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It all started about three months ago when my HTC One (M8)'s USB charging port died. At first the port would sometimes not work, you just have to move the cable around a bit for it to charge, then you had to hold the cable down to make it keep charging, and finally device wouldn't charge at all.

The same exact thing happened to my HTC Vivid. When I got the Vivid fixed, the technician said it was water damage.

Anyway, after the local phone repair shop successfully installed the new USB port on my One phone, failing on the first try as it was still in the same condition, everything was fine. For a few weeks. Then the phone started shutting down as if it had no battery left, at 20%. I immediately plugged it into a charger, turned it back on, and the phone read 1%.

Its been doing that ever since. Some days it goes down to 0%, some days it goes down to 20% or 25% and dies.

Here's a screen shot of what is going on. enter image description here

Under device settings, it says that the battery condition is good.

So I'm just wondering why my phone may be doing this, and what do you think the best option is to fix this.

I tried recalibrating the battery, clearing the cache, and installing a new ROM. None of the above worked.

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  • The battery is probably worn out. It won't show anywhere that the status is bad, but it will suddenly drop voltage and can't keep your phone running. Try to get a replacement and check if it fixes the problem. I had this problem on my devices multiple times and replacing the battery always fixed the issue of a sudden shutdown.
    – GiantTree
    Nov 6, 2015 at 6:44
  • @GiantTree Actually, check my answer, the battery problem is finally fixed! Nov 21, 2015 at 20:25
  • Well, that is an HTC specific answer. Glad the support helped you. Usually the battery has no way to tell how much charge it has, only a voltage that is used to determine the charge.
    – GiantTree
    Nov 21, 2015 at 20:29
  • Well thanks anyway. If it starts dying again, I'll get a battery replacement. Nov 22, 2015 at 0:53

4 Answers 4

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There could be three reasons to this (not in any order) :

  1. Battery lived it's life.

  2. Fuel Guage drivers corrupted. To rule this out, i suggest back up your data and with your recovery wipe clean all Cache and system and flash stock(not sure if you cleaned fully when you flashed a ROM) If the problem continues, it is likely that it is not a driver corruption issue.

  3. Hardware of battery charging chip gone bad. One possible way of checking this is to see if it is charging and discharging fully in safe mode. If it does unlikely to be hardware issue

I would recommend step 2 first and then if possible borrow a battery to check if it is a case of battery end of life.

All the best and do post the conclusion

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  • I would love to test a new battery, but the HTC One's battery is not removable, nor is it easy to take apart. It requires resin, and heating of that resin to get it apart. It costed 40 dollars for labor alone at our local phone repair shop. Nov 6, 2015 at 20:33
  • Then a guy with an iPhone came in and said his USB port was broken too and they said it would only be 20 for everything. No joke. Nov 6, 2015 at 20:34
  • That sounds steep. All the best
    – beeshyams
    Nov 6, 2015 at 21:36
  • Thanks, maybe I can try to install a new battery myself. Nov 6, 2015 at 22:32
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Actually, after hours of scouring the forums, I finally contacted HTC via chat. Right away, they said to power off the device. Then hold the volume down, volume up, and power buttons all at once for...3 mintes??

Yep. You hold all three physical buttons for a full 3 minutes. He said this resets the battery logic, and how the battery talks to the software to let it know how much power it has based on the voltage. The phone started up, then shut back down. Powered up, then shut back down again for the whole 3 minutes, then I let go. It started turning on and when it finished, the battery read out 19%. Woah, before I did this, I was at 54%! Was my phone really that inaccurate the whole time? Probably. I'm charging the phone back up right now, so hopefully this fixes the problem!

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  • 1
    Checking back: Did the battery problems you were having actually end after you did this? Jun 15, 2016 at 19:23
  • 3
    @user1354557 No, it ended up doing the same thing after a few hours. It was the battery hardware. I tried replacing it but broke the whole phone and ended up getting another M8. Few months later and I bought a Nexus 6P. Jun 16, 2016 at 19:47
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I had the battery problem with my phone - shutting off at 20% and some settings resetting after charging and turning it back. Nothing helped except factory reset. The reason for such behavior seem to be HTC Service Pack (not 100% sure though). Make sure not to install it after reset or uninstalling the update might also help.

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In case more people are having this issue but are unable to get the battery working properly, I developed a workaround that shows a low battery warning at any given battery percentage.

Here is the link for the interested: Custom Low Battery Warning

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    How does that app address the question? Please enlighten.
    – Firelord
    Mar 15, 2016 at 12:44

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