[RAZR i Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] bengtan:
Hi all,

I have weird battery issue with my Razr i xt890 and I'd like some help. I have tried googling for information, but there's too much noise and I can't find anything suitable.

I'm asking on this site because I know the people on here are really knowledgeable.

My Razr i (with Jelly Bean) seems to have erratic battery readings. Sometimes it'll drop to 6%, and then go up to 90%, and jump around to points in between. I have even seen it drop to 1% and then go up to 6% (or something like that).

Needless to say, this makes the phone unusable because I don't know when it's on low battery so I can charge it. Furthermore, twice, it has reported low battery and then automatically shut itself down.

I hope someone can help with this, because I'm really stuck. I bought this phone overseas, and I don't really want to send it back overseas for warranty repairs.

So, some history.

Before the issue:

This is a stock Razr i, running Retail GB software. When I bought it, it was running 81.5.31002.Retail.en.GB 4.0.4. I upgraded to 81.5.39001.Retail.en.GB 4.0.4 and it's been running fine until this issue happened. I normally get about 4.5-5.5 days of battery before I recharge the phone.

This is stock software. No root. No bootloader unlock. No custom roms.

The issue:

I charged up my phone yesterday, and unplugged it from the charger at 100% battery. There was a notification that 91.2.29001.Retail.en.GB 4.1.2 was available. I selected 'Later' because I was busy at the time.

A bit later (maybe about an hour?), I went back to the phone and checked for updates, and selected to download the update. After it was downloaded, I noticed the battery was about 95%, and then I proceeded to install.

I figured 95% power should be sufficient to perform an upgrade.

The install took, maybe 10-15 minutes? At first glance, it seemed successful, but when the phone started up again, the battery reading was at 100%.

I distinctly remember thinking 'This is impossible. There's no way it could be 95% before the install, and 100% afterwards'.

I played around with the phone a bit (to try out Jelly Bean), and after a few minutes, the battery reading dropped to 60% or something.

That's when I knew something was wrong.

Since then, the phone battery reading has been erratic. If I plug it into a charger, it takes a few minutes and then shoots up to 100%. Unplug it, and it drops to a low level within minutes, and then goes up and down like a yo-yo. Twice, the phone went to a very low level, and then shut itself off.

I've tried various charging/unplugging cycles, and nothing has worked yet (Although I didn't have the patience to try an 8-hour charging cycle yet).

Please see the attached images to see what I mean.

The graphs are just bizarre.

I also did a factory reset (from the Privacy menu rather than 'recovery') but that didn't help.

At the moment, I haven't tried to root the phone or unlock the bootloader. I am still keeping the option of warranty open.

I can't think of a reason why this is happening. It doesn't seem to be a simple calibration or battery stats issue. I think the battery is working okay (because it was fine before the upgrade), just that the readings are wrong.

The phone is operating okay in all other respects. If I ignore the battery readings and the 'low battery' alerts, the phone continues to work ... except when it shuts itself down.

Another theory could be that ... because I upgraded without plugging the phone in, perhaps there was insufficient power during the upgrade and caused some corruption, and I have a faulty software/firmware? Not sure how I could test that though.

Any ideas, any one? Please?