Random drop to 0% battery

[sudders]

Hi,

I've had my Galaxy for about a week now and all has been going well. I had some battry life problems at first, but manage to find that these were being caused by a dodge router at work. With WiFi switched off, I get around a 2%/hour drop in battery life normally.

However, today I found that my phone was very hot and had turned it self off. I couldn't turn it back on again until I had plugged it into a charger. Even then it wouldn't turn on until it had been plugged in for a couple of minutes. When I managed to get it back up and running and looked at the battery meter, it had dropped from 90% to zero instantly. I'd post a screen shot of the battery graph, but I havn't posted enough times yet.

Googling around, I found that the battery meter on these things isn't accurate after a restart, but I think in this case the drop is real because 1) The phone had gotten very hot. 2) It wouldn't start again until it had been plugged in for a while.

Does anyone have any ideas what might be causing this? It on the UK O2 network, running stock 4.0.3 from the network. WiFi and GPS were switched off.

 

[sudders]

Okay, I take some of that back. After pulling off the charger after it had chaged back to 50%, I've noticed that the charge is continuing to increase. SO perhaps the battery drain wasn't real.

Still doesn't change the fact that the phone got hot, went dead, and then wouldn't start again until it had been plugged in.

Also, if the charge reading is wrong, would it be possible to over chage the phone (if the battery was full, but the meter thought it was empty)?

 

[Slug]

The cause was most likely a misbehaving app or system process which stopped the CPU sleeping.

if the charge reading is wrong, would it be possible to over chage the phone (if the battery was full, but the meter thought it was empty)?

No, as the battery itself contains protective circuitry to prevent over-charging.

The "charge reading" is an estimate based on battery performance over time. A sudden unusual drop, as caused by a runaway process wake-locking the CPU, will confuse this and result in strange readings until a base performance has been reestablished.

 

[Deleted User]

I've had it before where I've plugged my phone in and left it for hours to find its battling against something and not actually charging! In fact iirc it may have been dropping when plugged in. Either way im now not sure if you were getting the same-in my case an email was Sat in the outbox!