From: Mike Montour <<a href="mailto:mail@mmontour.net">mail@mmontour.net</a>><blockquote>
Gothnet wrote:<br><br>
> I still find it amazing that the FR doesn't charge when off and empty. Every<br>
> phone (and every other portable device) I've ever owned does this. It's not<br>
> even a software thing - there ought to be some direct hardware way to charge<br>
> the battery from totally dead without the need to even start booting.<br><br>
The FR's power-management chip (PCF50633) can be configured to do this,<br>
but it's not as simple as you might think. One source of complexity is<br>
the USB standard, which requires devices to negotiate their power<br>
consumption with the host computer. Another complication is a brownout<br>
problem on some phones which prevents them from booting the CPU unless a<br>
battery is present.<br><br>
If you program the PCF50633 as:<br>
- charger enabled<br>
- 100mA current limit<br>
- do not wake on USB insertion (avoids the brownout issue)<br><br>
then it will have the behaviour that you want - even with a<br>
completely-dead battery, you can plug it in and it will slow-charge the<br>
battery in hardware. I think it still technically violates one of the<br>
USB standards by drawing current without talking to the host, but IMHO<br>
it's unlikely to cause any real-world problems.<br><br></blockquote>This, to me, would seem like the best solution to this issue. In fact, I'm suprised this isn't the default behavior of the power management chip. Is this something we can do?<br>
<br><br>-Luke<br><br>PS - Someone from OpenMoko was kind enough to work with me on the battery issue, but I'd like to prevent it in the future.<br>