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I'm using my Samsung Galaxy S2 for development so I regularly plug it while it's not fully charged, and my phone starts charging over USB. I think this (charging while in use) can affect battery life (is that correct)? Is there any way to avoid charging while the phone is on and connected via USB?

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2  
Does the phone function when plugged in but the battery removed? – Al Everett Nov 25 '11 at 13:54
That's quite a hack, I don't think it does since it doesn't boot when battery is fully empty. – AsTeR Nov 28 '11 at 18:01
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This would also be useful you want to tether your phone to your computer with the least amount of power draw on your phone's battery. – chobok Apr 23 '12 at 8:37

3 Answers

up vote 8 down vote

The outer pins of a standard USB connector are used for power. You could try removing them from your cable, leaving only the inner data pins.

For more info on the pins, see http://pinouts.ru/Slots/USB_pinout.shtml. For more info on battery life, see Does constant charging harm my Android cellphone?

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This is really geek, I won't risk to ruin my usb connectors, but this is cool ! – AsTeR Jan 13 '12 at 23:12
+1 Quirky, but nice! – Power-Inside May 16 '12 at 7:00
You can try this, but if I'm not mistaken the power uptake is involved in the signalling that a device is present. Therefore, if you cut the power lines, the device may not be recognized! – Michael Kohne May 16 '12 at 17:18
Has anyone tried this? Does it detect device after cutting the power lines? – iSid Sep 9 '12 at 18:28
I cut the red power wire on a usb cable as an experiment to see if i could send data from a device without powering it. The result was as suggested above, the pc would not recognise the device. This was not an android device, but a garmin gpsmap 62s. I want to send satellite info from the garmin to other mapping software without powering the garmin, I am as frustrated as you guys. – Kav May 3 at 2:16
up vote 2 down vote

I have an Android 4.0.3 phone without root access so can't test any of this but let me point you to /sys/class/power_supply/battery/ which gives some info/control over charging issues. In particular there is charging_enabled which gives the current state (0 not charging, 1 charging) and may be writable on some phones?

$ adb shell
$ cat /sys/class/power_supply/battery/charging_enabled
1

There is also a file charger_control which sounds promising and is writable by root but I've found no documentation on it.

Someone has requested this feature as an enhancement on the google developer forum but so far without response: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=30612

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up vote 0 down vote

You can find an interesting article about phone batteries at http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries.

Basically, the more heat, the less lifetime your battery will have. My suggestion would be to charge it while the phone is shut down, that way there is no drain or load on the battery other than charging.

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This does not answer OP's question (see the title) at all. – Power-Inside May 21 '12 at 10:27
Actually, he's also asking if it is correct that the battery life can be affected by using it while charging, which increases the heat of the phone so reduces battery life. The article I posted talks about the relation between temperature and battery life. – Weboide May 29 '12 at 15:48
Oh, my bad. I didn't notice that. :) Well it would have been more apt to state that what you're posting is just "partial answer" etc. – Power-Inside May 29 '12 at 16:03

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