Xperia X battery stuck at 20%
 

I could not find an Xperia subforum so I am posting here.

I dropped my Xperia X (running Sailfish) on the (wooden) floor from about 90 cm (3 feet). It switched off and would not turn back on. I plugged in the charger and it came back to life, only to show the charging screen saying it was empty. Strange, since it had recently been fully charged. I expected 99-100%.

I took it out of the flip case and found the back peeling a bit. I opened it and found the battery dislodged. That made sense since the battery had been replaced once and I had not glued it in place like it was originally. Phew, that explains the empty battery!

After a bit of effort, I managed to snap the connector back in place (it's tiny and extremely fiddly) and pressed the power button. Nothing. Oh, bummer. The last act of desperation, plug in the charger. Yaaaay, it booted up fine. Everything seems to be working, including the power button. That's a relief.

However, the battery status is stuck on 20%. I had it on the charger for about 30 minutes, no change. I have been using it, no change either. Still 20%. When I plug in the charger, it says "charging", but that's about it.

It may be a hardware fault but I suspect (or should I say, hope?) that plugging in the charger while the battery was disconnected may have messed up the power calibration and all I need is recalibrating it. Can anyone confirm? Has something similar happened to you? Do you know how to calibrate it? Is it just a matter of letting the battery fully drain and then charge it up again, like it was in good old N900 days?

Re: Xperia X battery stuck at 20%
 

Hi there
Had that problem on mine and it had hardware problem. Hope yours is fixable
Try some of the ideas i read (on Android)
https://forum.xda-developers.com/x-c...ck-20-t3854039
https://www.intellectsoft.net/blog/a...attery-status/
https://www.reddit.com/r/SonyXperia/..._20_for_my_z5/

Re: Xperia X battery stuck at 20%
 

Thanks!

Hmm. That one just says unplug the battery and plug it back in again. That's what I did.

The second one is too esoteric for me. I have no idea what it is on about. Never used adb, not would I know where to start. If I really had to go down that route, I would rather buy a new phone.

The last link did not any useful suggestion. "Use a different charger". "Tried it, did not help." Well, duh.

Re: Xperia X battery stuck at 20%
 

Have you tried letting it go below 20% charge, maybe even the 10% low battery warning? Battery low levels can be monitored based on voltage output so if it starts dropping off it might trigger something and reset the calibration.

Re: Xperia X battery stuck at 20%
 

Tha adb trick is very simple and very easy to perform. You can test it with phone on and see if the values change

Re: Xperia X battery stuck at 20%
 

With my experience with device repairs there is 90% chance the charge IC on the motherboard is damaged.

Re: Xperia X battery stuck at 20%
 

Well if it is "stuck" you cannot let it run to 10% since it always shows the same 20%...?

Re: Xperia X battery stuck at 20%
 

I think to do that you'd need to have android running on the device?

Re: Xperia X battery stuck at 20%
 

I am trying to drain it as we speak. The accident happened last night, very soon after I took it off the charger fully charged. So it may take a while to drain it.

If that does not help, the I will try to open it again and re-plug the battery as per deutch1976's first link. Maybe there is a speck of dirt stuck in the connector or something like that.

Re: Xperia X battery stuck at 20%
 

Yes. Forgot to mention that

Re: Xperia X battery stuck at 20%
 

An update. It was the battery after all that got killed in the fall.

TL;DR

My phone suddenly shut down in the middle of playing a game. Presumably the battery got finally drained. But then it would not charge. I opened it up. Took the battery out and put it back in again. Tried three different cables. One, from a USB hub, would do nothing at all. Other two, one straight from the laptop's USB connector and one from the wall charger, also looked like nothing was going to happen, but after a while (about a minute, I reckon) the phone booted to the charging animation, showed the battery empty, switched off, then continued looping like that.

That's it, I thought. The phone is dead, like Trzyzet said. But then I had a brilliant idea. The sign of a true genius. I replaced the battery only recently. The old one puffed up so much that it opened the back cover. It seems like ages, but it was less than 2 months since I got the new one. I may still have the old one lying around! Rummage, rummage... YESSSSSS! Found in the discard box, waiting for recycling. Popped it in and... voilá! It works! Status 57%, increased to 60% by now.

Phew, that was a relief. A new battery is a bit less hassle than a whole new phone :D

Re: Xperia X battery stuck at 20%
 

So you're in the lucky 10% :D

Re: Xperia X battery stuck at 20%
 

Not really. It was a hardware fault after all. Just not on the main board but in the battery.

I suspect the battery connector. The battery was violently yanked out so it is the most likely part to have suffered. But the fall was too short do damage anything else (well, except the screen, but the screen survived). But I am too lazy to investigate further. A new battery has been ordered :)

Re: Xperia X battery stuck at 20%
 

Hopefully the last word on the topic. The new battery arrived, and here is a side-by-side photo. The one on the left definitely looks like the connector is borked.

Attachment 41079

Re: Xperia X battery stuck at 20%
 

I don't know how many last words one can have but here is another one :D

Now that I have three batteries (1-the old puffed up one, 2-less than two months old with a broken connector and 3-brand new), I decided to swap the control board from #1 to #2. After stripping the decorative (really, it has no other function) wrapping, it seems like a trivial operation:

Attachment 41083