Phone battery issues

When a phone gets hot, very hot, because it’s processing something in the background and it doesn’t finish. It has crashed and you realise the battery has gone from 98% to 8%. You force close every app and have to leave your phone for an hour to cool down. Since October 2022 my phone was processing something and was always running hot and it’s hard a profound impact on its usability over the last six months.

Today I have the same phone but it is 3 year’s older. It’s battery says 80% but it’s actually only 5% and it randomly switches off, some days it’s 50% and lasts the day, some days it never seems to go above 20% despite having it on charge and not using it.

I turn the screen brightness down, turn off Bluetooth, force close all my favourite apps and charge it for about 15 hours a day just to be able to message people once in a while.

It randomly turns off if I try to send an email or make a call. Using maps in a new location or using any apps that do not have a shortcut or accessibility concessions.

Moving the phone from one charger to another doesn’t help and often makes it worse, somehow losing half its charge for the next 3 days.

Showing your phone to someone else doesn’t help, for that moment, on face value, it seems to operate like any other phone and is indistinguishable in its performance. Only living with it day in day out does one realise they need to get a new phone.

I imagine most people can relate to this if they’ve had a phone in the last decade. Now, imagine this was your body and you had a diseases or illness where there is no rebooting or upgrading of that ‘phone’ and no real evidence that your phone is actually broken.