Is My Phone Battery Displaying Infinite Energy?

[Hawksteinman]

I was recently charging my phone and I plugged it out when it reached 94%. I have been using it for over an hour now, and it still says it is charging and the battery still is at 94%

This is amazing!

 

[jerromyjon]

This is amazing!

Sounds like a defect! Could be a defective battery or a defective voltage circuit... one thing is for sure, it will not continue indefinitely!

 

[wukunlin]

I thought this belongs to the lame jokes thread

 

[Hawksteinman]

The battery died and now it's working properly

 

[ZapperZ]

The battery died and now it's working properly

Maybe you should smash it into the ground. It might work even better.

Zz.

 

[russ_watters]

The battery died and now it's working properly

Charge level isn't a "thing" that can be easily measured like the % full that a gas tank is. Electronic devices have various ways of estimating it, and for phones and computers they rely on measuring the voltage and amperage and tracking the capacity over time (because the capacity itself changes). So if you removed and re-inserted the battery, reset the phone, upgraded the software, etc., it could have lost all the history data on the battery and had no idea what the charge level was. Running the battery dead allowed the phone to measure the energy consumption and re-estimate the capacity associated with different voltage levels.

An old laptop of mine, as the battery aged, would occasionally stop charging at 90something% and then as it realized the battery was losing capacity, re-calibrated itself to 100% for the next charge.

 

[OmCheeto]

I had a similar experience during solar PV testing last year. I was measuring the voltage on my deep cycle battery, and it kept going up, even after I disconnected it from my solar panels. (It had "apparently" exceeded 14.4 volts while hooked up. Ahhh! Do not ever do that.) I thought it was going to explode!

But then I discovered that the battery in my voltmeter was dying, and was the cause of the "apparent" voltage rise. I replaced the battery in my voltmeter, and my deep cycle battery voltage was magically back to normal.