Mr Bombastic

OK, here's the deal. I have a Samsung Smartphone. It has about 100 megabytes of books on it. I was reading yesterday, watching the percentage on my battery slowly count down to nothing. It finally reached zero and shut itself off. I did something else for about half an hour, then plugged my phone in to charge. Imagine my surprise when it indicated a 50 percent charge on the battery. Anyone know what's going on here? I've never seen anything like this.

JW

I just had the same thing happen with a camera battery. It shut the camera off so I put it in the charger and it indicated that it was half charged. I assume that there is a calibration error in the battery but that is only a guess.

I looked it up. Battery powered devices have a set termination voltage. That voltage is half of the stated power of the battery. For a 1.5 volt device termination requirement, a 3 volt battery would be specified. The battery indicator on the device will show no power when the battery reaches the half charge level but the charger may reflect the actual charge in the battery. Basically, the devices tell different things; the device charge indicator tells what the device requires and the charger tells the actual battery status.

Mr Bombastic

I don't think so. It took the normal amount of time to deplete the battery. Don't think it was calibration error. Maybe I'm walking around doing things like charging my cellphone, and forgetting about it. Who knows? No time missing on the clock, so that can't be it. It's a mystery. At least I'm not imagining it, since it has happened to others.

JW

See my previous response. I updated it.

Mr Bombastic

OK. But it's never happened before. I'll see if it does it again.

Super Dave Loc: Realville, USA

Were you reading a book about a perpetual motion machine?

PeterS

Exactly....

Mr Bombastic

No such thing. But I ran the battery down again, and it's working normally. I'm still baffled.