Help Memory Card Battery Drain issue

[dmcollins57]

Is there any reason why a sd card word drain the battery?

For the past couple of weeks I have had a serious battery drain issue. After fully charging my phone it would drop 10% in less than an hour and after like 4 hours of just sitting on standby it would be around 50%.
I read a round looking for some solutions and some said that maybe a corrupt file on the sd card is causing problems. I go and format the card; on my computer, from the phone, on my computer then again on my phone, and not one of those trials worked. I later did a hard reset, fully erasing everything on my phone, thinking maybe there was some app draining battery. I left the phone with stock settings and without installing any apps for a day and again the battery drain problem was there. (the sd card was formatted again when I did the hard reset).

Before finally throwing the phone against the wall I completely remove the sd card and behold the battery is finally holding. It has been a little over an hour sitting and the battery is still at 100%. I wanted to see if maybe there was something wrong with the phone so I pulled out an old 4gb card i had from an older phone and put it in my evo and still the battery life remains good.

So, my question is, can a memory card be damaged in some way that it can drain a battery like that? I have not had any read or write issues with the card at all so i don't know what could be wrong.

 

[EarlyMon]

Welcome to the forums!

Ok, first thing to note - these phones do not trickle charge.

Once it hits 100% charge, it will start running off of the battery and not begin its charging cycle again until the phone is at the 92~93% mark.

So - if you leave your phone on the charger after it turns green, it's actually in a cycle of draining down, charging up, draining down, charging up... from that point.

It takes several minutes (or more, depending on what it's busy doing) for the phone's software to register the actual battery state once off of the charger. During that time, if you've used 2%, it looks like you've used 10%. Try watching to see the point where your LED turns green, and then report back - I'll bet you'll find this is all true.

Cell phones didn't used to be this way, but to avoid setting batteries on fire, they are now - and this is exactly how a laptop charging circuit works, fwiw.

As to the fast discharge - there are a few threads that will help you with that. Some big ones might be to off Mobile Data Always ON (that'll rob you especially if you're in a fringy area or moving between towers I believe), Background Data always on (few apps really, really need that) and Talk (Gtalk) might be best set to not auto-login as another example.

One of my compadres has moved you to our Support and Troubleshooting area (beat me to it ) and then I'll come back and edit this to add some links for you.

Bottom line - the stock settings are kinda sucky, really.

~~~~~

OK - here's your Tips and Tricks sticky post - look those links over, especially the Battery Tips.

http://androidforums.com/evo-4g-tip...icks-guide-updated-8-53pst-sept-9-2010-a.html

Here's the way to survive a factory reset with minimal grief, and some of the same tips and tricks mirrored -

http://androidforums.com/evo-4g-support-troubleshooting/141369-how-fix-froyo.html

~~~~~

The only intelligent thing I can offer on a memory card is weak:

Running apps will often use the memory card. If there's some issue accessing it, you might find some apps working harder to retry those accesses.

 

[dmcollins57]

I understand what you are saying but, lets say after a longer period, my battery would almost be dead if left unplugged over night with a full charge, that is with a hard reset and me downloading no apps off the android market and the sd card being formatted.
Before a few weeks ago i could use my phone for over a day before needing recharging and that was with it filled with apps and yahoo messenger running in the background.

 

[EarlyMon]

In that case, your logic seems rock solid to me - it was working, you changed nothing, it's degraded - hardware faults are a likely cause.

Might also be your battery, btw. Those do degrade over time depending on the number of charging cycles involved. They probably publish a spec for this for our battery (I've not seen it) but like all things, some are better than others.

If the memory card swap isn't cutting it, then I'd look at the battery. If the memory card swap did indeed fix it (that's my takeaway from reading your post too quickly, sorry, but doing this and a few other things at the same time) then that points at the memory card (which are also lifetime-limited by some number of write cycles, btw).

 

[ollasam]

I have had the same problem after replacing my LCD screen. When I disassembled the phone I damaged the sd card but it still worked ok so I forgot about it. The battery kept draining for no apparent reason. I called several phone 'Experts', bought a new battery etc. Finally, yesterday I removed the card and it has not lost any charge since! Now I will call all the 'Experts' and give them some advise!

Is there any reason why a sd card word drain the battery?

For the past couple of weeks I have had a serious battery drain issue. After fully charging my phone it would drop 10% in less than an hour and after like 4 hours of just sitting on standby it would be around 50%.
I read a round looking for some solutions and some said that maybe a corrupt file on the sd card is causing problems. I go and format the card; on my computer, from the phone, on my computer then again on my phone, and not one of those trials worked. I later did a hard reset, fully erasing everything on my phone, thinking maybe there was some app draining battery. I left the phone with stock settings and without installing any apps for a day and again the battery drain problem was there. (the sd card was formatted again when I did the hard reset).

Before finally throwing the phone against the wall I completely remove the sd card and behold the battery is finally holding. It has been a little over an hour sitting and the battery is still at 100%. I wanted to see if maybe there was something wrong with the phone so I pulled out an old 4gb card i had from an older phone and put it in my evo and still the battery life remains good.

So, my question is, can a memory card be damaged in some way that it can drain a battery like that? I have not had any read or write issues with the card at all so i don't know what could be wrong.