Battery: not charging to Full

[periwinklemoon]

I noticed this the other day and thought it was a fluke. I had left my phone on overnight (USB) and charge was at 98% after 11 hours or so.

This morning about 5 a.m. it was at 97%, so I left it on a bit longer. Just checked and 2 hours later, still on USB charge with no use it's dropped to 96%.

What's up with that?

This battery hasn't remotely been pushed. Very light use the last week, moderate since purchase. Could it be my USB? I read the wall charger can be hard on these batteries, but I've only used the wall charger once (though I will have to use it when I travel). And I calibrated it once, full drain and recharge, per Apple do that once a month.

[joe_fresh]

i dunno, i use the wall charger myself. Have you tried just giving it a hard reset by holing the home and power button? i noticed mine was acting a little funny the other day so when i reset it power jumped up a couple of percent

[periwinklemoon]

Thanks, I'll try that. It's now 2 hours later, still on USB charger, still dropping. It's down to 94%. So it's dropping 1% per hour. Either my battery meter is wonky, it's the USB charge, or I have a bad battery?

Taking it off the charger now and will do the reset, since it's dropping anyway.

[joe_fresh]

hmm, i know on my work computer it has a usb port that has a little lightning bolt on it, seems to charge faster on that port. i dont charge on my laptop at home because i would have to leave it on and well the lights are quite bright on this thing.

[periwinklemoon]

I think I'm going to try the wall charger for the next charge. (I think it's mentioned in the battery life thread here that wall charging can overheat the battery, too much juice too fast or something along those lines...?) Now I'm beginning to wonder about that. I travel back home to the country a lot, and don't take my laptop (nice to get away from technology and get back to basics & outdoors, don't even watch TV, it only gets 1 channel anyway ) Use the wall charger there, up to two weeks at a time. I always noticed a faster battery drain on any BB model I had there. Thought it was the phone searching for the tower, it's a very rural, hilly area. As soon as I got back to civilization, the BB battery was always fine again, held a charge a good long time.

It's odd though, have used this same USB for BBs, no issue. I put my Bold on there to test the USB, that battery is down to near dead anyway.

[joe_fresh]

One thing i have noticed is charging from the usb port i have a faster drain in my battery

[periwinklemoon]

I'll compare drain time tomorrow too, after charging tonight on the wall. Thank you.

I have a head cold & therefore a foggy brain. I had 5 apps running while charging. (Spaced and forgot to shut them all off last night when I put it on the charger.) Phone, messages, calendar, facebook and mail. It doesn't make sense to me, since it charged from upper 30% range to high 90%, but could those apps running actually drain the battery while it's on a USB charger?

[joe_fresh]

how do you shut apps down peri? still learning this device

[periwinklemoon]

1. With screen unlocked, give the round "Home" button two quick short taps.
2. The main home screen will raise up a bit and fade.
3. At the bottom will be a gray background bar & you'll see a row of icons for any apps open and running.
4. Pick an icon in that row, press and hold for a second till it starts to wiggle. All icons will be wiggling. This also causes a red "-" (minus sign) to appear in upper left corner of each app icon.
5. Tap the red "-" (minus) to close the app.
6. If you only want to close some, but not all, when you're done closing out the ones you want, give the home button a single tap. That makes any remaining icon(s) stop wiggling, red minus sign disappears, & remaining app(s) continue running in background.

HTH

[periwinklemoon]

Huh. I put my Bold on USB charger 4 hours ago. It's at 100% now. So it must be the i4s battery and not USB charger.

[periwinklemoon]

Well, I put my i4S on the wall charger maybe 90 minutes ago. It was at 38% and dropping fast because a new app (since uninstalled) kept pinging GPS. Anyway, on a wall charge it did charge fully to 100%. So it must be my PC USB and this device, since same USB charges BB just fine.

At least the battery isn't jacked up.

[FigureThisOut]

When you charge it overnight and it hits its full charge, it stops charging even if it is still
plugged in. This is to prevent an overcharge. So if you plug it in at 10pm and it gets a
full charge by 12am, it's not actually charging anymore. So if you wake up at 7am, it's
normal to be at 98%