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[Jim Searle]

My second battery has died on my Cingular 8125. It seems that if you let the battery go completly dead, it's not possible to charge? I found someone else with the same problem: http://www.golod.com/2006/06/cingular-8125-battery-woes/

Has anyone else had this problem? Or has anyone let their battery go completly dead, and been able to charge it?

- Jim

[awarner]

Depends whay you mean by completely dead?
You should never try to fully discharge a Li-ion battery as you will damage it.
The phone's battery need to be topped up to get the best life out of it.

[Jim Searle]

Depends whay you mean by completely dead?
You should never try to fully discharge a Li-ion battery as you will damage it.
The phone's battery need to be topped up to get the best life out of it.

awarner, thanks for the input, here's some more details. When I got the new battery I plugged it in for at least 8 hours to get a full charge. I used the phone for about 3 weeks, charging it fully about every other night. Then was away from home all day and forgot my charger and the phone shut itself down because the battery was almost dead. When I got home I plug it into the charger and the charge light will not come on. It's been plugged into the charger for 2 days and still will not turn on.

[omega2008]

aparently the batter has been discharged beyond what the charger can recover. I believe there has to be a set amount of current or voltage left on the battery for it to charge. I will do some research and ask my Power Systems professor about it, he know all about these things.

[omega2008]

Another easy way to destroy an Li-Ion battery is by discharging it too far. The Li-Ion cell should never be allowed to drop below about 2.4V, or an internal chemical reaction will occur where one of the battery electrodes can oxidize (corrode) through a process which can not be reversed by recharging. If this occurs, battery capacity will be lost (and the cell may be completely destroyed).

A similar process will occur if an Li-Ion cell is charged to too high of a voltage. If current is continually forced into a fully charged cell, internal corrosion can take place which will reduce cell capacity (possibly completely).
For this reason, Li-Ion cells can not be trickle charged for extended time periods without cutting off the current when full charge is reached. Sustained charge currents (even a
few mA) can damage the cell if allowed to run continuously.

Source: http://www.national.com/appinfo/power/files/f19.pdf

Basically if you let the battery discharge to around 2.4V the battery will be damaged and will not take a charge. You can read the rest of the article to find more information about properties of Li-ion batteries.

[Jim Searle]

omega2008,
Thanks for the info, but I still say this is a problem with the 8125 software. I completly understand that deep-discharging a lithium-ion battery can ruin it, but the problem is that the 8125 allows it to get to low. I've had many phones, cameras, camcorders, ... that use lion batteries and have run them low to where the device will not turn on, but every other device accepts a charge after that. For example, with my RAZR if the battery gets to low it turns off, then if you try to turn it on it immediatly shuts back off, and eventually will not even try to turn back on. But, with the 8125, the device will shutdown when the battery gets to low, then when you turn it back on it will go through all the network initialization, start up WM5, and then shut down. The phone software needs to be much smarter about shutting down the phone when the battery is low.

I now have my second dead battery. I left it on the charger for over 2 days, still no light. This morning I went to unplug the charger from the wall, and as I was doing that. the charge light flashed on for a second. So I plugged it back in, still no light, unplugged it and the light flashed again, immediatly plugged it back in, and the light came on and stayed on. So, now it's at home and hopefully will have a some kind of charge when I get home tonight. Although, as you have said, it's probably a damaged battery now. I've ordered a new battery for boxwave, since I don't want to give cingular any more of my money.

Does anyone know if the new ROM helps this situation at all?
http://www.htcamerica.net/support/software...nloads_8125.htm

- Jim

[omega2008]

I don't have that problem I have let the battery go completly dead and the device shut itself off. I went home pluged in the charger and the light lit up and charged the phone. It does have the right hardware to shut off the phone when that battery gets around 10% of the critical voltage of damaging the battery. However I am not using a Cingular ROM and my battery died when I was using a different ROM, so there could be a software problem with the Cingular ROM, or you could have a hardware problem since the charging proceedure is only controled by the software, if the hardware is malfunctioning then you may need to do an XBM on the device thru Cingular.

[Jim Searle]

Got home and the charge light was still on. but the phone would not turn on. Went to the Cingular store and they gave me another free battery. Charged it up to 100% and it's working again! I'm entering this post from my 8125.

Don't let your battery die!!!

Jim

[ekalbach]

Got home and the charge light was still on. but the phone would not turn on. Went to the Cingular store and they gave me another free battery. Charged it up to 100% and it's working again! I'm entering this post from my 8125.

Don't let your battery die!!!

Jim

Thanks I will have to pay lots of attention to the battery.

Have you or anyone else you know been able to get wireless to function with 128 bit WEP. Have you also tried WPA with radius auth.? Trying to figure out if its a bug in the OS or phone.

Thanks

[omega2008]

I use WSK-PSK or whatever its called where you have a password and anyone who logs on to your wireless network has to know it to get access.

[8125lowpower]

My battery ran low on power and I had misplaced my charger. The cingular store told me that they didn't have the 8125 charger, but that the motorola chargers (which are also mini-usb) would work I found that the motorola chargers wall or car chargers will not work if the voltage on the battery is too low. When I borrowed a 8125 charger, it was able to charge the battery up to a point that the motorola chargers would work. Some of the problems that people are reporting may be because they are using 5 volt, .4 amp chargers instead of the 5 volt, 1 amp chargers that comes with the device.

[gui84]

I have the same problem with my MDA. I went out last weekend and forgot to charge my phone, by the time i got home my battery was dead. I put the phone to charge and left it there till morning and realized that the phone wasn't charging so i thought that i had not plugged it in correctly, but it was. So i went out and bought a new one thinking the one i had was broken and nothing, not even the light indicating it was charging would turn on. So... finally i called Customer care and they said they would send me a new phone but not a new battery lol... If i wanted the battery they would have to charge me $100. RIDICULOUS!

[Jim Searle]

I have the same problem with my MDA. I went out last weekend and forgot to charge my phone, by the time i got home my battery was dead. I put the phone to charge and left it there till morning and realized that the phone wasn't charging so i thought that i had not plugged it in correctly, but it was. So i went out and bought a new one thinking the one i had was broken and nothing, not even the light indicating it was charging would turn on. So... finally i called Customer care and they said they would send me a new phone but not a new battery lol... If i wanted the battery they would have to charge me $100. RIDICULOUS!

Go into your local store and see if they will give you a new battery... I've gotten 2 free batteries from my local Cingular store.

[gui84]

oohh i've tried 3 different stores, they didn't even have a battery for me to test my phone at the store... the guy suggested i just buy a new MDA from him, i just laughed...