USB Charging So Slow Almost Not Worth It - XPERIA X1 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Is anyone else having this problem?
Any work around to having it actually charge the battery up?

it uses electricity faster than its recharging its crap! ive never known any device do this. When im low on battery and have it connected to my computer i have to switch it to the mains for 30 mins. Its terrible, bad design fault

I have the same problem with my Toshiba G900 (WVGA too). Very slow on USB, but normal fast at standard charging or car charging. USB is very bad for this at all.

it really depends on what you're doing with the phone, its unlikely to charge when busy, its a lot faster at charging than my old advantage, im actually impressed!
have you made sure that you've not ticked turn off charging whilst connected to a computer?
charged in under 3hours whilst on connected to ubuntu yesterday.

don't u guys realized how many amperes that a USB socket and your PC (as well as the power supply) allowed compared to a wall socket?

usb chargin usually is never worth it.

I don't understand your disappointment, usb voltage/ampere are the same for all devices, even for my touch when used as modem doesn't supply enough power for charging seriously

Does it even charge at all via USB when the X1 is on idle? If it does, how long does it take from low to full?

I left my X1 idle on USB for 6 hours, it was nearly flat when I put it on and after 6 hours it was still 1 bar below full. Whereas my LG Viewty fully charged in about 2 hours. My Universal only takes about 3 hours
So in my case, comparing the three phones, you can see where my dissapointment originates from.

vinokirk said:
I left my X1 idle on USB for 6 hours, it was nearly flat when I put it on and after 6 hours it was still 1 bar below full. Whereas my LG Viewty fully charged in about 2 hours. My Universal only takes about 3 hours
So in my case, comparing the three phones, you can see where my dissapointment originates from.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But remember the size of battery the x1 has maybe the 1500 comes into play.

BuddyLee said:
But remember the size of battery the x1 has maybe the 1500 comes into play.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, of course. Xperia's battery is bigger. That's like complaining that your glass fills up faster than your pool. (may be exaggerating a bit )

BuddyLee said:
But remember the size of battery the x1 has maybe the 1500 comes into play.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
True tho, point taken.....dissapointment level aleviating.....slightly....

After my phone beeped saying the battery was low, I plugged it into my USB hub (which has a mains supply). An hour later I removed the cable and the phone beeped again.
At least with my P990 I was able to gain some charge, it seems like with the X1 it just stops the battery running down.

Try it after Softreset again. I had this problems with an old ROM on my G900 too. After some time it did not charge. Softreset fixed it.

also yall are forgettin that it's a different kinda battery in the x1 compared to other phones it's ising a li-po compared to a li-ion (which is in most other ppc phones) it charges slower via usb because it's tryin to keep from exploding any extra surge that the usb gets could cause your phone to explain
the li-po is more likely to explain given the way it's built
when you use the wall chargers and car chargers the connection are ment fron rapid rechargin of the device unlike the usb which is for data transfer mainly
when you think about the charge time just think about how long it actually takes for your phone to run out of battery life from what i heard it's close to like 1.5 to 2.5 days compared to normal ppc phones that last probably a day at the most with out recharge
hope this help

Keland44 said:
also yall are forgettin that it's a different kinda battery in the x1 compared to other phones it's ising a li-po compared to a li-ion (which is in most other ppc phones) it charges slower via usb because it's tryin to keep from exploding any extra surge that the usb gets could cause your phone to explain
the li-po is more likely to explain given the way it's built
when you use the wall chargers and car chargers the connection are ment fron rapid rechargin of the device unlike the usb which is for data transfer mainly
when you think about the charge time just think about how long it actually takes for your phone to run out of battery life from what i heard it's close to like 1.5 to 2.5 days compared to normal ppc phones that last probably a day at the most with out recharge
hope this help
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Err... this is not true for TP. TP lasts about 2 days on average from normal daily usage and it doesn't have problem charging via USB. Given that the port used is USB 2.0 not 1.1 or below. Took about 2~3 hours from nearly flat to full charge if I remember correctly. I have to try again just to make sure. But definitely not taking 6 hours.
I would've thought that X1 shouldn't have any problem with charging since the battery is only like 150mA more than TP. Also, if it's charging faster from the AC adapter, the same result should be expected when charging from USB port. Doesn't matter the type of battery used. Unless if X1 somehow limits the charging current on purpose when PC USB port is detected. Even though USB 2.0 is actually capable of giving out 1.5A maximum. Try to soft reset it after charging for about 2~3 hours. See if the battery gets fully charged. Some TP users are experiencing this issue as well when the battery meter only updates to fully charged after doing soft reset. Experienced users might want to try and measure the current drawn when charging via USB 2.0 port.
Hope this helps.

On my xperia if i put it in sleep mode, it charges no problem using USB.

the advantage used to charge slower from a usb port, that is until someone found out that the standard ac charger had a short across two of the usb pins, and with a quick mod of a usb cable charged quickly from the usb on a computer
however my x1 charges the same from usb or mains, I use the same cable, but can't see what difference that makes.
there are three conditions that affect charging speeds, whether device is on or not, off charges much faster, whether screen is on or not, screen off charges faster, whether theres good radio signal, if like at home, reception is dodgy it can really draw a lot of juice.

Just for comparison sake, I did a test on my TP just to confirm. Charging via USB 2.0 while it was on idle with screen turned on, from 4% to 100% it took about 2.5 hours and its battery feels warm.

Ok lets clear out some things.
A standard PC USB socket can provide maximum 500mA (milli-Amperes) Current at 5 Volt. Ideally that means that a battery rated at 1500mAh (milli-Amperes-hour) can be charged around 3 hours (minimum). Now, subtract the current that the xperia needs while operating and you will get how many milli-Amperes are left for charging.
Of course in order to know how many current the xperia needs to operate you need to connect an ammeter in series, also keep in mind that current needs change depending on usage (wifi, 3g, bluetooth etc).
So in essence if you USB port is not very good and can't give fully 500mA and the xperia needs a great amount of current to be on, then the charging time can be quite long. A simple formula could be:
xperia_Battery_mAh / (USB_Current - xperia_Current)
Now the mains charger is rated at a greater value than the USBs 500mA. Actually I don't own yet an xperia (waiting patiently to arrive), so I don't know how much current the charger can give. Can someone see what is the rating of the charger?
From other devices I own (that can charge through USB) I've seen that their chargers are rated as high as 2 Amperes. Obviously these devices never draw so much current, it is just a failsafe or it was more cheap for them to bundle a charger like that. But they could draw 800mA of current which the USB port is unable to do so.
Keep in mind that while charging with USB might be longer, generally it can be safer for the battery (longer battery life and more charge/discharge cycles), although I am not so sure about this with excessive charging times in a USB port.

Related

Disable USB charging

Anyone has any idea why do we need to turn on "disable usb charging" ?
Settings -> Power -> Advanced
[ x ] When device is turned on, do not charge the battery when connected to the PC
In what situation?
One thing that I can think of ... is to preserve the battery to have a good condition by only charging if you have "enough time". That means, to charge until 100% and beyond.
Any more valid / good reason?
Thanks.
gogol said:
Anyone has any idea why do we need to turn on "disable usb charging" ?
Settings -> Power -> Advanced
[ x ] When device is turned on, do not charge the battery when connected to the PC
In what situation?
One thing that I can think of ... is to preserve the battery to have a good condition by only charging if you have "enough time". That means, to charge until 100% and beyond.
Any more valid / good reason?
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In my case, i thin is better to make three or four completes cycles of charge/discharge, so for the moment i use this option to prevent charging while i connect to PC to install or trasfer something....after complete discharge, i charge full...
Regards.
Hi,
It's probably to preserve Laptop/Notebook battery when on the go...
alexxo said:
Hi,
It's probably to preserve Laptop/Notebook battery when on the go...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, this is another one.... i don't have a laptop so i don't think in it
I reckon its so you can plug it into a unpowered USB hub which is near its limit of how much power it can supply...
g
charging
i think it might have something to do with the amps/volts, i'm not a scientist as you could already tell, but i do know that you shouldn't use a motorola charger to charge an htc product. i used a razr charger to charge my dash once and it killed the battery pretty well. so i figure you shouldnt use a non-approved charger to charge your device, be it via laptop or any other charger that didnt come in the box
My bet is that this is about battery life. I think that these batteries do best (live longest) if they go through complete charge-discharge cycles at least every 30 days.
I plug my TyTn into my computer when I am in the office and, unlike ACtiveSync, the charge always works!
I vote for the portable use theory as well, so you don't drain the battery on a laptop or unpowered hub that can't supply the additional current.
RemE said:
I vote for the portable use theory as well, so you don't drain the battery on a laptop or unpowered hub that can't supply the additional current.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm with you on this one. Current gen batteries don't need to be cycled so much for optimal performance. However, charging your phone via USB will drain your PC's battery more quickly if you are on the go.
The Kaiser draws a lot of current. Even when charging by USB I have seen the battery level dropping.
I have seen quite frequently USB ports being disabled due to too high current draw, making the connection unstable. If this was a problem this option would prevent it.
Surur
quite a few posts here about li-ion batteries and how best to look after them:
http://www.modaco.com/Warning-Battery-Chargin-t233233.html
That's good stuff especially the Wiki on them. I use a lot of lithiums at work and play. Bottom line, don't run them flat, ever, that's the only thing that will ruin them quickly. Most devices have protection circuitry to prevent this by shutting down. When you get to this point the battery should be charged ASAP because the small amount of drainage in the device will take the battery past the critical low point if left in this very low state for any length of time (say more than a few days).
Cycling really doesn't do much for lithiums, their total capacity decreases from date of manufacture slowly over time, weather you use them alot or not. This is unlike other batteries.
Best storage state for lithiums is 50%, not full. But in a phone, best rule is to just top them up whenever possible, plus you never know when you are going to get that marathon phone call
As a few others have alluded to, this is used when you're tethering on the go. WM5 / 8525 doesn't have this switch, so when tethering via USB on the 8525, it will literally suck the life out of my laptop battery.
Glad to hear that this switch was added in WM6 / Kaiser.
The best battery information I found is here: http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm
Summary (for li-ion batteries, as in Kaiser):
1. Avoid full discharge; partial discharge/charge cycle is better. However, a full charge/discharge cycle once every 30 times is useful to keep battery gauge calibrated correctly (doesn't really help longevity, but prevents erroneous gauge from forcing early retirement of the battery).
2. Avoid prolonged storage at full charge and/or high heat (optimal charge is ~40%).
3. Avoid high rates of charge or discharge. Presumably the charge rate is already set at an acceptable rate by the manufacturer; as for discharge, it probably can't be helped if you need to run some ultra-high load applications on the phone. One thing this confirms: it is good to charge the battery using the USB; the possibly lower voltage available during the USB charge is helping, not hurting, the battery. So definitely, the "do not charge when plugged in" option is only to save your laptop battery, not to help the phone battery.
As said already in this thread, its so you can connect to a non-powered usb hub or a laptop usb port that can't supply enough.
WM devices normally detect supplied power and go into charge mode before they are polled by the PC/Laptop via Activesync for data transfer. If the charge system pulls the port down then data transfer is disrupted.
When tethered to a laptop and the laptop is running on battery, you may want to disable charging to conserve the laptop's battery.
This is the answer I got from batteries4less where I bought a replacement battery for my 8525.
You should generally charge your battery every night. It is not good to do
it continually during the day. It will wear it down faster. Thank you
Alix Kane
CBW Customer Service Rep.
Cellphone Battery Warehouse
www.batteries4less.com
1800-300-9993
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
By the way.....shameless plug: I ordered a battery late on thursday afternoon and received my replacement battery on saturday and installed it in the phone. On monday I bought the Tilt 8925 and then emailed that I bought a new phone and asked them if I could exchange it for a Tilt 8925 battery and the next email I received from them about an hour or so later said the new battery was on the way and to send the 8525 battery back in that package.
These guys will get my battery business from now on.
Years ago i had a t-mobile dash also known as an htc excalibur, and i would use it to tether to my computer for 6 to 8 hours a day as a high speed modem and low and behold, it burnt out the battery. I bought a new battery and switched to Kaiser OS that had an option to disable usb charging and never had a problem after that... Now if you only connect to a computer to transfer a few files back and forth every onle in a while then there probably wont be a problem because that is not going to drain your battery very fast so it will only charge every once in a while and that is ok. But when you tether to a computer to use your phone as a high speed modem it takes ALOT of battery power. I saw a post in a different thread here on xda that said that when your battery reaches 100% that it stops charging. Yes that is correct. But even though the battery will stop charging at 100%. As soon as it drops 5 or 10 % is starts charging again and when you tether your phone as a modem it will drop 5 or 10% within minutes so your phone will basically be charging nonstop which is defiantly not good for a battery and that my friends is what the disable usb charging is for.
Just as an added statement for those of you that disagree with what i have said. Try it yourself and see what happens. Tether your phone to your computer as a modem and surf the net, and play games, and download stuff for 6 or more hours a day. I bet in just a few weeks or months you will be replacing your battery too.
Reason to turn off phone charging when connected to PC
I installed "Syncois iOS & Android Manager FREE" to back up my Android phone data to my PC. The program would not work if my phone was charging when connected to my PC, it told me. So, I had to turn that charging option off. Outside of that, I will always have my phone charge when connected to my PC. Hope this helps!

HD2 Mains Charger with a difference!

I think this is pretty unique
http://tinyurl.com/yztqtrq
A mains charger with multiple plus adapters BUT...and here is the clever bit, the mains charger has a small lithium ion battery built in so that whilst you are charging your HD2...it's also charging the internal battery. That means if you are away from a power source, you can still charge your HD2 by flicking the switch on the side of the mains unit and it then charges your HD2.
I haven't had it long enough yet to see how many charges it'll do, but it seems like a good bit of kit and the only charging kit I'll ever need. Heck, it even comes with two USB ports in the top, (you can actually charge TWO devices at the same time) plus a USB charge cable and a car charger plug too.
Nice, but what's the battery capacity there? It looks a bit smallish.
Batrtery capacity
Looking at the battery it's a 3.7v, 1000mAh ... 'BL-5C' which I think is battery for some Nokia phones.
..you don't use the smaller 'emergency' battery actually in your HD2, you just plug your HD2 into the charger as normal, flick a switch on the charger and it uses the juice in the emergency battery to charge your HD2. So this means that even if you are away from mains power, you can still charge your device
simples...
1000 mAH is too little, alas. Otherwise I'd get a couple of those.
Too little...?
Hiya
Electricity isn't my strong point....but I don't get why you say 'it's too little'. I've been charging my HD2 using the device and it seems OK. Did I confuse you? The 1000 doesn't go *IN* the HD2...it stays in the charging unit and charges it form there...
stevep said:
I think this is pretty unique
http://tinyurl.com/yztqtrq
A mains charger with multiple plus adapters BUT...and here is the clever bit, the mains charger has a small lithium ion battery built in so that whilst you are charging your HD2...it's also charging the internal battery. That means if you are away from a power source, you can still charge your HD2 by flicking the switch on the side of the mains unit and it then charges your HD2.
I haven't had it long enough yet to see how many charges it'll do, but it seems like a good bit of kit and the only charging kit I'll ever need. Heck, it even comes with two USB ports in the top, (you can actually charge TWO devices at the same time) plus a USB charge cable and a car charger plug too.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great find! The whole package is actually as cheap as a cheap non-OEM HD2 battery
stevep said:
The 1000 doesn't go *IN* the HD2...it stays in the charging unit and charges it form there...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah but that doesn't matter - surely a 1000 mAh battery will not be able to fully charge the HD2's 1230 mAh battery?
In fact, it would probably be better if the secondary battery did go into the HD2 as you're sure to lose some of the power by way of heat etc during the charging.
I must say i like the car charging aspect. If you find yourself low in the morning, you can charge while you driving, and take it with into work (or anywhere without having to plug in) and finnish it off. Traveling time is not usually sufficient to give a decent charge.
You can then replenish the small battery on the way home. Makes sense.
I got one of these but am having some trouble using the sync & charge cable with a PC. Although the phone will charge when plugged in, t I'm not asked whether I want to connect via ActiveSync, disk drive, etc. and I get driver errors on the PC. Do I have to do something special to use the cable with a PC?
I think its a charging cable only and not a data transfer cable.

Battery takes forever to charge. Literally.

I just got my Xperia and sometimes when I hook up my phone to the usb charger from the wall it doesn't charge at all. The illuminations don't come on. Sometimes they do.. And when it does "charge" it takes like 9 hours for 2 green bars of charge. It's really slow. I did drain the battery the first time I used it. Is the cable faulty? I don't know. Also, when I turn my phone on it tries to establish an internet connection through like GPRS or EDGE. I don't want to use those features since Wi-Fi is enough for me and I don't wanna pay for those services. How do I stop it from automatically trying to connect to the internet? Data connections are always off in Comm Manager for me..
for the second issue (GPRS) use nodata. google/search the forum. the data connection toggle in comm manager won't stop apps from conneting to the internet
for the first issue, i have no idea, sorry mate. maybe it's a problem with the cable, or the battery, or the phone's power circuits
I had the same problem before and mine was a faulty cable
try changing it, it should solve your problem
also I have a STAT program come with "ae button plus"
it shows me how fast I am charging in mA, some cheap wall charger are as slow as USB.
frostz said:
I did drain the battery the first time I used it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And that's how you destroy li-ion batteries. Don't do it again!
yeh, li-on batterys like to be charged regular (the x1 has a li-polymer battery but same difference.lol) you dont need to completely discharge and charge like nicad or nimh batterys. they dont have a "memory" like the older batterys, where you need to completely discharge them now and again else they would run out at 50%. sounds like you might have a dodgy charger or cable. the charger i had was a detachable usb cable. mayb try pluggin it into your pc and see if that charges it ok.
from the wall the charger should take about 2 hrs (the wall charger should provide 700ma so a 1500mah battery will take 2hrs or thereabouts) from a pc it should be about 3 -4 hrs as usb supplies around 500ma. either way it definately shouldnt be 9 hrs. new chargers on ebay cost very little so dont panic if its broken.
also your battery should say "1500mah BST-41" on it if its genuine.
More bad news
Well, I contacted Sony Ericsson and they sent me a new battery and charger which I received today. When I started charging it, it showed 5/10 bars and after 10 hours of charging while off (using the wallcharger), it now says it's at 3/10 bars of charge. What is possibly wrong!?!
make sure you are not running programs which may drain
programs you started yourself or programs in windows\startup
and if you're charging over usb use the AC charger and check if the charger or cable is defect
frostz said:
Well, I contacted Sony Ericsson and they sent me a new battery and charger which I received today. When I started charging it, it showed 5/10 bars and after 10 hours of charging while off (using the wallcharger), it now says it's at 3/10 bars of charge. What is possibly wrong!?!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Happened to me when I was charging off 110 volts. switched to 220 and fixed the problem for me. Don't know if it'll help you, but it's worth a shot.
harveydent said:
Happened to me when I was charging off 110 volts. switched to 220 and fixed the problem for me. Don't know if it'll help you, but it's worth a shot.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
could the cable of yours too long?

Anyway of disabling usb charging on Galaxy S I9000?

Hi folks,
Been searching for a hack or tool to disable usb charging while connecting device to laptop usb port to prolong battery life. But to my disappointment, there's none at the moment
Aren't there any solution for this at all from the developers?
So far, the only tool that I've googled is USB Charge Commander but that doesn't work on Galaxy S
It's designed for ZTE Blade/Orange San Francisco handset only.
Appreciate for any tips given. Thanks!
Sassy,
there is no need for such a tool. Since you are using a Lithium-ion battery this would NOT prolong your battery life. This type of battery has no such thing as a memory effect. The battery will take no damage if you charge it every time. You don´t have to wait till it is fully empty. Actually, if you discharge your battery completely every time, it may cause shorter battery life in the end...
Have Fun
Chris
How about this for a reason:
I don't want the phone to charge off of my laptop which itself is running off of a battery, but I do need a USB connection for application debugging. My laptop's battery does not last nearly as long as my phone, so I would prefer that the phone does not charge via USB when my laptop is running on batteries.
No solution?
USB charging shortens battery life
Indeed, I've been looking for such a solution of USB connection without charging for my Galaxy S. I also came across a suggestion of clipping the power +5V wire of the USB cable which I believe would not work as that would disable the detection of USB connection.
Back to the battery life of lithium battery, we know that partial discharge is fine as there is no memory effect. However, every discharging cycle matters and counts if we believe the info from the Battery University page, Table 2 (batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries). According to the test and assumptions, if we charge the battery at 10% of Depth of Discharging (or approx. 90% of capacity), we have 4700 cycles before the battery is worn out. Yeah, 4700 seems a big number. It is not that big if we connect our phone via USB to a PC very often.
We don't know the exact no. of discharge/charge cycles a li-ion battery on our mobile phone can tolerates before its end of life. If you believe EVERY CYCLE COUNTS, you'd better find a solution.
Franky
You can try using File Expert https://market.android.com/details?id=xcxin.filexpert&feature=related_apps for accessing the files via WIFI or connect your phone via Bluetooth.
rustamabd said:
My laptop's battery does not last nearly as long as my phone, so I would prefer that the phone does not charge via USB when my laptop is running on batteries.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Typical laptop batteries are around the 4.4Ah mark, the phone draws 95mA from the USB port while charging. This means you could charge your phone continuously for 46 hours off a typical laptop. You won't notice the difference in practical usage at all. This is about the same amount of power as your laptop CPU doing actual work for a few minutes. There are many other factors that have a far greater impact on your laptop battery than charging a phone.
pistachia said:
We have 4700 cycles before the battery is worn out. Yeah, 4700 seems a big number. It is not that big if we connect our phone via USB to a PC very often.
...
If you believe EVERY CYCLE COUNTS, you'd better find a solution.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you look at the table in detail you'll find that 4700 cycles at 10% recharge is roughly 10 times the 500 cycles at 100% recharge. It's an almost linear relationship and there's nothing to be gained by letting your phone discharge further rather than putting it back on charge when it drops to 10%. The cycles aren't a counter after which suddenly everything stops.
Also they are hammering their battery pretty hard. A 1C charge is roughly 4 times higher than what the SGS battery experiences. The faster the charge the lower the life, so expect your phone to last longer than 4700 cycles.
On top of everything with replacement batteries costing a whole $5 it's not worth losing sleep over.
Yeah, you're right. If a replacement battery costs that little, even my quoted analysis really matters, it does not worth 'counting' at all! Just use the way you want and make sure you got one replacement before it's out of market.
garbz said:
...the phone draws 95mA from the USB port...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you sure about this? Where does this info come from? The info I have is 500mA for a USB 2.0 port...
The option is available in MIUI

Quick question about charging a mobile battery

Quick question. If you leave your phone plugged in and its fully charged and your using it, is the phone just leeching off the charger for power or is the charger pushing out small bursts of power to the battery. The context of my question is i'm starting to use webtop alot and I leave my phone on all day plugged in. Is continuing this behavior going to impact my battery or does the phone just leech directly off the charger without using the battery?
It's fine to leave it plugged in all the time. The phone has a "smart circuit" that use what is called trickle charge to just continually top off the battery as it drops below full charge. The phone is designed such that it doesn't receive power directly from the charger or USB cable, unless the +5v DC current is on pin 1 like a factory flash cable.
Bottom line is there is no damage or shortening of the life of the battery to leave it charging all the time while in the dock or any other means and Li Ion batteries no not have memory problems.
On a related note, is there any damage in using low-power chargers?
I have an external solar-powered battery charger that also supports USB-out, and I find that it doesn't put out enough power to really charge the battery, but it can keep the battery at its current charge level (whenever it is plugged in) for the equivalent of one charge (so the phone could theoretically last 2ish days).
I'm wondering whether this is constantly charging/discharging the battery (bad thing), or just providing enough power to run the phone (good thing).
I've also seen a similar behavior when charging over USB. If I'm using the phone a lot, sometimes a usb port doesn't supply enough juice to charge the phone.
I also saw this in some (rarer) cases with my OG Droid, but I didn't pay it much mind because I had 3 batteries for that thing and you could pick them up for a few dollars off of Amazon.com.
Thanks!
cellzealot said:
It's fine to leave it plugged in all the time. The phone has a "smart circuit" that use what is called trickle charge to just continually top off the battery as it drops below full charge. The phone is designed such that it doesn't receive power directly from the charger or USB cable, unless the +5v DC current is on pin 1 like a factory flash cable.
Bottom line is there is no damage or shortening of the life of the battery to leave it charging all the time while in the dock or any other means and Li Ion batteries no not have memory problems.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you so much for your response. I had a feeling it was something like this. Good old "smart circuit".
podspi said:
On a related note, is there any damage in using low-power chargers?
I have an external solar-powered battery charger that also supports USB-out, and I find that it doesn't put out enough power to really charge the battery, but it can keep the battery at its current charge level (whenever it is plugged in) for the equivalent of one charge (so the phone could theoretically last 2ish days).
I'm wondering whether this is constantly charging/discharging the battery (bad thing), or just providing enough power to run the phone (good thing).
I've also seen a similar behavior when charging over USB. If I'm using the phone a lot, sometimes a usb port doesn't supply enough juice to charge the phone.
I also saw this in some (rarer) cases with my OG Droid, but I didn't pay it much mind because I had 3 batteries for that thing and you could pick them up for a few dollars off of Amazon.com.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To my knowledge, there is no reason a low power charger should present any problem, but charging from the USB on a PC is limited to 350mA and will definitely not push enough current to charge the phone while it is under heavy use like Mobile Hotspot tethering with LTE or even 3g.
The standard wall charger is 850mA and even that can sometimes only keep up or charge very slowly under heavy load.
USB spec is [email protected] not 350mA. But yes, a dedicated charger probably will charge faster. Some may go as high as 1A output...
Sent from my DROID4 using Tapatalk

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