Database Users

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.

WiFi kills battery when Universal is switched off?

Hi there,
With my BlueAngel I could leave the WiFi on all night as when the phone was switched off it did not eat up the battery - when the phone was switched on it would spend a couple of seconds reconnecting to the wireless point.
The Universal seems to behave in the same way, yet it eats up all the battery overnight even when I have switched the phone off and it is not connected to the WiFi access point.
Is there some setting or registry key I can alter to fix this?
Cheers,
Quilty

@Qulity, if you don't close PIE I have found the battery can be drained. I assume overnight you are using Flight Mode.

Are you closing the flip and presuming that the device gets turned off or have you actually set your device to turn off after a fixed period of inactivity in the power settings?
If it is the former, then the device actually does not turn off if there is any activity in the background like active GPRS or WiFi etc. A simple solution to this would be to press the hard-ware on/off button once you are done irrespective of whether wfi is active or not in the background.
Try it out and post your results here.

My device is set to turn off after 2 mins on battery power, but I made a special point of turning it off with the hardware button before testing last night. As I said before my BlueAngel never behaved like this.

my jasjar was turned off yesterday, and every 5min i heard sound for new wifi network!! same problem, i solved it with turnig wifi off!! any other solutions?

Wifi battery drain ?

Will Wifi drain my battery even when in sleep mode ?
I charged my phone last night as I always do right up to 100%. Left it in sleep mode and went to bed.
Received a call this morning and when the phone switched on noticed my battery was on 26% and it was trying to connect to wifi.
Is wifi similar to bluetooth in that I believe bluetooth will still be active and receiving in sleep mode and will so drain the battery ? I could have sworn I have left wifi on before in sleep mode and it didnt drain the battery, but maybe I am wrong.
So will wifi in sleep drain my battery to that extent ie from 100% to 26% from about 10.30 last night to 10am this morning ?
The wierd thing is I was playing with it all day yesterday and the battery only got to 39% or something.
Is something wrong ?

yes, leaving your wifi on will cause battery drain. If there's any traffic, this gets worse

Also activesync may have been running and trying to connect every 10 minutes or so. The activesync problem has been mentioned in another thread.
Just hope its just battery drain and not a fault.

Yes, I second the observation... 2 hours powered off drains 40% battery power...
That sucks, the blueangel didn't do that. It automatically turned wireless off on shutdown and turned it on again on wakeup.
Now I'll have to get used to doing that manually... :?

If you still have the BA, or if somebody else could check, look for this key in the registry:
HKLM\System\CurrentontrolSet\Control\Power\State\Suspend
There will be various values there. Default = 3, means state D3, which is the suspend state.
If there are any other values there, please note the value name, and the value of it.
If there aren't, check whether there are any subkeys.
For example, the Qtek 9100 has subkey {98C5250D-C29A-4985-AE5F-ADE5367E5006} which, if you look under HKLM\System\CurrentontrolSet\Control\Power\State\Interfaces\, you'll see is "Power-manageable NDIS miniports". Its default value is 4 for state D4, which is the -off- state.
Basically, I suspect, or rather expect, that the BA will have another value or subkey there which will refer to the wireless connection, and set its state to 4 as well. If that's not the case, then it's being handled more directly by whatever power manager adjustments they have made - rather than letting Windows CE's power management handle it as above.

kilrah said:
Yes, I second the observation... 2 hours powered off drains 40% battery power...
That sucks, the blueangel didn't do that. It automatically turned wireless off on shutdown and turned it on again on wakeup.
Now I'll have to get used to doing that manually... :?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The daft thing is when you switch your device back on, you arnt connected to the wireless network and it has to find a signal again. So its like its keeping the wifi switched on but for no reason whatsoever !
What would be cool is if on putting the device into sleep mode it would automatically put the wifi into low power mode so you could leave it on without it whacking your battery and you could possibly receive msn alerts.

That was sort of what the BA did.. :?
I still have it but with a broken screen
So unfortunately can't check, maybe someone else?
I think I've found the way to deactivate wifi again when the manager doesn't want to. Tap on the OS's connectivity icon at the top of the screen. It may say Enable wifi or disable wifi. If it says activate, tap once to activate and once again to deactivate. If it says deactivate just tap once. Then go into the wireless manager again, it should now be off. Works for mine at least

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

What is killing my battery life?

My 8125 is suddenly running out of batteries very fast. I suspect this is because of some activity running - if I turn the unit off, and leave it on my desk overnight, it is exhausted by morning (I, on the other hand, am exhausted by morning only if I am turned on. Sorry.)
I have checked for:
alarms and notifcations that are set to go off - there seem to be none
mail and other internet access items - there seem to be none
programs (like SPB Weather) updating themselves too frequently - there seem to be none
My energy settings are normal; sleep in one minute, backlight down, etc.
Is there anything I'm missing? Any suggestions?

wifi, bluetooth. make sure they are turned off.

That's exactly, WiFi and BT even when active in standby really drain the battery quickly.

thanks so much, but.... Wifi and Bluetooth are off - I never turn Wifi on, and I almost always keep Bluetooth off (though I wish there was a way to quickly - or even automatically - turn it on or off, ie, whenever I use it in phone mode, BT would turn on, and when I hang up, it turns off.)
any other thoughts?

Battery Gone Bad
Hey I think your battery is gone bad.
BT Off
Wifi Off
Backlight Down
Sounds to me battery is ready to go to the recycle bin lol
Also check your MSN Msnger Is not onn all the time.
Bernie

maybe it is the battery. the unit is less than a month old, but I just bought a spare battery. I'll compare run-down times on both.
a related question: why would WiFi and Bluetooth consume battery power if the unit is asleep?
-thanks-

I started getting horrible life out of my battery as of last month, but then I upgraded the ROM on it and have been getting FANTASTIC battery life. Better than when I first got the device.

which Rom did you upgrade to?

Summter <sp?> 2.3 for Cingular

soulbarn said:
My 8125 is suddenly running out of batteries very fast. I suspect this is because of some activity running - if I turn the unit off, and leave it on my desk overnight, it is exhausted by morning (I, on the other hand, am exhausted by morning only if I am turned on. Sorry.)
I have checked for:
alarms and notifcations that are set to go off - there seem to be none
mail and other internet access items - there seem to be none
programs (like SPB Weather) updating themselves too frequently - there seem to be none
My energy settings are normal; sleep in one minute, backlight down, etc.
Is there anything I'm missing? Any suggestions?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did you solve your battery problme?

when i am out in the country, where i might rarely get a signal, my battery drains real fast, prob to do with the constant searching for a signal to connect to.

I came upon this thread after my 8125 began having problems with the battery life last week. I'm wondering what kind of battery life people are getting and which settings they have.
For instance, before last week, I was getting little battery drainage during a 9 hour shift at work. Then this week, I was getting close to 55% battery drainage over the same duration. Just a few moments ago, I checked my battery settings and I found out that for some reason, my phone wasn't shut off after 2 minutes of idle time as it was originally set at. Okay, I'll test my battery usage tomorrow at work, but I suspect that was the problem.
Then it got me wondering how long other people have for battery life. With Bluetooth on, wifi off, lowest brightness setting and my auto shut off set at 2 minutes, I was able to last an entire 9 hour shift on standby with only about 4 - 5% drop in battery life. Hopefully, that is what I'll have tomorrow when I test it again with the auto shut off setting in place. What are others getting for battery life (please specify your settings).

I've forgotten to charge my phone at night before, and have had no problems making it through the second day of usage, though I'll usually get a low battery warning.
I keep Bluetooth and data connection on constantly. Don't use Wi-Fi unless I need something really quickly. Backlight is at the lowest active setting. I would say I use it moderately throughout the day. I use it to take important notes and make reminders for myself, along with surfing the internet without worry.

hi
Please check out activesync which drains the max battery..
make sure that activesync is not running in backround. once after disconnecting your mini-usb cable connectivity from PC please check for the activesync status.. if running turn it off.
--tux