Strange and Sudden Charging Problem

General
#1

Last night, I turned off the phone, and plugged it in, as usual. It’s the same charger and cable I always use. I didn’t look to see what happened, since it’s just habit - I just plugged it in and walked away. This morning, the phone was hot. I turned it on, and battery charge was at 39%. I plugged it in while turned on, and it kept vibrating one vibration and showing “charging” popup banner, over and over. It did it 5 times, and then settled on “charging”, and stayed that way. However, the battery did not charge, but the percentage droppe, even while showing charging. Then I turned it off, and reconnected it, and watched, and the led would go back and forth between red and green continually, the screen never turning on to the Sony screen, and showing battery charge, as is typical. I guess this is what must have been going on overnight.
Now, this is where it stands - plugging in while powered on results in exactly 5 vibrations every time, then settling on “charging”, but without actually charging the phone, and plugging in while powered off results as described above. It doesn’t matter what USB mode I choose, and I’ve tried with different chargers, cables and outlets. Everything was normal until last noght.

What happened?

Phone is Xperia X, with latest SFOS, (3.3.16 or whatever)

Thanks

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#2

I guess someone might have a software idea on this, but I can’t help feeling those are more symptoms of a hardware issue (speaking as more of a hardware brain, but admittedly not an expert). Like the battery management circuitry and/or the battery itself.
If there’s a software interface to the battery management, I suppose that may be an approach (I expect this information is available somewhere).
Hopefully you’ll get input from the developer side of the forum, but in the meantime I personally would change the settings to shut off the vibration before the battery completely exhausts. :slight_smile:

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#3

Can you verify the charger or the cable are not the issues here? I recently had a similar problem where the charger cable of my Xperia X had a defect, leading to the same behaviour of the phone permanently vibrating and continuously detecting plug and unplug events

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#4

OP appears to have eliminated external issues; however it’s true that sockets and connecting ribbons etc. are vulnerable to damage with similar symptoms. Going the h/w route, an internet search may throw the symptoms up and link to commonly damaged parts on the model/hardware family.

(edited to remove unnecessary smart-arsery)

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#5

So I had the idea to boot into Android recovery to test if hw problem, and it wouldn’t charge still, even though it shows charging symbol. I sadly concluded that it must be hw… Then I had the thought that I believe that the battery functionality is handled by the kernel. So I restored an Android backup I have on my sdcard, and booted to Android, and it’s charging fine now…
Just another SFOS mystery, I guess. My prime suspect was mce-tools. I had installed it and set some tweaks, which were working fine for a week or so, but, (as I had already heard and experienced in the past, so expected), noticeably affected the battery drain. So, when I first had the problem this morning, the first thing I did was set the tweaks back to default and uninstall mce-tools, hoping that would fix it. I wonder if it left some hidden effects somewhere…

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#6

Flash back to a clean SFOS and you will know…

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#7

Just to let you know, I have the same symptons. I cleaned the port and tried different chargers/cables.

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#8

Can’t remember exactly what happened back then, but I think it ended up being fine after new install…

#9

I have a similar problem right now, and I have MCE-tools instaled too. A workaround is turn off the phone and press and hold the ‘Volume up ’ button before connect the charger. A blue light will light up, and phone will charge normaly.

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Xperia 10iii suddenly stopped charging while in kernel
#10

This workaround seems to be the only what helped. My new and fresh installed X10ii had the same issue. My XA2 was sorted out after replacing the 3rd battery. This is a OS bug.
Pressing the volume up button while connecting to charger helped (Phone off). Blue light did not appear, it stayed white. But now it seems to charge as it should.
Thanks for your help!

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#11

Same symptoms on my Xperia 10iii :

  • it suddenly stopped charging (same USB-C charger as usual, charger was successfully working right before with my Pinebook Pro - USB-C 5V ~@2.5A).
  • only charges while in the boot-loader, stops charging as soon as kernel boots (either regular full Sailfish OS, or in “play dead” charging only mode).
  • putting the boot-loader in an alternate mode (blue LED with Vol Up + cable) keeps charging.

Thanks for pointing out the workaround.

#12

Could this bug (regardless of device) be introduced depending on which SFOS version which was initially flashed to the device?

I’m asking because me and a friend both have an Xperia 10 iii. While my friends device flashed with Android 11 ( 62.0. A.3.109) and SFOS 4.4.0.72 is affected my this bug my own device flashed with Android 11 ( 62.0. A.3.109) and SFOS 4.4.0.64 (later upgraded to .72) is not affected.

Tried reflashing with Android 11 ( 62.0. A.3.109) and SFOS 4.4.0.72 and the problem was gone for about a week but was later reintroduced.
I have the flash files for .64 but was friend is currently back on Android and want to wait til SFOS 4.5.x.