Battery life: Maybe really a hardware issue?

[KNERD]

Modem is cut off from power when the phone is off. KIll switch also cuts all power to the modem.

I guess you did not read the previous posts were I , and others posted losing battery power while the phone has been shut down.

[Zebulon Walton]

I did find that although I initially thought I had the same problem it turned out to be a dying aftermarket battery. Since replacing it the symptom has not returned.

[dachalife]

I’ve got a new phone & battery, haven’t seen any drain with the power off.

[megous]

Modem is cut off from power when the phone is off. KIll switch also cuts all power to the modem.

I guess you did not read the previous posts were I , and others posted losing battery power while the phone has been shut down.

I did. It doesn't change anything about how the pinephone modem powering works.

Your phone is probably broken in some way if it consumes power while off. It's not by design. All of my pinephones consume power in uA range while off (I measure it directly on battery terminals).

Or you have some very early batch (second one, I believe) that had some leakage issue, but that was quite small, and would take more than a few weeks to discharge the phone while off.

One of my pinephones started consuming 800mW while off, after I damaged it during development of the keyboard firmware a week or so ago, by shorting pogo pins. It now discharges overnight while off. So it's possible to damage the phone to exhibit similar behavior if you're unlucky. For example by laying the phone on a conductive surface without a backcover (even when it's off). You can basically short the battery that way, because one of the pogo pins is VBAT.

[mob]

When my phone goes into deep sleep without the charger connected, the phone is very cool to the touch and it seems to discharge fairly slowly.

However, when it is plugged into the charger and charged to 95 - 100% even in deep sleep, the modem can be quite warm.

((That is the upper portion of the phone,  NOT the battery (lower

I made similar observations. Randomly my PP discharges abnormally overnight, even when powered off, and I did notice the warmness on the upper side. For note my front camera is always switch off.

So far I attributed naively abnormal discharges when on to softwares upgrades (and potential regressions, time to time) as it seems to be very random and I update quite regularly (PP PMOS with mobian bookworm here). This thread is very interesting. I have not been very meticulous and did not keep any precise record of the battery status / context so far, but I'll investigate it.

I am not especially blaming the design, though I did not had any accident and have been very careful with my PP. Could it be anything, I am just curious of the reason (and how to fix it).

I'll try to do some more formal tests over the weekend (I die without music, I need my PP fully charged in the morning)

---

@Zebulon Walton : do you have any gist or so for the test script you wrote ?

[KNERD]

I am now starting to suspect this is a software issue. For the most part I have been using UBPort's Ubuntu Touch as it seems most things on the phone seem to work best with it, however no updates in over a month.

I do have an image of the Manjaro with Plasma. I booted it up yesterday around 3PM local time and did some updates. I played around with it for a while, then tossed it to the side, forgetting to plug it back in for charging, as with Ubuntu Touch the battery would be dead in about four hours.

I grab the phone this morning, and now over 18 hours later, the battery charge is quite high. By the time I tossed the phone to the side it was about 83%, and now showing 74%.

[Zebulon Walton]

Another data point, I just turned my Pinephone on after being turned off for nearly a week with the battery installed and after booting up the battery is at 96%. The battery was at just about 100% when I'd turned it off but I'm sure the boot process consumes a bit.