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Hi everybody.
To get the most out of my battery I always wait until my device shuts down due to lacking battery. The I chargt it until it the end and the battery displays 6+ houres.
When I recharge the battery before its empty I only get 4+ houres when its full.
I also read that the battery's lifetime is increased by only charging it that way.
My problem is the cradle that charges it everytime I sync.
Is there a way or tool to switch charging on/off for the cradel?
Thanks alot
Alex
The way I understand it, modern batteries do better when charged regularly in small increments. They do very badly with multiple deep discharges, which can actually damage them.
So I would actually disagree with you that what you are doing is a good idea.
If you still decide to do this, the simplest way is probably a manual activesync via bluetooth, using a dongle, as it actually charges via USB too.
Surur
Right the bluetooth thing would be a good idea.
And you might also be right that you should not charge it in such an extreme way...
I read this an a PC Magazin.
I don't know if its wrong or right. the only thing I know is that the battery lasts longer when I charge it thta way.
Thanks
Alex
The battery in the xda2 is designed for constant charging, I dont see how you would get more battery life because if you acheive your desired aim the xda2 will be discharging during sync and will give less battery time than if you let it top up the charge.
I read that Ion battaries have only a limited number of complete chargings bevor the are broken...
alex
I've had an o2 mini s for about a week now and i'm pleased with it on the whole. My only real concern is battery life. My mini seems to drain much quicker than by xda 2 s which I had before. I seem to drop about 10% in 1 hour 10 mins and that's just a few calls/txts and minimum fiddling.
8:20 100%
9:42 88%
I've dropped all the o2 software and don't have any tricky 3rd party apps installed only;
xbar3 ( great btw )
avantgo wireless
ebook reader
tcpmp
I've read quite a few posts about battery life being good on this phone but i'm not seeing it. I'm still in my 14 day cooling off period and i'm considering sending it back for a replacement.
Jeff
Is Wifi off, bluetooth off. Do you check your email every ... minutes over GPRS?...
With email checking every 10 minutes my qtek battery last at least 2 whole days.
wifi/gprs/bluetooth all off - not used today
Just phone today - maybe 12 calls.
Time now 14:21 battery at 61% !
Now i'm worried ......I reckon i'll be down to 30% by this evening.
16:32 - 49%
maybe there are problems with these batteries i had problems with charging the battery it didnt seem to show correct level, sent it back for another unit
17:26 - 38%.
If another goes we'll be up here all day.
My battery life seems to be utter rubbish every time I charge my MDA Vario over the USB link. I can go to bed with 100% battery and find it dead by morning. This has happened two or three times since I bought it on 5th November. Last Saturday morning I had the USB cable connected to download some music to my SD card with 100% charge at 10:00. I played music for about an hour through the supplied headphones and by 13:00 I was down to 50% battery. By that evening I was down to a few %. I've read reviews that you you should squeeze about 10 hours of continuous music from this thing on one full charge so an hour of music and 7 hours of standby/sleep seems pathetic.
If I charge using the mains charger and sync over Bluetooth I get a standby battery life of about 5 days. Obviously that is shortened with use so in practice I am charging it every 2-3 days (no point starting a day with only 20% left!).
I have no idea why USB charging is completely hopeless. I have tried soft resetting or closing all active apps after charging, to make sure ActiveSync isn't actively running and causing a drain (just as you are advised to with a Bluetooth sync) but that seems to make no difference. USB charging is rubbish. Mains charging is the only way to go, IME.
21.50 - 24 %
Charging over USB hopeless
tdodd said:
I have no idea why USB charging is completely hopeless. I have tried soft resetting or closing all active apps after charging, to make sure ActiveSync isn't actively running and causing a drain (just as you are advised to with a Bluetooth sync) but that seems to make no difference. USB charging is rubbish. Mains charging is the only way to go, IME.
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Click to collapse
I confirm USB charging IS rubbish. The reason seems to be that the power available out of that conector on a PC is not enough to charge properly... I had the same issue with BA and Himalaya...
Answer: get a USB charger / car charger that can deliver 1A minimum.
BTW I found a craddle for the Wizard in Dubai @ Plugins. It comes with USB port/cable + power adapter. Works like a charme.
Cheers,
Hal.
tdodd said:
My battery life seems to be utter rubbish every time I charge my MDA Vario over the USB link. I can go to bed with 100% battery and find it dead by morning. This has happened two or three times since I bought it on 5th November. Last Saturday morning I had the USB cable connected to download some music to my SD card with 100% charge at 10:00. I played music for about an hour through the supplied headphones and by 13:00 I was down to 50% battery. By that evening I was down to a few %.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My C500 Did that when I had it Plugged in the Front USB ports on my case, I normaly had it plugged in to the onboard USB at the back of my pc with a usb ext cable so I could have it on my desk but I went off to a lan party and when I plugged everything back in I put my USB cable to front usb port and found it was Discharging my Battery instead of charging it, got my usb in Back port all is fine again now
Maybe you have yours in to the front USB port or non onboard port?
I use a laptop, which only has two USB 1.1 ports but they each supply enough juice to power a USB ADSL modem (not that I'm using one of those these days), which is more than some PCs will manage and also my USB hard drive, which my Shuttle won't. So there is no lack of power from the USB ports on the laptop.
Of course, the USB spec only permits a maximum current demand of 500mA so any equpiment expecting more should not be using USB for its power supply. In any event, the phone does charge from the USB ports, albeit very slowly, but eventually the orange charge light does go green. So my situation is not one of discharging instead of charging.
I've just swapped my ROM from Vario to k-jam so I'll see if that makes any difference to the performance. I know it's given me 802.11g, which was missing before.
I had an M500 briefly (Magician) on Orange that had very poor battery life, it was one of the reasons I ebayed it, gave the contract sim to my wife and started a cheaper better value T-Mobile account with an MDA Compact, which
had better battery life. Typically overnight after a full charge the Orange unit went down to 75% and the T-Mobile one was at about 98% on standby.
My Vario I have now, my other T-Mobile account has very good battery life and charges very well off USB. If I sync it in the morning whilst reading my emails and stuff, let it charge USb for about 25 mins, it'll be full and by the night it will have dropped down to about 80%. This is with about 30 mins of calls, about seven or eight emails sent/received and maybe 15 mins with WIFI on.
tdodd said:
I use a laptop, which only has two USB 1.1 ports but they each supply enough juice to power a USB ADSL modem (not that I'm using one of those these days), which is more than some PCs will manage and also my USB hard drive, which my Shuttle won't. So there is no lack of power from the USB ports on the laptop.
Of course, the USB spec only permits a maximum current demand of 500mA so any equpiment expecting more should not be using USB for its power supply. In any event, the phone does charge from the USB ports, albeit very slowly, but eventually the orange charge light does go green. So my situation is not one of discharging instead of charging.
I've just swapped my ROM from Vario to k-jam so I'll see if that makes any difference to the performance. I know it's given me 802.11g, which was missing before.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
do you have a link to the imate rom? is the vario rom also available?
sundip said:
do you have a link to the imate rom? is the vario rom also available?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can't remember for sure where I got the k-jam ROM ( I think someone saved a copy somewhere) but try here - ftp://ftp.clubimate.com/ - and then save file K-JAM_WWE_1010903_106_10110_ship.exe
That is a self installing upgrade that includes the whole k-jam ROM and k-jam extended ROM files.
I don't know where to get a Vario ROM from. I did back up my own copy (I hope) but the method is a bit whacky and as I only have a 1GB mini-SD card my ROM backup image is 1GB because the only way to secure the image is to dump the whole card to a file.
Before you go playing around do make sure you have your own backup of the ROM or if not the whole thing then the Vario extended ROM files at least. I'm using the k-jam ROM with the Vario Extended ROM.
Re: Charging over USB hopeless
hal said:
I confirm USB charging IS rubbish. The reason seems to be that the power available out of that conector on a PC is not enough to charge properly... I had the same issue with BA and Himalaya...
Answer: get a USB charger / car charger that can deliver 1A minimum.
BTW I found a craddle for the Wizard in Dubai @ Plugins. It comes with USB port/cable + power adapter. Works like a charme.
Cheers,
Hal.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi,
Is there any way to disable USB charging? I didn't connect USB very often since it will charge automatically and I don't like the battery be charged very often. It might kill battery soon. I like to sync with bluetooth; however it is much slower than USB. It's amazing if there is any tool to disable USB charging. Because it will sync fast and will not hurt the battery. Thanks for the suggestions in advance.
Cheers!
Michael
Re: Charging over USB hopeless
Michael Lin said:
Is there any way to disable USB charging? I didn't connect USB very often since it will charge automatically and I don't like the battery be charged very often. It might kill battery soon. I like to sync with bluetooth; however it is much slower than USB. It's amazing if there is any tool to disable USB charging. Because it will sync fast and will not hurt the battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are thinking of older batteries such as Nicads. Topping up often does not hurt Lithium batteries, in fact it's better for them. Their main enemies are deep discharge and heat - and that's exactly what you're subjecting it to by letting it run flat, then charging for hours to get it back to max.
Re: Charging over USB hopeless
Ineedtoys said:
You are thinking of older batteries such as Nicads. Topping up often does not hurt Lithium batteries, in fact it's better for them. Their main enemies are deep discharge and heat - and that's exactly what you're subjecting it to by letting it run flat, then charging for hours to get it back to max.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dear Ineedtoys,
Thanks for the reply. I understand that there is no so called "memory effect" on Lithium battery; however when I checked the battery spec, I always found that there is a "charging cycle limitation". For example, a specific battery claimed that it can be rechaged 10,000 times, then very USB charging will be counted also. It will reach 10,000 times faster. This is my concern. I don't know if this is right or wrong. Can somebody help to clarify this?
B. Rgds.,
Michael
Re: Charging over USB hopeless
Ineedtoys said:
You are thinking of older batteries such as Nicads. Topping up often does not hurt Lithium batteries, in fact it's better for them. Their main enemies are deep discharge and heat - and that's exactly what you're subjecting it to by letting it run flat, then charging for hours to get it back to max.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dear Ineedtoys,
Thanks for the reply. I understand that there is no so called "memory effect" on Lithium battery; however when I checked the battery spec, I always found that there is a "charging cycle limitation". For example, a specific battery claimed that it can be rechaged 10,000 times, then very USB charging will be counted also. It will reach 10,000 times faster. This is my concern. I don't know if this is right or wrong. Can somebody help to clarify this?
B. Rgds.,
Michael
Re: Charging over USB hopeless
Michael Lin said:
Ineedtoys said:
You are thinking of older batteries such as Nicads. Topping up often does not hurt Lithium batteries, in fact it's better for them. Their main enemies are deep discharge and heat - and that's exactly what you're subjecting it to by letting it run flat, then charging for hours to get it back to max.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dear Ineedtoys,
Thanks for the reply. I understand that there is no so called "memory effect" on Lithium battery; however when I checked the battery spec, I always found that there is a "charging cycle limitation". For example, a specific battery claimed that it can be rechaged 10,000 times, then very USB charging will be counted also. It will reach 10,000 times faster. This is my concern. I don't know if this is right or wrong. Can somebody help to clarify this?
B. Rgds.,
Michael
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's true. It's the same with Notebooks. The more you charge it, while it's in use, the faster the battery gets "killed"!
Re: Charging over USB hopeless
Michael Lin said:
Hi,
Is there any way to disable USB charging? I didn't connect USB very often since it will charge automatically and I don't like the battery be charged very often. It might kill battery soon. I like to sync with bluetooth; however it is much slower than USB. It's amazing if there is any tool to disable USB charging. Because it will sync fast and will not hurt the battery. Thanks for the suggestions in advance.
Cheers!
Michael
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Answer my own question.
I am quite sure that the USB charging can be disabled since I used to see the config on a HP device. I also believed that this can be done by 'registry' since it is Windows tradition. I finally found it after a short study. Please go to
HKLM\Drivers\BuiltIn\usbfndrv
and change the
EnableUsbCharging to '0'
then
soft reset => Bingo.
Hope it helps.
Michael
So I upgraded to the latest mr clean rom and did some tweaks with the registry wizard. I was playing around with it for a while and turned it off to charge overnight. I wake up and try and turn it on and nothing. I've tried soft reset, and hard reset and it doesn't turn on or do anything. When I plug in my charger the light on my phone doesn't even come on. PLEASE HELP. WHAT CAN I DO!!!.
This exact same thing happened to me last week. I played with it everday hoping it would turn back on, but nothing worked. Out of nowhere, it powered back up after 7 days of being non-responsive.
So I would just suggest waiting it out and making sure it is fully charged. Sorry I don't have any better solutions, but this is what worked for me.
leave it charging (even if there is no light) for a couple of hourse. then hold the power button for 3 secs. It will work...ciao,V.
Charge it with the charger, not usb, mine did this and I thought it was dead but it's probably just a dead battery. For some reason it can self discharge to the point where the USB charger can't recharge it.
I've done that, had it charging for over 24 hrs now on the home charger. I guess the next step would be a new battery? Do T-mobile stores carry them? TIA
YOU HAVE TO USE THE ORIGINAL 1A CHARGER!!!!! 800mA will not do the job!!!
that's what i've done i think...the home charger... it doesn't say how many A though.
I fixed it , What I did was zap the battery with a 9v battery in 3 sec intervals, I did this about 5 times, then I pluged my phone into the charger and turned it on, the 9v gave it enough juice to boot up and the usb took over from there. So to everyone out there who is having this same problem, try this but don't over zap, check your battery with a multimeter.
my wizard wont turn on this morning. I just tested my battery and it's at 3.1 volts (not 3.7 as stated on the label)
Would your method work do you think ? My mains charger is at my girlfriends house i rely on usb here
Yeah I've had this issue before and I have it again. Last time it self-started after about an hour just sitting on the desk. This time it's taking longer, and is still out. I'm charging it as we speak - no light but I'm hopeful.
So this is a battery fault then? I guess that's a slight relief - I've already sent one in for repair and I can't do it again, as I'm on the far side of the channel..
ive never been backwards in trying these things out so i gave it a go. Slightly different method (a little safer).
Found an old 5v 2A charger lying around bared off the wires and used my meter to identify the positive and ground cores.
tested the battery again.. 3.1volts
applied the wires of the charger to the terminals for 5 secs
tested battery.. 3.25 volts
re applied wires for 5 secs
tested battery.. 3.45 volts
re applied wires for 5 secs
tested battery.. 3.52 volts
put in the wizard.. boot screen.
I think i have a seperate problem as i now have a red flashing light and then it locks up around 20 secs later but im a little further on at least !
cheers,
malty
all sorted here. I hadnt quite enough juice in the battery. Re applied the charger until the battery measured 3.62V Booted ok to the point then that the usb charger took over.
many thanks to the original poster
You saying that giving it brief jolts helps restore the battery? Given the time you applied it for, I can't really think it's being recharged by this action...
its a very temporary thing like a 'kick' and the extra voltage isnt sustained very long. It worked. thats all that matters
Yeah. But I'm reluctant to pump power into an electrical device without knowing why. In my case, the battery is giving a steady 4.2V output, which should be enough, no? In fact, the battery seems to be healthy in every way possible, and a few minutes before it died was reporting a ~80% charge...
I'll try kicking it though
4.2V is over voltage but yea that should be enough. sounds like you may have a more serious problem
Yeah, so do I. Battery was unaffected by a kick, output is still at the rated 4.2V, well above the needed 3.7V.
So, what would make an apparently healthy phone sporadically fail? It wasn't dropped or exposed to anything. I had it, on, on my desk. The screen turned off after 30 seconds, as usual, and then wouldn't turn back on. Soft and hard resets both fail to invoke any response whatsoever. No charging light.
The only thing that's different is that I did an ActiveSync for the first time in weeks, on a new computer, a few hours before it died. For which I'm extremely thankful, as I'd got a lot of data building up without a backup until then. But I'm doubtful that the sync has anything to do with the failure.
These symptoms occured before, a month or so ago, but the phone revived on its own after an hour or so. This one has been out two days now, which worries me.
Hi All,
THANK YOU!! I just bought this 8125 and thought I broke it in only 2 days. The 9 volt battery did the trick.
Now I can get on with trying to use it.
I have had the same problem last week and I used a 9V battery briefly onto the + and - of the phone-battery.
this just gave the phone-battery enough juice to start up and I was able to normally charge the phone again.
Old Trick but !!!Caution!!!
What you guys are doing is reviving a deeply discharged battery.
I frequently do that to normal AA 1.2v NiCd or NiMH Rechargeble battery that have not been used for a long time. When they measure about 0.2v you just jolt a 10v current through it for 1-3 seconds and then carry on charging as normal. If it does not come right, throw it away or use it as a paperweight
Problem comes in with the type of battery you do it with. I had a Lithium - Ion battery explode in my hands once.. (Thank god I wear glasses) I only had a few cuts on my hands and my shirt was ruined so I came off very lucky.
With lithium-Ion batteries one should be very carefull when attemting to boost it when deeply discharged... They dont like it very much.
My 10cents worth
Ok I am a new member to this whole PocketPC thing since I just purchased my first PocketPC which is an i-mate JASJAM. I honestly think that it's a great product with a lot of features and potential. My problem though, lies in the fact that I haven't had the chance to enjoy it for a full day yet. Ever since I bought it, I always charge it for like 7 to 8 hours, even though it fills up after like 3, but i leave it on charge anyway, because I was told that "that's what you should do!".
Anyways, no matter how long I leave it on the charger, once i take it off the battery begins to drain like there's no tomorrow. I'm talking about going from 100% to 0% within 5 hours, while on FLIGHT MODE. If I turn the screen off then it might last for an extra hour.
Surely this can't be something normal, and I have been beating my brain trying to find a solution. As far as ActiveSync goes, I did the tweak that stops its automatic scheduled syncs, hoping that it would be the problem, but to my disappointment, no luck. Also made sure that no programs were running in the background. It came with a battery with a capacity of 1300mAh and then I bought another one hoping it was a problem with the battery. The new one had a capacity of 1350mAh, not much of a difference but it was all I could find. But there's no difference between them whatsoever, when it comes to battery life.
My first question is whether it is possible that this may be a software issue rather than a hardware issue (such as a power leak)?
If it is, then would upgrading the ROM or Radio or upgrading to WM6 make any difference?
Problem's that I don't have the phone on me right now so I can't give ROM or ExtROM versions etc., but I do know that it is running WM5 with AKU 2.3 and Radio is either 1.21 or 1.31.
N.B.: Until I get this issue sorted out, I am using a Nokia 6680 which has an average battery life of 3 days (72 hours), so should I be expecting something in the vicinity with my i-mate?
Well it sounds as if you've done all the obvious things. There is a power saving registry tweak in the wiki somewhere but that should not be necessary just to bring it to normal power consumption. If I don't use mine much (not on flight mode) I'll get a couple of days at least.
A ROM change might help a little but if you have a warranty I'd be tempted to use it. Radio change is unlikely to change things if you have been testing in flight mode.
Anybody else got ideas?
Mike
The only problem that I have with getting it fixed or replaced under warranty is that I have to send it to another country. So I am trying everything I can do before going through that hassle. So is there any test that I can carry out at home, or a certain diagnostics software that can test the phone for me?
Would a digital multimeter help if i can measure the current being drawn from the battery? What should the current rating be for the phone, is it 1A? Because there is one other interesting thing i found while just snooping around, there is a sticker that just has 5VDC and 1A written on it, and it's stuck to the phone under where the battery goes. I can only imagine that this is the voltage and current rating for the phone. The interesting part is that the battery that came with it, as well as the one i bought are both 3.7V batteries.
:-S
Best to just update your phone.... But becareful! read and research on flashing b 4 you do it... VERY IMPORTANT... USE only softwares for your phone...
I wanna make sure that anything i do doesn't void my warranty as well.
Used their offical update for your phone... However, my friend brick his phone and sent it back to the company and they replace it for him... I dunno if you would have that luck however... if ur careful and read all the information... and ur computer is stable... you shouldnt worry about it bricking ur phone...
jlaham said:
The only problem that I have with getting it fixed or replaced under warranty is that I have to send it to another country. So I am trying everything I can do before going through that hassle. So is there any test that I can carry out at home, or a certain diagnostics software that can test the phone for me?
Would a digital multimeter help if i can measure the current being drawn from the battery? What should the current rating be for the phone, is it 1A? Because there is one other interesting thing i found while just snooping around, there is a sticker that just has 5VDC and 1A written on it, and it's stuck to the phone under where the battery goes. I can only imagine that this is the voltage and current rating for the phone. The interesting part is that the battery that came with it, as well as the one i bought are both 3.7V batteries.
:-S
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The ratings you see written inside and the battery ratings are just standard - nothing unusual there. You could test current draw etc but even if you find it a little high it doesn't really help you to pin down a problem save to say it's the phone and not the battery. However as you have two batteries it's fairly reasonable to say it's not the battery. (reasonable but not impossible of course that two batteries are not working as they should).
Unfortunately we do not yet have our hands on the test file that HTC use.
Mike
I guess I have no choice but to get it shipped back. Thanks for your help guys.
Are you using a wall charger or a trickle-charger such as the USB Cable? The wall charger is the only way to truly charge it to full.
If you are using a USB charger or other trickle charger, after the device says it is fully charged remove it from the charger for about 2 minutes and then reconnect it. It will then charge (most of) the rest of the way.
If you don't do this, the problems gets worse and worse. After 1 day, the trickle charger may get you up to a 90% charge. After two days, 80%, etc. After a week you'll only be holding half a charge, even though the device is reporting a full charge while on the charger.
Another tip I have found is to perform a soft-reset after removing it from the charger, particularly if it has been plugged in for a long time at full charge (more than an hour or so). It seems like the device doesn't always detect that it has been unplugged and tries to suck down juice as if it were still plugged in. If you have noticed that your device gets pretty hot when the battery drains quickly, this is probably what is happening to you.
You also haven't mentioned the programs that you are using during the day. Some programs, particularly chat clients, will drain the battery in about 5 hours, though obviously you're not using anything like this while in flight mode.
One more thing. You noted that you were told that leaving it on the charger whenever possible is the thing to do. This is incorrect. The more the battery is exercised in this way, the shorter the lifespan of the battery will be. With any PocketPC device we're all bound to charge it every night, but once it is charged you want to take it off the charger. A battery being fully charged is just as bad as a battery being fully drained, so you want to keep it somewhere in between as much as possible.
My battery doesn't last either.
I've ordered an extended life battery with its own back.
I've also ordered a car charger.
I also carry my old hiptop with me when I need to switch sims.
Apparently touchscreen phones that do so much, ie. bluetooth and wifi, eat batteries.
Doom Tints said:
Are you using a wall charger or a trickle-charger such as the USB Cable? The wall charger is the only way to truly charge it to full.
If you are using a USB charger or other trickle charger, after the device says it is fully charged remove it from the charger for about 2 minutes and then reconnect it. It will then charge (most of) the rest of the way.
If you don't do this, the problems gets worse and worse. After 1 day, the trickle charger may get you up to a 90% charge. After two days, 80%, etc. After a week you'll only be holding half a charge, even though the device is reporting a full charge while on the charger.
Another tip I have found is to perform a soft-reset after removing it from the charger, particularly if it has been plugged in for a long time at full charge (more than an hour or so). It seems like the device doesn't always detect that it has been unplugged and tries to suck down juice as if it were still plugged in. If you have noticed that your device gets pretty hot when the battery drains quickly, this is probably what is happening to you.
You also haven't mentioned the programs that you are using during the day. Some programs, particularly chat clients, will drain the battery in about 5 hours, though obviously you're not using anything like this while in flight mode.
One more thing. You noted that you were told that leaving it on the charger whenever possible is the thing to do. This is incorrect. The more the battery is exercised in this way, the shorter the lifespan of the battery will be. With any PocketPC device we're all bound to charge it every night, but once it is charged you want to take it off the charger. A battery being fully charged is just as bad as a battery being fully drained, so you want to keep it somewhere in between as much as possible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow, I am very surprised to hear some of these. First of all, are you sure that using the usb charger kills your battery capacity so fast? I mean, I almost always charge my phone with the usb charger and it seems to be quite fine. Of course once in a while I charge it with the wall charger when I am in a hurry. But I was thinking that charging it with the usb will be better as it charges slowly.
Also I usually keep my phone plugged to the usb. Indeed, I already ordered a desktop cradle so that I can see the screen while it is being charged. Is it a bad idea to keep it cradled all the time? This is what I did with my Dell Axim all the time and it was quite happy with it.
The process of charging/draining modern batteries won't shorten their lifespans. However, having a chargable battery at full charge or at no charge are both bad and both will reduce the lifespan of the battery.
So no, you shouldn't leave it plugged in/cradled all the time.
The problem with trickle chargers is altogether different. They just won't always charge a battery to its full capacity -- so in this way they are actually better for long-term battery health. This is why I said that if you want to get a full charge off of a trickle charger, you have to (usually) take it off the charger and put it back on when the device reports that it is fully charged. After unplugging the trickle-charger you'll get a new battery reading on the device which will usually be anywhere between 60% and 90%. You can then put it back on the charger until it shows full again.
Deleted, invalid, i didnt read the whole post.
Well, it seems that i was just unlucky with my buy. Thanks to all of you first of all for all your support it really did help me learn more about PPC's in general, and it also made me sure that there is a problem with the phone. I sat through what i like to call a debugging session, just following the phone's every "move". I know, sounds kinda crazy but i was just that determined. What i realised was that whether i performed the soft-reset or not, it still had a problem, even though the solution did sound very promising.
This is what happened, charged it to 100%. I also tried charging it a little more later, but that was it, so i'm pretty sure that the capacity was right. After detaching it i performed the softreset, hoping that it would help. Then i just left it over night on flight mode. Next morning it had only decreased to 90%. GREAT! And it felt rather normal, but then about an hour later, it jumped down to 80%, 70%, 60%, then 50%. Then when I held it, it felt pretty hot, i figured that whatever was the problem earlier, just happened again. So I turned it off for a few hours then turned it on again and it started off on 40%. As before seemed to be performing quite normal, then within a minute it heated up again and jumped down to 20%. And that was when i just lost my nerve and packed it to send it back to my retailer.
I am now convinced that the phone is faulty!
Yes, it very well might be.
My device has drained suddenly a few times, with the exact same heat problems that you're describing when it happens. A soft reset for me when this occured fixed it -- and it hasn't happened for months.
But as we all know the same solutions don't work for all people with HTC devices.
I just had the same sort of problem. I've been using my TyTN for several months now under Dutty's WM6, and only just flashed Schaps 3.60 a few days ago.
It worked fine the first couple of days, but now I'm having the dreaded 5hr battery life too.
I had had that a couple of times before, but it was always related to some software, and a soft reset would cure it like Doom Tints said above. The problem is that here, either this or a power-off and reboot doesn't change a thing.
It's clearly a software problem too. I use UpTime Meter from AE, and I can see that the PocketPC simply doesn't turn into standby mode, but only deactivates the screen. In UpTime, the power on time will always be equal to the time since last charge, which means the PocketPC is on all the time. In that case the 5h battery life makes sense.
Would there be a way to find out why it doesn't enter standby mode (which software blocks it up), or force it into it? It would be good to find something as I'm nearly sure this is the reason for most if not all of the cases of short battery life we see around. Without having the meter there's simply no way to realise that the thing just stays on...
Doom Tints said:
The process of charging/draining modern batteries won't shorten their lifespans. However, having a chargable battery at full charge or at no charge are both bad and both will reduce the lifespan of the battery.
So no, you shouldn't leave it plugged in/cradled all the time.
The problem with trickle chargers is altogether different. They just won't always charge a battery to its full capacity -- so in this way they are actually better for long-term battery health. This is why I said that if you want to get a full charge off of a trickle charger, you have to (usually) take it off the charger and put it back on when the device reports that it is fully charged. After unplugging the trickle-charger you'll get a new battery reading on the device which will usually be anywhere between 60% and 90%. You can then put it back on the charger until it shows full again.
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Your good man, Phone has been charging for about four hours and it didnt go up more than 40% so I unpluged the phone and turned it off and on and then it went up to 80% and now its recharging it again. Thanks
Battery discharge and heating up
kilrah said:
I just had the same sort of problem. I've been using my TyTN for several months now under Dutty's WM6, and only just flashed Schaps 3.60 a few days ago.
...
Would there be a way to find out why it doesn't enter standby mode (which software blocks it up), or force it into it? It would be good to find something as I'm nearly sure this is the reason for most if not all of the cases of short battery life we see around. Without having the meter there's simply no way to realise that the thing just stays on...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Since I had my hermes, a few times it would get very hot and discharge the battery, and I assumed I was turning it on in my pocket and running a program. But now it does this continually. As soon as I take it off the charger it discharges and gets hot. This even happens if the phone is powered off.
I have borrowed a battery of someone else and the same thing happens
I have also hard reset it and have nothing installed extra, so it can not be software problem.
Must be a short circuit inside the phone? Does anyone have any ideas? I can't send it back as it is a Cingular and I live in the UK and have no support contract.
Thanks,
Mark
I managed to investigate and find the culprit - A2DP Toggle in my case. Whenever its Today plugin is enabled, it will prevent the phone from entering standby. Deactivate it - no uninstallation needed - and it returns to normal. Weird as it had been working perfectly for about a week, and I haven't done any change when it started acting weird.
Now it kinda defeats the plugin's purpose if I have to deactivate it everytime...
@simkin: If it drains the battery even powered off completely that's most likely a hardware problem. Does it happen too if you remove the battery and put it again without turning the phone on (as opposed to having the phone on and turning it off with a long press on the the power button)?
There could be a slight chance that the phone actually starts booting and gets stuck there draining power. As a last solution I'd try flashing it with a different ROM, but if that fails it's most likely a hardware fault.
I'm having battery trouble too, I switched to WM6 with a full battery that lasted for about 24 hours and it became 7-8 hours, so I switched back to my previous ROM and Radio ver and it still says I only get 7-8 hours average, I'm gonna try to hard reset it on more time, and then i'm just gonna try a new battery.
So lately I've noticed that battery life is strange on my Vogue with android. When I let it charge overnight, I take it off the charger and it instantly falls to about 97%. At about 1 PM the battery hits around 30% so I plug it in.
Here's the weird part: it's only charged for a half hour and it's reached 80% according to the meter. After another half hour it will say 100%, and stops charging. If I take it off the charger, it will instantly drop to around 77%, and lower quickly. If it says it is not charging anymore, but I know it is not full, is it really not charging? Can I just leave it on and expect it to continue charging to the real capacity?
Is this just how it is? or is there anything to be done about this? I've tried completely discharging the battery a few times, but didn't really help at all that I could tell.
Curious about everyone else's experiences
Thanks!
I think I remember reading somewhere that Android reads the temp of the batt. to figure out what % is left....
Try this.... When your batt. is low, take it out and blow on the connectors for a few minutes... See if your % rises.
cbaty08 said:
I think I remember reading somewhere that Android reads the temp of the batt. to figure out what % is left....
Try this.... When your batt. is low, take it out and blow on the connectors for a few minutes... See if your % rises.
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Click to collapse
Trying this now... lol
Would I have to do this every time I want to get a full charge? seems strange. Maybe this woudl explain why it charges overnight - longer period of time the battery can cool down, charge up more, cool down, charge
how long should the vogue legitimately take to charge? Seems as tho mine does well within an hour...
berardi said:
how long should the vogue legitimately take to charge? Seems as tho mine does well within an hour...
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Click to collapse
3 hours usually.
gigermunit said:
3 hours usually.
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Perhaps my battery has just lost it's capacity - it is around 2 years old
Here's what I posted about battery issues in the thread for my Kaiser build:
Battery issues are due to the driver. It was written months ago and AFAIK hasn't been looked at since... I know it has some bugs, here are the ones I am used to:
Intermittent charging
stopping at certain percentages (like ~70%) and refusing to charge
when refusing to charge also does not detect when plugged into USB/ADB
won't fully charge
reports different battery percentage than WM
sometimes jumps instantly from ~30% to ~4%
reports connected to computer when only connected to wall charger
repeated USB-connected notifications
battery becomes hotter during charging than on WM
I should add also that sometimes when the battery dies in Android it won't charge in WM until I boot the phone in WM and unplug and replug the charger.
If I want a proper charge, I just boot WM and wait ~2 hours. Much simpler than Android.
berardi said:
Perhaps my battery has just lost it's capacity - it is around 2 years old
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Click to collapse
well it could be that the age, my phone of 2 years got replaced after the power button snapped off, got another which i lost which got replaced by my most recent.
polyrhythmic said:
Here's what I posted about battery issues in the thread for my Kaiser build:
Battery issues are due to the driver. It was written months ago and AFAIK hasn't been looked at since... I know it has some bugs, here are the ones I am used to:
Intermittent charging
stopping at certain percentages (like ~70%) and refusing to charge
when refusing to charge also does not detect when plugged into USB/ADB
won't fully charge
reports different battery percentage than WM
sometimes jumps instantly from ~30% to ~4%
reports connected to computer when only connected to wall charger
repeated USB-connected notifications
battery becomes hotter during charging than on WM
I should add also that sometimes when the battery dies in Android it won't charge in WM until I boot the phone in WM and unplug and replug the charger.
If I want a proper charge, I just boot WM and wait ~2 hours. Much simpler than Android.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Gah, that's too bad.
When I charge overnight, I don't have problems. It's in the middle of the day when it isn't on the charger for too long that I have issues.
Thanks for confirming the weirdness though, at least I won't bother with a new battery (yet)