When I bought my UV-5R and put the battery is put into the charger, the charger red led ( indicates charging) turns on for 3-90 secs and then the red and green led starts flashing. The online manual says that the flashing is an error condition or the battery is out of the charger. I measured the battery voltage at 7.4v out of the charger. When the charger red led is on, the battery voltage rises to 7.65v. When the flashing occurs, the voltage goes to 8.4v, which is also the charger voltage when the battery is removed. Charging never resumes. The battery has a protection circuit and it looks like the protection circuit is cutting the charging off. When I try to use the radio, the radio dies fairly quickly because the battery isn’t charged. I got a new battery and it charged up, so the original battery was bad.