Recovery from 0% battery bug 16
Have you ever been using your webOS phone, browsing the web or playing a game, knowing that you had plenty of battery left and then all of a sudden the battery level drops to 0%? And then shortly afterwards, the phone shuts down because it thinks there is no battery left even though you know it has plenty of juice in there? While this bug doesn't hit often (and seemingly most often on a Pre3), it seems to rear its ugly head at the worst possible times just when you need your phone most. The good news is that there is a rather simple fix for this, the bad news is that it may be a bit inconvenient for you.
Actually, the simplest way to fix this is to swap out the battery with a spare, if you have one. If you don't have an extra battery with you, all you need to do is plug in your device to a power source and leave it plugged in for a bit until the device recalibrates the battery to the correct level. Once your phone turns back on, it will still only show a low battery level, typically under 5%. But if you keep the phone charging, it will eventually jump back up to its "correct" levels. It may slowly charge up to 20% after 10 minutes and then jump to 90%, or it may take 20 minutes and then go back to 100%, or it may only take 5 minutes, but eventually it will return to normal. Here's just hoping that the next time this happens you are close enough to a power outlet to charge up your phone, otherwise you will have a nice paperweight that you get to carry around for a bit.
16 Comments
Timely tip for me. Thanks for the post.
Thanks for posting this! Still this reeks, big-time. HP should have taken care of this issue, it sounds like a really minor bug that could be fixed quite easily. I have not heard of such a bug on other devices. For me the "workaround" presented here is not acceptable.
Please see my comment below re: Dr. Battery for the proper fix.
Saw the link and thought "great!" but actually it tells me nothing I don't already know. This is happening about once a week for me. The only saving grace is that the phone is not mine, it actually belongs to HP as I am an employee and it was supplied to me. I was thinking of etting a spare battery - now I definitely will if this is the only way around this problem short of plugging it in.
had forgotten about this issue, hasn't happened to me in a long time
*ATTENTION EVERYONE*
There is a free homebrew app in Preware called Dr. Battery that you can use to properly recalibrate your battery's charging circuit and remedy this issue.
I'm shocked this wasn't mentioned in the article as it's well known in the forums! Adam, please add a reference in the article if you see this.
Dr. Battery is a great program but will not calibrate a Pre3 due to a change in the relevant underlying battery driver/coding. These details can be found in the forums as well.
Exactly! So, anyone else have a better solution than the one I suggested above?
Adam, not to knock you for trying to help, but your suggestion in the article isn't a solution at all. You're essentially just telling people to plug their phone back in and charge it up (seriously, huh?). Doing just that without reprogramming the actual charging IC will NOT recalibrate the battery on those affected phones to any degree. Users will continue to get the drop-to-zero effect all the same.
Dr. Battery fully works for all varieties of the Pre-, Pre Plus, Pre2, Pixi, and Pixi Plus, since they all use the same battery who's integrated charging chip is programmable. Fortunately, these are also the models that most often have the 0% battery problem (which is why it needs to be mentioned in your article!!!).
The recalibration feature of Dr. Battery does not yet work with the Veer, Pre3, or Touchpad only because the specs for programming the battery electronics on those models has not yet been made publicly available. At least since the problem lies mainly with the battery and not the devices themselves, simply getting a new battery is the (only) real solution for those models right now.
I suggest you please at least point readers to the appropriate thread(s) in the forum where they can find a ton more info and feedback on this heavily discussed issue.
Dr. Battery has indeed fixed issues like this and I should try it again, cause now and the I'm told that the Pre is out of juice mid day and it wants to shut down. Even so, it keeps running at 0% for many hours.
To me, Dr Battery fixes the issue when the recalibration is out of whack, where you should still have battery left but the calibration is not aligned so it doesnt give you the full amount of charge. However, the issue here is when it jumps from 80% IMMEDIATELY down to 0% and then shuts down, and then charging it allows it to go a little higher (say to 20%) and then IMMEDIATELY jump to 100%. How will Dr Battery help that? if you have some details or a link to a forum thread I would be happy to update
The two issues you are comparing are different symptoms of the same problem. They are both still the result of a misconfiguration in the battery's internal charge regulating chip, and are both remedied by using the calibration function of Dr. Battery.
And I was badmouthing my Mugen when I just replaced it with my original battery. I will give it another chance.
Whate about the Veer? I just got hit with that this morning, phone was dead. Should have been fine.
and this is one of the many reason the pre failed. i had this issue towards the end of the life of my pre minus and no dr. battery did not fix the issue. it actually let me know that the battery was charging up to 65% capacity but then after around 40% which it will take 2 hours to get there while on stand by it will drop to 0% and shut off.
sounds like your battery cell was starting to go flat. In that case even a recalibration would only shortly mask and delay the inevitable.