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Help Battery exclamation point icon?

T

TheFrigz

Member
What does this battery icon mean? I had 71% battery and the battery was only 91 deg F so it isn't related to those things. It went away when I restarted so maybe just a freak thing?
 
I was getting that too, when the battery icon would go gray with an exclamation point. When I looked at the battery status it would say unknown. Usually the battery status either says charging or not charging. I don't know what causes this.
I don't know why that happened, but in addition my phone would turn off by itself frequently. I got the battery on my phone replaced and both problems still continued.
In the end I got Sprint to replace my phone and haven't seen the exclamation point battery icon since.
 
yes the exclamation means the battery is no longer communicating with the device. this can be due to a faulty battery, dirty contacts, something in the OS that's "tangled" up.. soft reset, cleaning the contacts, battery replacement, factory reset, phone replacement are all ways to remedy.
 
Recently I've noticed that when I'm charging my phone, it goes MUCH slower once it gets to around 88 percent. today i unplugged my phone when it was at 91% (confirmed by Elixir). then I restarted my phone, and Elixir then said I was at 99% battery. it then dropped to 97%. i restarted again and it said 99% again. I did a battery pull and started the phone back up again and it said 99%, but the battery icon was the grey battery with the exclamation point. i restarted the phone again and it now says 91% again and has the normal battery icon.

what does all this mean? is there a way to fix this? i'm kinda freaking out right now since i'm outside of my 30 days so i might be screwed...
 
Ok I'm noticing that my battery charges abnormally fast until it gets to about 88 then it goes abnormally slow. The battery reading changes every time I restart my phone so i dont think my phone is reading the battery properly. I am outside of my 30 days and I am beginning to panic. What do I do?
 
yep it's official, my phone has no idea how much battery i have any more. was charging it, it went from 44 to 65 in about 20-30 mins, i restarted it and when it came back on it said 78, 5 mins later was at 88..i'm on the verge of panic :( i've tried soft resets, battery pulls, and wiping the contacts with a cloth
 
OK - nobody panic.

How about charging from only 40% to a full 100% in 15 minutes. Yes - impossible. So - I've been there.

If you are rooted, join me in the All Things Root forum in this thread:

http://androidforums.com/evo-3d-all...tery-calibration-after-rom-kernel-change.html

Otherwise - for stock phones, please read on.

All of the funny charging times is because your battery subsystem is out of calibration.

This happens from time to time, and it's especially common when there's some kind of kernel change - or major enough changes in apps / usage / habits. (And the phone automagically decides what's major - not us users.)

All of the observables being reported about charge percentages and times are based on a single data file - that is now a little out of whack - and that's what we call "out of calibration."

Not rooted, you can't erase that file and make it start over, so you have to nudge it along until it straightens itself out.

(In fact, if you simply do nothing the problem will eventually clear itself - but that will take way too long.)

Plan this to take a few nights -

So - run your phone until it says it's out of power and shuts itself off. Normally - we don't like doing that with LiIon batteries, but it seems that the built-in protection circuitry won't let anything bad happen and more importantly - when your phone says it's out of juice and shuts itself off - when you power it back up, it's going to say that it has more than zero battery.

Now - charge the phone to full, or as best you can, with the phone powered off.

Use normally, next day, run out of juice again.

Charge phone to full, or as best you can, with the phone powered on.

Report back if this is helping and where things seem to be stuck if not.

There are a small percentage of cases where it could be a bad battery and even smaller percentage where it could be the charging circuit - but my bet is on this being a simple calibration problem from the stuff being described.

Hope this helps!

PS - whenever you a thread self-reference with a mod thanks, that's a mod thanking for pointing at the suggested merge. ;)
 
Now that you mention it, I'm pretty sure this did only start occurring after I did the major update for my phone, so I'm betting you're right about it being that causing a calibration issue. Thanks for the help, I'll report back when I can.
 
my battery is starting to get near the low end on my first cycle through this..why exactly is it bad if LiIons die? will doing this damage my battery?

anyway well regardless, i think the problem might be fixed, i just ran my battery all the way down and it turned off, i plugged it in and turned it on to see what it was at and it said Charging (1%) so it seems right. when it gets up to 100% we should be good to go :)
 
Normally if you run a LiIon battery all the way down you can hit heating conditions that will deform the metal microtubes within the battery and degrade its lifetime or damage it.

Protection circuitry built in tries to prevent that - and if I thought for an instant that you'd face that risk, I'd have never suggested this route. ;)
 
hmm..i think it's closer to correct now but not quite there yet. i'll do it again tomorrow night of course as you said. when i got it to 100 i turned the phone on, sent a few texts, whatever, eventually it dropped to 98, i restarted it on a hunch and sure enough when it came back on it said 99 again..but only for a few minutes then back to 98. so i think it's getting close to being calibrated correctly.

i mean it's not even a huge issue really, i can still get full charges, it's just a minor annoyance i suppose especially for someone like me who is a bit ocd about battery life

kinda wish i was rooted just for this, your rooted solution sounds a bit easier :P
 
Easier, but still time consuming.

Remember - the phone runs off the battery at all times. It does not trickle charge, because trickle charging a LiIon battery causes fires.

So when charging, the instant it's at full charge, it shuts down charging. It then runs down to a set point, anywhere between 92% to 96% before actually charging up again. During this time, your charging light may be green, but the only way to have your phone at 100% is to take it off the charger the instant it turns green.

It may take days for that last percentage point to level out, rooted or not.
 
well i've gone through two days now and i'm not sure it's getting any better..was charging it up, it was at 48%, restarted it and it jumped to 68%...i just don't understand..

edit: would it work if i did this other calibration technique that i found in the evo 4G forums?

Also need to calibrate the battery...
With the phone in the on position.

Fully charge the battery with the phone on... (until the led turns green.)

Once the led turns green, unplug the charger until the led goes off.

After the led goes off, plug the charger back in. When the led turns green , power off the phone.

now.... with the phone fully powered off...

1. Unplug the charger.

2. Wait until led goes off.

3. Plug charger back in until the led turns green. When it turns green, unplug the charger again and go to step 1.

4. repeat steps 1 and 3, 10 times. This may take anywhere from 30 seconds to 30 mins per cycle. Typically only about 1 minute. though.
 
I used to do that and have recommended that to others who got positive results.

In this case because it's a newer battery technology I was hoping a simpler, more conservative approach might work.

Both methods have a good track record - if the first one I suggested isn't cutting it, give that one a go! :)
 
excellent, thanks for the info! :)

edit-tried that method..every time i unplugged and plugged the phone, the led was instantly green....strange...but i restarted the phone and it was then at 99% (red)..guess i could try it this way with restarts
 
Simplify:

1. Power on, charge until green.
2. Immediately power off when green, charge until green.
3. Immediately power on when green, charge until green.
4. Goto step 2 until immediately showing green whether on or off.


The 3vo's charging circuit fully cuts out during power cycling, so no need to plug/unplug.
 
when i use power off/on, the LED stays green no matter what, but when I do restarts in seems to be working

edit: then again i can't tell if i'm just losing battery as a result of the restart and then recharging or if i'm actually calibrating

edit2: nah it's definitely calibrating, it's taking less and less time each restart
 
I work for verizon and have seen a lot of different issues, but as far as I can tell from the battery being a gray icon with an exclamation mark in it is from a loose connection. I have had an eris and an incredible 2 with this issue and both times the phones had a little damage from being dropped. When I compared them to a new one we had in the store, the battery was noticeably looser. I found that when you made a call, got online, or opened a game it would go from a green battery to the gray one with an exclamation mark. It seems to happen when the phone starts draining or receiving a larger amount of power...and it would come on the majority of the time when you charged it. The phone had no other issues other than randomly shutting off and not restarting itself which can be from a loose connection too. (all batteries should have a small amount of movement to allow the battery to be taken out and put in...but these had too much)

Both people didn't have the issue with the percentage of the battery fluctuating so much. So if your battery is fluctuating like that then the earlier suggestions, from EarlyMon and The Frigz, would help. If it is just the icon and shutting off then check the connection and see if the battery is loose and compare to another one of the same phone if you can.

EarlyMon: If you feel that that isn't correct then I would appreciate a suggestion.
 
ok well i have an htc vivid and my cousin was playing games on it and it died. the next day i went to turn it on and it wouldn't so i plugged i up and it has the battery symbol with a red exclamation point on the top. I have no idea what this means. I just got this phone about a month ago. and then when i try and turn it on it just goes black. :(
 
camz3311 said:
ok well i have an htc vivid and my cousin was playing games on it and it died. the next day i went to turn it on and it wouldn't so i plugged i up and it has the battery symbol with a red exclamation point on the top. I have no idea what this means. I just got this phone about a month ago. and then when i try and turn it on it just goes black. :(
Click to expand...

Have you tried using a different battery? Sounds like it may be hardware failure if the battery didn't go bad on you. My advice try a different battery, if you still get a black screen. Take it into a sprint store that has a repair center and see if they can fix the problem for you.

Sent From My HTC Evo 3D Using TapaTalk 2
 
My htc evo 3d got the black screen of death.. The battery has been acting up and was getting a weird blank battery with a "!" inside of it.. then the next day I unplugged it and nothing the screen stayed black but the bottom buttons are working and light up. So i went ahead and just replaced the LCD and Digitizer and still the same problem. I dont know if a bad batter can cause this but its my last guess really. If anyone could give me a yes or no thank you
 
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