Possible battery solution (fix)

dj_gabzz · Jan 5, 2008

Fellow universal users who suffer from battery problems, i know this issue is reccuring and is in many threads and forums now. However i am sorry to increase the talk in another thread. I just thought i would share my peice of advice.
Attached is a pic of the universal battery and below is a little procedure that you might wanna try.
Lets say your universal battery is dying after 10 mins and you just had charged it overnight (meter says it died at 95% or whatever.. ) here is what you do.
1- take the battery out locate the pin provided in this pic attached. its the second pin from the top if you are holding the battery with the connector being to the upper right corner (just see the pic)
2- cover this pin with a thin peice of tape that you will leave temporarily. till the battery fully dies.
3- turn your universal on after placing the battery in it again
4- change the power settings in a way that leaves the universal on for all the time unless you manually turn it off.. so all the power savings are off.
5- let your battery drain all the way until it just turns the universal off.
6- take the battery out and remove the insulation from that pin
7- turn your universal on again and let it charge overnight or till the light turns green.
8- this fixed my universals' battery and now mine turns off at 5%

p.s. while the universal is running and the pin is insulated you will notice that the battery indicator that shows the percentage left doesn't work. (thats the whole point making the ppc blind and not being able to read how much is in the batter and take full advantage of whats in it as far as power goes, this will make the battery realize that it was drained more than usual and forces it to recalculate or recalibrate itself.
by the way you will also notice that the universal wont be able to get charged while that pin is insulated. so again my advice is fully charge your battery , take it out, insulate the pin then drain it all the way , take the insulation out and recharge until light is green.
please post if you had a successful result and hopefully for all who are suffering from this battery problem now they have one more hope.

mzalan · Jan 5, 2008

This is what they call "Resetting" or "Formatting", nad while it's good for NiMH and neccesary for NiCd batteries, it can actually prove harmful to the LiION battery of the Universal, since it may over-deplete the battery.

Use with care, and only if you can't afford a new battery, since this might leave you without a battery!

ramfangzauva · Jan 5, 2008

Deeply discharging of Lithium Batteries

People may remember the videos of burning Dells and Macs. Deeply discharging lithium cells puts them into a critical stage. You may loose a bit more than only the battery ...

dj_gabzz · Jan 5, 2008

well its not deeply discharging
i monitored mine and was playing games on my uni until it turned off once it did then i took the tape out and fully charged it.. then viola it worked fine. i dont see any risk plus yes there is in the lithium batteries a problem similar to the nicad research about it and verify.. anyway you dont have to follow, just saying this worked on 3 of my batteries.
Cheers

mzalan · Jan 5, 2008

NiCd yes, but those are of a completely different architecture. There's something called the Memory effect there, which means that the battery retains the previous charge as the threshold for the next charge, meaning they can't be "topped up", because then only the "top-up" can be drained from the battery.

Lithium Ion batteries retain this memory effect too, that's true. But in them, this is nearly insignificant, meaning the can be topped up at any time, even at 99%, and the almost full charge can be drained. Almost, because there is a minimum threshold beneath which the internal mechanism changes and the battery becomes unusable.

That is why I recommend against deep-discharging the batteries. What I did once was ordered a battery, and noted that it came with a six-month warranty. Now I get a new battery on the warranty(free) every six months, regardless of the state of the old one. But usually by then it startsx to show signs of weakness...

Juun · Jan 5, 2008

i will try this swith my old bat after my new bat is here. thanks for the fix

greets

dj_gabzz · Jan 7, 2008

Juun said:
i will try this swith my old bat after my new bat is here. thanks for the fix

greets

no problem, how did it work out guys.. anyone tried it yet
?

TehPenguin · Jan 7, 2008

mzalan said:
Lithium Ion batteries retain this memory effect too, that's true. But in them, this is nearly insignificant, meaning the can be topped up at any time, even at 99%, and the almost full charge can be drained. Almost, because there is a minimum threshold beneath which the internal mechanism changes and the battery becomes unusable.

Unfortunately, the Memory Effect in Li-Ion batteries can be made worse if the battery is of low quality and/or has impurities in it (due to manufacturing or age). This is why our original, top quality, batteries are dying (due to age) and the cheap ones we buy off ebay are pretty bad (low quality)

mzalan said:
That is why I recommend against deep-discharging the batteries. What I did once was ordered a battery, and noted that it came with a six-month warranty.

I second that. This may be a fix, but be careful!! As with anything in these forums, it caries its own risks.

Probably best just to buy a battery from a respectable shop\dealer and get a warranty with it...

webmin · Jan 7, 2008

hey guys ... i´ve tried it ...

i think it works, give it a try.

takes 4-6 hours to completely discharge, the i´ve loaded it one night long. today i´ve played long time with my colegues at work, used bluetooth several times, hat some calls... and now, after 10 hours without charging it has 45 % of charge.
at the moment i turned the brightnes to the maximum, with wifi, beam, phone and bluetooth on, to see at wich percent my universal will turn of.

i give you a notice if this happens.

cheers

webmin · Jan 7, 2008

now ... finaly it turns off at 19 % !
but ... without any warnings or notifications...

but before it always was shutting down at 40 %, now with shutdown value at 19% the battery is more useful as before.

maybe it could help someone.

cheers

pa3x · Jan 7, 2008

Didn't work form my orginal battery.

dj_gabzz · Jan 7, 2008

pa3x said:
Didn't work form my orginal battery.

at what percentage does your battery turn off ? try it again does your battery last longer with the tape on?

dj_gabzz · Jan 7, 2008

webmin said:
now ... finaly it turns off at 19 % !
but ... without any warnings or notifications...

but before it always was shutting down at 40 %, now with shutdown value at 19% the battery is more useful as before.

maybe it could help someone.

cheers

sounds great

try to guve it another shot if you want .. fully charge it and then put the tape on until the universal turns off . maybe you will get closer to zero like i did and if not then.. meh 19% isnt that bad compared to people shutting off at 40 and 80 ...

the only reason i came up with this method was because i read in the wiki that some pople discharged using led or whatever to depelte tha battery or even on bootloader. i thought about it in a way that would make mnore sence using the device itself to deplete its own battery (think about the ammount of power tha led will be drwaing vs the amount the ppc will be drawing ) maybe the chip in the battery claiberates itself on the ammount of draw ... most likely not but it crossed my mind like that so i gave it a shot and it seems to be an exploration by surprise

cheers

pa3x · Jan 7, 2008

dj_gabzz said:
at what percentage does your battery turn off ? try it again does your battery last longer with the tape on?

With or without tape on 96%

sl9 · Jan 8, 2008

dj_gabzz said:
well its not deeply discharging
i monitored mine and was playing games on my uni until it turned off once it did then i took the tape out and fully charged it.. then viola it worked fine. i dont see any risk plus yes there is in the lithium batteries a problem similar to the nicad research about it and verify.. anyway you dont have to follow, just saying this worked on 3 of my batteries.
Cheers

It sounds very much like "deeply discharging" to me - you are disabling the sensor which is also the failsafe circuit!!! The sensor is not there just to "annoy you" by shutting off early, it's there for safety reasons!

All Lithium ION batteries shut off quite a bit BEFORE they are fully discharged. This is because a truly 100% discharged Li-ION battery (or even close, like 95%) becomes unstable, and this can cause it to set on fire, leak acid, and even violently explode causing you serious injury or burning down your house (people have actually been killed by exploding Li-ION batteries). This is rare yes, but it does happen and it has happened.

We all know that the sensor in some Li-ION batteries can lose its calibration over time, though this is NOT due to a "memory effect", NiCD batteries were the only chemistry which suffered from that problem. But you have no way of knowing if the sensor is really de-calibrated, or it is shutting off because of a fault with the battery, or even that the battery is just nearly dead.

For gods sake people please be careful, this hack may look "cool" and yes it probably will work on quite a few batteries, but it can also be extremely dangerous, and is just not worth the risk, especially when you can get a new battery for less than $20!

Check out these videos to see how violent and extreme a Li-ION explosion can be...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5f0VCoFuFM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJCZ4ayioCU

dj_gabzz · Jan 8, 2008

sl9 said:
It sounds very much like "deeply discharging" to me - you are disabling the sensor which is also the failsafe circuit!!! The sensor is not there just to "annoy you" by shutting off early, it's there for safety reasons!

All Lithium ION batteries shut off quite a bit BEFORE they are fully discharged. This is because a truly 100% discharged Li-ION battery (or even close, like 95%) becomes unstable, and this can cause it to set on fire, leak acid, and even violently explode causing you serious injury or burning down your house (people have actually been killed by exploding Li-ION batteries). This is rare yes, but it does happen and it has happened.

We all know that the sensor in some Li-ION batteries can lose its calibration over time, though this is NOT due to a "memory effect", NiCD batteries were the only chemistry which suffered from that problem. But you have no way of knowing if the sensor is really de-calibrated, or it is shutting off because of a fault with the battery, or even that the battery is just nearly dead.

For gods sake people please be careful, this hack may look "cool" and yes it probably will work on quite a few batteries, but it can also be extremely dangerous, and is just not worth the risk, especially when you can get a new battery for less than $20!

Check out these videos to see how violent and extreme a Li-ION explosion can be...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5f0VCoFuFM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJCZ4ayioCU

thanks you for the info.
i dont mean to harm noone.. i just tried it and it worked for me and thought i would share.. for all future readers. dont take risks if this is really true..

webmin · Jan 8, 2008

a new battery for 20 $ ? where ?

in germany you have to pay nearby 50 -60 $ for a new battery, and you never know if it is a good one or some old crap.

for that reason i will try to maximise the life of my battery ...

quadxeon · Jan 8, 2008

webmin said:
a new battery for 20 $ ? where ?

in germany you have to pay nearby 50 -60 $ for a new battery, and you never know if it is a good one or some old crap.

Or you get new crap

webmin · Jan 8, 2008

hehe

yes, thats true.

lorgem · Jan 8, 2008

****! It worked on my UNI. I've used my original battery which is about 2 to 2.5 years old. As of now still 77% after 8 hours with beam on, bright max, gprs on. WOW! Thank You!!!!!

Possible battery solution (fix)

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