Why is it that when my cell phone is plugged into the charger, after being dead, it still doesn't have power for a while?

If you’re running the battery down completely, you’ll likely need to wait until the charger can charge the battery enough so that it will boot up.

You might want to carry an extra battery with you if this happens often. You can buy one for $14. Then, if you kill the battery, just swap in the replacement and you’ll be good. You can also splurge for an extra charger, so you would be able to charge the extra without the phone. You can get this whole set for $25. It is a charger and 2 extra batteries.

Why not put it on the charger every night?

@janbb: Sometimes I’m busy, sometimes I forget.

@hominid is right.

One tip is if you turn off all the features that make it a smartphone eg 3G/data, gps, Bluetooth and basically turn it back into a phone that just receives and makes calls and texts, your battery will last much longer. The phone is constantly looking for the signal and this drains the battery fast. If i need to use the internet or as a sat nav, I turn the data and GPS etc back on for the time that I use it. When I am finished, I just switch off the data when i close the browser. My battery last about a day if they are all on all the time but a week if I turn them off.

@hominid is correct. The battery must have enough current capacity to run the phone. It’s not just voltage from the charger since the battery is “floating” on the charger. The phone is really only drawing current from the battery itself. Until it charges up a little the phone cannot run and it will not allow the user to turn it on until it senses there is enough capacity to do so.

It’s the same with both my iPhones and the above explanations are the reason why.

You might be interested in exploring the possibility of getting a charging case. These are protective like any other case but contain a very slim extra battery built in.

Until I got one I never realized what I was missing. Here’s a few to start with.

www.mophie.com

www.power-skin.com

The best known brand with an excellent reputation is the Mophie Juice Pack. And that’s reflected in the higher price.

But you can search on Amazon or Ebay for dozens of less expensive alternatives
which do the same thing.

Even though buying ones
made on China are kind of a
crapshoot, I bought several from Amazon for around $10 and haven’t regretted it.

This way I can have one hooked up to charge while the other is on my phone. As I said, I never realized what I was missing. Having them has made life so much more convenient for me. When these crap out, I’ll definitely get some more. But I’ve been using them daily for over a year and they’re still going strong so I have no complaints.

@janbb: In thinking about it further, why I don’t charge the phone, I realized that it’s really because when I’m home, almost all of my friends who may need to call know my home phone number. II’m kind of old school in that way. I don’t usually text when I’m home. I use the computer, not the phone, to access internet. Usually, when I’m at work is when it occurs to me to charge the phone and I have the charger right on the floor near my desk.

Me too. I don’t use the phone at home but have made part of my bedtime ritual putting the phone on the charger at night. Then I grab it in the morning. That does solve the problem.

If you can’t remember to put your phone on the charger before bedtime, you probably run out of gas in your car a lot too. Owning a smartphone is a little like having a pet in that you need to feed it at least once a day. Maybe you aren’t ready for that sort of responsibility.

I find that disabling auto-updates (especially on Facebook, but also for Google Play) dramatically increases battery life. However, wifi will drain the battery pretty quickly. GPS really doesn’t affect battery life much. The biggest draw is the screen; often half the battery or more will go to the screen alone.

@jerv: No, I don’t run out of gas in my car ever. As far as your snide remark about me being ready for that responsibility, I don’t think the remark was necessary or called for.

@jerv On my Android phone simply disabling the GPS doubles if not triples the battery life. This is the case on any android phone I have played with. The reason this happens is that the GPS chipset must continually run to maintain a location fix. It prevents a good chunk of the electronics from entering a low power or “sleep state”. Now with Kitkat you can’t separate location services from the GPS so I end up having to disable location services also.

Just to reiterate – her phone (S4) is designed to easily swap in new batteries whenever she wants. As I pointed out above, for $25, she can get a set of 2 extra batteries and an external charger. This way, she doesn’t have to limit her phone’s functionality, yet still have enough power to go without recharging for days.

Sure, you can go to the battery manager and see what’s using the majority of your battery, then turn things off. But why not just use the phone to its potential and pop in a new battery if you forget to charge the thing? For me, locations services and gps is more important than being able to make a call or text.

Good Answers to all you helpful people! Much thanks for the ideas.

I guess my confusion with this issue came because when my laptop is dead and I plug it in, it starts up right away, once it’s charging.

@jca Laptops can run on the power adapter only, the charging system is “smarter” and can bypass the battery while it’s charging.