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.
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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.
hi,
I have the problem, that if I charge the battery from near empty state, that it requires 4-5 hours to charge with the ac adapter and if i charge it via usb it needs 910 hours. The issue is, I am not at the same place the whole time,
so sometimes I need it to unplugged, before the battery is full, so this may quicken a potential memory effect. How do you handle the battery charging?
do you charge it before it gets empty or do you unplug before its full?
Did you find a way to charge it faster?
cheers Avalun
Avalun said:
hi,
I have the problem, that if I charge the battery from near empty state, that it requires 4-5 hours to charge with the ac adapter and if i charge it via usb it needs 910 hours. The issue is, I am not at the same place the whole time,
so sometimes I need it to unplugged, before the battery is full, so this may quicken a potential memory effect. How do you handle the battery charging?
do you charge it before it gets empty or do you unplug before its full?
Did you find a way to charge it faster?
cheers Avalun
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Always charge your device switched off if possible. This makes the charging time shorter and helps the battery to "calibrate".
If phone on, make sure screen is off. Also helps.
Your phone will always take longer to charge while synced through USB.
Try and let the phone completely drain before charging it. This should increase battery length.
hi,
I usually plug it on when the message of critical battery level appears, the problem if I switch the device off is, that no one can call me during this time.
How long does your HD need to charge from near empty to full?
Avalun said:
hi,
I usually plug it on when the message of critical battery level appears, the problem if I switch the device off is, that no one can call me during this time.
How long does your HD need to charge from near empty to full?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To fully charge from empty it normally takes a couple hours.
Generally I always charge my phone at night and have it sync'd via USB during the day so it rarely gets below 75%
There has been previous threads regarding battery strength, charging etc.
Try typing battery into search this forum at top of page.
Hope this helps
hi,
thanks for the answer I already read many other battery threads here, they are all about battery draining, not charging time.
So I thought I just ask, what other peoples have to say about this.
As I see the charing time is normal so thanks for the answer.
hi
what the recommended method to charge the new battery?
1)charge few hrs till full and drain till 0% and charge again?
2)charge >10hrs?
I used to have N6288, it will auto stop charging when full.
Therefore i tend to charge my hp before i sleep and wake up in the morning to off the charger. So which is like charging for >10hrs.
Since i do not own htc before, so i'm not sure about how they charge.
lets say if battery full till 100%, will it auto stop charging?
i only afraid with my charging pattern (charging while sleeping) will make htc batt spoilt.
any advices?
thx alot
htctc16 said:
hi
what the recommended method to charge the new battery?
1)charge few hrs till full and drain till 0% and charge again?
2)charge >10hrs?
I used to have N6288, it will auto stop charging when full.
Therefore i tend to charge my hp before i sleep and wake up in the morning to off the charger. So which is like charging for >10hrs.
Since i do not own htc before, so i'm not sure about how they charge.
lets say if battery full till 100%, will it auto stop charging?
i only afraid with my charging pattern (charging while sleeping) will make htc batt spoilt.
any advices?
thx alot
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Of course it will stop. Every battery will stop charging when it will be full otherwise it would burn or explode.
erzketis said:
Of course it will stop. Every battery will stop charging when it will be full otherwise it would burn or explode.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i see..thx
so how long u charge the 1st time?
Before when I bough Tytn II, I charge it over 10 hours and that works well (3~4 days). Recently I bought HTC Touch Cruise09 and I only charge it for 3~5 hours (because the LED turns its color and I just remove the charger). I will see how this battery works.
How to charge a new battery... the solution. ;-)
Hi,
As erzketis says, you have an internal tools wihc switch of your charge.
I'm an electronical technician...
As the charger is a 1Aand the battery is a 1.1 Ah.
In two hour maximum it should be OK.
For me, I went to the sport and 3 hours after, it was OK.
What we usually forget to says is 2 things:
- After the first charge try to use at maximum your battery, let put it close himself (memory effect even if we says taht Lithium has a minus effct, it's a bull****). Try to reperform the same thing 5 times before going on the second tab...
- Avoid to charge you phone when it's not necessary (desactive auto charge when connected on USB). I'll says, wait till 10~0% to charge it. I know it's not prctical, but you'll have a better battery life.
I hope it will help you.
Xperia wont charge to 100% - gets stuck at 90 %
any ideas whats going on?
its been charging all night at 90% :S
are you charging via usb to pc, or usb to floor charger?
i hope battery not been extremely discharged before....
USB - but i've just done 2 restarts and 3 soft resets and its gone up to 100% now - really odd problem - lucjy its fixed - phew
if you can't get it to 100% charge while charging with the floor charger..
you might have already discharged it too greatly.
90% might be your new maximum, unless it's the phone's problem.
EDIT: Ah I see, that's good then! I usually charge it with the floor charger since it's faster than a pc-usb charge =]
Good news then~
If you have a laptop and you're trying to charge you're phone thru the USB port...you'll wait A LONG LONG time...
I only use the floor charger...
i think by doing a soft reset, you just recalibrated the battery settings. just a guess tho. sometimes battery charge, and indication gets out of sync and so you have to recalibrate them. as i said, dont know if this applies to the x1.
To recalibrate a battery you need to drain it to the last drop then charge it fully (i think preferably thru Wall charger) for several hours.. so the battery controller can detect which voltage range the battery is working on... normally i think when i charge thru usb it gives me power but i think it drops faster... than when on wall charger...
just don't drain it very often.. it makes your batt go bad... i read somewhere that once every three months is ok...
Hi, my phone the x10i has a problem. A few days ago my phone fell out of bed during charging. The battery fell out, and then i reconnected the cable and inserted the batterry again and fell asleep. the morning after my telephone was 5%..
So i reflashed the firmware and the problem was gone for 2 days..
Now when i connect the telephone it charges till 89% and then it slowly start to drain to 8%.
PS when i shutdown the telephone and connect the power it charges to 100%
What should i do or does someone have the same problems?
Sorry for the bad language but i had to write fast!
when mine charges to 100% it will slowly drain over night, like battery 'forgets' that its on the wire.
PartyVirginX10 said:
when mine charges to 100% it will slowly drain over night, like battery 'forgets' that its on the wire.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I noticed the same, i think X10 will stop charging when it reaches 100% and will never start charging again unless you unplug the phone and plug it again.
Sometimes when i leave mine on the charger during night, i get about 90%( sometimes even less) at morning.
I also noticed that today,when I unpluged phone,battery was on 91% and when i last checked when it was charging it was on 94%,I think that is some feature to avoid overcharging of the batery and on some way it drains itself to protect battery and phone
Sewez said:
I noticed the same, i think X10 will stop charging when it reaches 100%
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Correct, numerous threads on the subject.
Sewez said:
and will never start charging again unless you unplug the phone and plug it again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's incorrect, it should charge to 100% (mine does), drop charge to what ever level (I've never sat to watch what it drops to), then charges again.
If you install Juice plotter you will be able to track the battery drain behaviour..
The device will charge up to 100% then AC supply is turned off.
Then it will run on battery until it drops to 90%.
... and will charge again to 100%.
(This 100%->90%->100% can occurs several times during one charge. Juice plotter will show you this)
This happens to me during over night charging.
Me too on both my x10i's. I assume this is normal behavior.
Sent from my X10i using XDA App
Mine sometime is battery around 50% i plug in to AC and I use the phone while charging but the battery still continue to drain until around 40%, and slowly raise to 100%
pacharru said:
The device will charge up to 100% then AC supply is turned off.
Then it will run on battery until it drops to 90%.
... and will charge again to 100%.
(This 100%->90%->100% can occurs several times during one charge. Juice plotter will show you this)
This happens to me during over night charging.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, that's correct. In this way your battery life is saved, because it couldn't reach higher temperatures or fall in short circuit.
It's a normal behaviour I've had also in 1.6, don't you?
Baldolo said:
Yes, that's correct. In this way your battery life is saved, because it couldn't reach higher temperatures or fall in short circuit.
It's a normal behaviour I've had also in 1.6, don't you?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine only started this since 2.1
Baldolo said:
Yes, that's correct. In this way your battery life is saved, because it couldn't reach higher temperatures or fall in short circuit.
It's a normal behaviour I've had also in 1.6, don't you?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine did the same in 1.6(i mean it did stop charging at 100%, i never saw it start charging again at 90%)
pacharru said:
The device will charge up to 100% then AC supply is turned off.
Then it will run on battery until it drops to 90%.
... and will charge again to 100%.
(This 100%->90%->100% can occurs several times during one charge. Juice plotter will show you this)
This happens to me during over night charging.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same behavior in 1.6 and now on 2.1
got the same prob since 1.6, sometimes i'm watching a video and it is plugged then the battery reaches 80%