yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] Telek:
If you use really fine gauge wire (like 24 or 28) you should be able to wrap the wire around the battery tabs in the phone pretty tightly without any risk of shorting to the next tab.

We also shouldn't be assuming that HTC uses a voltage at all - they could be going strictly off of % remaining as reported by the battery (like laptops do).

As soon as the load is removed the voltage will jump significantly. Even testing it within a second of removing it will give you a very different voltage than it was at when it decided to turn off. We really need to be monitoring the voltage while the phone is running to know at what point it decides to turn off, but as I mentioned that may not really tell us anything since it may not be a voltage cutoff at all. It'll give us a good enough point though that we can do consistent testing on the battery rig.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] anit77:
I have some battery tabs I'm going to cut up into thin strips. My problem is the multimeter I have just has pointers... If the tabs fit I'll solder leads to them then I can wrap the leads around the pointers.

I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to let the battery run down though. My cable is out here and I'm tethering now, so it's charging...

Edit: I forgot I could change the charge settings. :o

I should have numbers tonight :D
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] Telek:
Better make sure you're on the latest ROM then if you're tethering ;)
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] anit77:
Yup, using aruppenthal's beta2.:cool:

Eagerly awaiting beta3. :)
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] d0ugie:
All right, got three out of four resistors in the mail, 5, 10 and 15 ohm with a 20 on the way -- along with hopefully the cheap charger and the flowmeter.

I was thinking, if the amp drain goes down as the ohm number goes up, were I to add a second resistor to the circuit, for instance two 10 ohm resistors right next to each other, would the two resistors combined behave as a 5 ohm or a 20 or something else? Afraid even the 20 ohm will be too heavy on the batteries to yield fair results but don't want to spend more money ...
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] Telek:
Running resistors in series will increase the overall resistance (simple addition) and decrease the overall current being drawn by the circuit.

Running resistors in parallel will decrease the overall resistance (R1*R2/R1+R2) and increase the current drawn by the circuit.

So for example 2x10ohm in parallel will give 100/20 or 5 ohm resistance. The 5 and the 10 will give 3.333ohm, the 10 and the 15 will give 6 ohm, etc.

With 4 different resistors you can create dozens of different resistance combinations.

As it stands the 20 ohm resistor will draw between 175-200mA and take about 8 hours to discharge. That is perfectly fine and I don't think qualifies as too heavy. Even the 10 ohm will be fine. By running the tests with the 5, 10, 15 and 20 ohm resistors you will be able to get a very good idea of the increase in mAh with decrease in load and extrapolate what different loads will offer.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] anit77:
It cutoff at 3.52 on my multimeter and went up to 3.53 and stayed there. I restarted and it cutoff at 3.49 and after rebounded to 3.52 and stayed there, not till after removing the cell did it go higher. Based on the margin of error of the meter 3.5 is within a reasonable range.

It was interesting watching the voltage react to different loads. Of all the different things I tried Google maps put the most drain on the cell. It would drop .05 a volt using it. With opera the load would bounce back and forth based on downloading or not.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] d0ugie:
Yay I got the flowmeter. But still no battery charger thing to wire this up.

Hmm.

I wish Macgyver were here, I want to fire this sucker up. Argh.

Now I have to sit through (Jon and) Kate+8 and some pre-finale interview with a Kate sympathizer in exchange for dinner so I'm extra frustrated. C'mon ebay, deliver.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] d0ugie:
Game on.

Hey now. Got the final piece, the charger to help me complete circuits. So I've got that, the Flowmeter and four resistors, 5, 10, 15 and 20 ohms on top of course of the OEM battery and the third party battery I bought which puts me in business for this operation.

A little tired to get this rolling tonight but will advise when I have results or questions.

Doug
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] d0ugie:
Good or bad?

Before I clip off the tips of the ends of the wires of the flowmeter, in the interests of doing this right and not shorting the battery, could one of you please confirm that this is more or less how I want to wire this thing up? The rest of the procedure has been covered, just need help or affirmation about the wiring. Can't see it on the picture but on the flowmeter it has Connect to battery on the left and Connect to charger on the right. I don't know if that makes any difference but I'm guessing that I want the battery side to go to the battery and the charger to the resistor. Also guessing that I want the pair of wires on that side to go to either prong of the battery charger (guessing polarity doesn't matter, red or black) and on the charger side the pair going to either end of the resistor. Like this:

Shall I proceed?

And have we agreed on voltages yet or do I need to test that too?

Doug
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] Telek:
Ok for the flowmeter "charger side" is the source of the power - "battery side" is the drain of the power. So for our tests you want the "charger side" to be the battery, and the "battery side" to be the resistor.

Second polarity absolutely matters. You need to take apart the battery charger and gut the insides - all you want to keep is the top half of the charger (the plastic) with the 2 battery prongs. Make sure that any circuit board or circutry inside the charger has been removed. You'll then need to determine which is +ve and which is -ve and attach the red to +ve and black to -ve. Reversing this could fry the flowmeter!

If you want wire it up and take detailed pictures and we'll confirm before you plug it in and make it live :)
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] d0ugie:
how's this?
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] anit77:
Looking at your last pic I can't tell the colors of the wires. What you want to do is connect the +pos to the outer terminal (The right one in the pic) and the -neg to the inner. You can discard the other half of the charger, it doesn't look like the half with the prongs is needed. I would solder your wires & heat shrink or tape up any splices. Also put some tape over the terminals on the housing.

That should be it, you're good to go. On brand new batteries run through 4 or 5 complete charge & discharge cycles before taking any real readings. As far as cutoff voltage goes I feel 3.5v is the number to use. You are going to need to write the numbers from the flowmeter before you disconnect the battery, as soon as you remove it the lcd screen will go blank.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] anit77:
How is it coming along? Have you managed to get any testing done?
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] d0ugie:
:(

Device was or became defective, never having shown a sign of life either with our testing setup or testing a nine volt (manufacturer said has to be ≥5v). I'm willing to get the fancy thing though I'd like a few bucks shaved off the price so I contacted the seller with this but no response yet:
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] d0ugie:
update

Got an update for you. So the thing wouldn't work for us so I decided to try to get myself a deal from this guy to buy the super fancy device, giving me a discount off the cost ($120something) and calling it even rather than my returning it for a refund. So this guy from the hobbyist website radicalrc.com who sold me the Flowmeter responded saying woops sorry about the bad voltage info, lemme fix that, and sorry but we stopped selling the CBA II but I'll cut you the same kind of deal on the CBA III (which is quite a bit more expensive so I'm waiting for him to tell me why I should buy that device for the same price I could get the other CBA II from another website. Awaiting his response. Seems like a nice guy.

The new device in question: http://www.radicalrc.com/shop/?cat=179

So I wrote a week ago...

[SIZE=-1][FONT=Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]

Dave just wrote,

[/SIZE][/FONT]

The saga continues. Slowly.

Doug
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] Telek:
Well if he's basically offering you $30 off then you would have been looking at $93 for the CBA II as opposed to $123. Keep in mind that if you want a CBA II then you're going to pay $120 on any other website anyway as you won't be able to get the discount. So basically it's a pretty decent deal still if you're willing to pay that amount as you'll get the newest CBA for the price of the older one.

What he mentioned about the discharge rate is interesting but good - basically what I mentioned before. Discharging at C/2 is perfect, so the 1500mAh battery discharging at 750mA is ideal. 3.7V with 5 ohm is 750mA.

Note that however that is what their standard is, and it is also a reasonable discharge rate, but for our purposes since the phone likely doesn't ever get that high we should probably be discharging around C/4 to get a more appropriate discharge rate. So resistor base would be 10ohm, or 375mA using the CBA.

In regards to the voltage there are ways to get around their 5V minimum that wouldn't impact the testing, but since you've decided to go to the CBA anyway then it's a moot point.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] d0ugie:
Yeah. Either way as you said I've resolved to get a CBA even if I didn't get the discount with the other one in which case it would have put me back up to $120 or so to spend and I'd still want it at that price -- so, makes sense to suck it up and get this CBA III from him. Though I am still curious what advancements the CBA people came up with in this revision.

I'm actually in the process of moving to another apartment now, right as I type. I don't know how receiving packages works in this building. Once I find that out I'll lock in the order.

If this thing ends up not working though I want a free remote control helicopter from this guy.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] qwalls:
Is this project dead? Haven't seen anything in a couple weeks.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] :
any results yet?
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] wildfxp:
I bought the Andida battery as well and I do notice it does drain pretty quickly as I power use my phone a lot. To me, it does seem like the original has more power.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] quato79:
Battery

Hi,I bought a Cameron Sino Tehnology(Hong Kong) battery from Ebay :

-1600 MAh normal size,I use the phone with this battery almost 5-6 monts and I can say these are very good batteries,my impressions are that this battery has 30% more power.

In the russian sites this is one of the best batteries,and I buy the 4-th battery from this manufacturer(previous MioA701 2500MAh,Eten X800-1600 MAh,Touch Pro-1600 MAh),and can say in every aspect this battery lasts more than OEM batteries!
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] roto8car:
So we still have nothing conclusive about what 3rd party battery is worth the purchase and which ones are not. I've already ordered a secondary charger and will order two more batteries once I can find some conclusive evaluations.

Regardless, I'm opting for two extra batteries at 1800 mAh rather than one 3500 battery with the bigger case back.

Thanks for your effort.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] Touch_Pete:
I have one too and I also have the boxwave 1350 ma, a Mugen 1800 and the Andida 2000 ma lasts about the same as the boxwave, and Mugen - all three are drained before the OEM. The only one to outlast the OEM is the Seidio 1750 ma
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] anguscook:
Errrr..

sorry I couldn't resist.... has anyone actually just kept a couple of apps running with the screen on to see how long each battery lasts? This may be the most non-geek approach, but ultimately what most of us care about :)

I'm just curious what to expect when my cheap-a** $10 battery finally does arrive from eBay Kong.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] OGIGA:
I got one of those for $6.36 or so. It was LiIon Polymer instead of LiIon. Anyway, it has been through like 5 cycles of normal use and it performs just as well as the stock battery. No explosions yet! Made in the same lovely country as the stock battery, sold from eBay Kong, shipped from Singapore.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] Telek:
The problem is that with that method we have no way of controlling the exact power drain nor can you reproduce it with any accuracy. Not to mention the time required to do that is greater as discharging it manually.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] d0ugie:
Back from the dead.

Hey everybody. A lot of work was put into this here thread by all of us so I apologize for just disappearing on you for so long. Anyway, back to work:

I got the CBA III and took it for a spin last night. Clearly it's what we've been looking for, no question. But I've got a couple questions before I get started. When I tell the software to start a test, it asks me for the battery's capacity, cells, voltage, weight, test type, cutoff voltage and for discharge testing, test amps.

How many cells we got in these suckers? Does that along with the weight of the battery actually matter in producing the numbers we want? Does it matter what I identify as the battery's capacity in this pre-test configuration stuff or is this information probably just for reference when reviewing old tests? We left the cutoff at 2.6V, right? Should I use 3.7V, the voltage identified on the batteries? Any final reflections on how much load to put on the batteries? Important to do the same thing every time from the first time.

Doug
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] Telek:
1 cell at 3.7V

Dunno, get yourself a digital scale or look it up online. I doubt that it really matters though so you should be able to estimate

We decided on 3.5V

I think 500mA is reasonable.

I can tell you that the total power drain when the phone is constantly online (i.e. tethering) and screen on is greater than 500mA because the phone still discharges while plugged in via USB. In fact a fully charged battery is reduced to 10% after about 10 hours - so I'd assume the current draw in that scenario is somewhere around 650mA. If I was playing music at the same time I bet it would be closer to 850mA. Absolute maximum that the phone could use would probably be in the 1A range.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] d0ugie:
temp probe?

Almost done with the first test of the 3rd party battery. Then I'll run a test of the OEM, overlay the charts and post it.

So I can get an external temperature probe for this thing for sixteen bucks. Any reason to do that?
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] Telek:
I don't think it's diagnostically relevant so I wouldn't worry about it.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] d0ugie:
Let's get started.

Well I think I've got the hang of this equipment. To bring you all up to speed I have two batteries, the 1500mAh OEM which I have been using as my primary battery since I bought the phone in September and a 2000mAh Andida, same dimensions of the OEM, which I have been using rather lightly as my backup battery since November. I'd say I've put several times as many miles on the OEM as the Andida.

I tested the batteries with the CBA III first against a 500mA current, got low results, figured I'd try at 250mA and got slightly better figures -- but the results from both sets of tests were proportional to each other. As we determined the appropriate cutoff was 3.5mA based on tests with software and with hardware (all here in this thread).

Unfortunately I do not have any brand new batteries on me but as I said the 3rd party battery claimed to have a third greater capacity than the OEM and I've put several times as much wear and tear on the OEM. And here are the results:

So what I can tell you is that I bought a third party battery by Andida on eBay that was claimed to have 33% more capacity than the OEM yet after using it much less than I did the OEM and running fair tests it's apparent that the OEM has almost 10% more capacity. The Andida, though granted I've used it since I've bought it, is showing 60% of its claimed capacity in these tests.

One noteworthy thing on this chart is that the OEM (black) spends more volts per mAh than the Andida (red) until 3.62V when the OEM levels off a bit and weakens more slowly while the Andida accelerates rapidly into its final decent toward the cutoff.

I think I can say with high confidence that the Andida people are being less than forthright. But hey, ten bucks, not bad. So one out of one, or 100%, of the third party battery claims, having run the numbers ourselves, have proven false.

Before I figure out what the next step is with this thread, does it sound like I'm doing this right?
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] Telek:
Fantastic! That is *exactly* what we're aiming for :)

Except 500mA is just as valid a test as 250mA - any chance you could post those graphs as well (or combine it with that graph?)

The higher volts could either be a characteristic of the battery itself, or more likely because your OEM battery has been used so much.

Good work!
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] qwalls:
I have both batteries and I've noticed this behavior in real life usage. The Andida seems to drain slower than the OEM battery down to 30-40% then drains a lot faster.

The 3.5 volt cut-off in testing makes sense due to the phone settings, but on the OEM battery at least I think you'd get closer to the 1500mah rating with a 3.1 volt cut-off. When I disable the low battery cutoff using nuebattery 3.1 volts is where the phone turns off and won't turn back on even though 3.5 volts is where the phone thinks the battery is completely empty.

Great results and thanks for your time on this.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] DeoreDX:
Man that's pretty sweet. THanks for all the hard work!
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] Telek:
That's a good way to kill your battery quicker.

Also there's not much point in testing to this because without the hack all phones will turn off around 3.5V. As long as we test a new OEM battery and use that as our benchmark then all tests will be a reasonable analogy to real life usage.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] qwalls:
I charge my battery throughout the day. I just did it once for my own edification. On days I know I won't have access to a charger, I carry a spare. I was just making the point (maybe poorly) that the OEM battery didn't reach its specified rating of 1500mah because the phone cuts off early and that's what was used as a cut-off voltage. :)
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] d0ugie:
Here you go. Interested in your take on this. Got some other reflections I'm banging out but I smell dinner.

To fill in any passers by, the 1500mAh OEM is the original battery that came with my phone that I've used as my only battery and then a few months later as my primary battery when I bought the Andida whose manufacturer/distributor rated at 2000mAh. My OEM has been in my phone at least ten times as much. I suppose I would identify a .5A current as what's needed to "talk and surf at the same time" like on the commercials whereas 250mA is when you fire up wifi or GPS -- more or less. Ahh just skim through the thread, you'll get the idea.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] Telek:
It's interesting to note that the Andida performed just about as well as your 6mo-OEM at the higher current draw, but worse at the lower. IIRC this follows with standard LiIon degredation over time - the 6mo-OEM is performing worse because it's older, it's not that the Andida is performing better. It'll be quite interesting to see that same test on a new OEM battery, as well as whatever other batteries you happen to get.

I'll see if I can get together some tests to determine actual battery discharge rates for different activities.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] wpbear:
So bottom line the Andida is a good deal for $10 as an OEM replacement, since OEM is more than $50.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] Telek:
Many places on eBay offer the OEM battery for < $20 including shipping if you're in the US, although the MSRP on it is much higher.

Also note that we don't have the ability to show how quickly a battery dies after a lot of usage - the OEM battery after 6 months is outperforming the new Andida - in 6 months the new Andida could be next to useless while the OEM is still running. So it's too soon to say.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] anit77:
This is great. I knew one of these CBA units would be the ticket!! Yes, there are less expensive methods to get the results but you've got to like the click it a forget it feature with the CBA III. It removes any monitoring by the user and human error in the final data, while giving you nice graphs to present the findings and protecting the battery for over draining.

Now to show the real world findings of the different batteries out there I think the tests should be done to the "safe" cutoff of 3V to show the real capacity of the batteries the way they are rated from the manufacturer, or reveal relabeled units from shady characters. These graphs will give us the info we care about with the phones cutoff voltage of 3.5 or modded 3.1 but to show the true MAH I think they need to be tested the same way they're rated. If you ever decide to publish your findings you don't want to give the people you expose any wiggle room in the results.

I think Telek's suggestion to run the tests at 500ma will speed up the testing. Yes you will have a shorter graph but the data doesn't loose it's validity. As we've stated new packs need to be cycled to come up to true capacity. So testing should be 5 cycles with the average of the last 3 used to show the findings.

A cycle consisting of: Discharge ~ Cool down ~ Charge ~ Cool down.
[Touch Pro2, Tilt 2 Accessories] Telek:
Here I have to disagree. The biggest question that we're trying to answer here is which battery should I buy for my phone? In order to test that we need to test under the same conditions that the phone uses - in other words stopping at 3.5V. Besides if it was safe to terminate at 3.1V then surely HTC would have programed the phone to stop there. The combined collective engineering experience of the cellphone industry has said that 3.5V is where a phone should stop using the battery, so I think we should do the same.

After all we're not really all that caring about how it relates to the mAh rating written on the battery. We do, however, care about how much mAh the phone can use before it dies.

Testing down to 3.1V can skew the results because a discharge to that level can alter the way that the battery charges and discharges on further tests - and again we're aiming to see about actual phone usage results more than pure battery results.

Let's say that a 3rd party battery manages to get 30% more life out of the 3.5-to-3.1V range than the OEM battery does. This will skew the results and then the actual people who want to use this data to determine which battery to buy for their phone will be misled.

After we get a sizeable amount of data I think that it is a good idea to do a few additional tests on the batteries running them down to 3.1V - but only as a supplement not as the primary set of data.

This is another urban legend that we can actually scientifically test here. Don't forget that batteries are tested before they leave the factory - and this myth comes from long ago when Lead Acid rechargeables required dozens of cycles and periodically had to be reconditioned due to memory effects. Lithium batteries are entirely different beasts - so we can test exactly how to get the most bang out of your battery!