AYN Thor Max (SM8550): Charging limited to ~4W in Armada, 0W when powered off

[carlthewinner]

Device

• AYN Thor Max
• Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 (SM8550)

Armada Version

• 20260628

Problem

Charging appears to be broken under Armada.

Expected Behavior

• Device should negotiate fast charging (similar to Android).
• Device should charge while powered off.

Actual Behavior

• While running Armada, my various Anker power bank and battery chargers report that it is only charging at 4 watts in Linux.
• It can't charge fast enough so the battery keeps draining.
• The device gets hot.
• When the device is completely powered off, the charger reports 0W (no charging at all).

Observations

• I have duplicated these results accross multiple charging docs and USB-C cables.
• When I boot up in Android, it immediately negotiates approximately 27W and charges normally.
• Etcher flash completed successfully and verified.
• Armada boots and otherwise functions normally.
• bootloader appears fine and functions as expeted.

[Zombrexo]

I found that it happened after the latest update which was only a few days ago, I am not sure if it was steam client update or an OTA update, but it was more recent than the most recent image found in this GitHub so I am guessing that it was a client update.

It could also be a random boot issue as completely turning my device on and off seems to sometimes fix the issue before it comes back again.

I am not completely sure if it was the latest update or not as it came just two days after I got to trying armada myself.

[carlthewinner]

I am also new to armada. This was my first ever install.
I just completely powered down my device and plugged it and it started charging.
From what you are describing, it sounds like it will probably stop working again. Strange behavior.

[Zombrexo]

The snapdragon 8 gen 2 chip has several charging features such as passthrough charging and 80% limiting, it is probably a linux kernel clash with any of those features, all we can do is wait for a response really.

[Ga1dz1]

I experienced some power management issues before the first reboot. It was the same behavior as with Rocknix, where the battery percentage was stuck at 34%. This bug only occurs before the first reboot, specifically if you install it after booting from Android, while the console is charging, with 'charger separation' enabled, and under who knows what other conditions. I’ve seen this happen several times. Just reboot after the first installation to allow the system to initialize normally. It will fix lot.

[Zombrexo]

All of your reasons there was not any of my cases, I first factory reset my android partition as I was considering selling my device but armada convinced me to give it a second chance, so it was flashed from a fresh android install then installed to internal storage.

The bug did not in fact only happen before first reboot in my case but after a couple of on and off cycles as ayn thor linux kernel that rocknix made (and armada is borrowing) doesn't support true suspend/sleep so I normally turn my device off completely to avoid battery health going bogus in the long run.

The bug has happened to me twice now, the second time it even persisted after a reboot where booting into android was the only thing that fixed it.

[Zombrexo]

Just here to report a new finding on this issue, there is a kernel script or something similar when it comes to charging that I can only assume has a random chance of crashing which results in the device not being able to charge above 4 watts/not charging at all.

As today I was using it like any other day and had been able to charge it just fine, but the issue popped up after a about a day's worth of usage without completely powering the device on or off this time which means it can happen randomly too without being boot related.

[Torbold]

Same issue on Odin 3 Max - very slow charging after some time of device powered on. Typically a reboot helps for some time and then after a few sleep cycles it fast charging would no longer work.