iNew V3 battery problems

[Burs]

@Gizbeat: regarding issue with battery charging, are you absolutely sure it is a hardware problem? How do you know that? Any link on that or just a personal oppinion?

[GizBeat]

I agree with what you both said. I just wanted to say that relying air gesture on front camera is a very bad idea, since the camera must be on for the whole time in order to use air gesture, and that drains the battery pretty fast. That's all. I bought it despite all "flaws" that it has, because I also know there are many other things which make V3 great.

@Gizbeat: regarding issue with battery charging, are you absolutely sure it is a hardware problem? How do you know that? Any link on that or just a personal oppinion?

Because I'm smart. Seriously though, It's based on many years of extensive smartphone experience. It's not only with China phones. You can find the same issue with top brand phones as well. With iNew v3 in particular, some part of the mainboard wasn't designed or implemented correctly, or perhaps not 'up to par'. Meaning some faulty hardware on the motherboard. The circuit just can't handle charging to the full mA/mV. Charging the batteries externally tells the tale, as the battery discharges 'normally' when charged to 100% externally.

If I'm proven wrong by some software upgrade, I'll gladly admit it. But I highly doubt it will happen. I still have further testing to do. I need to check what the mV is reported as from a 100% externally charged battery. Will report back tomorrow.

[Burs]

I just hope the battery is not actually 1610mAh, since charging "stops" at 88%
But even in the phone, the battery is sooner or later charged at full, right?
I don't care if I have to wait a little bit longer, but I don't feel like pulling out the battery at the end of each day.

[GizBeat]

I don't believe the battery is 1610, but you may have a point. It's possibly misconfiguration of the battery itself. The voltage is showing 4.2 right around when charging rate per hour drops dramatically. So it could be a 'safety' feature of Android that just calls it 'full' after mV no longer increases over a certain amount of time.

Another test that needs to be done is charging a battery other than the iNew batter. We'll need another brand battery to test in the phone that we know is charging properly, and see if it charges smoothly all the way to 100%. If it does, then we know it's an issue with the battery itself. If it doesn't, then we know it's an issue with the phone.

I'll be doing some more testing today and we can narrow it down. I also don't think this is an issue with all v3. So it could be a batch of batteries, or a batch of v3. Anyone else can test this, please charge your phone and record the arc with Battery Spy from Play.

Burs, once you swap, you'll never go back. It's extremely liberating to not being tied to a charger. The swap takes 30 seconds from pull to booted back in Android. The phone boots quickly. Obviously you'll need a 2nd or 3rd battery for this to work out.

[StardustOne]

The original battery delivered with this phone is 1830 mAh. I just bench marked it with the Antutu Tester Battery Test function and it scored 514 points what is an excellent score for such a phone and battery and 3.7 V is mentioned on the sticker. Antutu Tester also sees it as 3.7 V.

Plus: the phone can also take the ThL W8 batteries that are rated at 2000 mAh, you may give these a try. Some forum members in Germany got ThL W8 batteries delivered with their V3 phones and they work just as fine if not even better than the original.

ThL W8 batteries are available on ebay or aliexpress (note: buying accessories with Aliexpress is low risk, buying phones is high risk, Aliexpress is quite okay for accessories).

[adimavi]

@StardustOne
I don't understand what you want to say about THL W8 battery.
You mean the original battery is better, no need to buy THL W8 battery, if i'm wrong please correct me.

[Burs]

I recently ordered two more batteries from BG (the phone is from another webshop, so that's good for testing - probably different batches), so once I have everything in place, I can test it alltogether on my part.

The batteries from the following smartphones are very similar to V3's (according to V and Wh signatures, and dimensions - some slightly longer/thicher), but provide more capacity (2000mAh or more): Iocean X7, THL W8, Lenovo S820, Fly IQ446. It would be great if someone dares to test with them and see how charging goes. If everything's ok, then all is clear, no question about it.

[StardustOne]

@StardustOne
I don't understand what you want to say about THL W8 battery.
You mean the original battery is better, no need to buy THL W8 battery, if i'm wrong please correct me.

This means: the ThL W8 battery is fitting the iNEW V3 battey compartment. In a nutshell, you can buy the higher capacity ThL W8 battery and use it in the iNew V3.

Until someone tries and compares the two batteries with the same test scenario, we cannot tell whether the ThL W8 battery does better or not, assuming that it has 2000 vs 1830 mAh it should of course provide more battery run time.

I have ordered a ThL W8 battery to try this, since it is an Aliexpress order, it takes a couple of weeks to arrive (if ever).

[bay]

I'm also curious about this.

Got my V3 the other day, now all loaded with Gizbeat's 1.03 with the 6gb mod (cheers Gizbeat).

I've noticed a couple of things battery related. On wall charger mine charges fine up to 100%, no issue. Whilst the discharge is pretty high on use (prob due to it being low-capacity battery & high level phone), I have no issues getting it back to 100% smoothly.

Also, the other thing i've noticed is in-car or usb charging. Using the usb cable which came with my v3, or another decent cable (I've got some sony ones from past phones), these work fine. Cheaper cables don't seem to get past 88%. Also, in car you need a high-powered usb port - such as one with tablet capacity. Standard USB won't get it charged past 88%, and will actually see the battery discharging despite the battery icon saying it is charging.

Same with connecting to USB on computer. At work, my using a sony cable sees it go back to 100%. Sometimes stops at 88% for a while but gets to 100% in the end.

I'm gonna see if I can get a THL W8 batt and see if there's any difference. I got my unit from to2c.com.

[GizBeat]

Hi Bay,

Thanks for this. So it could be the phone is very sensitive to quality of charger and cable. That's interesting.

Yes, it will eventually get to 100% regardless. What happens is the phone basically gives up trying to push any more voltage.

If you could check a couple of things - How long does it take to charge from 80%-100%, what is the final voltage when it's charged to 100%?

If you don't want to sit next to your phone and watch it from 80%-100%, just use Battery Spy.