Battery discharging after long time connected to the power charger ?

Russell Sears sears at cs.berkeley.edu
Mon Jul 21 09:17:13 CEST 2008


I seem to be able to reproduce it now, which is progress.  I've attached 
a CSV that contains readings from APM and all the files in the charger's 
directory in /sys.

The good news is that the problem is detectible in software; apm reports:

Off-line, battery status low: 49% (1d+3:40:00)

when charger_type contains:

charger 1A mode 1A

This can never be the right state for the phone to be in...

It is losing charge slowly over time in this state, though at a rate of 
less than 1% per hour.  (It dropped from 50 to 49%, then I waited 45 
minutes for a change, and got bored)

Here is the contents of dump_regs:

13 84 00 00 00 00 00 80 00 00 00 00 00 d3 aa 4a
15 44 ff 01 00 07 00 00 02 08 6b 01 00 0a 1b 02
00 22 2f 01 00 22 00 00 3f 01 05 20 11 18 02 18
02 00 00 00 00 15 00 15 01 16 01 00 00 ff 3f 00
00 17 63 e6 28 19 ff ff 00 02 00 33 20 50 19 00
00 08 00 00 0e a3 00 f0 00 42 04 23 00 20 06 08
7f 7f 3f 07 3f 1f ff 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 c9 72 d9 0a 27 60 08 c0 b8
13 c0 03 07 00 00 00 03 e2 ff fa 62 11 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

I haven't forgotten about the suggested kernel patch + charger override; 
I just haven't had time to figure out how to patch, compile and package 
a new kernel yet...

-Rusty

Stefan Fröbe wrote:
> Hi everybody,
> 
> I experienced something similar yesterday with my Freerunner running a
>  recent andy+mwester kernel:
> 
> After plugging the turned off phone with about 30% battery left into
> the wall charger at night, I woke up to realize the battery had become
> completely drained! And in addition, the original battery would not
> allow a startup neither with charger nor usb attached, only a spare
> nokia and then quick-changing while on USB allowed it to become
> recharged again.
> 
> When plugging in the charger, the icon for USB now switches between
> shown / not shown in 1s intervals, accompanied by a knock-sound from
> the loudspeaker. This happens every time, and looks to me as if the
> charger is broken - any other USB device attached to it blinks with
> the same frequency, and I cannot measure the 5V but see fluctuations .
> 
> Any idea, or shall I contact my distributor (Pulster) for a spare charger ?
> 
> Stefan
> 
> On 7/20/08, Russell Sears <sears at cs.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>> Michael Shiloh wrote:
>>>
>>> Russell Sears wrote:
>>>> I've started noticing this too.  It bit me the night before last, when
>>>> it was plugged in for 8 hours, but the icon indicated battery status.
>>>> When I woke up, APM reported the battery was low. (I've been regularly
>>>> running opkg update/upgrade on the factory image).
>>>>
>>>> Plug the charger into the phone.  Slowly count to 10 or 20.  If the
>>>> icon doesn't change to have a lightning bolt, unplug the charger from
>>>> the phone, and repeat.
>>> here's another thing to try: make sure the phone is really charging,
>>> either with 500mA or 1000mA (assuming you're using the wall charger),
>>> using Andy's patch that lets you manually set any charge rate:
>>>
>>> http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/openmoko-kernel/2008-July/003761.html
>>>
>>> Let me know the result of this experiment
>>>
>>> Michael
>> I'm still trying to reproduce the part where it actually runs the
>> battery down while plugged in, so I haven't applied the kernel patch.
>> (Perhaps it was accidentally unplugged or something...)  In the meantime:
>>
>> What's the desired policy for charging?  Could the charger be shutting
>> off once the battery is full?  I've heard that doing this is standard
>> procedure for Li-Ions, since they don't like to be continuously topped
>> off...
>>
>> My phone is plugged into the charger right now, and says it's not
>> charging.  It said it was charging an hour ago, so now its just a
>> matter of waiting...   I'll disable power management, enable wifi, gps,
>> etc, and see if that gets it to drain the battery while charging.
>>
>> charger_type contains:
>>
>> charger 1A mode 1A
>>
>> chgstate:
>> enabled usb_present
>>
>> chgcur is empty
>>
>> chgmode:
>> enabled
>>
>> apm says:
>> Off-line, battery status high:
>> 98% (5d+3:01:00)
>>
>> ** Update **
>>
>> I was having some problems with my mail client, so this has been sitting
>> in my outbox.  Anyway, I left the phone on the charger last night, woke
>> up and it was on with the red and exclamation point in the battery
>> status icon.  I pulled the charger plug out of the phone and reinserted
>> it, which shut down the phone.  I can't turn it back on, so I'm going to
>> buy a second battery and/or external charger today...  It seems the best
>> way to reproduce the issue is with a batter that's not nearly full.
>>
>> -Rusty
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> support mailing list
>> support at lists.openmoko.org
>> https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/support
>>





More information about the support mailing list