My last flash was in August 22 and my cycle count is 37. I am also using battery budy and charge only to 85%.
Then something else must have reset the counter at some point (or it stopped working altogether) in both of your cases, as its value is technically impossible for such long periods of timeā¦
Can you please:
- check whatās the date of last update of that cycle_count file
- check in a few days (a few chargings) if it has increased?
Thank you.
1 Like
I flashed my phone only once in May '22, but updated it regulary:
/sys/class/power_supply/battery/cycle_count ā ā1ā
I re-flashed my phone September 29 (thatās the earliest date I can find in file browser, and it matches my memory of having flashed early this autumn) and my count is 32 (was 31 two days ago).
What makes you think something must have reset the counter?
As i earlier stated:
check whatās the date of last update of that cycle_count file
Today.
check in a few days (a few chargings) if it has increased?
I donāt think it will unless a full recharge cycle is made.
No, this is a wrong assumption. This counter (which is also present on Android) works the following way: the process controlling it silently adds up every mAh that you feed into your battery, and when the number of mAh fed into the battery reaches its capacity (which is 4500 mAh in case of the 10 III), the counter increases by 1. In other words, if you do a full charge from 0 to 100% at once, this counter will increase by 1 right away. But if you do partial rechargings, it will wait until those rechargings SUM UP to the battery capacity, and then it will increase by 1, too. For example: a 40% recharge (1800 mAh) + 20% recharge (900 mAh) + 20% recharge (900 mAh) + 13% recharge (585 mAh) + 7% recharge (315 mAh) = 4500 mAh in total and will make this counter increase by 1. Fully confirmed by my own observations on my device (and formerly on my BlackBerry Passport, too).
But thatās only if the process/service/whatever that controls this counter works correctly, which is clearly NOT the case with your phone, or - even more clearly - with @Speedy-10ās phone, whose counter is 1, i.e. doesnāt work at all.
Mine is now at 108, despite NEVER having fully recharged my phone, as I never discharged it below some 20-25%, not to even mention to 0%. I always recharge it daily, usually with 30%-50% still remaining.
I donāt know what causes it not to work on some phones. Maybe it doesnāt react to some types of chargers, or God knows what else.
2 Likes
I agree, it makes sense. May i ask, is this based on actual information on cycle_count behaviour or just observation? I would just like to confirm.
Both.
(+20 characters)
Oh please, elaborate.
But what?
I already described how it works and that my long time observations on two different phones confirm it. Where I read its documentation, I donāt remember, I guess you can try to google it yourselfā¦
So i guess your assumption is as good as mine. Which is just fine. I just wanted to check.
Can you call Jolla for an update? :>
First of all, i said mine was a guess, and commented your explanation āi agree, it makes senseā, but when i asked for something to back that explanation, it felt like yours is just another guess (like mine). You have to understand that in this kind of situation the burden of proof is undeniably yours.
And second of all, there is no need to be rude. And there is no need for an argument. If you feel like arguing with someone, please keep away from this forum.
I would also like to hear the facts from Jolla devs, since my guess is worth nothing, and @wetab73 is just quoting random stuff about laptop batteries and from Apple support (?) and showing that there are apps.
Do you really talk to people like that face to face?
Do you think that is acceptable behaviour on this forum?
1 Like
Itās amazing but yesterday I did the very same thing (stopped the Battery Buddy service and allowed the phone to recharge to 100%) and guess whatā¦ After I went to bed and set the phone as usual (only mobile network for voice calls enabled, mobile data off, wifi off, bluetooth off, gps off, Android support off), when I woke up only 4% were consumed (compared to the usual 8%-9%) and each 1% lasted 1 hour 50 minutes rather than the usual ~ 1h:00m - 1h:15m. Now at 23:00 in the evening I still have 82% battery left, whereas normally at that time of day I only had 55-60%. Of course, I charged it 10% more than the usual 90%, but the difference is much more than that.
I guess that the battery must have re-calibrated itself when it was allowed to fully recharge, and the indicator now uses correct units (1% is now really 1%, i.e. 45 mA) whereas previously the % indicator must have been kind of de-calibrated, and the % units were smaller than in reality so they were decreasing too fast.
Letās see how long it is going to last so, and what enabling Battery Buddy limits will causeā¦
2 Likes
Flightmode standby drain with 4.5.0.19 remains the same at 0.7%/hr (not that any difference was expected)
1 Like
ā¦ and after 25 hours of normal use I still have 70% left. Power consumption seems to be actually the same, so - as I wrote - the battery level control must have undergone some kind of recalibration. I donāt remember it lasting that long ever. Now even with WiFi and mobile data on, 1% lasts 1h:00 - 1h:05ā¦ Magicā¦
It looks that it is very useful to recharge the battery to 100% once in a while to calibrate it.
I had the following out of sync (much lower than actual power level):
/sys/class/power_supply/battery/charge_counter
and recharging to 100% fixed it.
This counter should reflect the level of charge (in mAh) left in the battery (in case of 10 III it should be eg. ~4500000 for full, ~2250000 for 50%, etc.). If it gets out of sync, I guess that the % indicator gets incorrect, too (decreases faster than the actual power draining).
And meanwhile my old Nexus5 is lying with flightmode on and wifi enabled on my desk. 5 days since the last charge, 55% left, 6 days to go.
Sadly, I was too optimistic. It took just one partial charging for the /sys/class/power_supply/battery/charge_counter to get out of sync again, and everything went back to what it was, e.g. my ābedtimeā standby (everything off except cellular network) is again 1h:10m.
charge_counter is a popular counter in Android world, very often shown by diagnostic apps on Android and used to track battery capacity and its health. For instance, AIDA64 (Android version, unlike the SFOS one) shows it.
When the battery is full, its value should be the same as battery capacity. Then, as the battery discharches, its value should reflect the charge (the number of mAh) left in the battery, whereas the battery % level indicator should translate it into a % value.
Yesterday, thanks to charging to 100%, it got in sync (value of the charge_counter was right, and the battery % level was matching it) but today, after partial charging, it is again totally mixed up:
- my current battery level shown is 75%
-
charge_counteris 3079720
It is wrong because 3079720 out of 4525000 (thatās the mAh value shown when full) = 68% not 75%ā¦ So, again, the displayed % value is ābiggerā than the actual % of charge in the battery, hence the % level indicator decreases faster than it should, giving incorrect, too short times per each %.
In the evening Iāll recharge it again to 100% and see if it gets things in sync again. If it does, Iāll probably say goodbye to partial recharging.
Just a guess, could it be that your battery doesnāt have its full capacity anymore?
On my linux laptop there are the values energy_full and energy_full_design. The first one shows the capacity of the battery when it leaves the factory, the other one the capacity of the last full chsrge, which gets lower when the battery gets older.
Maybe tge charge_counter value shows the real capacity of the battery?
Edit:
The values on a phone are charge_full and charge_full_design.