Battery indicator inaccurate?

[amychica]

Hi,

I bought a Motorola Droid a week ago and I am having an issue with the battery indicator.

The first day I got it, I started using it right out of the box with the battery around half full. I played around with it quite a bit, installed some apps, organized contacts, texted some people. That night, it warned me that the battery was at 5% and needed to be charged, so I plugged it in and got ready for bed. Before falling asleep, I noticed that the lock screen said it was around 20% so I knew it was charging. When I woke up in the morning, it said Charged, so I disconnected it and immediately got the 5% warning again and the battery bar dropped back to red.

I plugged it back in, waited until it got up to around 70% and unplugged it again with the same results. I repeated this same process with a different phone charger and my car charger. The phone always appeared to be charging (white light on the side, battery percentage on-screen kept increasing). Every time I unplugged it, I got the 5% battery warning.

I went to a Verizon store, they mimicked the problem, and replaced the battery for me. I used the new battery for a couple days, charged it once or twice and it seemed fine. But now the same exact thing is happening again. I have noticed that if I ignore the 5% warning and don't plug the phone in, the battery indicator will often go back up to yellow and then green after half an hour and I can often use the phone for hours before I get warned again. However, this means that I never know the true status of the battery until the phone powers off and is completely drained.

Has anyone heard of this happening? Should I get the phone replaced? Should I try restoring factory defaults or something else?

Thanks for your help.

 

[tty]

Try "spare parts" application from market to get the voltage reading for your battery.

The voltage for full charged battery is about 4100-4200mV. The lowest reading may be around 3500-3550 mv for a %5 power left battery.

 

[amychica]

Thanks for your reply. I installed the spare parts app and it shows that my phone stops charging when the battery voltage is around 3987. It shows battery level as 100 when it says fully charged, then changes to battery level 5 when I unplug it (and raises to 30 after a couple minutes). Is my phone not charging the battery all the way to full?

 

[tty]

Your battery seems OK. If you charge it for additional 2-3 hours or a whole night, it will be over 4100 mv. When I quickly charge battery, I also get battery reading like 4000mV.

You may check if your battery percentage reading is consistent with the voltage reading. Usually these two readings are closely related, such as 90% - 3950, 80% - 3850... 5% - 3500.

 

[amychica]

The battery levels are not matching up with the appropriate voltages.

Here is how it has fluctuated tonight:
3987mV - 100% - while connected to the charger, charge complete
3810mV- 5% - immediately after unplugging the charger
3800mV - 30% - five minutes after unplugging charger
3757mV - 100% - an hour after unplugging charger
3778mV - 5% - five minutes later, warned me that the battery is low

Any idea why these aren't matching and/or how I can sync them up again? Some sort of software problem? I am wondering if I should ask a store to replace the phone tomorrow.

If you charge it for additional 2-3 hours or a whole night, it will be over 4100 mv. When I quickly charge battery, I also get battery reading like 4000mV.

If I keep the phone plugged in after the white light on the side of the phone has turned off, does it continue to charge? The light turns off when it hits 100% so I figured it wouldn't charge anymore.

 

[Redls1bird]

I would try a factory reset (seems to solve a lot of glitches) If you get no luck out of that, i would try The verizon store for at least a replacement battery, if not a new phone.