[classact]

[MOD: Feel free to move this if you think there's a more appropriate place for it. Please let me know if you do.]

I’ve been having severe battery drain issues with my Q10 out of the blue lately and one thing I want to eliminate as a possible cause is the charger I’m using. I already changed batteries and eliminated just about all other possible factors but the problem seems to actually be rapidly getting worse.

I keep the charger that came with the Q10 in my bag for on-the-road use if needed, and I rarely use it.

What I've been using all along as my everyday overnight charger for the Q10 is the BlackBerry branded charger that came with my previous BB, the Bold Touch 9930.

I seriously doubt that the chargers have anything to do with the battery drain issue but this is something I've wanted to know about anyway.

Here are the specs on the chargers I have and use. They’re all 0.5 volts but with different amperages.

- PlayBook charger:
- 0.5V, 1.8 Amp (1800 mA)

- Q10 charger:
- 0.5 V, 875 mA

- BB branded charger at office desk:
- 0.5 V, 750 mA

- Bold Touch 930 charger:
- 0.5 V, 700 mA

Is there any chance my having been using the 9930 charger on the Q10 has compromised its batteries?

What about when someone is visiting who has a device made by a different manufacturer and they want to use one of my chargers to charge it? If it’s got a micro USB port, can they use it without any concerns?

Someone once told me that as long as the "voltage" is correct to match the device, and as long as the amperage is at or below what is recommended for the given device, you’re fine. But I don’t if the amperage being lower than what the phone is supposed to have can in fact harm the batteries over time.

Thanks!

EDIT: Those should all say 5 V, not 0.5 V. And the Q10 charger is apparently 875 mA, not 850.

[anon(1852343)]

Sounds like a defective phone if you have tried a different battery. I use my playbook charger to charge my Q10 as it charges faster the the 750 or 850. I won't use the 750 on my Q. Only because it came with my 9780 and is outdated for the newer BlackBerry's imho


Q10 10.2.0.1725 thanks BL Team

[gloommerchant]

Posted via CB10

[anon(1852343)]

I don't have any issues using my 9900 charger for my Q10, it just takes longer to charge compared to my playbook charger, twice as slow to be exact but a full charge still lasts more than a day and I am a heavy user



Q10 10.2.0.1725 thanks BL Team

[peter9477]

There's two possibilities to consider in analyzing this. One is whether a difference in the charger used might somehow affect the nature of the drain after the charger is removed from the device, and the other is whether the charger might damage or otherwise affect the battery such that it no longer functions the same.

The first possibility, simply isn't. Once you remove the charger, the device and battery basically have no memory of what just happened. I've seen some people claiming things like if you charge with a rapid charger it won't hold the charge as well (or similarly inane things) but this just isn't how the world works. (The same people may claim that hot water freezes faster than cold, so we can safely discount their input here. ;-) )

As for battery damage... not likely with any non-defective charger. Lithium-polymer batteries are actually pretty robust, except to three main things which are worth considering. One is getting too hot. The other two are over- and under-charging. We can ignore under-charging for this discussion.

If a LiPo battery goes above some upper limit, sometimes quoted as 4.1V, other times 4.2V, but generally in that range, it's likely to become damaged and may even be destroyed in a fairly violent chemical reaction. This is actually so dangerous that there are (generally) multiple levels of safeguarding to prevent it, both within the battery itself and in the system (possibly including both the charger and the device). As the voltage of the battery increases during charging, the charging "system" will gradually decrease the current, effectively "levelling off" as it reaches what the system considers to be "full" charge. (That's a simplification of what really happens, but close enough.)

In all cases with a device like your Q10, it's actually the device itself which controls the charging, and not the charger. It has multiple sensors for temperature, including possibly one that is integral to the battery, and also monitors the charging current and the battery voltage. It has algorithms designed to cram the most charge it can into the battery, but always with an adequate safety margin.

The charger can be capable of sourcing twice as much power, or ten times as much, and this will have no effect on what the device does, because it will always limit the charging current to the level which it calculates to be required at a given moment. By the time the charge is around 80%, none of the chargers you've ever tried is actually behaving differently than any of the others, because in all cases at that level the charging current has been limited (by the device) to levels well below its maximum capacity.

In short, the answer is no, the charger used (provided it's non-defective) will not in almost any case ever "matter", if we're talking about either battery damage or the subsequent drain that you witness.

For drain problems, if the battery is not defective for some other reason, you need to look at the Q10 itself, and the environment its operating within. That can include apps you've installed, and the radio connections it establishes to things around it. For example, having a weak cellular tower signal will generally mean your phone has to transmit with greater power, and that drains the battery faster.

Likewise, using the phone in a company WiFi environment where possibly hundreds of other people are using their own devices may mean a huge increase in power consumed.

And there's always the mysterious background apps, or even just bugs in the OS, and lastly just inevitable and normal behaviour such as the device having to sync a whole lot of data (emails, contacts, etc) when it's first activated and set up with accounts. (That's probably the main reason people observe high drain with their new devices.)

To answer the specific points at the end of your post, yes, make sure the voltage is correct, but you'll probably find it's the same on all chargers with the same plug so if it can plug in properly, it's safe on that front. Amperage is irrelevant as noted above because it's the device which controls the charging current, and not the charger. As for having too low a current rating, that just means the battery will take longer to charge (or, potentially, just continue discharging though more slowly than before, if you try using it while it's charging). No damage will occur.

[classact]

Thanks you so much! With all the incorrect information out there on this topic (“the amperage needs to be equal or below”, “the amperage needs to be equal or above”…), it's nice to have input I know I can rely on. I'm sure others reading this feel the same way. Your being the dev who created Battery Guru gives me all the peace of mind I could want. You clearly know what you're talking about. (I am in close, frequent communications with an enterprise tech at BlackBerry in Waterloo who I have worked with on various issues since I got the Q10, from my learning it to resolving issues to my helping him with input for next-gen development, and he told me he uses Battery Guru himself on his phone.)

I notice that twice you hinted towards the possibility of a defective charger. I've been starting to wonder if that might be the cause of my problem. Two nights ago just for the check of it I changed over and began using the charger that came with the Q10, and oddly enough the next day at the end of the day I still had about 85% charge left. I'll be anxiously watching to see what it will be like at the end of the day for the next few days, now that I'm using this other charger. I'm thinking it may indeed have just been a matter of the charger having gone bad.

The BlackBerry tech who I have working with me also said, as you did, that the difference in amperage between the two chargers couldn't have been the cause of my drain problem, though he wasn't as well-versed as you on the finer details and simply pointed out that that wouldn't be the likely cause in light of the fact that that older 9930 charger worked perfectly fine for me on the Q10 for the four or five months that I've had the Q10 and the drain issue just began quite abruptly within the past two weeks.

I would like to please ask you two questions with respect to the possibility that the charger went bad:

1) If the charger did go bad, why would the phone have displayed a full battery like it did each morning after charging overnight?

2) If it was a bad charger that caused the issue, what are the odds that that hurt the life of the batteries a bit now that I’m using a different charger?

By the way, for what it's worth, forum members responding to another thread I started that's specific to my battery drain issue suggested a couple possibilities that the BlackBerry tech also felt were worth exploring if needed (before I changed chargers and made that my new primary suspect to isolate). A few people said that sometimes it seems that either a radio gets stuck in the "on" position or an email account gets stuck perpetually syncing. The first of the solutions suggested was to put the phone into Airplane mode for little while (thus turning off all radios and syncing) and then take it back out of Airplane mode. A few people said that worked like a charm for them. Failing that, the sequence to try would be: a backup and then restore from backup; then a backup, reset to defaults, and restore from backup; and then a backup, reset to defaults, and rebuild from there (updating the OS, installing apps, etc).

Thanks again!

[peter9477]

If a battery app shows that the OS reports about 100% after charging, and especially if you confirm that reading by checking the voltage and it's near the peak, around 4.25V or so (lets say, higher than 4.2V) then the charger is not defective, simple as that. A defective charger doesn't charge... if it's charging, then even if the charger were somehow damaged it's still charging and that means it's "working" as far as you're concerned.

I saw the other thread and skimmed the replies, and noted those Airplane mode and other ones. They were good suggestions so I didn't bother chiming in just to say "yep, what they said" but consider that done.

Airplane mode ON just means you're eliminating radios of any kind, and external traffic, as a source of trouble. If the problem goes away with that, and returns when you disable Airplane mode, then the issue relates to radios or data traffic (which is possible only with an enabled and functional radio).

Playing with that is basically just a tool for troubleshooting the issue, and "partitioning" the problem space.

As for the backup, it could go either way. Problems can be coupled to settings which get backed up and restored, and will return, or they may not be so coupled and the problem may go away. It's well worth doing.

My gut says you may simply have a defective device. This wouldn't be the first time... and the BB tech sounds quite capable of helping you identify and resolve that, maybe with an RMA.

Thanks for the note about him using Battery Guru. :-) Nice to hear!

[classact]

Thank you again.

I think part of the reasoning for putting it temporarily into Airplane mode is to have a way to control turning off the radio if it were in fact stuck in the perpetual on mode (and maybe also for interrupting a perpetual attempt by an email account to keep syncing continuously), with the idea being that when Airplane mode is turned back on the locked status of the radio or syncing wouldn't re-engage.

I do realize that of course a restore from backup might re-introduce an issue.

Well, since my theory about it having been a bad charger seems invalid (I don't know how to test the voltage -- do mean of the charger or of a battery?)...

You may be right about my needing to replace the phone. Unfortunately, I'm quite certain the fact that I got it from Verizon means the BB tech can't help me with an RMA. A replacement will have to come from Verizon. It would be a refurb (unless I can get a supervisor to override that for me).

Thanks again!

[peter9477]

An app like Battery Guru can show you the voltage of the battery.

Just let it charge fully, remove the charger, and the voltage displayed should be a pretty accurate measure (within a few millivolts).

These batteries are cycled between roughly 3.4V for the low (well above the point where they are damaged by "over-draining", so ignore anyone who says "omigod never discharge to 0%!") and 4.2V (for the PlayBook) or about 4.3V (BB10) for the maximum.

[classact]

I have now installed Battery Guru. Amazing app! It really shows pretty much everything that's going on with the battery including an ongoing history graph. Cool! (Seeing what it is that's draining it would be nice, too, but I assume that could quickly get into an incredibly complicated set of data.)

On waking and removing the Q10 from the original Q10 charger today, Battery Guru showed the battery at 100% with the voltage at 4.3V, exactly as you said it should/would.

Maybe in a few days I'll test it with the 9930 charger. I've been using the Q10 charger the past few days and so far it has not dropped below 50% by the end of the day, though it's also had minimal usage. It does seem a bit coincidental that the battery was consistently dropping into the red by the end of the evening for about ten days in a row and even died one evening -- right before I changed from the 9930 charger to the Q10 charger, at which point it has behaved fine although it's only been about three days so far.

[peter9477]

Seeing what it is that's draining it would be nice, too, but I assume that could quickly get into an incredibly complicated set of data.

Sadly, the issue is that BB10 makes it impossible to do that. :-( They're adding something in 10.2 in the system settings that will help with that though.

[classact]

Well, as the hopefully "final" outcome to my battery drain situation, a few weeks ago I tried going back to the original Q10 charger. I didn't do anything else (didn't try Airplane Mode, which was next on the list) because I wanted to go with a clear process of elimination. It turned out that right when I went back to the Q10 charger, the problem disappeared. However, that seems to have been pure coincidence since, for one thing, Battery Guru's dev guru is making it very clear here that the charger can't be the issue if it's charging, and for another, after a few days just to make sure I went back to the 9930 charger that I'd been using previously all along including when the issue existed and sure enough the issue has never returned.

Next time, I'll be trying Airplane Mode first thing -- if there is a next time. I'm sure it was something like a radio stuck on, or an account in non-stop sync mode. It apparently wasn't bad hardware since it came abruptly, persisted for a couple weeks, and then disappeared as abruptly as it came and has not occurred since for the past couple of weeks.