Battery drop from 50% to 15% every time

@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

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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 :frowning:

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,

But you already wrote to the support?!

Yes, https://fairphone.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/70294 (don´t know if you can see the link though)

Nope, we can’t. (Post must be 20 chars long at minimum…)

Sorry, I had important personnal problems and couldn’t take the time to deal with my Fairphone issues.
The thing is, even if i disable the wifi (settings> SIM management > Wi-Fi OFF) the phone connects to wi-fi when it finds some.
The battery spin test is negative.

I’m trying to drain the battery and charge it as indicated in post 2 tonight.

Do that. But before putting the drained battery back into the phone leave the “empty” phone plugged in for some time (a (few) minute(s)).

How long does it take from seeing the first symptoms/problems of your battery to swell?

I have the same ugly battery problems – but the battery is »unfortunately« not swelled (yet) …

Thanks!
webaschtl

ah, found this: Battery drop from 50% to 15% every time

My battery started bloating a few weeks after the symptoms of fast battery drop. I reported the problem mid-November (see my comments on 15 November and around that date) and the bloating appeared at around Christmas. I have now replaced the battery, and the phone is fine again… almost three days without need for charging.

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Hi there! since I took part to this discussion earlier on, I thought I’d report back. I tried some of the suggestions multiple times (as the battery drop was so quick after 50%, full discharge happened regularly), had a look at battery stats, etc., and in the end I just bought a new battery and all is working just fine, as expected.
If I have to look for a reason why the battery got to this, I fear it is because for a few times the phone has remained exposed to the sun for lengthy periods, and lamented overheating. Anyway, a couple of years have passed since I first bought this, so it’s not tooooo bad.