Phone will not charge

[Captain Skeet]

Hey guys I have a bit of a dilemma. I have a verizon note 3 that has the bootloader unlocked by me. It's rooted with Temasek's CM13 Rom. My only issue is that I am having problems charging my phone whether it is turned on or off. I have replaced the battery recently in hopes to troubleshoot and solve my problem but came to no avail. When turned on and plugged in it shows the icon in the top right with the lightning bolt to indicate it is charging however it seems to drain still and will eventually turn itself off. If I try to charge it when it is turned off it just vibrates every 1-2 seconds repeatedly. I have replaced the charger cable and block with a brand new one from the store as well. Any help is appreciated.

 

[bftb0]

Try the following and report your results.

1) Pull the battery with nothing plugged in to the USB port. Put the new battery into the phone. While watching the screen carefully, plug the ORIGINAL charger and ORIGINAL cable in to the phone.

Do you see:

(A) Nothing at all
(B) A battery charging animation, or
(C) A static battery icon graphic followed by a brief appearance of the Knox message "Knox Warranty: kernel"

Hopefully the answer is (A) or (B). If not you might have a chicken-vs-egg problem getting your battery to charge.

Answer these questions:

2) Is the original charger the OEM (Samsung) 2A Wall-wart charger, or something else?
3) Perchance was the new charger identified as "Apple Compatible" or "For iPhone", or similar?
4) Are you able to use both cables (old & new) for data connections to a PC (testing with some other devices that can exchange data)
5) What are the rated charging capacities of the old & new chargers? 2 Amps?


The business about Apple compatible chargers is that Apple intentionally violated parts of the USB specification (to suit it's own needs) that detail how devices are supposed to interpret signals on the 4 wires of a USB 2.0 connector during initialization. So a lot of "Apple compatible" chargers produce out-of-spec signals during initialization, and many Android devices will conclude that those chargers can only provide 500 mA of current. So even if they are rated at 2A, the charge controller in the device won't pull anything more than 500 mA.

Similarly, there's all sorts of counterfeit junk being sold, even USB cables. I bought a "USB 3.0" cable in a box that appeared to be Samsung's from Fry's electronics. Despite it having blue connector inserts, it didn't even have any D+ or D- connections. It was neither USB 3.0 nor even a data cable - it couldn't even be used for charging beyond 500mA (because of the missing D+/D- connections). If you can use the cable for communication, at least you know that all four wires are present.

The amount of current that gets pushed into a handset battery during charging is typically controlled by a charge controller chip that sits either on the motherboard or on the (replaceable) USB connector daughterboard and the battery, and also watches transitions taking place on the D+/D- lines shortly after plug-in. (The external charger is just a dumb power supply rated to provide 5v up to whatever it's maximum current draw is before the voltage collapses... unless it is an Apple charger, and then it wiggles the D+/D- lines around inappropriately, confusing any device you plug them into that actually follows the USB spec, aka all Android devices)

Were it not for some certain odd behaviors that the Samsung bootloader engages in when there is an unsigned boot image flashed to the device, the scenario I'd be most likely to suspect is the following:

That you have a bad charge controller chip and you need to replace the USB connector interface. (IIRC, I think the charge controller chip might be on the connector module behind a flex connector, but I can't remember).

Sorry for all the questions - just trying to eliminate possibilities which could be interfering with your debugging.


https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Samsung+Galaxy+Note+3+Teardown/19209

 

[Captain Skeet]

1: Nothing at all.
2: The original charger is a verizon 2.1A micro-usb charger that I bought from a direct verizon store.
3: No it is a Samsung usb3.0 charger directly made for the galaxy note 3 from verizon. Guy pulled it out of the box for a old note 3 he had sold out of the store and the customer already had a charger.
4: Yes I can use both on a galaxy s5. The old charger is a micro-usb and the new is a usb3.0. They charge and transfer data through both cables to the S5.
5: Old charger: 2.1A New charger: 5.3v=2.0A

I have replaced the charging port before on this same phone because my charger would only work being held a certain position and that fixed my issue. However now it won't charge hardly at all. Some time I can get lucky if I leave it overnight but not always. It's temperamental. But I honestly thought it would be a software issue considering it doesn't do anything. When it does do something the battery logo will come up but will not animate, it will remain static and then disappear forcing the phone to turn on and will slowly charge.

 

[bftb0]

1: Nothing at all.
2: The original charger is a verizon 2.1A micro-usb charger that I bought from a direct verizon store.
3: No it is a Samsung usb3.0 charger directly made for the galaxy note 3 from verizon. Guy pulled it out of the box for a old note 3 he had sold out of the store and the customer already had a charger.
4: Yes I can use both on a galaxy s5. The old charger is a micro-usb and the new is a usb3.0. They charge and transfer data through both cables to the S5.
5: Old charger: 2.1A New charger: 5.3v=2.0A

I have replaced the charging port before on this same phone because my charger would only work being held a certain position and that fixed my issue. However now it won't charge hardly at all. Some time I can get lucky if I leave it overnight but not always. It's temperamental.

But I honestly thought it would be a software issue considering it doesn't do anything. When it does do something the battery logo will come up but will not animate, it will remain static and then disappear forcing the phone to turn on and will slowly charge.

TL;DR Maybe it is a software issue.


There is something subtle that happens when an unsigned boot image is in the boot partition. This is going to sound kind of strange, but it appears that in some conditions where you would expect the phone to be off, when the bootloader detects an unsigned boot image, it will start the kernel up in some kind of software prison where the kernel is actually running, but unable to complete the normal boot. (See this thread, posts #483-#494 where @Zzim posted a very similar set of observations to yours - again with CM13.)

Just now I repeated this experiment - flashed a unsigned image into boot and observed what happens plugging to either a charger or a PC, and then flashing a signed image into boot, and observing what happens in the same circumstance (in each case plugging done after a battery pull & replacement)

Unsigned boot image: Pull battery, replace battery. Plug an active device such as a PC or a dumb charger into the phone. A STATIC battery icon image appears - not an animation - and then a few seconds later you'll see "Set Warranty Bit: kernel" appear momentarily on the screen. If it's a PC you are plugged into, 15-16 seconds later the USB device port changes to a VID/PID device which is exactly the same as the device ID used during a normal boot. But the screen stays dark - the boot never completes! (I don't know if many minutes or hours later the USB device disappears.) That 15-16 second interval is also exactly the amount of time it normally takes for the boot process to be reaching the spot where it is setting up the USB port.

Signed boot image:: Same as above - Pull battery, replace battery, Plug in PC. A battery ANIMATION appears, no Knox message (expected) but also this: with a PC you are plugged into, no USB activity.

It seems a little weird, but its almost as if the bootloader is executing the kernel, but in a way that it's ramdisk has been spoofed or something so that init() never does anything meaningful. Rather suprising but maybe the kernel actually needs to be alive to control the charge control chip? Or produce a battery animation? That sure seems extreme.

Anyway, my experience is that the temasek/CM13 kernel eats through a lot of battery compared to stock kernels. If this phenomenon is still taking place when you plug to a charger and the charge controller isn't working very well, I suppose that could prevent you from gaining any charge on the battery. But I wouldn't expect even that to be chewing through 2A* ~3v ( = 6W) of power in that state, so there must be something else going on. OTOH, if the non-stock kernel messes with the charge controller somehow, then this mechanism potentially *could* interfere with charging.

I tried booting my phone plugged in to the USB charger but with no battery present, thinking, "well, maybe as an experiment he could restore a stock kernel termporarily using a custom recovery". But no joy, phone does nothing.

If both your batteries are so completely discharged that the phone isn't going to do anything, it would seem you are going to need to figure out how to get one of those batteries charged with enough juice so you could boot TWRP and put a stock boot.img in the boot partition. Seems like you need a friend with a Note 3 or a battery store that can juice up your battery enough to flash a stock ROM. Or there's this: boot into TWRP instead of your ROM (& temasek's kernel) and see if it starts gaining charge more rapidly than if temasek/CM13 was booted.

I've only had some older versions of (temasek) CM13 on my phone, so I can't vouch for recent stuff, but I will say that even though it ate up battery, it never caused me to lose charge while the ROM was up and running and the phone was plugged in to a 2A Samsung OEM wall-wart. (I would think that also your phone would get really HOT if it was really getting 2A of current and still could not keep the battery charged)

Which exact version of CM13 were you one when this started happening? I sort of remember someone over there reporting "massive" battery usage for a recent build.


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[Captain Skeet]

Honestly it has done this since I can remember being on Temasek's CM13. But I have been using it since it was released. I never noticed it until recently because my old battery I've had since the note 3 was released did have some major drain issues. But my new battery on the updated build (OTA) has been pretty decent battery life....just won't charge when plugged in. CM13 is the only rom I use and is on my only phone unfortunately but If I have to start from square one I won't hesitate to if does solve my charge issues. I can usually get my phone to boot to download mode after 15-20 tries. And it usually won't turn off in download mode. So if you have a theory/hypothesis you would like to test that won't brick my phone then i will be more than happy to try/test. Maybe if others have the same issue then we can resolve it for others before they throw their phone in a lake because it won't charge lol.

 

[bftb0]

Honestly it has done this since I can remember being on Temasek's CM13. But I have been using it since it was released. I never noticed it until recently because my old battery I've had since the note 3 was released did have some major drain issues. But my new battery on the updated build (OTA) has been pretty decent battery life....just won't charge when plugged in. CM13 is the only rom I use and is on my only phone unfortunately but If I have to start from square one I won't hesitate to if does solve my charge issues. I can usually get my phone to boot to download mode after 15-20 tries. And it usually won't turn off in download mode. So if you have a theory/hypothesis you would like to test that won't brick my phone then i will be more than happy to try/test. Maybe if others have the same issue then we can resolve it for others before they throw their phone in a lake because it won't charge lol.

I wouldn't risk flashing anything with a poorly charged battery, even if you can get to the Odin screen.

I'd figure out some way to get both of your batteries charged about 25% or so - got a friend with a different Note 3? I suppose you could even take your battery in to a VZW retail store, give them a sob story about how you are not sure if your phone is dead or not, could you please charge this for me just a little bit so I can find out if it's my phone or my charger? Or something like that - get creative.

If you are comfortable with electronics, a 5v supply and two 1/4 watt 22 ohm resistors in parallel ( == 1/2 watt 11 ohm resistor) would safely add charge to a discharged NiMH battery at about 180 mA while not exceeding the thermal rating of the resistors, or creating a dangerous situation by charging with too much current. (When discharged, NiMH batteries are about 3v. So: (5v-3v)/(11ohms) = 0.18 amp. P = I^2*R = (0.18)^2 * 11 = 0.36 Watts). Or you could use a different phone with a similar battery size and get creative by insulating the battery terminals of the battery that fits, tape two wires to your battery, and stick the other ends of those two wires in the little spring contacts of the other phone. Obviously you need to be absolutely sure you are observing the correct polarity here and making sure that nothing is going to come loose and create a short. (A battery meter/DMM helps here making sure you are not doing something stupid)

Then stick a partially charged battery in your phone, boot to TWRP, put it on the charger, and see if the charge % is going up or down. That's a different kernel, so if the fault is with the temasek/CM13 kernel, presumably you will get more rapid charging when TWRP is running. I think it displays battery percentage right on the main screen. Or if you wanted you could restore a stock ROM. (Not the whole thing including bootloader! Just boot, system, and cache. Remember that with an unlocked bootloader you can flash whatver ROM components you want in Odin in the AP slots)


When I ran the charger tests just now, I made a TWRP backup of my boot partition (only), and manually flashed an older sprint kernel into my boot partition

dd of=/dev/block/mmcblk0p14 if=/sdcard/bkup/0407-hltespr.img

and then ran my testing experiments making sure to avoid accidentally booting up the main ROM (so that the mis-matched kernel couldn't bollux anything in /data up). When done testing, I just restored the TWRP backup that only had the boot paritition in it.

Anyway, you get the idea. If it really is temasek/CM13 that is causing the problem, then temporarily putting a stock boot.img into your boot partition will give a different charging result.

But at the moment you have a chicken-vs-egg problem: you can't get the temasek/CM13 boot image off the phone (even temporarily) until you get a little charge on a battery first. I think that means you need to get one battery charged a little bit using some other device.


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[Captain Skeet]

I managed to get a charge on my device somehow; (55% so far) . It seems that with CM13 Build for Hlte has changed the "Offline charging" images to be modified. I searched the rom thread and seen your theory about the device not fully turning off and being in a weird state. It seems users are having similar effects and it is different per user. What I have found (may not be 100%) is if you take the battery out, unplug it and put the battery back in, then go to download mode as if you were going to flash something through odin then press and hold the power button - it turns the my phone off and then shows static image with "Set Warranty Bit: kernel" on top then disappears. Supposedly (guess) that means it is charging offline (turned off). However I wish I could change it so it would pulse the top light or show an animation when the home button is pressed or something.

Just seen where you were the one explaining the process happening in the CM13 thread..It is exactly the same issue.

 

[bftb0]

I managed to get a charge on my device somehow; (55% so far) . It seems that with CM13 Build for Hlte has changed the "Offline charging" images to be modified. I searched the rom thread and seen your theory about the device not fully turning off and being in a weird state. It seems users are having similar effects and it is different per user. What I have found (may not be 100%) is if you take the battery out, unplug it and put the battery back in, then go to download mode as if you were going to flash something through odin then press and hold the power button - it turns the my phone off and then shows static image with "Set Warranty Bit: kernel" on top then disappears. Supposedly (guess) that means it is charging offline (turned off). However I wish I could change it so it would pulse the top light or show an animation when the home button is pressed or something.

Just seen where you were the one explaining the process happening in the CM13 thread..It is exactly the same issue.

When you see that "Set Warranty Bit: kernel" message, that means that the Bootloader is very likely starting the kernel up (especially likely when you notice USB activity 15-20 seconds later). On my phone - which has a much much older MJ7 bootloader, every time you unplug the charger and then re-plug that charger, that "Set Warranty Bit: kernel" message re-appears. Even though the phone is supposedly "off"

I suppose it is possible that the Signed, stock kernels get started up in exactly the same fashion. You don't see any warning message on the screen because the stock kernel is signed, so the screen just stays dark and it appears that nothing is happening other than maybe a brief battery charging animation. OTOH, it's a little odd that there is no USB activity after a delay in that case.

It's pretty counter-intuitive. You would want the phone to charge as fast as possible when it is "off", so using the minimum amount of power would help that. And there's no way that a modern Linux kernel with several million lines of code is needed to paint a simple animation on a screen or charge a battery - the bootloader is more than capable of that. (The Code Aurora LK "LittleKernel" bootloader from which a lot of these vendors have derived their proprietary bootloaders is actually a tiny operating system capable of running multiple threads simultaneously as separate "apps".)

These phones appear as if there is always something going on even when they are "off". I built one of those UART jigs to be able to see kernel messages before init() even is launched. If I yank the battery, replace the battery, and then plug that thing in to the USB port.... the phone boots immediately without me touching anything else.

You are not on 10.4 are you? There was a user over there that was saying that the battery usage was quite high...

 

[Captain Skeet]

Yes I'm on 10.4. My battery drain isn't really high surprisingly it just doesn't charge usually when the battery is below 20%. If I plug it up to the wall it has the lightning bolt and says it's charging however if I leave it alone and come back then it has a lower percentage on the battery than when I plugged it up. And I just checked your twrp method and it seems to charge my phone when not in the rom as well. The rom thread OP posted another kernel version of the one that comes with the rom in the thread. Original is v1.86 and new version is v2.05. Maybe it has some changes that might help?

http://temasek.rajasthanautoworks.in/Samsung Galaxy Note 3 - HLTE/CM13.0/Kernel/

 

[VJmac15]

My girlfriends note 3 is gOing through these same exact issues, she needs something stable so I'm going to put her back on Alliance, I will try a fresh restore and flash alliance.

Currently going from 10.4 to alliance battery drain is still present.

 

[Captain Skeet]

My girlfriends note 3 is gOing through these same exact issues, she needs something stable so I'm going to put her back on Alliance, I will try a fresh restore and flash alliance.

Currently going from 10.4 to alliance battery drain is still present.

It seems to be a current issue after being unlocked. Either put the phone in download mode then press the power button it should restart the phone in the off status and should charge. Or put it in recovery mode in twrp and it should charge that way as well.

 

[bftb0]

Yes I'm on 10.4. My battery drain isn't really high surprisingly it just doesn't charge usually when the battery is below 20%. If I plug it up to the wall it has the lightning bolt and says it's charging however if I leave it alone and come back then it has a lower percentage on the battery than when I plugged it up. And I just checked your twrp method and it seems to charge my phone when not in the rom as well. The rom thread OP posted another kernel version of the one that comes with the rom in the thread. Original is v1.86 and new version is v2.05. Maybe it has some changes that might help?

http://temasek.rajasthanautoworks.in/Samsung Galaxy Note 3 - HLTE/CM13.0/Kernel/

Dunno but your test of the TWRP kernel vs. the temasek kernel seems like a smoking gun, so it's probably worthwhile to investigate. I thought I remembered someone saying they swapped kernels for lean kernel but I couldn't find that post, so I'm not sure what I remembered.

Trying to run a simple test over here (unpack and repack a stock kernel to break the Sammy signature - see if the observable behavior has nothing to do with signing and is all about the kernel) but I'm mucking it up... need sleep.

lates

 

[bftb0]

Better Information About Battery Charge Animation on unlocked Phones

@Zzim @VJmac15 @Captain Skeet

I have some unambiguous clarifying information now about the "battery charge animation" when the phone is supposedly in an "off" state but plugged to a charger. Read on.

I took a stock (MJ7) boot image and unpacked it, and then simply repacked it, and flashed it to the boot partition in my (MJ7-firmware) SM-N900V.

Because there are very slight differences in "cpio" and libgz from linux release to release, this has the effect of making very tiny differences in the re-packed ramdisk image - enough that the Samsung signature is now broken, but likely nothing different at all from a functional perspective with the stock kernel or ramdisk (The kernel itself and it's device tree are bit-for-bit identical).

So what do it observe when I turn the device "off" and then plug to a dumb charger? The exact same stock "battery charge animation" that you would see on a retail device with a locked bootloader - plus one additional detail: that "Warranty bit set: kernel" message on the screen. After the battery animation runs for a while, the screen goes dark and the LED lights up according to charging state (red=charging, blue=charged, etc).

So the implication here is quite clear: the "off state" charging behavior you get depends on the kernel you have installed, and there is no difference in animations between signed and unsigned versions of the same stock kernel+ramdisk. An unlocked bootloader gives the same animations and LED illuminations as pure stock - so long as you are using a stock kernel.

Before I thought this was the bootloader running the (battery animation) show; but now I am beginning to believe that the bootloader fires up the kernel in some sort of jail when you plug power to the device. So if you are using a kernel that defaults to using a lot of power in it's idle state, (especially if it uses "init" to tweak into place battery savings) it's not going to charge as well as a less hungry kernel does - even when the device is supposed to be "off". It's even possible that the kernel could use more power when in this curious "off " state than when the ROM was running! (For instance, if the kernel developer decided "I'm gonna make this thing boot fast by setting the governor to performance; I'll reset it back to "interactive" with init in the late boot")

I watched the stock boot (MJ7) carefully, and realized that I couldn't conclude anything from USB behavior, as the MJ7 stock boot doesn't do anything with USB until well after init() has started running. I guess that the "jail" the bootloader creates for the kernel is probably a dummy ramdisk, perhaps including a very thin "init" program. That would explain why USB activity is seen with CM13 in this case, but not with the stock kernel. In the stock ROM that happens late in the boot after init has begun running, whereas the CM13 kernel fiddles with the USB interface before init is started.

Based on the evidence we have, I think this suggests that even with 100% stock retail devices & locked bootloaders, the same thing is going on - it's just not easily noticed because there is no on-screen activity other than that battery charge animation.. (It could be detected perhaps with an EMI sniffer or something)

So anyway - are the missing animations the fault of the kernel? Yeah, looks that way. Is it possible that the charging rate you get when the device is supposed to be "off" depends on the boot image kernel? Yeah, sure looks that way.

cheers

 

[Captain Skeet]

Amazing. Thank you for your investigation work detective. lol At least now we know it has nothing to do with signed or unsigned but more rather what kernel you have. Thanks for all your help man. If you ever need help with mimicking an issue you have shoot me a pm and I'll be more than happy to use my device to troubleshoot the same issue.

 

[VJmac15]

@Zzim @VJmac15 @Captain Skeet

I have some unambiguous clarifying information now about the "battery charge animation" when the phone is supposedly in an "off" state but plugged to a charger. Read on.

I took a stock (MJ7) boot image and unpacked it, and then simply repacked it, and flashed it to the boot partition in my (MJ7-firmware) SM-N900V.

Because there are very slight differences in "cpio" and libgz from linux release to release, this has the effect of making very tiny differences in the re-packed ramdisk image - enough that the Samsung signature is now broken, but likely nothing different at all from a functional perspective with the stock kernel or ramdisk (The kernel itself and it's device tree are bit-for-bit identical).

So what do it observe when I turn the device "off" and then plug to a dumb charger? The exact same stock "battery charge animation" that you would see on a retail device with a locked bootloader - plus one additional detail: that "Warranty bit set: kernel" message on the screen. After the battery animation runs for a while, the screen goes dark and the LED lights up according to charging state (red=charging, blue=charged, etc).

So the implication here is quite clear: the "off state" charging behavior you get depends on the kernel you have installed, and there is no difference in animations between signed and unsigned versions of the same stock kernel+ramdisk. An unlocked bootloader gives the same animations and LED illuminations as pure stock - so long as you are using a stock kernel.

Before I thought this was the bootloader running the (battery animation) show; but now I am beginning to believe that the bootloader fires up the kernel in some sort of jail when you plug power to the device. So if you are using a kernel that defaults to using a lot of power in it's idle state, (especially if it uses "init" to tweak into place battery savings) it's not going to charge as well as a less hungry kernel does - even when the device is supposed to be "off". It's even possible that the kernel could use more power when in this curious "off " state than when the ROM was running! (For instance, if the kernel developer decided "I'm gonna make this thing boot fast by setting the governor to performance; I'll reset it back to "interactive" with init in the late boot")

I watched the stock boot (MJ7) carefully, and realized that I couldn't conclude anything from USB behavior, as the MJ7 stock boot doesn't do anything with USB until well after init() has started running. I guess that the "jail" the bootloader creates for the kernel is probably a dummy ramdisk, perhaps including a very thin "init" program. That would explain why USB activity is seen with CM13 in this case, but not with the stock kernel. In the stock ROM that happens late in the boot after init has begun running, whereas the CM13 kernel fiddles with the USB interface before init is started.

Based on the evidence we have, I think this suggests that even with 100% stock retail devices & locked bootloaders, the same thing is going on - it's just not easily noticed because there is no on-screen activity other than that battery charge animation.. (It could be detected perhaps with an EMI sniffer or something)

So anyway - are the missing animations the fault of the kernel? Yeah, looks that way. Is it possible that the charging rate you get when the device is supposed to be "off" depends on the boot image kernel? Yeah, sure looks that way.

cheers

My gf reports that the Rom change is perfect for her, said she was on her phone all day and only lost about 7% feels like a new phone. Booting into download mode then restarting seemingly fixed the issue as suggested. Thank you for your replies!

---------- Post added at 02:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:46 PM ----------

Amazing. Thank you for your investigation work detective. lol At least now we know it has nothing to do with signed or unsigned but more rather what kernel you have. Thanks for all your help man. If you ever need help with mimicking an issue you have shoot me a pm and I'll be more than happy to use my device to troubleshoot the same issue.

Yeah that 10.4 kernel must've wrecked phones!