Phone powers off with high user demands

[car46999]

So I have been daily using my standard Pinephone for about a year and three months and I have begun to have an issue.

I am running PostmarketOS and the issue began while running Postmarket (but I do not believe it is an OS issue).

I started noticing that when the battery percentage was below 50% the phone would abruptly shut off when browsing the web. If the battery is higher percentage the phone would work if just browsing the web, but might shut off if streaming a youtube video. It was so bad one day the battery showed 40% or so and as soon as I would open firefox and select restore session it would abruptly shut off. It did this over and over again until the battery was so dead it would not turn on.

• So after that day I updated from the version of Postmarket I installed in Dec23/Jan24 to the latest version, but no change.
  
• I searched for a new battery and found the OEM Pinephone batteries are out of stock, so I bought a new old stock Samsung BJ700BBU. No change (maybe a slight improvement in battery life, but the issue persists)
  

• So I tried booting Mobain from an SDcard and it still does the same thing.
  

• Also if the battery is in the lower charge state and if I use the camera with the flash with either OS it will abruptly shutoff.
  

If the phone is plugged in to USB power, regardless of the charge state, I cannot make it abruptly shutoff.



So I am left thinking either both batteries are bad or I have a motherboard issue. I plan to power the phone using a bench top power supply through the battery pins to see what the current draw is and if it will shut off with more current available from the battery power path.

Anyone see this behavior on their phone? Any other ideas? I am gonna be pretty disappointed if this ends up being a motherboard issue.

[KC9UDX]

If your battery really is NOS, all bets are off. I would find another battery before making any assumptions. Or better yet, connect a power supply where the battery is supposed to connect and see what happens.

[car46999]

Yea it is an Ebay battery, quoted to be genuine Samsung. But IDK if it is and do not know how old it is.

[car46999]

If your battery really is NOS, all bets are off.  I would find another battery before making any assumptions.  Or better yet, connect a power supply where the battery is supposed to connect and see what happens.

Yea it is an Ebay battery, quoted to be genuine Samsung. But IDK if it is and do not know how old it is.

Looking like a hardware issue. It pretty consistently would do the abrupt power off at 3.6V (70% indicated), while drawing 1.4-1.7A. Power supply was set to be able to supply 5+ amps. So it does not appear to be a current draw issue exceeding the capability of the battery.

Looks like the Li-Ion battery should be safe to discharge down to 3.0V generally speaking. 

Anyone know what the hardware is rated down to in the Pinephone?

[zetabeta]

... battery and power issues ...

i go speculative comments.

one possibility is a design flaw with pinephone motherboard. and there was an issue already with bi-directional usb port and keyboard case. in this possibility basically internal power is not capable to handle cpu and others. because i already have experience of testing flipping frames bug, i think i run some tests. cpu is not the only power load, modem chip, sdcard, gpu also.

maybe you have faulty motherboard. bad individual unit. i already noticed that in flipping frames frequency bug, all pinephones were not affected.

or just bad contacts for battery, try to clean those battery contacts.

[car46999]

Thanks for the advice, after testing it with the power supply and observing that with a voltage of 3.6V (70%) I have decided that I am done with the Pinephone. Time to move on, I am going to get another phone that will run PostmarketOS.

[zetabeta]

Thanks for the advice, after testing it with the power supply and observing that with a voltage of 3.6V (70%) I have decided that I am done with the Pinephone. Time to move on, I am going to get another phone that will run PostmarketOS.

i didn't put here, although there were quick tests only. i didn't find any similar issue in my pinephone. i ran some cpu waste tests with battery.

in flipping frames bug, i was testing gpu and its drivers, so it was on charger. beyong battery vs charger, tests are very similar.

i may do some deeper tests, especially using mobile data.

[zetabeta]

although i'm thing another distant possibility.

do you have 2GB ram version? and not 3GB ram version?

2GB for a web browser starts to be low and adding low-powered cpu, nightmare is ready.