Battery charge tests - running a battery to 0 frequently - checking re-charge times

he's forever moving the goalposts.

yep. language evolves.

slow down!

GNU Software Foundation perhaps?

On 5/6/2022 5:14 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote: snip...

Actually, the "adaptive charging" option seems to do that but without asking. Place the phone on the wireless stand after the phone knows that it is "sleepy time" and it will automatically restrict the charge rate to what is needed to have 100% at the next alarm time. It has seemed to work fine for me on my Pixel 6 Pro, anyway. Of course you have to switch the option on in settings before it will know to do that. I'm guessing that this will work with plugged-in charging but I have never really tried and I almost never used wired charging except when in the car on a long road trip.

There's no reason to manually select slow charge or fast charge on recent vintage iPhones or Android phones. The phone automatically sets the charge rate based on the charge level of the battery. There's no down-side to fast charging a battery that has a low amount of charge and then having the charger reduce the power as the battery level increases.

If someone really wants to charge as slow as possible, with a wired charger, you can use a data blocker and the charger will be unable to communicate with the phone and will default to the lowest charge rate, i.e.

which will be extremely slow and might even be insufficient to overcome idle demands of the device because it will be 5V@100ma, or 1/2 watt, assuming it works at all, since such adapters are non-compliant with the usb spec.

a better and more practical solution is use a 5w/1a charger, which most people have.

Jeff Liebermann wrote:

It's worse than that, but just as prevalent in apps you don't want it in. Can you handle detail, perhaps with a bit of confusion involved on my part?

It's actually difficult to find a _good_ explanation of GSF for you.

But I just made these two graphics for you to illustrate the general idea:

I'd welcome a better description from someone here than I can find for you.

For example, this sounds innocuous, right?

This is a completely _different_ description, isn't it, of what GSF is?

Here's a stackexchange question on it, but even there, they gloss over what GSF is and concentrate only on what Google Play Services is instead. *What is Google Play Services & Google Services Framework (gapps)?*

If you can find a good description of GSF, I'll be all ears, trust me, where the _simplest_ way I can explain what I think it is - is that it's a set of APIs from our good old trustworthy friends at Google that many apps can link to so that they don't have to write calls for stuff that Google provides for them.

That should make you feel real confident in using apps that use it! Luckily, the FOSS google play store clients clearly list those apps as you can see in this snapshot I made moments ago of my Android phone.

The problem is that GSF is sneaky too, since it comes from you know who.

Personally I prefer to stay away from "SDKs" that other apps link to that our good old friend Google provides to them, presumably for a reason.

I have so many APKs that I install on so many phones that I keep an archive

All the FOSS google play store clients have filters for GSF as shown here.

You'd be hard pressed to find better apps than the ones I use, e.g., say you wanted to know whether your phone was connecting to your unique femtocell tower ID or you needed to know what your neighbor's Wi-Fi signal strength is, nicely graphed along with yours with the typical channel graph, then I'd _start_ with finding a free, ad free, google free, gsf free, app with usually a 4+ rating and, oh, over a million installations, and then, if none show up, you slowly open your search criteria...

Most of my apps are FOSS but there isn't a switch specifically for that. For example this ia one of the best FOSS application managers for Android.

You can pages upon pages of information for any one given app with that.

Such as Activities, Services, installation date, updates, services, receivers, providers, app ops, permissions, trackers, versions, features, configuration, signatures, shared libs, etc.

These app managers are useful when you search by installed or updated dates

And, of course, they give you an idea of the number of trackers in each app

What you're looking for is the best app which is also the least intrusive, which, let's be clear, probably takes time to get to know the app well.

But you have to start by finding the best starting point for any functionality, so, for example, for Wi-Fi/Cellular debuggers, start with free ad free google free gsf free highly rated often downloaded apps.

An example is this wi-fi debugger which I personally find rather useful. *Cellular-Z*, by JerseyHo Free, ad free, google free, gsf free, 4+ rating, 100K+ installs

While that's not foolproof of course, it's far better than wading thru this

That doesn't really tell you the truth as you can install an app which won't show up in that list, nor will it show up in the Google Play Update list (and each of the specific update apps also gives different numbers).

I have plenty of tools that can tell me how many "packages" are installed.

You can sort and view your apps by many methods to keep track of them all.

Usually around 700 "packages" but we covered this question in gory detail in the past on the Android newsgroup where you'd actually be hard pressed to get _two_ of the many application managers to give the same answer each.

Since every app installed on Android up until recently was packaged as an APK, it is easy to _not delete_ the APK after you install each & every app.

We have had _many_ discussions on the Android newsgroup about what the update life is for an Android phone, and, well, you seem to be the type who can handle detail, and detail is what you're going to need to handle if you ever want to figure out what the various versions are for Android, and what their actual EOL dates are for support, given there are _many_ levels! *How long does GOOGLE say they'll update the two dozen core modules in project mainline?*

Suffice to summarize there are at least the following main Android updates, each with their own update schedule, some of which are completely unknown:

1. User apps (such as your personal APK archive) are often updated forever
2. Key apps (such as the default web browser) are often updated forever
3. Firmware (such as the Qualcomm modem firmware) are updated by Qualcomm
4. Security updates
5. Android version updates (a team effort of google, mfr & carrier)
6. Core modules (such as the two dozen core modules) are updated by Google
7. Those core modules are always donated to the AOSP to maintain forever

But even that only scratches the surface, given the complexity of a. Google Play Store app updates b. Google Play Services updates c. Google Play System updates

Each updates a different way as you can see from this recent screenshot:

It's the same with just finding which version is which scattered about:

I don't think I've ever in my life found anyone who mentioned the actual versions correctly (or fully) when they "think" they updated Android.

It's no big deal as I can install hundreds of apps very quickly since I maintain a well organized Android system as a Windows 10 drive letter.

Since I love learning how things work, the Android 11 to Android 12 update gave me a perfect opportunity to figure out what "indexing" does when you update Android, where I never had to look into what it does before.

I have a thread on this topic over here which I opened a day or two ago: *Warning when updating Android 11 to Android 12*

Here are just some of the results I'm gathering from that experiment.

I'm well aware that there are many apps with the same name, and, some even try to copy the icon of the best apps (try finding the best pedometer, for example) where a lot of times what happens is the open source FOSS app is shamelessly copied by other apps who try to muscle in on the success.

You'll find that all over the Internet, as with SatStat for example, where the source code is often copied and then ads are added which is a shame that people fall for that trick.

As proof of concept, I strongly suspect this is a shameless ad-added copy!

Same with NewPipe, and a bunch of very kewl Open Source apps that are shamelessly copied which detracts from the overall Android experience when people fall for those bait-and-switch tricks by the shameless copiers.

People fall for that copy crap, which is why a good filter is de rigueur.

--

I apologize for not being clear, where I'm not sure exactly what Google Services Framework is other than it's a set of APIs that our good friend Google provides so that apps can link in all sorts of stuff from Google.

If that alone doesn't make you wonder what's inside of it, bear in mind there's also a (loosely? tightly?) associated _permanent_ unique GSF_ID.

Luckily, after some effort, I figured out a way, using Windows FOSS tools, to replace the GSF ID without too badly affecting the operating system.

The main point though is that all the FOSS google play store clients have an option to filter out the GSF ID (in addition to plenty of other options), none of which will be in the google play store client itself.

You were the first person to tell me about GSF years ago, which I appreciate since you said (rightly so) that it's getting harder over time to find apps that don't incorporate these Google calls into their code.

I'm not ashamed to admit I don't know how exactly the GSF code deals with the supposedly permanent unique GSF ID but that may be why my Android 11 to Android 12 upgrade deleted hundreds of apps (perhaps they're linked to the old GSF ID.. dunno... it's too many to be simply that as I only figured out how to change the GSF_ID recently).

BTW, if others are interested in looking at your permanent unique GSF ID, this is the app I used to make sure that my experiments actually changed it *Device ID* by Evozi Free, ad free, Google free, GSF free, rated 4.5, 1M+ installs

Note as someone already noted, many apps have the same names in the repos

Without filters in the FOSS Google Play Store clients, I don't know how anyone can find decent apps given they frequently use similar names, icons, and descriptions - and yet - many have ads and many incorporate GSF calls.

I _know_ it's a really bad idea, which is _why_ I want to see what happens.

I got a handful of these phones for free, so I have _plenty_ to work with. It's just a phone. Phones are a dime a dozen. They're a commodity.

This is a Samsung Galaxy A32-5G, which, even if I paid for it, is cheap.

People do drop tests all the time, don't they? That's a really bad idea too. :)

I designed microcontroller-based batter chargers as experimental tools back in the 80's in graduate school but it has been a long time since then.

I've probably forgotten more than I learned by then, but my main point is that I consider all smartphones merely a tool to play with to learn about.

If you don't do destructive testing, you won't learn as much as if you do. (As an aside, you should see the destructive testing I did on the iPad!)

I take risks with the mobile devices all the time in order to learn more.

For example, I recently figured out a way to change my supposedly permanent supposedly unique Google-supplied GSF ID, which may be the reason that the Android 11 to Android 12 update on my Samsung deleted hundreds of apps. *Have you ever tried to CHANGE your unique GSF ID on your Android device?*

It's the Samsung Galaxy A32-5G and it's the T-Mobile model SM A326U.

You'll see some of my experiments on the XDA Developers' forum:

Like you appear to do, I try to learn why things fail when they fail.

For my BMW, a lot of parts break, where I take them apart to find what caused the failure, whether that's the FSU or the expansion tank.

You can't put that stuff back together, although I did try to reseat the myriad "angel hair" wires inside the ABS control module, which are just impossible to do without specialized machines.

Having said that, my cars are decades old where I fix everything I can, even to the point of mounting and balancing my own tires at home, so if I _can_ fix it after taking it apart, I will fix it after taking it apart.

Bear in mind it's difficult to find out why some wear patterns happen simply because they are on perfectly well aligned vehicles sometimes.

I can't disagree with anything you've said as I run experiments all day every day, some of which are detailed (like those tire experiments) and others aren't as detailed (as my phone battery experiments are).

The one thing really convenient about destructive autopsies is you don't have to put anything back together. You just put it in the recycling bin.

Notice the tire experiments above where there is precious little information on the Internet why all the cars that are perfectly aligned in any given twisty road area wear the tires the exact same abnormal way.

Take a look at the Scotty Kilmer video below, and note particularly that the photos I've been posting (which I've posted for years) are the _same_ as in Scotty Kilmer's videos (just look and you'll recognize my pictures!).

This is a shot he took of my BMW tires, for example, with wear lined up:

Fifty-two (52) replies in pursuit of idiocy. Jimmy Neutron strikes again!

Kilmer is a backyard mechanic at best who doesn't know any more about, well, *anything* than any one else. I wouldn't let this guy change the oil on a car.

One other thing, which could be good or bad depending on your point of view, is that for iPhones that are capable of fast charging, if you turn the phone off _after_ the phone is plugged into a USB-C PC charger. then the charge rate goes down (on the iPhone, if the phone is off and a charger is plugged in then the phone automatically turns on so you must turn it off _after_ the charger is plugged in).

On my iPhone, with the phone on the battery begins charging at around

With a USB-C PD charger, it takes _longer_ to charge an iPhone is the power is off since the voltage never goes above the nominal 5V, yet current is always limited to a nominal 2A. This is because the PMIC inside the iPhone can't negotiate the USB-C PD charge rate when the phone is off. On an Android phone, at least phones with Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets, QC charge rates are unaffected by the phone being on or off.

Also, on the iPhone, unlike on Android devices, there is no indication as to whether or not the phone is fast charging. Someone could be using a junky, USB-C to Lightning cable, that they don't realize does not support fast charging, but think that their phone is fast charging. You need to plug in a USB-C to USB-C power meter between the USB-C PD charger and the iPhone to see the charge rate.

that is false. it's very easy to tell if it's fast charging.

there is no such need.

An upper class english accent pronounces a house as "hice". English is a bastard language with so many accents and vernaculars that it's pointless arguing over what is "correct".

mouses is an acceptable plural when referring to a computer mouse. not applicable to the rodent.

true.

I have two close friends that moved from England to California. After a couple of decades in the U.S. they learned to speak proper English, but they occasionally slipped up.

When they first moved to the U.S. there were some embarrassing/amusing incidents, one involving trying to buy pencil erasers at Walgreen's, and one involving the item used for washing pots and pans, while on a backpacking trip.

Long thread, I may have missed this above, but:

Laptops are notorious for having bricked batteries. Sometimes replacement is cheap, sometimes not.

Battery life is supposedly longest when charge is maintained between 20% and 80%. The way most of us use a laptop is to leave it plugged in all the time and treat it like a desktop. I have a couple we use that way where I've removed the battery after it bricked. Anyway, the most common use of a laptop seems to be inherently hard on the battery. My millennial daughter almost never has hers plugged in while in use though.

I've read that with modern auto battery chemistry, every time you run it down flat you lose one half life.

If you're talking about lead acid car batteries, then running them way down even just a couple of times is very bad for them. While discharged, they begin to sulfate almost immediately. Even a fairly new battery can be easily weakened severely by leaving it discharged for a fairly short amount of time.

EV batteries are much more tolerant of discharge than lead acid batteries are, but of course are not immune. There are plenty of published tests when determining ultimate range of EVs where they are run to zero. In the short term at least, they don't seem to suffer any indicated range loss. I don't know if any testing has been done of running an EV to zero and leaving it like that for 6 months. I've read that LiPo cells are even better at tolerating extreme discharging and charging at the cost of some capacity. Some Teslas are being shipped with LiPo battery packs.

When my android phone crapped out, my buddy gave me one that belonged to his deceased daughter. The phone was only about 6 months old when she passed, and it was completely discharged for two years when I got it. I've been using it about a year now and doesn't show any sign of battery life issues. Back when I was doing camcorder repairs, batteries that were new one Christmas were shot the next after sitting for a year without being charged.