Battery problems (wrong charging status / battery might be dying)

Help Fairphone 1
44

Hi

The fairphone staff are aware of the problem, however this is a community forum rather than a place for official answers, they do see topics but don’t spend a lot of time on here.

We have raised it as an issue and it will be looked at but no more detail. You can also contact support directly but you may get a similar message that it’s being looked at. The software team have a list of bugs and they are having to prioritise time

3 Likes
45

I have same problems with 14% of battery… In 20 seconds gone down untill 11%. Before read about update in web I downloaded update at fairphoneupdater 1.6 and clicked to instal, but later i entered again and updater and it say i still have 1,5. In options of FP says I have jeally bean. Im lost and undersrand nothing! The problems with battery didnt fixed yet? Someone asked support?

46

In that case the update hasn’t been completed for some reason. Try updating again. See this info if it doesn’t work:
https://fairphone.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201883738-The-software-update-does-not-work-what-s-wrong-

If it’s still impossible to update using the updater app, manual install is an alternative:
https://fairphone.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202478028

47

Thanks and sorry for mistakes, auticorrection is killing me) and what about jeally bean? I have to update this also? But cherry 1,6 seems not solve battery problem, or yes?

48

No… Stock Android (Jellybean) is an alternative to Fairphone Cherry. Basically same Android version (4.2.2) but without Fairphone’s application launcher, Play Store install widget and so on.

The battery issue is a bit of a mystery. I don’t have this problem myself. But it seems as the update will not solve the problems for the users that experience the problem.

1 Like
51

Here the same problemes from time to time with my battery with Cherry 1.6 (which brought already an improvment to 1.3) at my FP1. Some details here:

I think there exits two “modes” in which the phone/battery accidentally can go in (most likely software related):

  • the correct one showing good agreement of percentage/voltage of battery level (= “Battery-mode 1”)
  • and another one, where there is a big offset of displayed/recognized level to the real level by about 10-15% (or even more), therefore the level often drops from 15%–>0% in minutes! (= “Battery-mode 2”)

Here my observation from yesterday evening to maybe get some more light into this:

  • The last time my FP1 was plugged to charger was unfortunately already in "mode2" (thus battery level is estimated too high)
  • Yesterday I went down from 25% down to 0% within some hours, the last 15%–>0% within minutes
  • FP1 switched OFF itself because the battery was drained out completely
  • I plugged into the charger but did NOT switched on the phone (only the loading screen appeared)
  • phone loaded from 0%–> ~40% (during switched off)
  • next day I continued the loading from 40%–>50% (phone still switched off)
  • Then the following (all with charger is plugged-in):
    1.) Loading screen showed 50%
    2.) I switched ON the phone, while loader is still plugged in
    3.) After phone was ready booted, battery jumped to 84% !!
    4.) for testing purpose I immediately switched OFF phone again (loader plugged in)
    5.) Loading screen showed then still 84%

I am sure that:

  • …for this discharging cycle I will again stay at “mode2” and will run into the “15–>0% at 5min” problem again
  • …if I will charge the next time while the phone is switched-off in one run up to 70-100% (I think there is a “magic limit” between 50-100%, but I don’t know where exactly), I will enter and stay in “mode1” and everything is fine down to 1% for this cycle !!

So in a bottom line:
Switching off and on the phone with a critical battery status (<50%? <20%?) can trigger it to go to the wrong battery “mode2”, from where it will only gets out by draining out the battery completely & charge in on run above 70-80%.

Some comments?
Same text I send as a ticket to support.
Cheers, Robert

4 Likes
52

Nice troubleshooting post! I’ll try to drain the battery out and charge it full with FP switched off.
I’ll post back my experience.

53

Ok, here is what I tried:

  • Let FP go out of battery.
  • Since I had to use it, I just let it charge for some minutes until I switched it on.
  • I then charged it until like 22%, with the FP being turned on.
  • When the percentage came down, it did not behave as usual, so it did not drain at 15%, but came down slowly like before the update. And it stuck with 9% for like over an hour.

It seems that I entered battery mode 1 * with only charging the battery till about 20%, so I cannot make out a pattern here. It all seems quite confusing… :confused:

*[quote=“therob, post:51, topic:771”]
the correct one showing good agreement of percentage/voltage of battery level (= “Battery-mode 1”)
[/quote]

54

Same problem with my phone. Cherry 1.6, FP 1.

Whenever I charge it, it unexpectantly reaches 100% very soon, the led turns green. Then while in usage the level only decreases very slow only to suddenly alarm me at 15%. Then I have around 3 minutes to find a plug because it runs down to 1% very quickly and turns the phone off.
When the charge reaches 100% (both while the phone is on and off) and I reboot the unplugged phone the battery shows a maximum of 64-65%. When I reboot while still plugged in, the same happens as described above (sudden complete discharge).

Does anybody has some kind of solution or work-around to solve that one? Does a phone reset help? Anything? Please?

55

To summarize the other posts regarding the topic: No work-around is known, but e.g. @therob did some nice testing. Since this issue appeared after the Cherry 1.6. update, we are pretty sure, it is a software problem and hope to have it resolved in a future update. I don’t know of any user, who could resolve this by a hard reset.

56

Maybe this is self-evident but…

…I put in the FP battery of a friend into my phone and it seems to discharge/charge normal. So maybe it’s just my battery (and that of some other FP users) that is already dying…?

57

I would not say that the batteries could already dying…because I am very fine with my battery and think it is only a calibration error. So normally mine lasts 4-5 days with one charge (switch of at night).

If you did not observe such behaviour with a different battery could also be explained by the fact, that the phone (hardware or software) has to do a new calibration table for your different battery. This could take 2-3 charge/discharge-cycles.
Maybe after that you run also with the other battery in this troubles.

Additionally, please regard also my preliminary thoughts about the two battery modes, where I will add some more testing at the end of the week (when FP is again empty).
Maybe you simply not yet entered the battery mode 2 with your other battery and therefore did not observe the odd behaviour…yet

1 Like
58

But why are then not all FPs affected?

59

therob assumed the problem could be in connection with switching off the phone.
Maybe the scheduled off/on switching in the settings menu has something to do with it?

Has anyone with the battery problem not used the scheduled shutdown before?

60

I’m not sure about this, can you give details where to set it (I’m using German as Language).

However; I have the behaviour that it goes down like this:

So I had that point that the battery perecentage goes down quite fast, but also the loading was quite fast. So I wanted to kill the phone by letting the battery run empty, but I’m at 1% since 5h, even 1 hour of playing games (normally a good battery killer) does not change anything

1 Like
61

In German you can find it here: Einstellungen > Ein-/Abschaltung nach Zeitplan
As for me, I am not using this feature right now. I have used it earlier and there were some issues with turning on in the morning. Maybe this really is related…

62

I use off/on Switch every day and I don’t have any issues with the battery.
I have a FP from the second batch (summer 2014) with Cherry 1.6.
The battery lasts from two to four/five days, depends on usage.

63

This is really hard to narrow down… :confused:

64

@Stefan thanks for this info

No, I do not use this feature and never used it before

65

I have not used that feature as well. By the way, at the moment I can charge my phone at least to “real” 100% by keeping the screen on the entire time. As soon as it goes on standbye, it’s only minutes until a spike in charging and the “fake” 100% sign (rebooting) brings me back to the “real” battery status.