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Nokia Battery Monitor has been something of a staple of the Symbian world in the last couple of years, providing a large-fonted, colourful guide to the state of your smartphone's battery. However, with new batteries coming along with slightly higher nominal voltages (quoted at '3.8V' rather than '3.7V'), the existing utility was demonstrably inaccurate. Version 3.1, now available, seems to behave better on the Nokia 808.
Firstly, note that battery voltages are never as easy to pin down as you might think, varying by temperature and load. They also vary according to the state of charge, typically starting at over 4V when full charged, quickly dropping to the nominal voltage (around 3.7V) and then dropping only slightly until they get to the last ten percent of so of charge, at which point the voltage starts to drop more quickly.
So when a battery is quoted at '3.8V', it just means that the chemistry has been improved slightly in such a way that the majority of the cell's discharge is at around 3.8V rather than '3.7V'. The maximum and minimum voltages will still be widely spaced and the voltage is never constant.
The result is that estimating the actual battery capacity remaining is something of a black art.
And isn't helped when the utility has the characteristics of yesterday's '3.7V' cells hard coded in, with the result that I'd charge my Nokia 808 and would be able to use it for a full hour while the charge was consistently shown as '100%'. This new version 3.1 of Nokia Battery Monitor seems to start decrementing the charge level sooner, though it's still not perfect
To illustrate the issues involved in the estimation of charge remaining, I did some tests over a full discharge cycle with my Nokia 808 PureView (with the BV-4D '3.8V' cell in place) and noted the percent values reported by both Nokia Battery Monitor and the voltage reported by the utilityPhoNetInfo:
So when a battery is quoted at '3.8V', it just means that the chemistry has been improved slightly in such a way that the majority of the cell's discharge is at around 3.8V rather than '3.7V'. The maximum and minimum voltages will still be widely spaced and the voltage is never constant.
The result is that estimating the actual battery capacity remaining is something of a black art.
And isn't helped when the utility has the characteristics of yesterday's '3.7V' cells hard coded in, with the result that I'd charge my Nokia 808 and would be able to use it for a full hour while the charge was consistently shown as '100%'. This new version 3.1 of Nokia Battery Monitor seems to start decrementing the charge level sooner, though it's still not perfect
To illustrate the issues involved in the estimation of charge remaining, I did some tests over a full discharge cycle with my Nokia 808 PureView (with the BV-4D '3.8V' cell in place) and noted the percent values reported by both Nokia Battery Monitor and the voltage reported by the utilityPhoNetInfo:
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