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I just had to have my Lumia 950 replaced under warranty yesterday, after hardly having the phone for a week. There was something wrong with the charging circuit that was preventing it from reliably connecting.

For the most part, whenever I plugged a charger into the phone, the phone would not start charging at all. During some additional troubleshooting in the store, while I was there for the return, we got the phone to respond a little but the charging indicator would not stay steady.

What we were seeing (whenever the phone would register a charger connected) was that the phone would say it was charging, but the power plug next to the battery icon would blink on and off. We didn't test it long enough to see if it actually was charging, but we did look at a display model for comparison. (In fact, we were borrowing that unit's charger for the test.) When the display model was charging, the plug would stay steady.

Last night, I had some similar issues with the phone. It was very slow to charge, and the power plug on the battery icon in the Notifications area was blinking again. (To be fair, I was running some apps that are known to drain the battery heavily. But the slowness to charge persisted for awhile after I'd shut them down, and the plug still kept blinking.)

Today, I think the phone is charging okay (haven't really watched it long enough to tell yet) but the plug is still blinking when it charges.

Is this normal? What are the various states of the power/battery icon for Windows 10 Mobile devices, and what do they mean?

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As far as I know, the blinking icon simply indicates that the battery charging. I've tried multiple chargers with my Lumia 950, including a Nokia wireless charger, and have never seen the icon not blink during charging. I initially suspected that the blinking icon indicates less than ideal charging current, because I normally use wireless charging, but based on my own and @Rowland Shaw's experience, that does not appear to be the case.

I can think of two possible explanations for the behaviour of the display model you referenced. One, its battery was full, so it wasn't actually charging. In that case the icon indeed stays steady. And two, it may have been running an older version of the OS (not at all unheard of for display models) where the icons behaved differently.

As for the possible states for the battery icon, there are four:

enter image description here Plugged in, charging

enter image description here Plugged in, full

enter image description here Discharging

enter image description here Discharging, battery saver active

Source: Get Started with Windows 10 Mobile - Icons on your phone

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    Even when using the supplied charger, mine shows blinking when charging, solid when on external power and fully charged.
    – Rowland Shaw ♦
    Feb 9 '16 at 20:09
  • Finally had a chance to let the new phone charge to full, observed. On initial plug-in, and several checks along the way, the plug was blinking. After it hit 100%, the plug stayed solid. So, that answers that. If you'll add the icon pictures and descriptions directly to this answer, and note the difference between blinking/solid plugs, I'll up-vote & accept.
    – Iszi
    Feb 9 '16 at 20:26
  • @Iszi Was already working on that :) Done now.
    – Indrek ♦
    Feb 9 '16 at 20:31

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