[somline]

I have got the first report of a bad battery on a veer,

The health scene show me "calculated left 468mAh",but "manufacturer rating 935mAh",I also run the battery test,and display "battery status:RED".

My response:

That means that your battery is bad.
Please contact HP and hopefully you get it solved.

You are the first to report such on one of the new devices.
You may try to completely drain the battery until the device shutsdown. Then charge uninterrupted to (real) 100%, until charging stops. (use dr.battery to find the spot).
This may recalibrate the battery

If you have similar problems please post them here.

[somline]

Good to know, nobody here has that problem on a Veer, Pre3 or TouchPad.
At present I know 3 4 users with a Veer or Pre3 and a battery health of 50%.
One user is trying to calibrate a Veer battery in a Pre:

Hi,I have tried to calibrate my veer's battery some times,but it's still 547mAh(50%),I had a Palm Pre alreadly,today I have an idea that get the battery from veer to put in Palm Pre(with copper wire),then use the Dr.battery from the pre to calibrate the battery,is it safe?

I succeed! yes,the veer battery have 3 contacts,the same with palm pre battery,but in the different position,
I am charging the veer now,

I'm wondering what the result would be?

[somline]

So he didn't calibrate but could reset the health of the Veer battery to 100 on his Pre using Dr.Battery.
Back in the Veer the battery charged completely.

Yes,I changed the battery health from 50% to 100%,and charged the veer successfully,the battery capacity reached 912mAh,thank you very much.

Remember that you may loose your waranty. There is a sticker inside you don't want to break.

Funny, seems to be my private thread ;-)

[somline]

<rant deleted by somline>

[somline]

And here we have the next 50% health on a Pre3;
http://forums.precentral.net/hp-pre-...ml#post3252792

Thank you HP for removing the battery interface. Now we don't have a chance to recalibrate or at least reset the health.

[somline]

Here is the next Pre3: http://forums.webosnation.com/webos-...ml#post3268035

Please don't post in this thread. It's my diary :-)

[Sanjay]

The battery on my Pre3 seems to have gone kaput. All of a sudden it is draining extremely fast and 'Dr. Battery' is now showing only 50% - 609mAh as the "Calculated Left" capacity. One day the battery is perfectly fine, showing almost 1200mAh as the "calculated left" capacity and then suddenly this. Any ideas what may have caused this> Is the battery actually damaged and down to 50% capacity, or is this just another one of webOSes quirks that is causing the battery capacity to be reported incorrectly? If so, is there a solution or a work around to calibrate the battery or get it to report the correct capacity so that ti can charge to it's actual capacity and not the 50% being reported by webOS now? Thanks.

PS: I have a Pre+, Pre2, Veer and a spare Pre3 to help in any experiment that you might think might work.

[Sanjay]

Thank you HP for removing the battery interface. Now we don't have a chance to recalibrate or at least reset the health.

But, this is totally in keeping with HP's consistent endeavor to remove as much functionality out of webOS as possible.

[somline]

Hi Sanjay and welcome to my diary ;-)
First some technical background.
In the old world (before A6) the kernel was communicating with the battery chip. I could see the driver code.
Now with the A6 the kernel is communicating with the A6. I can see the driver source. But the A6 is communicating with the battery. This is implemented in the A6 firmware which is closed source.
It seems that the A6 can actually write to battery registers. The "getage" interface driver file is actually read and writable. I tried writing to it (could be risky) but the health has not changed.

A webOS battery usually has three contacts.
One is plus one minus and one is the one wire interface to the battery chip.
We don't know what chip is in the Pre3 battery.

As you could read in this thread one member (hlbice) was able to reset the health of his Veer battery with a pre. Seems the Veer has the same or compatible chip as the pres/pixis.

The Pre3 battery has (I think) 5 contacts. Maybe they have just doubled the plus and minus to get more current through it. Then it would be theoretical possible to connect 3 contacts from the pre3 battery to a pre and reset the health, if the chip is the same or compatible.

Or you buy a Mugen.

EDIT: Question: You said: "One day the battery is perfectly fine, showing almost 1200mAh as the "calculated left" capacity" is this still the case?

I have hoped (and still do) that the A6 is able to calibrate the battery. We may havn't found out how.

[Sanjay]

EDIT: Question: You said: "One day the battery is perfectly fine, showing almost 1200mAh as the "calculated left" capacity" is this still the case?

Nope. Now it shows '50% - 609mAh' as the "calculated left" capacity.

[roughty]

May I ask a non-technical but related question: is it bad to charge e.g. a Veer although the battery is not totally drained or even almost full?

What about charging with 80% battery still charged? Can one do that without damaging anything?

I know there is the so-called memory effect that harms batteries but I dont know if that is the case with webos phones/Touchpad.

Thank U!

[somline]

LiIon batteries don't have the memory effect any more.
It's better to keep them charged instead of complete drain:
How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries - Battery University

[roughty]

Hi,

thanks very much for the answer!

If I understand correctly, this also means that one can also charge the battery with randomly long cycles, e.g. stopping to charge after say a couple of minutes even though the battery is not loaded to 100%. Is that right?

Thanks again

[somline]

This is my understanding as well, but I'm no expert in (LiIon) batteries.

[chejlava]

It looks like I can't post this file anywhere other than in a forum, so here it is.

I hope it helps - if not, ask again and I can dig a bit more...

thanks for supporting webOS!
edc

[DrOwl]

Ok old thread but this happened to me last week too...

Battery went from full health lasting for a day and a half, to 50% health and lasting about 2/3rds of a day.
This must be a logical things rather then a physical thing... (i did run a few times at 0% battery for several hours)
Most annoying indeed!

Has any one had success resetting a Pre3 battery on another device?

I might try this on my Pixi after i get my new battery, i ordered one of the cheep ones from Cell phone shop i did want a merga but importing from the US is not fun!

<rant>
i dont mind paying my taxes what i dont like is the "processing fee" which in cases like this is much more then the taxes!</rant

[Mize]

I just discovered somline's diary. Thanks for Dr Battery! My pre3 batteries are still going strong, but I worry about d-day. Did anyone figure out hoe to reset them? What was the file posted by chejlava?

[somline]

I havn't heard of anyone resetting the health of a pre3 battery. I would (and have) buy a Mugen (free shipping).
The file from chejlava was some interesting information about the A6 interface. It had no new information for me since I already saw the interface from the kernel sources. I've ask chejlava about more info, but got nothing else.

[DrOwl]

Just a little note, I used my (new, whoho) Touchpad charger on my Pre3 and gave it a good old charge, the battery seems to be lasting much longer now.

The Touchpad's charger has almost dubble the ampage of the standard charger!

I still have two of the cheeop batteries on order though =)

[OldSkoolVWLover]

Just a little note, I used my (new, whoho) Touchpad charger on my Pre3 and gave it a good old charge, the battery seems to be lasting much longer now.

The Touchpad's charger has almost dubble the ampage of the standard charger!

I still have two of the cheeop batteries on order though =)

The chips in the battery regulate the charge the battery sees.

Somline feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I am prettty sure the regulation is on the battery side.