V3 charging problems....

ok, i know just about every freakin thread in this forum is about the razr, but i have to add one more i guess. i m having a problem with the charging system. when i am charging the phone, the green battery bar fills up, but the brown battery bar doesnt. i have contacted moto support, but they ran me in circles and didnt know what i was talking about. i would like to figure this out because i like the razr oand stuff, but the battery life is kinda crappy when it is like this. it goes dead in like 24 hours so i think osmehting is wrong with either the battery or the charger. if anyone knows anything about this, please let me know. i havent even had the phone for more then a month.

I am facing the same case, and didnt figure out the causes yet.
I will be delighted if i received an explanation.

Cheers,

If the phone is under 1 month old, depending on who your service provider is, there may be a DOA (Dead on Arrival) policy. Bring the phone back to the store you bought it from, with your receipt, and they will either DOA it and give you a brand new one, or they will send it out for repair (as it should have 1 year manufacturer warranty).

So basically, go back to where you bought it with your receipt and see what happens.

problem is i bought the phone through wal-mart at home and i at at college like 3 hours away. u think any wal-mart would handle it?

As long as you have the reciept, any Wal-Mart should take care of it, as long as it is within thier return policy.

so u think i have a bad phone then? cuz it holds a charge, it just only last a day or so and i was to understand that it would last like 3 when not being used.

Assuming it's the GSM version of the phone, than no, the phone should last longer on a single charge. Have you ever left the phone on the charger for more than 12 hours ? Any longer than that and it'll fry the battery. It should only take 4 hours to fully charge from dead, shouldn't leave it charging for more than 8 hours, 12 at the very most.

Anyways, Wal-Mart should accept it back. Any 3rd party retailer will have the same DOA policy. Whether it's World of Wireless (the store I work at), or Wal-Mart, or Joe's Electronics, they all should have the same return policy.

yeah i have left it on the charger for more then 12 hours once or twice, but it says in the manuel( i know i hate them and i dont uasually look in there, but this problem i am having forced me to) that it doesnt hurt the phone to leave it plugged in. and yteah its the gsm phone cuz its T-mobile. its just wierd how one battery bar chargees(green bar) but when its plugged in the brown bar doesnt move. oh well, looks like i am trading it in saturday.

You don't have to worry about leaving your handset plugged in the charger, new batteries have no memory effect and your charger will stop charging once it has reached a full charged...
also keep in mind that battery life and standby time will also differ depending on how long you talk, use media, bluetooth devices etc...

Have you tried using someone else's charger to see if it's the charger and not the phone? you can also test it with a car cell phone charger...just to be sure.

went to buy a car charger and the damn thing wouldnt fit my phone, i thought that was wierd, but it was a cheep one from walmart. the wall charger fits fine though. id try other peeps chargers and stuff, but no one at college has it. they arent half as cool as me. lol i guess ill just get a different one and try that, dont want to cuz i got attached to this one, but i want the damn thing to work. i dont use bluetooth or anything like that, it just sits in my pocket cuz i dont get service inside here at school. only outside.

If you purchase another car chrger make sure it's the one for the Razr and not the MPX220 which also has a mini usb connector.

didnt even purchase it, it said v3 on it and the connector was outside the package(nice touch by the manufacturer btw) and it didnt fit. i tried like 7 of them

Is your charger OEM? Some 3rd party generic chargers make the phone show that it's charging when it actually isn't. As Tony pointed out, there are several chargers that will plug into the RAZR (mpx 220, blackberry 7100t) that will NOT work. The Blackberry 7100t charger actually makes the RAZR show that it charging.

If Wal-Mart won't handle it Motorola should under their one-year manufacturer warranty.

charger came with the phone, has the moto label on the charger, its the right charger. the charger that didnt fit wasnt oem and it was a car charger

You are correct in the sense that there are no memory effects on newer, Lithoum ion batters. That said, you can still fry the battery by leaving it on the charger for more than 12 hours. When the battery nears a complete charge (98%), the phone starts to trickle charge instead of full charge. So, for example, say you were getting 2.1 volts on regular charging. Now it'll trickle charge at 0.2 volts. And it won't stop charging, contrary to what the owners manual says.

Now, at 0.2 volts, it'll take hours and hours to complete the 100% charge. When it gets to 100%, it however does continue to charge even more. While on a short time span this is not a problem, after 12 hours it begins to overheat the cells in the battery and cook them. Hence the term, frying the battery.

Again, from a completely discharged battery, it takes 4 hours to get it fully charged (fully charged is 98%). Another 8 hours on the charger is the most a battery will take. Any longer and you risk damaging the battery.

You can trust me on this, as I work in one of the busiest NMI / Bell Mobility stores in Canada. We put out almost 500 new activations in December. And if you read my sig line, you'll see that I'm also a pretty busy person. I've seen enough fried batteries to know that the phone doesn't just "stop" charging after they're full.