I would not buy a new battery before having identified the problem… the battery might not be the fault.
Yep ! same problem here. I noticed that the battery was emptying itself much faster after the last update.
And it definitly seems to be coming from the wi-fi : the phone keeps looking for wifi even though I’ve disconnected it, thus emptying the battery.
@wmarc999 and @chsf35:
You blame the WiFi search function in connection with the newest FP-OS (1.8.7) for the massive battery drain.
To help other people, I would like to see a more detailed analysis. Could you contribute with some more test or ideas, to really nail the problem down?
Some points from my side:
-
I doubt, that it is the WiFi-look-up by itself, because I can let the WiFi enabled at my FP1 the whole day (+ normal usage) and end up with -20% battery.
–> let us test it tomorrow: I will enable my wifi from 8:00-18:00 and will report back a screenshot with “BetterBatteryStats” about the consumption (only 2G and data disabled)(example). -
Can you make a double check of the following:
1.) Enable the WiFi for a certain time span (e.g. 1h /5h etc.) and note battery level drop (maybe first with connection to your own WiFi and then again without beeing connected to a known WiFi at all!)
2.) Disable the WiFi and note the battery drop for the exact same time
Moderate usage during this test should be OK.
If you also use BetterBatteryStats for making the screenshots we have some real numbers and further more it directly shows the process with the main consumption and we can compare WiFi off/on (you can also look for so called “wake locks” with this app), as I still beleive that any other app than the operating system itself causes this problem. -
You both did a battery spin test with negative results?
@Tobias_Nordqvist and @gsoundsgood:
I think you are faced with another problem than described by the other two guys (see above).
1.) Did you performed the spinning test as well? What is the result?
2.) Have you both tried the charging procedure exactly like we explained above (post 2 and post 6)?
If yes: please report back the result as detailed as possible.
If no: give it a try!! Also doing it twice can help in some cases.
If this doesn’t help you should receive a replacement battery for free from fairphone I guess, if you contact the support!
Good look and I would be glad to see some response, maybe we can contribute to the Battery Wiki with this.
2 Likes
Here is the result of my test today:
After 9h34m WiFi enabled and some of the time connected,
Battery drop from 68–>57% (=1.1%/hour).
Usage was average for me, but could be described as very low, most of the time dual-SIM stand-by (2G)
Post back if you have some numbers!
Cheers, Robert
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Hey there!
Thank you for all the posts and help already, I have right the same problem and was glad to find a thread already dealing with the issue.
I may have an interesting addition to the quest for finding the cause:
I am pretty sure that my problem is related to switching the phone off and on… E.g.: I always turn my phone off while sleeping and for some time now (might have been since the last update, ain’t sure though) the battery would always be completely empty on the next morning, even if I turn it off with 60% charge or more before going to bed. As it’s pretty inconvenient to start with a phone out of charge in the day I now charge it every night, I know that’s not good for the battery but have little choice so far.
The same correlation between the battery issue and switching on/off I just encountered when trying the spinning test of the battery right now: The battery was at about 70%, I just switched it off and took the battery out for approx. 20 seconds to spin it, inserted it again and bum - the charge was down to 12% and told me to urgently connect the charger… I’m charging it right now and it went up to 16% so far, so seems like a normal charge load.
Although in earlier cases I had the feeling that it’s been recharged way to fast, taking a few minutes and it showed 99% or fully charged again.
Does anyone have a clue? oô
And just to be precise: I have a FP1 from the first batch with Kola-Nut 1.8.7
Thank you all so much in advance!
All the best,
Robert
Hey Robert:
1.) Please tell us the result of your spinning test! Is the battery bloated`? If yes --> see here!
2.) If negative, did you already try the Battery reset, as stated above and here in another form form the battery wiki:
- Use the battery up until it is below 0% (until the phone dies).
- Take the battery out of the phone.
- Plug your charger into the phone (still without battery). [Wait a few minutes]
- Insert your battery. (This will give the battery a kick)
- Charge your phone in one go until 100%. Do not boot the phone during charging.
- If this doesn’t work for the first time, try it a second time, beginning from step 1
Your battery should charge with the original charger (1A) about 2h from 0%–>100%!
What are your results?
Cheers, Robert
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imho these three things are signs for an old battery that is about to die. The capacity and thus charging time varies because the voltage becomes unreliable. Restarting the phone forces it to guess the actual charge in the battery. Although I don’t own a FP yet that’s my experience with my dying Samsung phone and other Li-Ion-battery devices
1 Like
Hi Folks,
Proud FP1 Owner here
I experienced the same kind of problems. The spinning test revealed nothing ; by the way the bloating problem does not correspond to age. it’s only related to overheating. And I haven’t tried the whole draining plus recharging thing. So I can’t tell you.
I’ve been having those sort of issues for about 2 or 3 month. But did not complain (even if I have to say it’s kind of slowly worsening) because all in alI keep an average of more than 1d8h of autonomy, even going up to 1d20h sometimes. This is not dependant on my wifi or data usage.
I have to say though, the behaviour is more erratic sometimes I experience more like a jump from 60% to 25% sometime smaller, when I performed the spinning test it went from 75% to 49 %, I had brutal drops to 1% and then one or two hours before reaching 0, and I even had the contrary : my phone was off charging for about an hour only to go from 7%to 9% and then I decided to turn it on and brutally appeared at 65%. I experienced that last one two or three times.
But in the end I’m not mad, I just think the battery is getting a bit old. Though I would’ve expect it to last maybe 4 more months .
It’s not really less than announced, As I posted on the french speaking Facebook group. If you have a look at figure 5 of this article https://www.fairphone.com/2015/01/22/first-fairphones-environmental-impact/
We’re coming to the end of the announced lifespan of our batteries and should expect replacing them around january.
@Jonathan_Bondu: I would highly recommend to give the “Battery Software Reset” a try, because this is exatly the (temporarly) solution for your described problems!
So please: try it once (or twice) and report back if you could improve it a little!!
After 2 years usage, I am far away from having a dying battery because it still lasts 3-4 days for my average usage, while I try from time to time the Battery Reset, which is by the way no big deal!
Some more points about this:
Battery drops appear repeatedly at FP (also after doing the Battery Reset) if you
- put battery off the phone and back in
- if you switch your phone off and on frequently
- if you switch of your phone with a low level (<20-30%)
- If your battery usage is not limited to only 20-80% but also involves from time to time 0-100%
So you shoud avoid these points in general, but mor important escpecially after doing a Battery Reset to keep a good battery health for a longer time.
After each of the above scenarios a “BatteryReset” should give you a quite more accurate Battery calibration and thus the possibility to just use more of its capacity, which otherwise just is not recognised by the Fairphone-Software!
But in very serious cases, you could also have a dying, while aged battery, but I think it should be only your conclusion, after you first tried the points above!
Cheers, Robert
@therob Thanks for your answer.
I just tried to do a battery software reset. and as you say, and it seems pretty legit to do that.
I am impress that you caan hold for 3 4 days. But I think I use a good bunch af battery intensive apps.so that may explain the difference.
Anyway, I’ll do other battery reste in the future, at least up till my battery’s average drop under a day.
I also have another problem, my clock battery must be dead. So that’s annoying. but unless it has other consequences than just having a clock that resets when I take off the battery, I won’t send my phone for repair I think. Because apparently for this kind of issue you have to change the whole motherboard. and apparenttly it’s not bothering me enough to justify this big a repair.
-
Nice that you think it helps. Can you later nail it down to some numbers? (like before: 1d8h / after: 2d5h or similar)
-
3-4 days (sometimes 5) with most of the time dual-sim@2G, mostly no data connection, only some SMS, calls, browsing WiFi.
-
clock-battery: I read in other threads (1,2), that here it is neccassary to change the clock-battery, which is not that easy. But in my case, the clock sets itself in the same second after I enabled my SIM with the PIN, and no need to adjust it manually!
Cheers, Robert
1 Like
I have made a test over more than 24 hours, trying to use the FP at minimum (no Wifi, no internet, only phone and messages, plus some small local applications). The battery went down smoothly and normally from 100% to around 60% in about 24 hours, and the phone was working perfectly. Suddenly yesterday afternoon the phone was completely stuck and I was obliged to reboot it (no other way). After rebooting, the battery level was at about 18% (so it dropped in few minutes from 60 to 18%). I decided not to recharge it immediately and observed its behavior, it was again working perfectly and the battery discharge went back to normal, it lost about 3-5% in 2-3 hours. I’ll attach a screenshot of the battery level of yesterday between 00h00 and around 22h00 which clearly shows the abrupt drop at around 18h00.
I am still skeptical… Is it the batttery or any internal software or hardware problem ? If it is the battery, why did its behavior start again to be normal with 18% charge after reboot.
If soemone has the answer… would be helpful.
My next step would be to try a battery reset. I ll provide my feedback asap.
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Good work!
I tend it is only a battery software problem.
FP battery is known to have problems acquiring the correct charging level after reboots (esp. unwanted).
Therefore I decided only to send my FP to FlightMode during night instead of shutting it down and struggeling with wrong charging levels…
- did you make the battery-reset already before this test? If not - go ahead to make it and again watcht to the battery consumption over the next hours (days) and provide a screenshot.
- your battery voltage is 3,694V for 18% level. I will check at home, if I noted also a voltage for 18% level, than we can compare [I will edit here]
- what is about your other problem, concerning the WiFi?
- I guess, if you would continue using the FP starting from 18% - it will be stuck at 14/15% for several hours and afterwards running down till 0% within minutes, as this is the behaviour a lot of FP users reported (incl. me).
- But with the battery reset und avoiding FP reboots with a low battery level I do not run in this problem within the last months [I will add later some comments on this in the [battery wiki\]
]1
I would say one should better write: “so it dropped from 60 to 18% triggered by an unwanted reboot” since it most likely has nothing to do with the “few minutes”.
Cheers, Robert
Edit1: From the battery test you can check some voltages for your FP battery, e.g. after a “full” charge it should have about 4.1V, 50% should have about 3.8V. Yours 18% with ~3,7V could be quite realistic…
I would recommend to make the battery reset test and afterwards note down every 10% your batter voltage and check if you are approx. at the voltage curve posted below (considering “Time/min” in first approximation as “capacity/%”, although it is most likely not linear.) Just for a first guess, if it seems OK or if we already here see a bloating battery (are there any voltage curve for this available?)
Actually I still see this behaviour as the first symptoms of a bloating battery… It started like this with my own (first) battery and subsequently it started swelling.
Yep, I still don’t say to ignore the possibilty to a swollen battery!!
Some more remarks for charging problems (by cleaning the USB-Connector), which could maybe also connected with wrong battery level:
My battery is now bloated and almost useless 
Just in case you haven’t done so already, instructions on what to do are here.
Also, please stop using the battery, the swelling is a sign of physical failure and a swollen battery can be dangerous, even more so when in use/being charged. See the linked help desk article for proper disposal procedures.
Bad to here.
Can you give us a short timeline of the develoment?
e.g.: Notice of battery level jumps on .[…date…] --> Spin-test=negative on […]–> more problems (like…) on […]–> spin-test=positiv on […]?
Would help for others to figure out the development of symptoms to a bloated battery…thanks a lot!
Cheers, Robert
When I first wrote about the problem, it had been so for about 2-3 weeks, so it was a month ago.
The bloated battery emerged continous, no special date.
Now I don’t dare use the phone anymore,