Database Users

Extremely Bad Battery Life on the XDAII when the PDA is off

Hello,
I was wondering if anyone else is having the same problems.
When I go to bed I turn the PDA off. The phone is still on.
When I wake about 7 hours later I find the battery is at 60%.
What's the deal? I thought it was supposed to have 150 hour standby life.
I do find something else quite weird. When I turn the PDA off the screen turns off and it all seems fine. I have the button lock turned on so no other buttons will work. After a couple of minutes, if I move the volume slider up or down the PDA will beep. Then if I press any of the buttons such as "Record" "Camera" and "Calander" Nothign seems to happen.
But when I turn the PDA on the "Recoard" "Camera" and "Calander" applications will load.
It is kinda of like it isn't turning off the PDA at all.
Anyone know what I'm doing wrong or how to fix it?
Thanks
Cam

if grps is only and bluetooth is on and maybe messenger and or icq is on it drain the batt

GPRS and Bluetooth are both on but GPRS is not connected. And Bluetooth is not connecting to anything.
I don't use messanger.
Would that still be draining the battery that much?
Cam

Cyeoh,
Unfortunately, I know exactly what you are going through. Your phone is entering a mode called 'resuming', it’s a low power state that does not turn on the display, etc, but will respond to hardkeys, volume slider, etc......
I'm guessing your XDA2 goes into 'resume' while trying to find a GSM signal, (are you in a weak area). This is my problem, you can read about it here...
http://www.pocketpcpassion.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=38598
As a test, you should turn off the phone, (flight mode) for one night and compare the battery in the morning, (I'm willing to bet is almost the same as when you left it). Alternately install an app that monitors cpu usage, (like the one in the above link), and you probably will see a similar pattern to mine.
The registry solution does help, but causes problems with Bluetooth, (at least it did on my device, nothing a soft reset didn’t fix, but it was VERY annoying)….
If it is your GSM phone, you might want to try using another GSM SIM card from another provider, (maybe a friends) and see if you get better results. When I switched to a better provider I got an increase of 10% on the battery, (not great but something!)

Thank You very much.
That does answer a lot. I do have very bad reception at home. I guess this may mean I need to leave it charging over night. However I do find the XDA does charge very quickly which mean in the time it takes me to get ready for work it is back up to 93%.
I will put it into Flight mode tonight to see what happens.
It's still a little bit ****ty and it seems to be because of software. Hopefully they will fix it in the next ROM update.
Thanks
Cam

How did you go with your test last night cyeoh, did your battery last a little longer?
I'm intrested to know as when I charge my battery over night in the morning its still is not on 100% untill I do a soft reset or disable and enable flight mode then it pops up to 100% and stops charging... yet a nother feature of some software I've installed or the ROM version at the moment!!!

Power Button and Data Retention BiG Problems

Hi All,
I have such a big Power issue with the Magician, or at least Orange's M500 version of it that i'm thinking of taking back the device :'(
It doesn't appear to be a device fault, but a design fault.
In the manual it says that if you press the power button for a short time (less than a second) it turns the PDA on and off. This seems to be correct.
In the manual it says that if you press and hold the power button for two seconds it turns the phone off, but this doesn't work. Instead it turns on and off the back light. If the PDA is on, it turns on and off the back light. If the PDA is off it turns it on with the backlight on.
Last night I turned my PDA into standby mode (As i can't turn the phone off) before going to bed. Around 3am in the morning my PDA woke up saying that the battery power was low. I turned the PDA back into standby mode but it complained later on that night. i.e. had a bad nights sleep last night.
I thought it best to remove the main battery so that it wouldn't continue to wake me up, making sure that the phone and PDA were turned off (no power) and let the data backup battery retain the data until i woke up (5 hours time). However, when i woke up the internal data backup batery was flat. It was fully charged before the i took the main battery out. It is supposed to last 72 hours right!!!!? What a nightmare!
I was wondering if anyone could help me answer these power related questions, as i love the device, but its useless if it won't retain the data when it says it should.
How do you turn the phone off so that nothing is running at all? (i.e. to make sure that the internal battery is only being used to retain my data)
Does activating bluetooth drain the main battery faster even when the PDA is in standby mode? (I think i may have left it switched on last night)
Why would the internal data retention battery drain flat in under 5 hours when the main battery is removed loosing all data? Does it need the main battery in place in order to work? Could the phone and the PDA in standby mode by running off of the internal power?
Thanks in advance to any help you can give. As you can imagine i'm very disappointed as i love the functionality of this device.
Neil

When you took the battery out and left it out, if you had slid the back down (this is the same as a power off) you would of been ok.
The action of sliding the back down and back up is equvalent to a power off. When you press the power button after this, it is like a cold boot. (Not a hard reset)
I hope that made sense.

So to power off the phone and PDA you have to slide off the battery cover and slide it back on again without taking the battery out. Surely there is an easier way to turn off the phone and PDA that to remove the battery cover?

Thats how i do it. I'm sure there is a different [proper] way, but i'm not sure what it is.

Hi
The main battery when flat enough to power off the pda should have 72 hours data retention, its designed that way... so if it goes flat on friday you will still have your data on monday. thats why it was designed that way and apparently it shuts of at 50% capacity.
Bluetooth active will drain more power.
the backup battery is only supposed to last around 20 mins or less, designed so you can take the main battery out without losing data. this is because Ram needs constant voltage to store contents. hence if you leave your main battery out for more time the backup battery has charge you will end up with a hard reset occuring.
The manual needs to be updated i guess. If you want to turn off the phone you can turn on flight mode which disables the GSM radio functions.
Oh and out of interest for the battery type Li ion, its actually better to keep them charged, they dont have cycles like older batteries. they only have a certain lifespan which starts from the date of manufactor and keeping them at low charge degrades them faster.
Enjoy
SpeedN

So up until the 50% point, pressing the power button just puts the PDA in standby and the Phone is still running. Only when the power goes below 50% ish does the PDA power off completely?
So after the phone is fully charged, the M500 battery life meter says there is 6 hours and 31 minutes of battery life in it. You say that the device will turn itself off at 50% battery life remaining, so that means it only has 3h 15m of useable time before it switches off? Can the phone / PDA be used when power gets below 50% or will it just not power up until its recharged?
Thanks for your help BTW very useful information.
Neil

The battery life meter will say eg 6h 31m, the device will turn off in 6h 31m give or take (usage dependant).
when the device is flat there will be still 50% capacity in the battery to allow for the 72 hours data retention. hope thats clearer.
when it is in that state it wont turn on I think...sorry been along time since i been in that state, untill you charge it.
SpeedN

Surely the easiest way to solve this (and yes I was fooled by the manuals answer to press and hold) is to enable flight mode(which turns the phone off) then turn off ? there are a few apps/ shortcuts that will switch to flight mode easily, you then simply press the off button.
Or did I miss something

I think when we push the power off button (or if we select the machine to be powered off after a period of idle time, through setting), the machine will be off except GSM functions. So when you turn on again, it takes a few seconds to make the machine runs.
You can try if you turn off the button, after few minutes (should be more than 180 seconds), then push the Green button to dial, it takes 3-5 seconds to make the dialing pad comes out.
If you do not select the machine to be power off after a period of idle time, you can use other software to "screen off" the machine, so that when you push green button to dial, it comes out very quickly.
If you turn off the GMS, and turn off the PDA, it will not really get into sleep but will be in the state of retention of data. In any case, when you wake up the machine it takes a few seconds.
Therefore, when you are on the run (say on the street) and make calls frequently, do not power off the machine so that you can make calls quickly.
That is only my experience, I have checked other HP and XDA phones, same results. So nothing to do with the speed CPU and size internal ram.
When the machine is ON, I under clock to 208, the dialing pad also comes out very quickly.

flight mode = on , thats all, it turns the gsm function off, so battery would last long.

how to switch off a MDA PRO Universal and battery life

How do you switch it off ? I have set the thing to switch off automatically after 2 minutes, but its still on after 3 hours and the battery has dropped from 99% to 40%. I had the bluetooth on and everything else switched off.
It is one week old.
Is the battery life normal ?
I'm sure it didn't switch off.
thanks

I have a jasjar. First thing i did, i uninstalled antivirus and skype. I keep it all day on with bluetooth active, and everything off at night. Based on calls and activities i put it on charge every 3 or 4 days.

I have set my MDA Pro to turn off after 3 minutes, and it does indeed turn off. If I don't touch it (turn it back on), the device can go all day with negligible battery usage (a few %).
Bluetooth is off. WiFi is on. 'Incoming beams' are off.
I sync by cable, so the device is powered while syncing. If you sync via bluetooth, then perhaps activesync is keeping the device awake even though it is not powered.
If you turn it off manually (power button on edge near SD card slot), does it turn itself back on? Mine does that when activesync is running and connected. Otherwise it is happy to stay off until I get a call or some reminder.

go to the phone options and change from Auto band select to GSM. Using 3G sucks battery like a mofo

my main issue is that it should have turned itself off
1) in the comms menu, only bluetooth was on
phone was off
wireless was off
beam set to off as well
From 98% charge to 40% in 3 hours, when I hadn't used it at all.
I am sure that is not usual.
So gsm/3g/gprs shouldn't have any bearing on the batt life, as it was set to off ....

was bluetooth actively doing anything during this time or just on and sitting there?

Firestomer, the following eat batteries:
- PIE running in the background
- Camera app running in the background (can be activated when you shut the camshell as it is easy to hit the camera switch on the front)
- UMTS (which is not a problem for as your radio is off)

hi joe
BT wasn't doing anything - I closed the clamshell and left it expecting it to switch off, but I guess it didn't since it chewed through nearly 60% power in 3 hours.
Also, what is the technique for switching it off ? I have pressed the power button to the left of the SD slot, all it does is switch the backlight off. I have held it for 0.5 seconds, 1, 5, 10 ....
I am loosing patience with the thing - wifi isn't working for me and TomTom5 keeps forgetting it has a GPS connection ...
btw what is PIE ??

firestomer
PIE = pocket IE
Two clicks of the off switch will turn the device off
On my device BT only uses about 10/15% of battery over a 12 hr period

Are you talking about svitching the device entirely off? i dont think that can be done...exept if you take the battery out and put it back in and dont turn it back on

yes as close to off as possible when I am as sleep etc, but it guess it needs to keep the clock and alarm and keypressed detect powered ....

my wifi stops working when

Can anyone explain why my wifi connection is dropped when I put my phone into standby mode. This does not happen when I am using GPRS?
If the battery was not so crap I would not need to keep putting it into standby mode.

I guess its because when the device is in standby all the PDA functions are stopped, but the phone functions are not. GPRS is connected via the phone line which is active in standby mode thus it does not drop.
This does not sound out of the ordinary to me.

thanks for confirming my fears. So does anybody know how you can use this device for 8 hours (working day) with wifi switched on? I normally leave it logged into IM when I am at home and do not want to leave it charing all the time.

Try Start-Settings-System-Power-Advanced and untick the battery Power Timer.

Dave,
Agile is clever enough not to power off the device but and all that happens is the screen dims. I am trying to put the device in to standby but leave wifi on along with running agile messenger but this does not seem to be possible. The reason for this is to prolong the battery life by not having the screen on as wifi zaps my juice so much more than GPRS.
It is however possible when using GPRS as the phone function works when it is in standby.
Marc

i needed to do this on my dell axim too, used a program called screenlock which kills the display and locks the buttons. you press 2 buttons to wake the system. Wifi and other apps continue running.
my post http://www.aximsite.com/boards/showpost.php?p=840747&postcount=2
the app
http://www.pocketgear.com/software_detail.asp?id=14621
be careful, if you cant work out which hardware buttons its using, you'll have to soft reset your device (if it works at all, i've not tested on wizard)
let me know if it does what you want

just tested and it appears to use messaging and voice speed dial as its 2 buttons

Thanks I will test it asap

completely shutdown UNI

can someone please show me how to shutdown my phone completely when I dun need it. to save battery. event when I turn off everything on COM Manager, (radio,wifi,BT...everything...).but my battery still droped. thanks. i wonder what eat my battery when everythis is off.

Your PDA is never realy off. As long as the battery is in there, and it has power... it will run. When you press the "Off" button, the device goes into some sort of stand-by mode.
I don't know the technical reason for this, but what's the use of a Personal Digital Assistant if it can't warn you of appointments and such It has to be able to wake itself (Same goes for the phone)