Battery statistics are incorrect for MX4

I did some digging, syslog said it was 'Initiating emergency shutdown'. So probably the battery is fine, just the statistics. Still annoying, if the phone shuts off when there's actually plenty battery left.

Is there any other logging about battery power? Is it hidden in syslog? There's too much there to read so I wouldn't know where to begin. I can post it here but prefer to clean it for relevant entries first.

Hi,

I have a similar problem, not sure if it is related though. While charging for 50 minutes already, my MX4 shows 26% from the beginning. I want to believe it is a software issue :)

Regards

Hi BlackJohnny,

I experience the same. Charging is pretty slow, but that may be due to my charger, I can't use the boxed adapter and may be charging at 1A. I think the rather big battery (3100mAh) also doesn't help.

It still may be that battery statistics is lagging behind, and therefor on charging the charge is underestimated, and discharging the charge is overestimated. Maybe somewhere the update frequency can be increased? The graph also looks sort of jumpy/blocky/undersampled.

I've been dumping all power-related data on my devices (E4.5 stable r23 and MX4 rc-proposed r47) while running a loop of power-hungry workloads (until the device shuts down) and recharges. So far, both the kernel and upowerd seem to report the correct data, and the "low battery" notifications were displayed at the right times.

Will have to collect more data.

Hi,

i've got nearly the same problem with my mx4. I've charged my phone for about 5 hours and the batery statistics shows me 100% after charging. If i disconnect the phone the batery life in the statistic goes down to 25% in less then 2 minutes.

The think is i don't know it, if the statistic is wrong or the battery is dying. I've got the phone for 5 or 6 days now.

Regards

I've made a screenshot of the behavier

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xbsb9l8nw02hyo1/screenshot20150707_065655064.png?dl=0

Hi Armin, that looks suspiciously similar to my experience. My battery seems to be getting less jittery now, though. Maybe a new battery is a bit more uneven chemically and the voltage provided is unstable and battery levels would seem all over the place. Battery drain is still quite steep, but I think that's a different issue.

It's strange. I powered of my phone and waited about 10 seconds and powered it on again, and now the statistic is correct. The battery charge went von 24%(before poweroff) to 91% (after poweron). I think its the same problem that the statistic is not correct.

I have also created a bug for this yesterday. I apologise about the duplicated bug report. I can not delete it now as it contains some useful information posted by another person.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/canonical-devices-system-image/+bug/1471913

I noticed that ;). I marked mine as duplicate, so yours is the main one. No apologies, I just want this fixed.

The developers in Taiwan are working on it.

Simon, I'm curious, does that mean it's a hardware issue?

Initially I thought it is indeed a software issue but now I am sure it is a hardware one as my phone is dead. After having some really quick drains of the battery without any reason (from 100% to less than 10% in under one hour) finally my phone is DEAD. Everything I have tried to "resurrect" it failed. Does not fastboot or anything. It is completely DEAD. I suspect it is the battery electronics and therefore I have already ordered one replacement ... especially after making the bad choice of opening the case, void the warranty and measure the voltage.

PS: the voltage is 4.1

On the other hand, because of the software issues, is it possible for the battery to get overcharged? I will hook some consumer on it to deplete it and see if the phone gets back alive.

I'm not an expert and definitely don't know for sure, but I've picked up a few things about batteries, and can guess at some things:

I don't think that if your battery was overcharged, the phone would work again if you drain it. Overcharging shouldn't really be possible in the first place. If not controlled properly, the battery would overheat and burn up if you would keep applying charge. Normally the charge regulator/controller makes sure that doesn't happen. Ever. Any damage from that would be permanent, I think. A phone, if not damaged by it, should still work at a higher voltage, and won't resume function when presented with a lower voltage. Another possibility is overheating due to fast drain, and some safety kicking in.

4.1 is a tad high, is this during charging? Without load a batteries voltage doesn't mean very much though.

If you did overcharge your battery, that's a serious issue, that means the charging regulator is not functioning properly and that could result in burning batteries.

Even if your phone is not damaged from this event, depending where the charge control unit is located (battery or phone), replacing the battery might not even solve your problem... On the whole, it really sucks that you voided your warranty.

On the bug: My battery is still working properly. In a day without real use, the phone consumes 14% battery. If left with the screen on, drain is pretty fast, but still managable, and correctly shown through battery management, contrary to my earlier experiences.

The 4.1 voltage is without load because it is quite difficult to measure it with load due to the very small propriety connector and lack of schematics for the board.

About the overcharge, it appears that android phones were affected by this a few years ago but I am not sure if it was related to android or to the fact that the hardware providers did not use these "charge regulators/controllers".

As soon as I get the battery replacement I will post the outcome here.

Regards

Evrika! I have managed to figure out the main board testmode procedure, reflash recovery and reset the Ubuntu OS. I hope it will stay alive from now on :)

I don't really know what was the cause nor how come clearing cache with (fastboot -w) and reflashing recovery solved the issue. I did not reflash the preloader.

Just asking if this is same problem... My phone is not charging probably (or not showing probably). Battery percentage is not increasing when i charge my phone. For example if it's 30 % and it start charging nothing happens, until a while when it jumps straight to 100 %. If i unplug charger now it will drain battery very quickly to something like 71 %. From there it will start decreasing battery percentage probably.

I can prevent that battery draining problem by shutting down phone and then unplug charger. I also did some testing today and i noticed that battery percentage is increasing correctly when screen in ON.

So is this software issue or should i return my phone?