Extended battery

2GigayteSD said:

It calibrating an Android phone's battery really is a myth.... A battery is a just battery. Would you try and calibrate a AA or D battery? No. Why? Because you just can't. The battery doesn't have software in it, so there is no way to calibrate it...

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Perhaps there is a misunderstanding here: Obviously the 'battery itself' can't be calibrated. Even with the advanced circuitry to prevent overloads, a Li-on battery is still just a battery.

What can be calibrated, however, is the device that uses the battery. If that device, say a smartphone, has a mechanism for estimating battery run time, it stands to reason that at some point, that mechanism was calibrated. In previous Android phones that I have had, if you swapped out a battery for an extended battery, or vice versa, it took the phone one or 2 times of complete battery cycling before the phone 'adjusted' its battery meter to the new run time.
I am not an Electrical Engineer, nor am I even an Android developer, however, it didn't take a rocket surgeon or a brain scientist to figure out you had to 'let the phone know' that this battery behaved differently than the previous battery. If I were to guess, and that is all this is, a guess, the mechanism the phone uses to 'calibrate itself' rooted or not, is by checking the voltage of the battery. If the voltage drops too far, the battery is considered 'discharged'. Since voltage is a measurement of electric potential, if the voltage drops below a certain potential, the phone decides it is time to shut off, before permanently damaging the battery.
Li-on batteries don't experience 'memory effect' but they do wear out, and if you completely discharge them, they will never hold a charge again.
Circuitry within the battery and within the phone is designed to compensate for this, but it can only go so far.
It is also my guess, that the LG Motion 4G, for whatever reason, has a hard-calibration that is not dependent on the actual voltage potential of a given battery. OR the phone is incapable or perceiving when the voltage potential is above a certain plateau, and therefore has an upper limit on calibration. Either way, when I swap batteries, depending on how long I charge the phone, when the phone is discharged with the extended battery, it gets to '2 percent' and then if I reboot the phone, the percentage goes up to around '38 percent'.

I just rooted my phone last night. I will see if this 'phone calibration' issue is fixable with a calibration app from the Play Store.

Here's some stuff about batteries.

The battery charge level is determined by its voltage level, and the voltage/charge level is identical for any battery of the same chemistry. It's a physical phenomenon particular to the chemistry.

A battery under load has a lower voltage than when not under load. When the load is removed (i.e. phone switched off for some length of time), the battery voltage recovers to a higher voltage. In that event, the battery maintenance circuit in the phone will register a higher charge level. As the load is increased, the voltage recovery effect also increases. This is normal for any battery chemistry.

Notes. The battery charger is inside the phone. The AC 'wall wart', or in-car cigar lighter plug, isn't the battery charger. The wall wart is only a DC current supply. Also, the maximum possible rate of charge is a design specification of the battery charger circuit in the phone. Though it is possible to supply less than the maximum charge current to the battery charger in the phone by using a low current DC supply. In that event, the battery simply charges slower.

Caveat. If you put a battery of different chemistry into the phone, the battery maintenance circuit will not read the correct charge level for that chemistry.

 

jacobdrj said:

I just rooted my phone last night. I will see if this 'phone calibration' issue is fixable with a calibration app from the Play Store.

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All that does, is delete the batterystats.bin and generate a new one. That wouldn't calibrate shyt....

2GigayteSD said:

All that does, is delete the batterystats.bin and generate a new one. That wouldn't calibrate shyt....

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I understand that... But wouldn't the batterystats.bat file affect how the indicator behaves?

jacobdrj said:

I understand that... But wouldn't the batterystats.bat file affect how the indicator behaves?

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*.bin

Nope, all that does in show usage stats in Settings>Power Saver>Battery Usage.

Unfortunately, I have come to just accept the limitations of the battery meter on this phone. Still a darned good phone.