Battery discharge problem

[g4mba5]

Hi,

I have received my Pine Phone Pro last week, Dec. 15th. I switched it on, and played a bit with the pre-installed Android system. The battery was at 100%. Then I switched it off.

Today I got a micro SD card, and switched the PPP on to start the installation process, but he refused to boot. The battery was completely discharged.

So I have three questions:

1) Is this expected?

2) If the provided battery is broken, what should I do? Is there compatible batteries I can buy here in France, or do I have to buy a battery at Pine64?

3) And do I have to buy a battery charger at Pine64, or do compatible battery chargers exist?

Thanks in advance for any answer.

[g4mba5]

Here is more details :

I have found a compatible battery charger, that delivers 5V and 3A, which is the requirement written inside the quick start guide.

If I switch off the phone, plug the battery charger, wait an hour, switch on the phone, Android tells me that the battery didn't charge. Same pourcentage.

If I let the phone on, while Android is running, and with the battery charger plugged, the battery does charge.(about 1% by minute).

How can it be possible? Could it be some hardware failure? Or the software that manages the battery when the phone is off that is broken?

[g4mba5]

Yesterday, I have charged the battery up to 35%, the phone being on. Then I switched off the phone.

Today, I switch the phone on, start Android, and see that now the battery is fully charged!

There is something broken somewhere, but what? Was it tested by the manufacturer?

[Cuperino]

Hello @g4mba5,

I seem to be having a similar issue. I was running Manjaro KDE on my PinePhone Pro. I left it on overnight and the next day it wouldn't boot anymore. The battery got fully discharged, but I didn't realized at the time. What I knew was that my PinePhone Pro stopped booting irregardless of whether it was plugged in or not. Thankfully the phone has a pogo pin that enables using the headphone jack for UART communication. Listening to the UART signals, I realized it would only emit sounds while connected to power, which later lead me to conclude the battery was fully drained.

For a moment I thought this wasn't a battery issue, because leaving it connected for an hour using a 5V 3A charger didn't make a difference. What I didn't think at the time is that the phone was spending all this energy attempting to boot an operating system and resting midway due to lack of power on the battery. Then I had an idea, which finally got the device to boot up!

If there is no SD card, and Android was properly removed, the hardware will idle and the battery might charge enough for it to boot. I left my PinePhone Pro charge with no SD card for half an hour, and proceeded to re-attempt booting the OS. A few seconds later I see Manjaro Posh loading on the screen, which is what was flashed on this other SD card. The battery had resumed charging as it normally would.

[g4mba5]

Hi,

Thanks for your testimony.

Here is what I noticed since the Dec. 23rd :

- I switched off the PinePhone Pro during five days, and the battery seems to have lost its power quickly, because I can't start the phone anymore.
- Then, If I plug the phone to the charger a few minutes, I can start the phone, and it tells me that the battery is at 100% !?
- Now I let the phone on, without the charger, then off, to see how the battery discharges...
- I noticed too that if I plug the phone to the charger, and switch off the phone from the GUI, or if I do a long press on the power button, the phone reboots instead of switching off. If the phone is not plugged to the charger, the phone switches off as expected.

As I don't know how the battery is managed (which part is for the hardware, which part for the driver, and which part for the user space...), I can't say more. I just can say that something is rotten in this part of the kingdom.

I will try the other OS images of https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pi...h/releases and will report if something changes about the battery.

I want to try the camera too, but the "MegaPixels" application installed with the plasma-mobile image does not run at all.

[Cuperino]

- I switched off the PinePhone Pro during five days, and the battery seems to have lost its power quickly, because I can't start the phone anymore.

If you attempt to restart, you'll notice the phone stays frozen. Because of this, I don't trust powering off the phone from any of the operating system. What I do is power of from the OS and then remove the battery from the device. This significantly reduces battery depletion. Plugging the battery back in after removing it also helps, but I haven't done any measurements to see if there's a significant difference.

- Then, If I plug the phone to the charger a few minutes, I can start the phone, and it tells me that the battery is at 100% !?

That's a first for me... Have you tried with a different OS. If it happens in multiple systems there might be something wrong with your battery...

- I noticed too that if I plug the phone to the charger, and switch off the phone from the GUI, or if I do a long press on the power button, the phone reboots instead of switching off. If the phone is not plugged to the charger, the phone switches off as expected.

That has been my experience as well. The PinePhone Pro will never stay off as long as it is plugged to a power source, similar to an iPhone.

[bcnaz]

If the Pro is like the original Pine phone, it turns on when you plug in the power, but you can then turn it off from the GUI interface.

a 2 second power button press, turns on the phone

a 10-12 second power button press is a hard shut down

a 15 second power button press results in a hard re-start.

removing the battery while the modem is running is NOT recommended !

---

The battery is the same as the original Pine phone, please check other threads on this forum for details on the replacement batteries.

I have purchased a few decent quality batteries on ebay, but they are available through other sources as well online.

Prices seem to range from about $6.00 to $12.00 USD, not too bad. ----> (usually includes free shipping)

---

*****************

The Boot order for the Pro phone is different than the original Pine phone, The Pro gives boot priority to the eMMC...
this can be "worked around" --->

I suggest reading a bit here on the forum to better understand how to work with this set-up. ---> Nothing "Faulty" with the Pro, it is just different.

---

*******
As far as holding a charge while the phone is turned off, This could be a fault with the factory shipped operating system.

The factory installed image is probably at least 2 - 3 months old by now, and most operating systems have improved a lot in the last few months.

Updating the installed image may help, but a fresh install may be better yet.

Welcome to the Pine Forum + Good Luck

[Cuperino]

Hi @bcnaz,

Thanks for the tips!

The Boot order for the Pro phone is different than the original Pine phone,  The Pro gives boot priority to the eMMC...

We're aware of the boot order. You can't boot Linux on a PPPro Developer edition unless you remove the factory Android OS from the eMMC. This is still good advice for those now receiving their Explorer editions.

As far as holding a charge while the phone is turned off,  This could be a fault with the factory shipped operating system.

In my experience, all distros currently fail to restart properly. This will continue to improve with new releases. Some, like Manjaro, shut down correctly now. You can tell whether the phone is powered off by enabling UART and listening through the headphone jack.

removing the battery while the modem is running  is NOT recommended

To be clear, what I do is remove the battery after the phone is supposed to have shut down or reset, in case that it's still on. It's faster than connecting headphone jack and listening for UART. If the phone was in fact properly off, the 10-12 second hard shut down press would only turn the phone back on.

I have purchased a few decent quality batteries on ebay, but they are available through other sources as well online.

Thanks again for the tips! I will lookup those battery threads...

[bcnaz]

** The "Different" boot order of the New Pine phone Pro is going to be the subject of some New threads here on the forum I am sure.

I have gotten used to running all my Pine phones on the micro sd cards, even my daily use phone, so easy to swap the whole system in just a minute.
> Little things are kinda easy to misplace though,
They run the same, --> just a little slower than the eMMC.

Eventually I will install an OS on my emmc, and use the sd card for extra storage at that time.

Which operating system(s) are you using ? some are more polished "out of the Box" and some are more like "Kits"

[FrozenPine]

I received my PPPEE yesterday, and am also having issues, though they seem more related to charging than discharging.

When attached to the keyboard case, I know I have good pogo contact because the keyboard can type on the device, but it will not charge from it. I know it the keyboard charging is 'on' because I can trigger the PPPEE to boot by pressing the keyboard power button, but after that the PPPEE battery will continuously drain.

I know it is not an issue with the keyboard device itself because the keyboard charging behaves as expected with the PPCE.

I tried swapping the batteries between the PPPEE and PPCE with no change in behavior.

Also, there is an issue where the phone cannot charge while powered is off. If power is supplied to the device and then a shutdown command is issued, as soon as shutdown completes it will boot again. This means it cannot be left in a 'trickle charge' state from a low-amp charger.

Perhaps the most troubling is that the device does not seem able to determine its power state. I have Manjaro Plasma on EMMC, and Manjaro Phosh on SD card. When booting to Plasma, the status tray icon for the battery contains the charging symbol at all times whether power is supplied or not.

In Phosh, regardless of whether power is being supplied to the device or not, the Powersupply app shows:
battery: Capacity 0%; Voltage 0; Status Discharging; Health Good; Temperature N/A
USB: Charger not connected; Voltage 0V; Current limit 0A
Type-c: Type-C revision N/A; PD revision N/A; Power role N/A; Data role N/A; Operation mode N/A

I'm starting to worry I have a defective unit, but I'm not sure if the issues with Powersupply are generalized to all PPPEEs, or specific to my device. Can anyone confirm if Powersupply works or doesn't work for them on PPPEE?

Is there a version of Powersupply, or an equivalent app that is available in Plasma?

Thanks!

EDIT: version info

Manjaro Plasma
KDE Plasma version: 5.23.5
KDE framework Version: 5.90.0
Qt Version: 5.15.2
Kernel version: 5.16.2-2-2-MANJARO-ARM
OS type: 64-bit

Manjaro Phosh
I don't know how to check the version. All it says under 'Settings > About' is: Gnome version 41.3