Left in a drawer for years and now it's slow

[UziMonkey]

I have a P900 that was left in a drawer for 2 or 3 years, never getting charged even once in all that time. Turning it on, I immediately realized something was wrong because it took forever to boot. The lock screen was so slow that the entire machine locked up for a few seconds, scrolling between pages on the launcher stuttered hard or locked up and everything else with the machine was generally the same. The web browser is unusable, even typing in a URL locks things up. The device is unusable.

So I thought the battery was obviously damaged, even charged at 100% it would be flat for sitting for maybe 2 hours with the screen off. I tried several cycles of charging to 100% then discharging and back up, but nothing seems to help. I don't have much money so I took at stab in the dark and got a cheap battery from ebay and it didn't help. I don't know if this battery is new, but it does seem to hold a charge like the device did when it was new but it's just still so slow that you can't use it.

However, one thing that I've noticed is that apps that don't touch the storage seem to work OK. I have a Spectrum TV app that once it starts up seems to be okay, but not great. Netflix seems to be okay as well after starting up. They both stutter a bit and rarely freeze. I don't know if this is relevant at all.

I'm at a loss of what else could be damaged or how to fix this. I'm in the process of cycling this new battery up and down, though I don't know if this would actually help. I just don't know how to diagnose this problem.

 

[UziMonkey]

Okay, the problem was the battery, it just took a few hours of charging. I guess now that it can see it has a fully functioning battery that it's running as it should now. Android really should give you an error message about that instead of just slowing the whole thing down to a crawl, leaving you scratching your head.

 

[snebojsa]

This strange thing happened to me also.
I was given a tablet that was not in use couple of years. It takes about one hour on charger to start booting at all, I was thinking that it don't working at all.
Then it sits on Samsung Note Pro logo about 15 minutes, then logo changed to Samsung and it took about 15 more minutes to boot in home screen.
Then i realized that it's very slow and unresponsive, I charged it to full and reset, but it's remain the same, very sluggish.
Tried everything, reset it couple of times, flash rom with Odin, nothing helped.
After couple of charge-discharge cycles it starts to work like new!
I would never have thought that the battery could do that, but there it is.