Old cell phone battery theory

[GeoffM]

My HTC incredible is getting close to 3 years old(Well, the battery is. The phone was replaced once).
That's a very long time in phone years, especially since everyone around me can't seem to make their phones last for the typical 2.
I've noticed a linear drop in the capacity of my battery. Only recently, it's become much more exponential.
Within 5 minutes of the alarm going off this morning, the battery had gone from 100% to 90 %.
Somewhat understandable. It's an old battery and the phone downloads all the files from overnight, much like a computer first turning on.

Here's where the fun part comes in: My phone has begun randomly shutting off.

• I'm rooted, and running a very stable ROM.
• Once the phone comes back on, it's at significantly less battery
• Once it's back on, there is no exponential power loss. Only maybe 5-10% per hour

This leads me to think:
The cells are getting old and developing "cracks".
Once the battery level comes to this "crack", it creates uneven power and the phone shuts off.
Once it comes back on, it's "destabilized" the linear power draw, and gone to a sort of a "safe" level.
I commonly see it fall from ~75% to 30%

What do you think?

[dysfunk]

Battery definitely needs replacing. I have a HTC Incredible 2. My fiancè also had one but has since upgraded, leaving me with a spare battery. These two dinc2s are two years old.

[GeoffM]

Battery definitely needs replacing. I have a HTC Incredible 2. My fiancè also had one but has since upgraded, leaving me with a spare battery. These two dinc2s are two years old.

I know. I think it's interesting how it's doing this.

The S4 is being announced tonight. As long as it's decent and less than $200, I'll probably get that.
I just need this battery to hold out till it's actually released.

[wed3k]

first thing i did with my htc is went to an extended life battery but it seems to drop pretty low fairly quick with heavy use.

[GeoffM]

first thing i did with my htc is went to an extended life battery but it seems to drop pretty low fairly quick with heavy use.

I'm to the point now where I charge it in the middle of the day.
I noticed the bad battery life was becoming obtrusive about a year in.
I've gotten around it in various ways.

When I ride my bike for long distances the GPS of my tracker pisses all over the battery.
A solar charger solved that!

[Ralphie]

I bought the Razr Maxx to not deal with this ever again.

I see around 12-22 hrs of battery life on a single charge, depending on use obv.

[GeoffM]

Oddly enough my old blackberry got fantastic battery life.
Like, 3 days between charges battery life.

[Ralphie]

Ya that's about all Blackberry's have anymore, besides Enterprise.

[GeoffM]

My favorite saying once I went to Android:
It is everything I wanted the Blackberry to be.

[foamypirate]

I have a dumb phone and pay $20/mo and it lasts a week between charges. Do I get a cookie?

[GeoffM]

I have a dumb phone and pay $20/mo and it lasts a week between charges. Do I get a cookie?

Only if you can post that on this website in under 10 minutes, from your phone.

[Joey GT-R]

I have a dumb phone and pay $20/mo and it lasts a week between charges. Do I get a cookie?

You get a sales pitch.

"Get a Smartphone with Verizon Wireless starting at only $99.99 with No Contract for as low as $60 a month! Free Shipping and Activation!"

[dysfunk]

I know. I think it's interesting how it's doing this.

The S4 is being announced tonight. As long as it's decent and less than $200, I'll probably get that.
I just need this battery to hold out till it's actually released.

I've been waiting for the S4 as well. I'm sure that the S4 16GB is going to be $199. I just recently bought an S3 for $99.99 + invisishield HD, total was around $127. Bestbuy rocks.


About the battery, yeah, it's weird, but of course, I've noticed that when my battery is low on power, my phone goes into full potato mode. All of the issues that you mentioned point towards the battery.

[sandman61377]

Oddly enough my old blackberry got fantastic battery life.
Like, 3 days between charges battery life.

That's not odd at all, BlackBerry's have long been known to have the best battery life of any smartphone.

Ya that's about all Blackberry's have anymore, besides Enterprise.

My favorite saying once I went to Android:
It is everything I wanted the Blackberry to be.

If that's how you feel, you must only have delt with the original Curve, which came out in 2007. I've owned 2 iphones, two android phones, and I'm on my fourth BlackBeryy (what can I say, I'm rough on phones), plus my best friend manages a T-Mobile store, so I can spend hours playing with almost any of the latest phones I want, and aside from front face chat, there is NOTHING that ios or android can do that the last batch off BB's with the traditional os can't do. And the Z10, the first BB with the all-new BB os 10 on it, is sick. The developement unit (which has half the ram of the production unit) beats out the Galaxy S III in every speed test they can throw at it, and has a higher html5 score than the desktop version of Chrome. For the month of February, it out-sold every other phone in Canada, and in every country its been released in, it has sold like hotcakes. Comes out in the US within the next week and a half, depending on which carrier.

The S4 is being announced tonight. As long as it's decent and less than $200, I'll probably get that.
I just need this battery to hold out till it's actually released.

I'd just get a new one if I were you. It is possible for a battery that's in that kind of condition to catch fire (though the likeyhood of that is probably pretty low) or damage the phone. You can find them on ebay for less than $10.

[dysfunk]

The older a battery gets, the hotter it will run to power the device, which in turn can damage the chips and whatever else inside of the device. Been there done that.. :/ I've repaired several phones that ended up having major issues because of an old or faulty battery.