yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] StevePritchard:
My O2 Exec seems to be behaving itself as far as crashing is concerned - it lasted about 8 hours before giving up the ghost on the replacement non-OEM battery, which I would imagine is about par for the course, my problem is that it doesn'tseem to be able to read the %, and is stuck at 100%.

The supplier is sending a replacement in a hope that it's a problem with this particular battery, rather than the fact it's non-OEM.

I think you were lucky to get a replacement Exec for what does seem like a battery issue.

Cheers,

Steve.
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] :
O2 XDA Exec crashes under load at battery 95%

About a month ago my EXEC started seemingly randomly powering off whilst using the Wi-Fi connection.

Recently matters have got worse and even though the battery show 95% I find that if I

a) use the WiFi for more than a minute or so

b) Receive or make a long telephone call

c) Switchon on the 3 radios i.e. wifi, bluetooth and phone concurrently

The XDA will just power off.

Powering it on is not so simple. In practice I have to be mains connected otherwise during the poweron, after after the O2 logo disappears it never completes the boot process, but just powers off during the middle of it.

THE ANSWER

seems (from this forum) to buy a new battery.

This expansys part exactly matches the serial number of my battery.

http://www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=126526

(I would hate to recommend exPansys in view of their restrictive and some would say grossly misleading policy about credit card shipments, but that is another story, they are a good reference for part numbers).

02 RETURNS COMMENTS

Since I now reside in Switzerland and my phone is a UK O2 phone I would also say that I had a frustrating converstation with O2 customer support and Returns. In summary O2 UK returns is outsourced. They are unable to post your phone back to anything other than the UK contract address, and do not guarantee to send it out secure post, even though they ask you to send it to them in that fashion! They told me that the unit was covered by a 1 year warranty but that they were unsure if that covered the battery.

If I get the new battery and should this fix the problem I will update this post of course.

Kind regards, marcus b
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] coolbeans252:
i've had an o2 xda exec for just over 8 months and had these instances of my exec blacking out before the battery reached 30% on 3 occasions, and each time i've left it for overnight charging for a couple of nights and it did the trick
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] StevePritchard:
My Exec used to be on charge most of the time - perhaps that was the problem, but during the course of a normal day, it would only spend, say, 2 hours uncharged - most of the time it was hooked up to a PC, or powered in the car.

Replacement battery seems to have done the trick - I'd just repeat, that making it completely flat, and recharging it just seemed to make it worse, rather than help the problem.

Cheers,

Steve.
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] cmonex:
hm.. strange problem. i think everyone should post the details on how the rom upgrade was performed before the battery started to give problems... maybe the problem has to do with that it charges during the upgrade too via usb? i read about problems with usb charging, could it kill the battery? ... or uncalibrate it during the upgrade. or the way the users discharge it directly after the upgrade, i.e. fully or not fully discharging it? then it may have not calibrated properly? then proper way to do the upgrade would be with a fully charged battery and/or fully discharge it after the rom upgrade.

i got my qtek 9000 almost a week ago :) did the rom upgrade (it had the original factory installed one), with a 96% charged battery. it was 100% when it finished (but not fully charged). i paid attention to charge it before the upgrade as i was warned it would be safer that way. never any problems with it since then. but i didn't fully discharge it directly after the rom upgrade, only to 44% or similar. i had the chance to discharge it below 10% since then, no problems.
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] StevePritchard:
To be honest, I think the ROM upgrade thing might be a red herring, unless the act of upgrading does something to the battery.

My original battery just doesn't hold its charge, and dies at a high percentage, I have a non-OEM 1600mAh battery that works fine, and have had 2 1750mAh that both report that they are constantly full at 100% until they run out.

The % full is obviously reported/controlled by the battery, so it's not a great leap to think that a battery reaching the end of its life could well report it's ok, but in reality not be able to supply enough juice to keep the device going.

Cheers,

Steve.
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] cmonex:
well i just guessed it could be that the universal tries to remember the calibration settings, and the upgrade could change that. but i may be wrong easily :)

are your 1750's holding their charge OK?
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] StevePritchard:
Yep, the 1750's hold their charge fine, just report themselves as full all the time though.

Cheers,

Steve.
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] cmonex:
hmm ok i got a spare battery. my original battery works and discharges fine to below 10%. this one is a little strange. it's an aftermarket battery but with the same 1620 mAh capacity. first it stayed at 100% for almost 10 minutes while doing wifi :) after one and a half hour, still 82% :roll: and the machine switched off at 39%. :wink: i recharged it and now it went down to 96% in 5 mins, without doing much on it.

something with the battery meter in the universal is not perfect :P

it is NOT the battery that controls the reported charge %. actually, it is never the battery. just imagine it, you put the battery in the device and it (battery) mysteriously tells you its charge level?! nope. the device has to sense it and then it (device) tells you. sad that this can happen. hope the original battery will still be ok.. i'll know soon.
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] StevePritchard:
I don't pretend to know what the mechanism is that the Universal (or anything else) uses to determine the % battery, but all I know is that my 2 1750mAh batteries both constantly report 100% - so there is some sort of issue in that the Universal can't read them properly.

Cheers,

Steve.
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] cmonex:
yup, we agree on that..
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] sundaymorninstaple:
I am not sure it is a battery issue at all, I just got mine back (a Dopod 900 version) here in Singapore. So far it seems to be narrowing to a manufacturing fault with a co-axial cable that is not up to spec. See these threads for alternative views on what seems to be a world-wide manufacturing goof-up.

http://www.ppcsg.com/index.php?showtopic=80272

http://www.ppcsg.com/index.php?showtopic=80652

Hope these help.

sms
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] StevePritchard:
Maybe I missed something amongst the general complaints about SIS (whoever they are), but I didn't see any specific evidence that it isn't battery related.

The evidence I've seen is:

Original Battery - has shutdown problem, short life, getting progressively worse

New non-OEM 1620mAh battery - no observed problem

3 x 1750mAh batteries - long life, but report 100% all the time

This implies to me that any specific battery can get the Universal to report a particular % regardless of that actual state of the charge or condition of the battery. If the problem were a hardware fault, then why would putting a different battery into the device give a different result? The behaviours are visible and predictable based upon which battery is inserted - surely, that points to a problem with the battery, not the device?

If I had a problem with my PCs monitor keep switching off, and I purchased another monitor, and it worked but was on full brightness constantly, and I bought another monitor, and that worked fine - I would think that I had two faulty monitors, and one good one. I don't see how this substitution and observation cycle with the batteries is any different, and would lead me to any other conclusion.

Cheers,

Steve.

Cheers,

Steve.
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] cmonex:
well, staying with your monitor example, i'd think the pc has the problem, there are just too many of the "bad" monitors. same for the batteries here.

im even more convinced as i've got new results since my last post here.

as you know, my original battery works fine, charge level is reported perfectly (my qtek9000 is about half a year old and i have performed an OS upgrade on it recently, it was untouched before), and the spare non OEM aftermarket battery isnt getting reported properly.

when it crashed i measured its voltage and it was down to 3.34 volts. charged it up in its own external charger, when it got fully charged i got 4.13 volts. so these numbers are OK. just the calibration is off, and that cant be the battery's fault IMO.

you (you all) could do the same, measure your battery voltages when the unit shuts off. when the universal shuts off the voltage should be under 3.40 volts (and fully charged over 4.10 volts).. curious about the results.

ok so the new results is that first time it crashed at a false 39% ,then after fully charging it it crashed at 22%. improving! :) (of course it lasts as long as the original battery).

and what i almost forgot to tell! when after the first discharge (39%) i went to recharge battery, i forgot that i wanted to recharge it externally and left it in the universal. next day after i got up the led was already green, i unplugged charger and as i said above, battery went down to 96% within 5 mins. well.... it got fully discharged after half an hour! but the measured voltage was 3.34. after again recharging but this time in the external charger, everything went ok (until 22%). maybe the universal can't evne charge this battery properly while it can the original. it just thinks that as soon as the battery reaches 4.10+ volts its fully charged. but its not! it still needs a topping charge. well of course it wouldnt explain why the original batt will charge up OK.

very interesting. and the second batt is good, it charges up fine in the ext charger, and lasts several days just fine.

so i think the universal doesnt have a perfect battery implementation...

in this case (when it didnt fully charge a battery) the green charge led even didnt change to blank when i unplugged the universal!!! (i was quite freaked out) a soft reset fixed it.. what do you say of this? :roll:
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] sundaymorninstaple:
Hi Steve,

Not discounting your theories a bit. It's just that we here in Singapore have also had our share of problems with the sister units released by Dopod.

My Dopod started experiencing the battery shutdown at 75% about 10 days ago. It started overnight! When it shut down it was after about 1.5 hrs of continuous use (MP3 & games simultaneously while riding the bus to work) Did this for 3 trips before I started searching forums. The chronicle is found on the PPCSG forum to which I linked earlier. When my problem started I was using a stock, untampered with and non-upgraded/flashed ROM. I was advised by Dopod to flash the ROM with the latest, which I did and got absolutely nothing gained or lost (next 2 trips managed the same 1.5 hrs and 67-73% before shutdown.)

Now, after the cable replacement, using the absolutely same battery without doing anyof the things as some have recommended in this thread to eliminate 'memory' I am now back to getting in this mornings test, 4.5 hours non-stop usage: details here:

http://www.ppcsg.com/index.php?showtopic=80652&view=findpost&p=554656

so, it looks like maybe there are several issues with this unit? I believe the co-axial cable is not up to spec and has an overload problem which causes degradation until it reaches a certain temp then shuts down the system. If I am correct, then it is a design fault and if the replacement coax's are the same then we are looking at a repeat around 5 to 6 months down the road. It seems that these problems are all cropping up around the same duration of time 5-7 months.

(SiS is the authorized service centre for Dopod in Singpapore - and just about clueless)

sms
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] StevePritchard:
I can agree that it's possibly a poor implementation within the Universal that's bringing the batteries "down", however, as has been pointed out, the batteries do have a limited life span of 300-500 charges, and it's not inconceivable that many people are reaching those with the vintage of the Universal being what it is.

I agree, it could be the way that the batteries are being charged that could be playing a part, and so behaviour on externally charged batteries could be an interesting observation to throw into the mix.

If I find I have the time to monitor the problem at some point, then I'll try measuring the voltage on the batteries, and see if any conclusion can be drawn. I don't know how the Universal calculates the % remaining, whether it's a voltage measurement, or something else - I don't know enough about batteries to make a guess.

Cheers,

Steve.
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] StevePritchard:
ok, that's an interesting observation - if they replaced the cable and that made the difference, then I have two questions (I'd just like to point out that I'm not questioning your results, just trying to understand the issues):

1. Can you be sure they didn't replace the battery at the same time?

2. If the problem is the coax, then why does the problem follow the battery around - you would expect a new battery to heat up the coax in just the same way, and cause the early shutdown, wouldn't you?

Cheers,

Steve.
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] sundaymorninstaple:
As to your first question, yes I am sure unless they can forge my signature written in indelible marker on the battery.

The second question is something that I can only speculate on. My thoughts are that given the senario you present then it should have happened when I first bought the unit then shouldn't it? Not wait 6 months (bought 9 Jan 06).

My theory is this: as the coax is not up to spec it is subject to overloading. Wiring, once overloaded/overheated loses some of its various properties (like tool steel if over heated during sharpening - if it's not quenched properly there is a chrystalline change in the properties of the steel. If my theory is correct, then eventually after the coax heats up over a protracted length of time it breaks down and reaches a certain temperature that causes the system to autoshutdown in a protective measure. I haven't actually seen the makeup of the coax cable but for flexibility I would assume it would be very fine multistrand rather than a single solid wire. Again if I am right, when it finally loses enough of it properties, a wire will possibly break. This will tend to put more load on the remaining wires thereby shorting the time before shutdown. As the properties of the coax degrade further by continued usage the time before the cable heats up to that point is shorter up to a point that it is no longer viable to use.

With a new cable, if its the same spec cable, I anticipate the same thing happening in 5-6 months. I had a long discussion with the engineer regarding this and they have notified Dopod/HTC with my suspicions.

Oh yes, another user who just got his back here in Singapore today put his through the same paces and also got the same results - he took his all the way down to autoshutdown at 2% (I actually plugged into my usb on the office PC at between 4~5%).

Most of the people who have bought new batteries seem to have the same problem from what I've read on these threads.

Anyway, the engineer told me that she would let me know what HTC/Dopod arrives at in their investigations (Dopod Asia was recently bought by HTC itself.) Should they actually get back to me I post my results here for everybodies info.

Rgds,

sms
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] cmonex:
hi, i'm curious to hear about your results with the voltages!

and i'll tell about the externally charged batteries :)
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] galt:
Thanks for the links to the other forum threads and your efforts to chase this down, SMS. It's really good to see that someone has the ability, dedication and knowledge to really pursue this. It's a shame that HTC-owned Dopod has been so unwilling to do their duty and support their *high-end* devices. It's starting to frustrate me that we've purchased the most expensive (?) windows mobile device on the market and have to deal with incompetent distribution companies like i-mate (and apparently Dopod) when technical service is needed.

This leads me to wonder, with HTC starting to roll out an HTC brand, will they also make efforts to offer "real" technical support on their devices?
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] cmonex:
hey sms,

i've read the threads you linked... pretty depressing...

looks like there are two different problems with the battery & universal.

the milder problem is the false reading the universal gives about certain batteries (or about the same battery after a rom upgrade, etc.). in this case the battery still lasts for the same amount of time. for example when my second battery crashed at 22%, my universal was running for over 4 hours and for three days! i used it alot with wifi, with 3G, whatnot.

the more serious problem is when the battery not only crashes at a high charge, but it doesn't last for long either... hope it is not a design flaw... there are sure many people who have had problems, but many have the milder one. maybe the second (serious) problem is not so common.. we need to find out about how frequently this happens.

may i ask what this coax cable is? what is its role normally, what is it for?

hope the engineer girl can get back to you soon. and with good news. fingers crossed.

cmonex :)
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] sundaymorninstaple:
Hi cmonex,

The co-axial cable is extremely important as it is the connection between the main motherboard and the subboard in the lid containing the screen. If you have spend an hour on the universal and felt the lid you know that a considerable amount of heat is being generated there. Whether this is supposed to be or is a result of the overload on the cable is anybody's guess until and if Dopod/HTC gets back to the engineer here. As it is the connection between the two halves of the unit that is the reason I assume that it would use multistrand wire in the cable rather than a single wire for flexibility.

Anyway, I shall monitor mine and should she give me an update I will inform all.

sms
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] cmonex:
oh, thanks for the explanation! what i still dont get is what this has to do with the battery. any further details please? :)

also, i never felt it hot there on my universal.. but i'll try to check this next time after 1 hr of doing 3G :D

btw, such connections between two halves of a clamshell usually use sturdy wires (if i understand you properly then not multistrand), but i never opened up a universal... :) just know about older clamshell ce stuff...

edit: ok i think i understand now at least partially... you mean that if the connection to the screen is not good, it will greatly depend on battery charge level if it can be established or not? in this case the screen will of course not be able to remain turned on. i've met such cases before on clamshell things... but i don't know what you mean by subboard in the screen.. any other stuff in there? then i'd understand completely (complete shutdown and not just screen).
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] sundaymorninstaple:
cmonex,

I am not an engineer so do not want to void what guarantee there is :( on the unit, therefore I haven't opened it up.

Regarding the co-ax cable. Most clamshells use a flat wiring harness of a sort. I don't think this is practicle in the case of the universal. Don't forget, it both opens up to 180° and swivels 180° on two different axis'. The normal flat wiring harness as is used in notebooks I doubt would be practical. How long do you think a single wire would last if constantly bend back on itself and twisted half turn at the same time would last?

Okay, the heat generation thingy. I would thinks the unit has a autoshutdown sensor built into the unit and if any component reaches a certain temperature (just to prevent fires or melting of components if necessary) the shutdown procedure would initiate. This would be something like using a halon fire extinguisher that is set off once the temperature in a room reaches a certain point. Automatic, without human intervention. Purely a protective thing.

There seems to be another issue with batteries re: indicators, memories and other stuff that doesn't seem to be affecting the Dopod units over here except where they are accusing the batteries of being the culprit in what I'm talking about now.

I don't think the battery has anything to do with it at all (at least this particular problem that I'm referring to). The charge remaining in the battery is just indicative of the advanced degradation of the co-ax cable. If it is in fact breaking fine wires when overheating/overloading of power (due to a manufacturing fault of the cable) as the wires still good try to deliver the power sufficient to power the screen it just causes the remaining wires to overheat that much faster hence it appears the battery is dying at a higher percentage when in fact (as the test with my battery seems to suggest) there is absolutely nothing wrong with the battery at all. It just the wire overheating faster and starting the shutdown mechanism due to overheating and not a bad battery. This would also tend to support the fact that once the unit has shutdown if it is left to cool off, the longer it cools off the longer it will run again once it has rebooted. However, if trying to reboot immediately after shutdown, no go.

One last thing, it seems that a lot of people are trying to blame the ROM upgrade for the troubles. On the Dopod Units some have the problem with and like myself exactly the same symptons but without any upgrades at all. Again, there may be issues with the batteries being used by other vendors and the ROM upgrades. I don't know if all the batteries are interchangable or the same across all versions of the universal.

Again, please let me stress, this is all pure speculation on my part based on limited knowledge and several lengthy conversations with the technician in Singapore. Once I learn more (if I learn more) I'll let all know what I've found out.

sms
[JASJAR, XDA Exec, MDA Pro General] cmonex:
thanks for the explanation. :) you're right about me having no experience with units with swivel screens (well i have used other such pda's, but haven't seen them opened up)

just a question, if the unit shuts off due to this overheating, how can you turn it on again? i read the threads a couple of days ago and am getting senile but wasn't it something like that you can put it on the charger and it will be able to run again?