Touchpad Battery drains when off - Is webos 3.0.5 the problem?

[shanpalm61]

one thing that comes to mind is that the Touchpad doesn't have a cmos battery like pc's and laptops that keep certain things going. Just a thought, not an answer.

[Mutoidi]

Originally Posted by shanpalm61

one thing that comes to mind is that the Touchpad doesn't have a cmos battery like pc's and laptops that keep certain things going. Just a thought, not an answer.

Mostly just to keep the clock going I think.. i notice that with 'Network Time' set to 'OFF" in the TP, it appears not to try to run the clock whilst powered off.
(I therefore have 'Network Time' set to "ON").

[OldSkoolVWLover]

Originally Posted by shanpalm61

one thing that comes to mind is that the Touchpad doesn't have a cmos battery like pc's and laptops that keep certain things going. Just a thought, not an answer.

When powered down for long periods of time, at initial power up the clock is WAY off on my extra TP.

[Carey_Robson]

I have read all the posts in this thread and have three Touchpads. I have Jelly Bean on all of them. MY gereral observation is that if your Touchpad is not perfectly aligned on a Touchstone charging dock, it may discharge to auto shut-off.

[kkalogia]

After many different trials and after a long time having this drain issue that would result in the batter being drained slowly even when off what worked for me was overcharging the battery. I left it charging in a wall plug and would monitor the charging current with dr. battery. Left it until dr. battery read 0 charging current. That is when the TP goes in a loop mode i think, no charging until it the battery has dropped a bit. Without waiting for it to drop i unplugged and replugged the TP so it overcharged a bit, meaning that dr. battery once more showed a small positive current. Left it till it was 0 again. Since then i haven't had this issue again. Fully charging it via the wall plug solved the issue for at least another user in this thread.

One simple way to check if you actually have this battery drain issue is again with the dr. battery app. When i had this problem dr. battery would read a negative current in sleep mode of about 20 mA. Now that it's fixed it reads about 4 mA. If you are close to 4 mA, you are fine.

[igord7]

Originally Posted by kkalogia

After many different trials and after a long time having this drain issue that would result in the batter being drained slowly even when off what worked for me was overcharging the battery. I left it charging in a wall plug and would monitor the charging current with dr. battery. Left it until dr. battery read 0 charging current. That is when the TP goes in a loop mode i think, no charging until it the battery has dropped a bit. Without waiting for it to drop i unplugged and replugged the TP so it overcharged a bit, meaning that dr. battery once more showed a small positive current. Left it till it was 0 again. Since then i haven't had this issue again. Fully charging it via the wall plug solved the issue for at least another user in this thread.

One simple way to check if you actually have this battery drain issue is again with the dr. battery app. When i had this problem dr. battery would read a negative current in sleep mode of about 20 mA. Now that it's fixed it reads about 4 mA. If you are close to 4 mA, you are fine.

I would like to thank-you for your dedication in helping me solve this problem that I have (had) too.
It seems that after I followed your instructions above and then with the TP powered off, it resulted in zero battery loss (overnight).
I will be doing further tests.
I joined webOS to tell you this.
Question: If the TP is in sleep mode, how do you tell what the neg current is?
Thanks again

[kkalogia]

Originally Posted by igord7

I would like to thank-you for your dedication in helping me solve this problem that I have (had) too.
It seems that after I followed your instructions above and then with the TP powered off, it resulted in zero battery loss (overnight).
I will be doing further tests.
I joined webOS to tell you this.
Question: If the TP is in sleep mode, how do you tell what the neg current is?
Thanks again

What you need to do is install an app and a widget. The app is called dr. battery and the widget is called battery widget i think. Both can be found in preware as they were developed by homebrewers. After you install them, run either one of them. Then let your TP go to sleep mode and leave it there for something like 30 seconds. Both these apps (actually the dr. battery app, the widget needs this app to run and all it does is give you readings ina neat way on the notifications rather than taking up the whole screen) take readings every say 30 seconds or something. So after you leave it at sleep mode for a couple of minutes, reopen your TP and see the readings. Essentially, since the apps take readings every say 30 seconds the readings you will se are from 0 to 30 seconds old so you will be seeing the readings the TP had when in sleep mode.

Normally it should be around -4 or -5 mA in sleep mode as long as it is not actively looking for wifi (that is either wifi is off or on but you are connected, looking for wifi networks is power consuming). So if you get these values your problem is fixed and glad it worked for you. I remember having this problem and it was quite frustrating, losing about 10-12 % of your battery over a 24 hour period with the tablet completely shut off did not make any sense and meant i could use it less and had to charge it more often which would eventually take its toll on battery lifetime. Glad it worked for you. Also i should note Semma2's observations helped us understand what's going on.

Note to moderators: Any chance this could be done in some form of sticky so people can easily retrieve this info. Back when i was searching for possible solutions to this i had noticed many people baffled by this problem.

[igord7]

Originally Posted by kkalogia

What you need to do is install an app and a widget. The app is called dr. battery and the widget is called battery widget i think. Both can be found in preware as they were developed by homebrewers. After you install them, run either one of them. Then let your TP go to sleep mode and leave it there for something like 30 seconds. Both these apps (actually the dr. battery app, the widget needs this app to run and all it does is give you readings ina neat way on the notifications rather than taking up the whole screen) take readings every say 30 seconds or something. So after you leave it at sleep mode for a couple of minutes, reopen your TP and see the readings. Essentially, since the apps take readings every say 30 seconds the readings you will se are from 0 to 30 seconds old so you will be seeing the readings the TP had when in sleep mode.

Normally it should be around -4 or -5 mA in sleep mode as long as it is not actively looking for wifi (that is either wifi is off or on but you are connected, looking for wifi networks is power consuming). So if you get these values your problem is fixed and glad it worked for you. I remember having this problem and it was quite frustrating, losing about 10-12 % of your battery over a 24 hour period with the tablet completely shut off did not make any sense and meant i could use it less and had to charge it more often which would eventually take its toll on battery lifetime. Glad it worked for you. Also i should note Semma2's observations helped us understand what's going on.

Note to moderators: Any chance this could be done in some form of sticky so people can easily retrieve this info. Back when i was searching for possible solutions to this i had noticed many people baffled by this problem.

Yes, my apologies. Thanks to Semma2 as well.
I will need to revisit this all over again as I think I spoke too soon. I'm dropping about 10% in power per day again. Back to the drawing board.

[GMMan]

Govnah is more effective than the widget for taking battery metrics. While you can use Dr. Battery/widget for accurate voltage and current measurements, Govnah will give you live readings, and put them on a scrolling graph, along with CPU utilization and load average.

[kkalogia]

Try it once more, maybe it takes a couple of times. I had charged my device completely several times before it got fixed and in that case i had to overcharge the way i described previously. Semma2 on the other hand solved by moving form touchstone charging to plug charging. In any case it seems that something in the hardware or software is recalibrated and then it gets fixed. I haven't had this issue again since my fix. Report back your findings for other users, hope it works for you.

And yes Govnah as GMMAN said is also an alternative way to check all these readings and more, i just used dr. battery because when charging it would also measure the actual charge of the battery in mAh.

[igord7]

Originally Posted by kkalogia

Try it once more, maybe it takes a couple of times. I had charged my device completely several times before it got fixed and in that case i had to overcharge the way i described previously. Semma2 on the other hand solved by moving form touchstone charging to plug charging. In any case it seems that something in the hardware or software is recalibrated and then it gets fixed. I haven't had this issue again since my fix. Report back your findings for other users, hope it works for you.

And yes Govnah as GMMAN said is also an alternative way to check all these readings and more, i just used dr. battery because when charging it would also measure the actual charge of the battery in mAh.

I installed Dr Battery and found it was discharging at about 600ma.
Once I plugged it into the Wall Charger, it started charging at about 500ma (from 99% full).
Once it achieved 100%, it then started to decrease the current charge (Trickle)
After a short while, it got to about 1.5ma which I consider charged.

I'll see what happens now during the sleep cycle.
Thanks

[Semma2]

I can confirm that the discharge-while-off problem comes back eventually when I go back to charging on the Touchstone as usual. So my recommendation is that you should never assume that the TP will power down properly until you test it by leaving it turned off for 24 hours. If it's discharging while off, charge via USB until it stops.