Over the past few weeks (months, idk?) my phone (Pixel 8) gives me a message that says “Charging on hold to protect the battery” when the phone is not plugged in. The notification stays forever until I select “override” to dismiss the safety feature. It will not charge (if I later plug it in) until I say “override”. When I say override, it will let me charge, but I will still see the notification again later, so it appears to be a temporary override.

This morning, I saw the notification pop up while I was using the phone. It was in my hands, not plugged in, and did the animation like I had just plugged in the phone to charge. It was at about 45% battery, so it also seems to have nothing to do with battery percent.

Am I just charging wrong, or I don’t understand how smart charging works, or is this incorrect behavior? In normal circumstances, I charge the phone overnight. Since this has begun, I have begun leaving it off the charger overnight and instead charging it earlier in the evening for a bit then removing it before bed. I’ve noticed recently that it only charges to 80%, so it is usually very low when I get home.

  • catloaf@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    No, that’s nonsense. Adaptive charging uses your plugging-in habits over the last 14 days and your alarms so that it can charge at the slowest possible rate to reach 100% one hour before your predicted unplug time. It should never show the charging symbol when not charging (as far as I know, anyway).

    You can turn the adaptive charging off if you don’t use it, but I think your phone is still going to think it’s plugged in when it isn’t, and still only go to 80% unless you override it.

    • xorollo@leminal.spaceOP
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      2 months ago

      Yep, I agree with you. I think the customer service representative just didn’t know what to make of the problem. They picked up on the fact that I use adaptive charging, and everything I got after that from them was telling me that this is how it works. I reiterated that it is doing this when not plugged in, but then we were going in circles, so I just said thank you and left.

      If it happens again, maybe I will get a different rep and have more success.

    • Markaos
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      2 months ago

      so that it can charge at the slowest possible rate to reach 100% one hour before your predicted unplug time

      No, it fast charges to 80% then restarts the (fast) charging to hit 100% at the correct time. At no point does it try to slow down the charge.

      I don’t really know where this misconception comes from, the description in settings is pretty accurate to what it does:

      To help extend battery lifespan, your phone learns your charging routine and waits until you need it to fully charge.

      • catloaf@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        That quote doesn’t support what you’re saying. The page that screen links to, however, says this:

        Adaptive Charging may turn on to charge to 100% one hour before you unplug

        https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/7106961?visit_id=638632664567131340-1406770578&p=adaptive_charging&rd=1#adaptive_charging

        So maybe it does. Unfortunately Android doesn’t chart battery level while charging. I just plugged mine in and adaptive charging turned on, and Ampere shows about 1.5 A, so not trickle charging.

        It would be nice if Google actually stated what it does.

        • Markaos
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          2 months ago

          I have a cable that shows wattage and my 7a goes all the way to 80% at pretty much stable 20W unless it’s overheating. The final 20% is a bit more random, but that’s true even without adaptive battery turned on - the top 10% won’t go above 5 W at all for me, for example.

          That quote doesn’t support what you’re saying.

          To me “waits until you need it to fully charge” sounds closer to “waits at a safe level until it needs to fully charge” than to “charges slowly”, but English is not my first language and it might sound to me like a stronger statement than it really is.

          But my point was more that nowhere does it state that it will slow charge (which I agree I didn’t properly communicate).