Why would a cellphone dump half its charge

[Teddy Lop]

Looked at my phone, suprsied to see charge so low, so looked at battery usage and its "dumped" half its charge over a space of a few minutes!



nothing could have used this power - it's a 6Ah battery and would have burnt a hole in me - what's going on?

Phone is a Doogee s60 FWIW.

[S6PNJ]

Sorry can't help, but interested to follow. My phone will sometimes dump lots of its charge overnight, even though the phone was powered down using the Android feature of shutdown and startup. My phone might be in the 90s or higher at night (I charge in the evening), it switches itself off at 11pm and back on at 7am and the first thing I hear is a low battery 'beep' telling me I am below 15%.

One similar aspect is mine is also a Doogee - an X5 pro. Coincidence or due to the hardware?

[number2]

My Samsung S6+ does it sporadically. The software doesn't indicate what's doing it either. I put it down to age - it's over 3 years old.

Sometimes though, if I restart it, the battery % jumps back up significantly so perhaps it's a software error sometimes too...

[jesusbuiltmycar]

Possibly a bug in the battery level monitoring software whereby it was showing an incorrect high value initially then started showig the correct value?

[dundarach]

Can't believe we've had three replies and not one pointed out that it must be something to do with dodgy american wiring...

Mobile Phones in this Country old boy.

WiFi running away
App playing in the background, audiobook \ music
Are you recording audio \ video
Game running

[ging84]

Was the phone outside? Or had recently bought it in from the cold? Changes in temperature can mess with batteries, sometimes doing permanent damage

[cobra kid]

Not sure, but my "mobile" phone has never done that either.

[227bhp]

Maybe Lop is a Meercan.
My Samsung does this occasionally and constantly for a few days, it'll flatten itself on standby overnight. I've always put it down to it doing an update, especially last time when it restarted itself too.

[2Btoo]

jesusbuiltmycar said:

Possibly a bug in the battery level monitoring software whereby it was showing an incorrect high value initially then started showig the correct value?

I'd suspect this too. The charge is not varying much, just that the measurement of it is.

Try another battery measurement app (presuming that the bug is in the app rather than the OS).

[Spoonz_]

My 6 month old Samsung S8 had a similar issue. Charge would reach around 30% and the phone would die. Upon charging it up and viewing the battery monitoring app, the graph would look similar to yours. At first I was told it was a software issue and my device was reflashed with new software. I ran it for a week with no apps and I was still having the same issue.

In the end it was put down to being a dodgy battery and was replaced under warranty. Along with aerials and a whole lot of other stuff interestingly.

[Teddy Lop]

Not been outside, was indoors at the time

Spoonz_ said:

My 6 month old Samsung S8 had a similar issue. Charge would reach around 30% and the phone would die. Upon charging it up and viewing the battery monitoring app, the graph would look similar to yours. At first I was told it was a software issue and my device was reflashed with new software. I ran it for a week with no apps and I was still having the same issue.

In the end it was put down to being a dodgy battery and was replaced under warranty. Along with aerials and a whole lot of other stuff interestingly.

Wow you got samsung to honour a warranty

[WyrleyD]

Spoonz_ said:

My 6 month old Samsung S8 had a similar issue. Charge would reach around 30% and the phone would die. Upon charging it up and viewing the battery monitoring app, the graph would look similar to yours. At first I was told it was a software issue and my device was reflashed with new software. I ran it for a week with no apps and I was still having the same issue.

In the end it was put down to being a dodgy battery and was replaced under warranty. Along with aerials and a whole lot of other stuff interestingly.

This happened frequently with my S6 Edge which made it useless when I was out and about (30% then nothing as soon as I loaded an app) in the end I sold it back to Samsung for £90 and bought an iPhone Xr which I swore I would never do!!

[Hazuki]

Do you have a phone case with a magnet in it by any chance?

[FourWheelDrift]

jesusbuiltmycar said:

Possibly a bug in the battery level monitoring software whereby it was showing an incorrect high value initially then started showig the correct value?

Yep, this can happen if you don't use the original charging cable, it gets it's battery level messed up. Usually find you phone turning off at 20% with no power but could sort it self out suddenly.

Or, SD card installed? Could have suffered a, SD card loop where it constantly tries to connect to the SD card without success, phone gets hot battery used up.

[Teddy Lop]

FourWheelDrift said:

Yep, this can happen if you don't use the original charging cable, it gets it's battery level messed up. Usually find you phone turning off at 20% with no power but could sort it self out suddenly.

Or, SD card installed? Could have suffered a, SD card loop where it constantly tries to connect to the SD card without success, phone gets hot battery used up.

too much power loss in too little time to be an actual true loss I think.

No magnets near it

I know batteries reported charge levels can get iffy in as they discharge towards the bottom end but this went from 85% to 35%.

Restart didn't revive the "lost" power.

Prob just buggy software. Doogee isn't the last word in refinement. Hasn't happened since.

[Spoonz_]

Teddy Lop said:

Not been outside, was indoors at the time

Spoonz_ said:

My 6 month old Samsung S8 had a similar issue. Charge would reach around 30% and the phone would die. Upon charging it up and viewing the battery monitoring app, the graph would look similar to yours. At first I was told it was a software issue and my device was reflashed with new software. I ran it for a week with no apps and I was still having the same issue.

In the end it was put down to being a dodgy battery and was replaced under warranty. Along with aerials and a whole lot of other stuff interestingly.

Wow you got samsung to honour a warranty

It was a challenge! I took a previous phone in with a completely different fault and the process seems to be the same. They deny there is any issue with the hardware, perform a software flash and send you on your merry way. You return a few days later having had the exact same issue and they actually sort it out. Whilst sitting there waiting my turn, it seems the majority of other people had been subjected to the same process.

[Teddy Lop]

Battery usage is making no sense whatsoever.

First pic shows it zigzagging up and down - phone was off charge and not in use at the time.

Second pic is 3 hours after full charge. First it should have used less than 10%, second it seems to think it's been 9 hours, third it's measured usage per app adds to 4% which is a tenth of the loss.

It can't be as simple as a failing battery with dodgy readout as it still takes forever to charge so the power is going in and going somewhere!?!