Android Battery Percentage Fail

I inherited a Samsung Galaxy A32 5G phone. According to Wikipedia, it was released in January 2021, which makes it about 4.5 years old. It was dormant for an unknown period of time, and the battery was completely dead when I first took possession of it. After plugging in a USB-C cable to charge the phone, I noticed that the battery did not charge past 9%, even after paying close attention to the battery indicator for more than an hour.

My intent was to sell the phone, and if the battery was near the end of its life, I would have reduced the asking price. That’s when I asked ChatGPT for advice. It responded by saying that while the battery could be degraded, there were other reasons why the phone would not charge past 9%, including:

• Faulty or dirty charging port
• Defective charging cable or adapter
• Software-related issue causing the system to report incorrect battery percentage
• Hardware issue on the motherboard or charging circuitry

It recommended the following steps to troubleshoot:

1. Try another cable and charger
2. Clean the charing port carefully
3. Force restart the phone
4. Check battery usage and health
5. Try charging in safe mode

I tried #1-3 but to no avail—the phone was still stuck on 9%. I could not perform #4 because I could not download a battery checking app without signing in, and I could not run existing T-Mobile diagnostic apps without signing in either. So I skipped to #5 and booted into Safe Mode by (1) holding the power button, (2) long-pressing the “Power off” option, and (3) tapping the “Safe mode” icon. After booting into Safe Mode, the phone indicated that the battery was at 85%, and with further charging it eventually reached 100%. I then proceeded to install a flurry of operating system updates, with each update displaying what appeared to be the correct battery percentage.

Safe Mode saved the day for 2 reasons. First, it allowed me to display the correct battery level. Second, I was unable to update the operating system because the phone required me to charge the phone to at least 30% before installing a software update. Safe Mode allowed me to break out of the infinite loop and get the phone in working order. Perhaps it will help you too.