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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Hello Gentlemen,
I have charging problem with mu Wizard Qtek 9100... its not battery issue I have 2 working batteries...
The phone starts only when the charger is not pluged in..
Otherwise RED light is shown and the phone refuse to start so I need to remove the charger and the battery and then put the battery back so I can start the phone...
When the devise has started already I can plug the charger but the Windows is not showing ORANGE light and is not showing charging....
The device acts very wired and is turning off with no reason...
This happened when my charger burned up while charging my device...
Now I have no sound,the device is SIM locked and is turning off sometimes for no reason....
I believe it is a hardware problem I guess I need new mainboard?
Please advice if this could be a software issue....
The device is G4 IPL/SPL 2.26.0001
Please advice,
Thank a lot...
Regards,
Mitko B.
Battery problem
Hi,
I know old post, but it may help somebody.
It is possible that your windows has switch off the battery charging circuit for some reason.
You MAY be able to get it working with the following trick:-
You need 3 x 1.5 volt AA batteries, some wire and 2 pins
You need to join the batteries together in series (i.e. end to end)
Next make a negative lead from the negative of the battery pack to one of the pins.
The make a positive lead in the same way.
Open the battery cover of your Wizard.
Connect the USB charging cable.
Put the negative pin you have just made into the gap between the battery and the charging pins in the Wizard - MAKE SURE YOU ONLY CONNECT IT TO THE PIN NEAREST TO THE USB PORT.
Now comes the tricky bit - take the positive pin you have just made and touch it on the charging pin which is NEAREST to the power on switch.
If all goes well the charging light on your Wizard should turn orange indicating that it is charging.
You might have to try this a few times, I was never sure if you had to keep the external battry connection on for any length of time or just a quick connection would do the trick. I suppose it depends on the state of the Wizards battery.
This is NOT my work! I do not want to take credit for something that is already documented on this site as it helped me get my battery working again.
Regards,
John
thanks a lot!
saved my wifes phone. Is this problem (happend twice already) something that I can address with a new rom, anyone knows?
I also have the remove the battery go back to Feb2006 issue. Device is off warranty by a few good years. Is it something an experienced electronics person could try (without destroying the phone that is...)
Cheers
V.
Worked for me too
I had just bought a new battery for my Qtek 9100.
This one:
sku.23974 at dealextreme.com
My 9100 had been dead since 2006 (because the battery was dead ...)
And i got a new phone.
but i tought it was to good to throw away, so i bought the new battery.
But i did let it run out of battery, and it would not take the charge.
but this trick did the job
Thanks
Hi all,
Just wanted to sign up to say thank-you - I chanced upon this forum while seeking a solution to the same problem.
I'm happy to report that the 'jump-start' works perfectly!!
I actually used the slightly different method, described in another thread on this forum:
Take a USB-to-Mini B cable. One that you won't need ever again.
Cut the Mini B end off and strip back the outer casing. Inside is a wire mesh and within that a foil lining. Pull these both back.
Now find and strip the black and red wires. The wires are thin and this is a fiddly job, especially if you have large hands, so this works best if you screw the exposed wire strands up into little balls.
Remove the battery from your Qtek 9100 (or whichever model it is). Pay attention to which pin goes to which contact and so identify which ones are the positive and negative contacts on the battery - It is described above in Heinkeljb's post.
Now, plug the USB into your PC (which should be switched on and running) and connect the black wire to the negative (and red to positive) contact on your battery.
Hold for a good 30 seconds.
Now reinsert the battery into the phone and attempt to charge.
You may need to 'jump' your battery a few times....
Once again, many thanks to teh lovely people here for saving my beloved Qtek 9100!!!!!
Hi guys asked it once before in battery section, but no replies.
My HD doesn't charge auto, when I press the on button the battery charges for 15 sec. tried a new battery same result. I know it Physicly charges, when I charge the phone by pressing the on button a couple of 100 times (really 100x) I get 1% charge. So don't say 'HTC phones only charge when on', cause I know.. Tried a Hard reset 2 times no luck. meanwhile my batt. is dead. So I can't try other firmware.(need 50% charge min)
(chargers are fine)
In short, anybody ever heard of this problem before with other htc models/HD ?
Physicly it charges, so would a firmware change help?(then I need to get a standalone charger/new battery with charge).
My last option is to bring it to HTC but that would take a month
Sorry for number of words on this lazy sunday.
Update - firmware update doesn't work.. next is radio....
no ideas anybody?
Hi,
Unfortunately I dont know much other, then charge the battery in another HD up if available (maybe u can ask in a telephoneshop or so) and then test the Firmware changes.
Is the same if you charge it via PC/USB?
thx for the reply, did just that, changed Rom/radio, official and dutty's rom's, no change. No problem sync. have atleast 3 usb chargers none of them work. When connected to usb cable 2 lights blink 1 green 1 amber one after each other. just like a new message/ low battery even when battery has 50% I get the same light patern, (this is a new battery).
The thing is when the battery is completly flat it stil charges for 15 sec then it turns of. So when I charge it 15 (x15 sec) times or so I'm able to turn the device on again. But when it has (some) battery power the lights start blinking again and I'm completly unable to charge the battery.
The phone is almost 2 weeks old and charged normaly until I checked the "don't charge when connected to usb" option in the power menu. ??!
Then I think you wont get around, to send it back for repair.
have you tried to charge it with a wall socket or is this only when you usb to pc charge??
Jbvb said:
have you tried to charge it with a wall socket or is this only when you usb to pc charge??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I never charges, wall/usb doesn't matter.
I just used another HD battery to restore everything to default, So I'll guess I'm taking it back..
Thx anyway.
exact same problem
Did you get anywhere with this problem? I have been strugling with the exact same thing... I have tried all the same things as you, only sometimes it seems like it might be the battery contacts.. I havent been able to consistently get it to work but sometimes if I firmly press the battery against the contacts it will behave normally
philbrown23 said:
Did you get anywhere with this problem? I have been strugling with the exact same thing... I have tried all the same things as you, only sometimes it seems like it might be the battery contacts.. I havent been able to consistently get it to work but sometimes if I firmly press the battery against the contacts it will behave normally
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope tried the contacts but they work fine, battery just won't charge, do your light also blink? (on the power button).
I haven't found any info on the web?!?:S
Problem is solved.. had to be sent back to HTC for repair, it took less then 2 weeks (door to door) so that was pretty fast. They swapped the mainbord, so I got my 'old' phone with a new imei.
So don't waste your time with software up/downgrades. It's a hardware problem.
I had a very similar problem.
Once my battery died some app hung system all night.
No charging at all wall charger and USB 1 day each and so many manipulations. The indicator blinks momentarily and then nothing. I didn't try (didn't know) the key presses like Dogtag. Did a hard reset still nothing...
Then thought about charging the battery with external (Lion) charger before sending for repair. I also shorted the battery compartment pins momentarily. To my pleasant surprise everything back to normal
So far no problems after that though I never drained my battery to zero.
Looks like something to do with corruption in battery calibration data - may not be in ROM?? who knows??
fantastic. can u elaberate?
hey Cragee
I did't understand what u did. Can u try to explane it to me one more time?
I'm realy excited about a posible soulution
hooray
ckraft
crajee said:
I also shorted the battery compartment pins momentarily. To my pleasant surprise everything back to normal
So far no problems after that though I never drained my battery to zero.
Looks like something to do with corruption in battery calibration data - may not be in ROM?? who knows??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Only two things I did can matter -
1. Charging the battery after taking it out (with a battery charger*)
2. shorting pins in the battery compartment after taking out the battery. (Warning: not on batteries)
Don't know which of the two worked.. No harm trying both anyway.
* U need a Li-ion battery charger - else invitation for trouble including fire and explosion.. These are available in electronics shop at a reasonable price.
Short-circuiting the battery pins... seems to work
I had the same problems with my Touch HD the last few weeks:
- stopped charging after a few seconds
- didn't charge at all (nor the wall nor the computer method, on or off)
- well... it charged sometimes but randomly, keeping it on a wall charger (on OR off) for a night could bring it back to 20% and then rapidly back to 0%
- no charging indicator in the screen while turned on
- blinking orange and yellow (?) light even while turned off
- charged almost never to full and 'jumping' from high to ultra low capacity when turning it on & off
So before bringing it back to the store i tried to short circuit the battery pins as suggested (while the battery and charge were unhooked) like the thing you would do to clear the CMOS memmory of a PC in the 'old days'
And for now it seems to work, at least the charging icon is back online!
I'll keep you posted on longer term results!
Update: I switched to the wall charger and the HD died again??? Now it's back on the computer and it seems to charge fine... why????
crajee said:
I had a very similar problem.
Once my battery died some app hung system all night.
No charging at all wall charger and USB 1 day each and so many manipulations. The indicator blinks momentarily and then nothing. I didn't try (didn't know) the key presses like Dogtag. Did a hard reset still nothing...
Then thought about charging the battery with external (Lion) charger before sending for repair. I also shorted the battery compartment pins momentarily. To my pleasant surprise everything back to normal
So far no problems after that though I never drained my battery to zero.
Looks like something to do with corruption in battery calibration data - may not be in ROM?? who knows??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When u say "shorted the battery" do u mean, turnoing phone off, taking battery out, connecting the 3 battery connectors with a wire for a few seconds?
....so what does shorting mean??
cxkx said:
When u say "shorted the battery" do u mean, turnoing phone off, taking battery out, connecting the 3 battery connectors with a wire for a few seconds?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I thing so. You should circuit the pins WITHOUT battery. In any other case it may occurs damage on the telephone
Dogtag is right... it's defenitly a hardware problem
As posted before...i had the same problem with my touch HD, charging was a pain or sometimes seemed impossible. The phone was repaired twice.
-First they replaced the connector - no succes.
-Second time the replaced the motherboard, and everything was solved.
So imho it's the mainboard of some machines, i still wonder if it's a factory problem or a 'fried' chip of some kind after a bad charging procedure? Bad USB car charger of some kind?