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Ampere app - strange readings?

S

Sunny Rio

Android Enthusiast
Ampere (an app to show battery charge or discharge rate) doesn't seem to work properly for me. I'm using a Samsung A10. The charging socket is poor (rusty/dirty?), so I was checking the charging speed.

With the phone idling and the screen on, with it plugged into the charger, the battery charges at 90mA. Unplug the charger and it discharges at 350mA. So we can conclude I'm using 350mA, and the charger supplies 440mA (powering the phone and a bit left over for the battery).

But.... when I instruct the phone to run Boinc (a science program which uses the CPU to 100%), the charging speed increases to 140mA. How is this possible? If I use more power, how does the battery charge faster?
 
I believe that Ampere app is only estimating what the charge current might be, and so maybe it's inaccurate and not work? To accurately measure USB charge current and voltages, you need a hardware tester. Something like this...USB Power Meter, USB-A and USB-C Digital Meter for Voltage, Current, Capacity, Energy and Resistance
 
I would assume the app can only measure the battery voltage, and knows the capacity. So when it sees the voltage drop a little due to me adding load, how can that possibly make it think more power is going into the battery? Sounds rather like the Ampere app is a load of excrement.

The phone itself gives erroneous readings. Overnight, with the CPU flat out and the charger plugged in, the battery fell from 80% to 50% charge. So clearly it's discharging, yet the reading while it was doing that said "charging, time to charge 3 hours". The battery state of charge cannot fall while it's charging.

The phone doesn't even have an option (I can find) to limit charge to 90% to extend battery life. I wonder if there's an app for that.
 
ARGH! This root nonsense. Everything needs rooting to actually work. Android really sux. The security on these things is over the top like Linux. Android 4 was a security mess, 7 was perfect, then they went too far.
 
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