Tablet not charging

[TRGTspecialist]

Hey folks,

A major problem has cropped up with my Asus Android tablet (one part of a product called the Transformer Book Trio, but the details of that don't really matter for this story).

Yesterday morning, when I woke up the tablet from sleep, it said that I needed to charge the tablet as it had low battery. The battery indicator widget said the charge level was negative 90%, which obviously wasn't correct!

When I plugged the tablet into my AC adapter (by micro USB cable), the tablet said 'plugged in, not charging', and the battery level indicator did not change. So I decided to shut down the tablet. But when I tried to turn it back on, it simply refused to do so. I left it plugged in to the AC adapter for a while, but it still would not turn on. There is no orange light on the tablet that usually comes on to indicate it is charging.

I'm confident it's not an issue with the micro USB connector, as the tablet can be plugged in to a keyboard dock via a proprietary connection and be charged through that, but there's no charging light with that either. AC charger is also fine, it's working with other devices. But apart from that I'm clueless as to what the problem is. There was nothing to indicate that the tablet was dying on its feet - apart from the odd software glitches and crashes, it's been grand for 3 years.

I've read that a battery that won't accept charge can possibly be coaxed back to life by slow-charging it from a low-power source for a long period of time, so I've plugged it into a USB port on my PS4 Pro and left it, for about 12 hours so far. There's no indication it's taking on charge yet.

I've contacted ASUS support and am waiting to here from them, but on the off chance someone is aware/familiar with battery woes in mobile devices, I thought I'd post it here too.


Thanks

 

[TB]

The only time I've seen

'plugged in, not charging'

was on an iPad that was on a 1 amp port instead of the 2 amp that the iPad "needs". It will still charge on a 1, just much, much slower. As you've left yours plugged in for a while, it doesn't sound like that's the issue.

The only other problem I've come across for charging is the cable not being fully inserted and a can of compressed air took care of the pocket lint that was blocking it. That might be worth a look.

 

[Robin]

Can you try another AC charger? Because it might be faulty and only providing a lower level of amperage than your tablet needs yet appears to work with other devices. It is odd that its charging through the keyboard yet not showing any charging light, it is charging at normal rate through that method?

It might also be worth running the device till totally dead and start charging from scratch because the battery level circuitry may have messed up and is reporting the wrong percentage numbers so it wont charge properly.

 

[TRGTspecialist]

I'm fairly confident the AC charger/cables aren't faulty (can't be 100% sure as I don't have another adapter to test) but in any case, when I got home I tried turning the tablet on again - lo and behold it works, only to start installing system updates on the boot screen (unexpectedly; slightly confusing that, don't know if it's related to the problem at all), and shut down again. But on the next attempt it boots up fully, says the battery level is 91% - plug it into the AC, charges fully, all seems normal. 👍 So I guess the slow charging did eventually convince the battery it was grand? To be honest I have no idea

the battery level circuitry may have messed up and is reporting the wrong percentage numbers so it wont charge properly.

Yeah, I'm guessing there's something awry in software/circuitry - I've had a handful of occassions where the tablet has done odd battery related things, like it appearing to lose a full charge overnight in sleep, or it forgets/can't display the battery level, but a reboot always seemed to fix stuff like that - this is by far the worst problem to arise with the tablet. I'll keep a close eye on it, and treat it as a device that could die at any time (thankfully there's no data on it I couldn't afford to lose anyway).

Many thanks @TB @Robin for the advice