considering getting a new phone.
Any ideas?
Also, the old Asus that I used to have (WM 6.0, standard keyboard) still has an amazing battery life, at least compared to the HTC (it can do about 3-4 days in standby, and 2 days with normal usage. Also, it's able to run for 12 hours while playing music and occasional web browsing. I can barely squeeze two hours of usage from my HTC)
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Maybe you should get a new and proper battery to your device, maybe your fix does not work anymore. Also you can damage the excalibur motherboard if your messing with different volts from batteries design for other phones.
Well, the battery voltage is the same. So is the pin layout (well, that was pretty self implied). Both batteries are manufactured for HTC phones.
I guess I'll find out when my new battery arrives. However, my phone has been acting weirder and weirder. SD card issues, now the battery... And on top of that, I wonder if the two issues are related.
Edit: also, will the charger output make much of a difference? Say I use a 500 mA charger or a 1000 mA one.
Issue solved. Apparently it was from the SDHC patch I had installed a few days before. Removing the patch did not solve the issue (also, the patch disabled my WIFI) so I proceeded to reinstall WM on my phone. Now it runs fine, with regular battery drain.
I think the patch may have not allowed the CPU to enter idle mode. I can't think of any other explanation.
nah its definitely ur battery. i had the same problem, its that ur battert has degraded and it has become unable to withstand its charge. just call ur phone carrier and tell them. the should send u a free battery.
Source
-experience lol
mtranda said:
Well, the battery voltage is the same. So is the pin layout (well, that was pretty self implied). Both batteries are manufactured for HTC phones.
I guess I'll find out when my new battery arrives. However, my phone has been acting weirder and weirder. SD card issues, now the battery... And on top of that, I wonder if the two issues are related.
Edit: also, will the charger output make much of a difference? Say I use a 500 mA charger or a 1000 mA one.
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I know some HTC batteries are the same voltage, but why do you think they make different ones especifically for every model eventhough they have the same voltage.
Just to let you know and regarding the output charger; I did a little experiment once, with motorola chargers (V3) since you can charge your dash with them but I tried to charge the exact phone (motorola) with the original HTC output charger.....and it didn't charge at all.
After months of using the motorola charger I started to realize my battery was not working well in my excalibur and in a period of 4 months my battery didn't hold a charge for more than 3 hours. I bought a new one and I strictly used the orginal HTC charger.
My battery is 9 months old now and works like charm (2 days + hours) with the latest ookba 3vo rom.
I received my replacement One X from HTC this morning. It was brand new and unopened, however it would not switch on, nor show any charging light. Initially I thought it was a complete dud but eventually the red light started flashing. The battery was clearly 100% dead. My question is, if the handset has been stored like this for perhaps three months or more in a warehouse, how much might it have deteriorated the battery? I'm told that leaving lithium batteries dead is an absolute killer. Can I expect any deterioration to my brand new device and its shelf life? Should I ring HTC and request an alternative? This would be a shame as this device seems perfect: for the first time I don't have a single stuck pixel. However with the battery being sealed I don't want a device whose battery starts off crippled from day one.
I'm probably worrying about nothing but I thought this would be the place to seek the best advice.
Personally I'd recommend trying a full charge and discharge, to see what your battery is looking like.
For me, a full battery charge from 0%, with the device on but not in use, takes around 2.5 hours.
This charge would last me around 8-10 hours of slightly over normal use (I tend to use my phone quite a bit throughout the day, nothing extremely just browsing etc.)
I would give your device a run against these numbers - if anyone else can provide theirs that'd be helpful too, that way you can gauge how your battery is at the moment.
I'm just passing the one year mark on my Note 2. My battery is still good but certainly nowhere near as good as it used to be. I used to have no issue getting through the day (would go to sleep with 45-55% but now I often find myself charging mid-day to make sure I won't run out at the end. I can easily get through the day if I'm careful but on heavy usage days I won't last the full day.
I first noticed battery issues when my phone went to 4.1.2 which was a long time ago. I never gave it too much thought as I seemed still able to get through the day and the main thing was noticing instead of the normal 2.2%-3%/hour it would go to about 3%-4.5%/hour. Now I'll often see 6%-8%/hour although I probably do use it a bit more now than I used to (damn candy crush).
I'm mainly wondering if this is b/c my phones got loaded a bit down more now as I've downloaded apps and more background processes or if it's because the battery is a year old and I should try buying a new battery. Is there any way to check battery health? I had been thinking it was the former as my phone is much slower than it was first (stutters and slow downs) than when I first got it so I assume it is just from the normal crap that starts bogging down phones vs. when they are new but perhaps these batteries are expected to get replaced (or at least not hold their full charges) after a year or so.
Thanks.
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FNM
it's everything you said. Your apps running in the background and age. Batteries just degrade from age and use. I wouldn't worry about the battery so much until how long it lasts becomes a problem to where using the phone is unreliable.
I'm mainly thinking about it now b/c I was planning on buying another charger to keep at my office but I'm wondering if the better course of action is spending the money on a replacement battery.
A bad battery can flake out in some unexpected ways, too. Mine threw bootloops until it was replaced; it was reading unreasonable values from the thermistor.
You can physically inspect your battery, looking for bulging that indicates off-gassing and overcharge issues, and PimpMyRom's hidden menu access can assess battery health via its current and voltage characteristics.
Definitely, though, batteries have limited lives in these high-draw devices, and periodic replacement is a good plan.
Speaking for myself I've always been kinda aware of the failure potential of these batteries. For instance, I tend to not leave the phone unattended during charging and also use such tasker profiles as to shutdown when charge below 5% or alert when charging above 95%. These latter measures and others are mostly to help with battery longevity as well as or rather my ocdness on this subject.
My only gripe is that I never succeeded in instilling the same 'respect' for battery in my wife.. Pre or even post-note she always forgets her tablet or her phone plugged in the charger, even when no one's at home, sometimes for days!
But this recent note7 'mishap' let me tell you, made me even more wary of the destructive potential of the batteries in our phones. Especially since most of my latest snapdragon devices (m7, z5) get very warm while performing various mundane tasks (syncing via wifi/lte, camera, games rendering etc), much warmer then the defunct note.
Did this event affect the way you use your mobile devices and how? Is there any particular strategy you use with this respect? Or do you rather think that the failure rate being so low it's rather silly to worry about it?
millicent said:
Did this event affect the way you use your mobile devices and how?
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Nope, it hasn't made me change anything so far. I don't believe the issue with the Note 7 is directly a result of the battery since Samsung had two manufacturers make batteries and in both instances Note 7 devices with either battery still failed.
Is there any particular strategy you use with this respect?
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As long as the device is working properly meaning there's no defect that I am aware of (as in no global recall in effect, etc) in any part of the power or charging systems then I tend to leave my devices plugged in until they charge to 100% status then I'll usually leave them connected to the charger for up to 30 minutes past that point then disconnect. With the GS7A I have, I only charge it once every 2.5-3 days typically and that's from 5-10% back to 100% using a Samsung 2A charger - I don't use the factory fast charger and I don't use fast charging because I believe that ends up shortening the potential lifespan of the battery cell itself.
I did not say that's a fact for everyone to live by or accept as the gospel truth, I said for myself personally I believe that fast charging shortens the lifespan of the battery cell itself.
For the record I've owned several hundred devices over the decades, some with Ni-Cad batteries, most with Li-Ion over the past decade, and a few with Li-Po technolology and I only had one instance of a battery having a problem (not a failure). It was a knockoff cheap Chinese clone battery for my Galaxy S4 Active several years ago and it bloated up one afternoon - thankfully that GS4A had a removable back cover and I caught the swelling up very fast because as soon as it started to bloat up the back cover literally popped off about 4 inches above my desk and landed on my keyboard. I of course took the battery out immediately and put it in a small ceramic box my Wife had laying around, nothing else happened and I ended up taking it to a local battery store here in Las Vegas and turning it in for safe destruction.
See, there really is a good reason to have removable batteries and removable back covers on some devices.
Or do you rather think that the failure rate being so low it's rather silly to worry about it?
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As stated above, I don't believe the actual point of failure with the Note 7 is the battery directly - the burning up and explosions of the battery cells is the effect, not the cause. Something is happening to cause the battery (now two different ones, which most of us know about now) to fail.
Now it remains to be seen if the cause can be determined for the failures.
There is one other, perhaps more placebo induced effect, routine I'd do every once in a while, related to battery calibration. So I'd let the battery go as low as can possibly go, or let it turn off by itself, charge at cold until 100% then power on while still plugged in and finally unplug when os fully booted up.
Is this still a proper thing to do or it rather stresses the battery uselessly?
After I got this GS7A I did allow it to run down entirely till it shut off once, just one time and I actually got concerned because when I then plugged in the charger all I got on the display was a battery outline (the white battery icon that's hollowed out) and I was expecting the lightning-bolt symbol to appear there to indicate yes it's charging, after which it should change into the progress meter along the inside bottom of the icon.
That didn't happen.
So I sat there waiting. 5 minutes went by, then about 10 minutes, and I started to worry that perhaps I'd just killed it completely. But about 11 minutes after I plugged in the charger the lightning bolt appeared for about 10 seconds, flashing a few times, then I saw a thin green line across the bottom. Success!
But it did pretty much scare me for a few minutes at the thought of potentially ruining it by doing that so, I don't intend to ever let that happen. Your practice you mentioned of using Tasker to shut down at 5% (not a complete discharge like I did that one time) and to stop charging at 95% is a good idea and something I'm going to have to do more research into.
I've spent a lot of time over the years reading research papers at Battery University and I know that full discharge of a Li-Ion cell is a bad idea but I still ended up doing it. I was actually trying to capture a screenshot at 1% then I planned to initiate a shutdown immediately after that but taking the screenshot just killed it, oops.
But the idea of shutdown at maybe 4% and stopping the charging at 95% (or at least providing me with some kind of alert I can hear clearly and charge or disconnect as required) is a very good idea so thanks for mentioning that.
My research and understanding of the available info at Battery University is that it's better to do your best to not let a Li-Ion cell go below at least 30-40% charged most of the time with short periods of charging to bring it back up to the 90-95% point and, and occasionally - like maybe once a month - allow it to go deeper into the discharge state but not fully (I learned my lesson on that one) and then charge it back to full. The question is what that "full" point might be because some papers say charging Li-Ion to full capacity ruins them as time passes and other papers say it's just fine to do so occasionally - the problem is there's no absolute consensus on either method.
The deep discharge method once a month might work better as a method of calibrating (?!?!) but I honestly don't know for sure, not sure anyone does. But I think I'm going to start using Tasker for that 4-5% shutdown and 95% top off point on my Active, it sure can't actually hurt the device and could give me longer battery lifespan or should I say longevity as you did - that word actually seems more appropriate because most folks hear "battery lifespan" and they only understand that to mean how long it runs on a single charge which isn't the meaning I'm trying to get across.
all i can say after this incident , my knowledge of ion battery deepen and yes in case of emergency , you cant remove if its seal tight shut inside , something to consider , Samsung .
for me, no it's not made me more wary, I always am re Li cells as there have been many failures not only in phones. I have laptops, eCigs, torches etc that all use Li cells. That said, I use the devices as "normal" but stay aware of how warm they've gotten in charge/use, try to not drop them or leave them on/in a source of external heating etc. Anything containing combustible material can go bang after all. A disposable lighter left on an iron fireplace with the fire burning goes bang very well indeed, as would one of these cells in the same circumstances
I tend to top off the charge regularly since I have Qi chargers on my desk and in the car holder but never charge overnight while I sleep. I'd guess my operating capacity ranges from 100% down to maybe 30% and mainly hanging in the 60-80% range as the device tops up. SatNav tends to mean in-car the device only gathers a minor gain even over a couple hours use as the draw from the screen/cpu offsets the input from the Qi charger plate. The phone of course gets warm in this mode, hence it is set halfway down on the centre dash rather than up high and in the sun. And no I'm not always looking at it - voice guidance is very handy
On charge levels, I've also read a number of articles on various cell types. Typically the recommendations are that Li cells effectively eat themselves if kept at 100%, degrading and losing capacity over time. Hence its best if storing them to have them at 50-70% and not fully charged. Of course whether the phone actually takes the cell to its 100% limit or its charge management calls 100% at the 95% of cell capacity I don't know. When fully discharge has happened then yes it does seem to take longer for the charge icon to start ticking along, seen the same on the old iPad-1 I have, probably because the initial part has to be a very slow energising charge to get the cell to a point when it can accept more current and maybe the icon only shows rates above a certain current.
re the swelling cell. I've not used non-Samsung cells in my note 1/3 or S2 but have seen Sammy's cells also swell when they get to end of life. Both notes had this happen around the 18-26 month mark but not to the extent of the back popping off/open. Dramatic shortening of on-battery runtime yes, but from the outside no real visible indications that anything was up.
NO, LiPo, and Li ion batts are everywhere why worry about, I have had dozens of LiPo an LiOn powered devices
What about Li-On batteries though?
Hasn't changed for me either. But it has made me more wary of Samsung devices. There no way I'm getting the s8 (or note 8) no matter how great the features are. They can't even figure out what's wrong with the note 7.. Who's to say their upcoming phones won't have the same problem.
The only thing that worries me is that it may become even harder to get batteries and such shipped to Hawaii, it's horrible.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N930A using Tapatalk
So about a month ago, I used to get about 40hrs of battery life with a single charge. Also, the overnight drain was about 3-5%. This was great and normal.
Suddenly, it's been a month since my phone drains like crazy. 20-25% overnight drain, and an always steep slope down battery plot. In fact, the plot indicates no flat regions. I'm sure it is not a third party application that's draining my battery, as the issue persists even right after a full factory reset.
I have attached two figures, one for the battery and for from the Naptime application that shows the doze times and supposedly blocks wake-locks. Still, huge drain. These figures are taken 9 hours after a fresh factory reset, with nothing new installed on the phone expect Naptime.
I've looked so many places and tried many different things. Can someone help me understand what's going on? I'm running N950U1EUE3BRA5 firmware if that makes any difference.
ptheguy said:
So about a month ago, I used to get about 40hrs of battery life with a single charge. Also, the overnight drain was about 3-5%. This was great and normal.
Suddenly, it's been a month since my phone drains like crazy. 20-25% overnight drain, and an always steep slope down battery plot. In fact, the plot indicates no flat regions. I'm sure it is not a third party application that's draining my battery, as the issue persists even right after a full factory reset.
I have attached two figures, one for the battery and for from the Naptime application that shows the doze times and supposedly blocks wake-locks. Still, huge drain. These figures are taken 9 hours after a fresh factory reset, with nothing new installed on the phone expect Naptime.
I've looked so many places and tried many different things. Can someone help me understand what's going on? I'm running N950U1EUE3BRA5 firmware if that makes any difference.
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Well since introduced out tablets have had to do power resets time to time to clear battery data. It's been an ongoing issue since Kit Kat upgrades from JB.
Since your device is 3 years old now, i assume the battery is bad. Very few have their original battery. I suggest checking on ebay, or dispute the transaction in that the item is not as described. Does not hold charge. You should get your money back. PS your 3 year old Note 8.0 should only be $50 at most. I got my new AT &T version new back when for $150 no contract no service, and my wifi variant for the same $150 US shipped about 6 months after release.
gooberdude said:
Since your device is 3 years old now, i assume the battery is bad. Very few have their original battery.
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I bought my phone last month, it's 1 month old!
Dude, look around before posting. This is the 2nd time i see people posted on wrong device