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Question

v74: Quest 3 not fully charging

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
February 2, 2025
335 replies
43042 views

My Quest 3 auto-updated to V74 Build 5070966.11190.510 (PTC) on the 31st and it won't charge past 73-74%. At that percentage, the orange charging light starts to flash. This one time I woke up to the quest turned on and in the factory reset menu by itself (the one you get from holding Power + Vol down), with it overheating.

In the settings, there are no updates but whenever I restart or shut down the quest, each time it says wait while the Quest is updating for maybe 2s, which is unusual.

Things I've already tried:

1. Soft/hard reboot.

2. Different cables/chargers.

3. Unpairing and repairing the controllers (as suggested by chat support)

4. Turning off the Quest and then charging it but the same issue persists

#PTC v74 #quest3 #PTC

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M

Maroszek

Participant

Man, I'm with Mugensukuyomi, why isn't there an official "hey we're on it". Or even some noise from the folks that cover the VR news, etc. Seems like this wouldn't be specific to a certain subset of headsets.

I tried PTC v76 (no change as we've seen in other testing here) then un-enrolled from PTC. Oddly however, the headset didn't revert back. I thought it would kick off a factory reset but I guess not. I might manually do it, but I thought maybe I'd do more testing in various states of discharge, etc. to see if there's any difference from V74 (although I doubt it).

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DarkVcious

Participant

From what I've seen being said around, it seems to behave the exact same way on PTC v76, so it's likely they didn't touch power management (yet).

I've seen other topics around that injecting power (through those USB A + USB C thingies) seems to make the issue go away. I know very little about how usb c handles power delivery, but a wild guess would be that using an injector like that makes it "ignore" what the headset is actually requesting and just providing as much as it can which goes around the issue. No clue if it's safe though seeing how jank the power management is in the quest 3.

d0gg

Honored Contributor

Just wanted to ask.

Are any of the people that are having the issue using Anker branded cables?

I use Anker and have not had any issues. (Anker tends to be considered to be a higher end trusted brand)

The reason I ask is something that DarkVcious just said about injecting power.
USB-C cables manage power delivery (the plugs have a chip in them that communicate with the device and charger to control power levels).

There are generally several quality levels of cables.

Good (manage power well)
"Bad" (simplistic power management)
"ugly" (crap cables that don't manage and just try to dump power)

If the cable you are using fits into the middle category that might have something to do with the charging issue.

This is a completely educated guess. Meaning I am experienced with technology, but I have not not tested my theory. I am just asking the question to see if my thought shows any evidence of proof.

Quest 3-[512GB] - v.78 (non-PTC) {PCVR} Predator Orion 5k (i7-14700F - Noctua NH-U12A Cooled)-64GB Crucial Pro 5600 (16GBx4) 8TB SSD (2x1TB Predator Helios PH18 SSD - 2TB WD Black SN770 SSD - 2x2TB Samsung 870 EVO SSD) Predator Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti Super - Win 11 Pro AXE5400 tp-link - Virtual Desktop

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chrismeitis

Participant

Yea this is a software issue, I believe since it started with v74. I was part of the PTO and tried v74 early and immediately noticed the charging issue. I then rolled back to v72 and everything was fine. Apparently people who are still on the PTO and have upgraded to v76 say the issue is still there. Meta has had issues with their batteries for a while. I remember the fiasco with their elite batteries and how they stopped working. Trying to get Meta to admit to having and issue was crazy hard but I was finally able to get my money back for it. I had high hopes for Meta and the Quest, but I fear that they are no longer putting out quality products. Horizon Worlds has been broken for a while and now the head set is buggy. I'm looking at other options for head sets since Horizon Worlds is not a priority for me any more.

d0gg

Honored Contributor

Correct, it is most likely a software issue. If the communication with the chip in the plugs on the cable is causing an issue (which is controlled by software). It is possible that the type of chip (manufacturer or model) could be part of or the entire problem.

That's my reasoning for asking the specific brand of cable being used. Not saying that a high quality brand wasn't being used, but that Anker specifically uses a particular chip or programming of the chip.

Quest 3-[512GB] - v.78 (non-PTC) {PCVR} Predator Orion 5k (i7-14700F - Noctua NH-U12A Cooled)-64GB Crucial Pro 5600 (16GBx4) 8TB SSD (2x1TB Predator Helios PH18 SSD - 2TB WD Black SN770 SSD - 2x2TB Samsung 870 EVO SSD) Predator Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti Super - Win 11 Pro AXE5400 tp-link - Virtual Desktop

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RealAct

Up and Coming

They replied to me again and said their engineers are still working on a fix for this. Based on their past record with battery issues and the sort. I'm not too optimistic about it.

ConvexRook

Participant

😆 I have an email thread with their team as well. Basically the same response. My device is out of warranty and they wanted me to do an OOW replacement for some pre-owned unit. I said "nope. Not hardware issue it's software, fix it."

stereoman

Up and Coming

I think most people have probably tried the factory reset holding power and volume down button and entering the menu and selectring the factory reset, I tried it along with the shut down and boot device option and made zero difference, still won't charge above 74% and the left lense will flicker once it reaches 74%.

It's an issue with V74 as others have mentioned it happened during the PTC release but back then we had the option to revert so people with the issue just reverted back to V72, as that's not an option anymore we're stuck until Meta comes up with a fix.

D

DarkVcious

Participant

Yeah, factory reset wouldn't do much for a core service like that. The "hard power off" might have helped if it was down to an internal component being in an "invalid state" and not being able to soft reset itself, requiring to be brought fully offline (no current at all through it) before it could "restart" in a healthy state, but here it seems it's just down to the software of some low level android service being dumb.

N

nastyjman

Inspiring

I'm also having problems with my Quest 3 not charging properly after getting v74 update.

I have my Quest 3 plugged in to an outlet, and I never had problems with it until v74. While plugged in and when I put it to Sleep, the LED battery indicator would flash on and off.

stereoman

Up and Coming

I let my battery drain to 1% and now it won't charge above 60% before the lense starts flickering so seems to be getting worse, this is becoming a big problem.

T

TomCgcmfc

Honored Contributor

stereoman wrote:

I let my battery drain to 1% and now it won't charge above 60% before the lense starts flickering so seems to be getting worse, this is becoming a big problem.

Honestly, draining your headset battery down to 1% is not a very good idea and this may damage batteries. I'm surprised that the low battery warnings weren't driving you nuts, lol! I try not to let my headset battery get below 15-20% before recharging it (the Elite strap battery doesn't seem to mind going down to ~2-3%). Maybe try recharging it when it gets down to about 20%, let it cool down a bit (5-10 minutes) beforehand and see if you can get a higher charge.

With latest non-beta v74 my +1yo Q3/512Gb with Elite battery strap continues to charge up as per normal (100% for both).

i9 13900K water cooled, RTX4090, Z790 MB w/wifi6e, 64Gb 6400 ram, 2x2TB SSD, 1000W PSU, Win 11, QPro, Q3, w/Link and Air Link, Vive Pro1 with 2x2.0 base stations, Etsy lens mod and Index Controllers

d0gg

Honored Contributor

TomCgcmfc is exactly right

The "20-80 rule" for Li-ion batteries suggests keeping the battery charge between 20% and 80% to potentially extend its lifespan, minimizing strain and optimizing charging efficiency.

Dropping the battery to 1% isn’t healthy for the current battery type that is being used in almost all devices that are in use. Full battery charge/discharge cycles have not been necessary nor suggested since NiCad or NiMH.

Quest 3-[512GB] - v.78 (non-PTC) {PCVR} Predator Orion 5k (i7-14700F - Noctua NH-U12A Cooled)-64GB Crucial Pro 5600 (16GBx4) 8TB SSD (2x1TB Predator Helios PH18 SSD - 2TB WD Black SN770 SSD - 2x2TB Samsung 870 EVO SSD) Predator Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti Super - Win 11 Pro AXE5400 tp-link - Virtual Desktop

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DarkVcious

Participant

Yeah ... mine is also draining lower and lower most of the time lately, and sometimes charging back up. No idea what the power management code is doing but it's very confusing.

stereoman

Up and Coming

I got updated to the PTC v76 last night, left it on charge last night and when I checked it today it was at 68% with the left lense flickering non stop, as soon as I unplugged the charge cable it stopped flickering, so it's a bit of a catch 22 here.

I leave it connected and keep it charged or I risk damaging the headset with all this flickering because like most people I can't spend my life constantly monitoring this thing. They need to fix this!

stereoman

Up and Coming

So quick update don't want to jinx this but I decided to leave the headset on in sleep mode isntead of complete power down and my battery is now at 99% with a solid green light, I've powered the headset down and the light is still on green and when I press the power button it shows the battery charge symbol and I don't see any flickering in the lense when the screen switches off again,

I did a factory reset and I dropped out of the PTC channel but it says I'm still on v76, the only thing I did then was instead of powering off the device like normal I just put into sleep mode and then it started charging up.

So fingers crossed here, I will be keeping an eye on it for now to see if it maintains a charge but so far so good!

mugensukuyomiAuthor

Up and Coming

I had a green light yesterday as well and assumed they fixed it. Then I did a power off from the recovery menu and then booted it back up, and the charging percentage went from 99% with the green light to ~60% with the same old orange light flashing at ~75%.

Only way to fix this is to jerry rig 37 20,000mAh power banks to power it in a series and duct tape it together.

This is just an artistic representation of what that might look like

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