Database Users

How to really power off an XDA2 /Qtek2020

Hello everybody; Sorry for this silly question, but it seems i cannot fully power off my smartphone in order to have it full charge the battery whithout the phone being on. By this i mean the smartphone totaly powered off and not only having deactivated the radio section of the phone which deals with the mobile phone section of the appliance and the bluetooth ; When i press on the power button, the only thing that happens is that the display switches off and not the smartphone; I was accustomed to a real switch off on my other smartphone P900 withj symbian UIQ 7.0
Have i missed something or is this condition a feature /bug of the phone or microsoft windows mobile 2003?
Thanking you all in advance for any input i remain
Arnaud

Hi, I'm new here. Just known XDA II for two weeks.
About ur question, I think it's not a bug but rather a feature. U can turn off the phone by click the phone icon at the top bar.
I would hate it if I can't power off the pda without the phone is on.
'cause when I sleep I really don't need the pda section. :wink:

Hi
Yes, you missed something...
A "real" power-down is similar to a hard-reset, and believe me, you won't do a hard-reset if it is not totally necessary.
The XDA unpackes the program files at powerup into its sdrams and keeps the data in the sdrams when it is switch off. Of course this sdrams need power to keep the data.
Otherwise, you can still remove the battery :wink:
But, I agree, it would be interessting to know how long the battery lastest when the phone is switch off.
regards,

actually, you CAN remove the battery
after all, the battery IS removable.... and intended to be replaced.
But then your PPC will be on the "backup battery" and 30 minutes
later you will lose all your data. too bad.
The fact is, not only you absolutely cannot turn this thing off,
if you're down to 5% power and will be awhile before you
plug it for more power,
YOU BETTER TURN IT OFF AND TURN THE PHONE OFF
if you somehoe run down the battery to zero with a phone call,
you will have a hard reset in 30 minutes ....
this is all the result of the STUPID MS DECISION, long time ago,
not to put all the critical data/install/whatever in FLASH / SD card.

this is all the result of the STUPID MS DECISION, long time ago,
not to put all the critical data/install/whatever in FLASH / SD card.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It wasn't a bad decision for the time - memory that kept its contents without power was very expensive, and very slow. It's still not great. Symbian went the no-power memory route, and the earlier devices (Nokia 9200 series) were crippled by it (CPU underclocked to 56MHz to cope with the memory, and too little memory to do everything people wanted).
Don't forget, you can't just use regular flash memory - it's still too slow, and will wear out with too many write cycles, however a good feature would be a 'hibernate' mode that dumps the static ram to flash ram, and restores on power up. Sort of like the *FlashMan utilities, but actually useful.

what absolute crap

i have had a few gadgets, mobiles and electronic stuff in my time, but to this day have not heard such a stupid thing as if i leave my phone untill the battery goes flat, I LOSE ALL MY DATA??!! this has alreeady happened to me after 1 nite i forgot to put the damn thing on charge, somebody should tell the makers of O2 XDA that some people have a life that does not revolve around constantly checking if your damn phone is about to wipe out all your data everyday!...also I cant seem to switch the damn thing off, by that i mean, there are times when you dont want people to call you, so you switch off your phone the normal way, by pressing the off button, was this too hard to incorporate????!!!!
...phew, feel a little better now, thanx guys.

i was worried about the Switching it off thing aswell at first.
Awnser is "Turn Wireless off" tap on the signal meter and the option is there.
also about saveing battery life, remember to allways press the power button on top when your not useing it
and to stop all sound, mute it
thing to remember is..
its a PDA with a phone built in.
not
a Phone with a PDA built in.
there is a diffrence as i say to ppl who tell me "man why d'you want a phone like a brick"
p.s. back up all data to your pc now n then
battery life never been a problem to me so far
and i can leave it days without a recharge.
anyway, it switches itself off as a failsafe if power gets too low.

obviously you need to go back to an organizer on paper. :lol:

The XDA /MDA is more a computer that a phone.. :shock:
Over 23 years of computing an ppl still think backup up is not needed.... :roll:

Hey dont knock rai. Its peeps like him that keep us IT'ers in a job :lol:

stryker said:
Hey dont knock rai. Its peeps like him that keep us IT'ers in a job :lol:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
LOL!! :lol:

granted that the XDA is more a computer than a phone, but i dont lose all my software and my documents if my laptops battery goes flat.
im not aking to have the wheel re-invented (honest), just expect a simple "OFF" switch to "switch off" the device and to have my data and contacts still there, should i sacrilegiously forget to charge it.

rai, there is an option to write your contacts and other data to ROM, thus preventing loss of contact and appointments or all data if you have enough space.

rai said:
granted that the XDA is more a computer than a phone, but i dont lose all my software and my documents if my laptops battery goes flat.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ypu would if you had i lightweight laptop w/o harddive and everything stored in memory. :roll: And that's what the PPC is...
Ok, granted, you have got a SD card, so you can store data on 'disk' if wanted. I have everything synced, on SD backup, or on the SD card.
Worstcase scenario is i may have to wait until i get home to resore all data...
Practical: Just plug it to power in your car and and home at night, and you'll probably even forget it works on a battery that could go flat :lol:

Perhaps the only solution fro PDA is this :
"Toshiba announced that it created a hard drive the size of a coin targetted for the mobile phone sector. The drive can hold as much as 3GB of information and will start shipping in 2005.
Related Link: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20031215/ap_on_hi_te/toshiba_tiny_disk"
but unfortunately we have to wait till 2005 :lol:

hi Johan, how does it work in a SE p800, does that have a HD?

It's one of the fundamental differences between Symbian and pocketPC - Symbian specifies that the devices main memory should not loose its contents when powered down fully. WinCE takes the other approach.
A few years ago, WinCE was probably the best way to do things, as non volatile RAM (or rather RAM that needed /very/ little power to maintain state) was slow and expensive - it was one of the bug bears of the 9210 that it had too little RAM, and the whole system was heavily underclocked - down to 56MHz if my memory serves me right.
Nowadays, this type of memory is a bit cheaper, and certainly more performant (remember this is not your regular flash memory we're talking about - that would be just too slow and incapable of the write cycle demands). This means that Symbian devices now have comparable performance to the WinCE, yet WinCe is still burndened with the loss of memory on power out.
One thing I'd like to see is an automatic "hibernate" feature added to the core OS. When power drops below say 1%, all open programs are closed, the remaining critical RAM contents copied off to flash storage, and the device won't wake up again until it's charged. It'd mean that device manufacturers would have to provide enough built in spare space on the flash ROM for this, but the current situation of manually backing up the critical data with the *flashman utilities is a poor substitute.
I know several people who refuse use PPC/WinCE because of the total data loss on power out, but as with so may WinCE problems, it could be fixed quite easily with a bit of thought on Microsoft's part.
Thinking about this for a moment, it would probably be relatively easy to create a third party app to do something along these lines - we can get the battery power level, we can 'unprotect' the spare ROM space, compress and dump the critical files to it along with a 'reawaken mode' flag, and we could have a little app that runs on startup and does the reverse if the flag is present, followed by an automatic soft-reset so that all drivers etc can reload cleanly. The only tricky part is making sure that there's anough space available for the main data for contacts/diary/registry/etc plus any additionally installed programs - these could be prioritised by the user if there's some that are more critical than others.

All that sounds a little complicated for rai.
He could simply copy his contacts and save it onto the extended_ROM using a basic txt document, or save it on his SIM, which is what we all should do anyway. :lol:
Or...
he could go the long way and copy the actual file for contacts and the calendar, then paste it into a secure folder in the extended_ROM, and if ever the problem does occur again, copy and paste it again.
Either way, let this be a lesson to you all: WinCE gives you all the programs Symbian users can only dream about, but there are drawbacks - you've got to be just a little bit more responsible with their devices. Like one chap here said: It's NOT a phone.

I'm sure I've seen a prog that does automated backups to the SD card. So there is an ideal, non user intervention solution.
Also when the backpack comes out you could get a nice CF Flash micro disk. That brings all the joys of your laptop with mechanical hard drive..... hhhhm mechanicaaaallll.

oh here it is, the answer to your problems. Automated backup and low battery backup
http://www.spritesoftware.com/ppc/products.html

rai the reason your laptop's batt is soo big is related to the fact that it use a harddisk because harddisks are full of moving parts which spin at a pretty fast pase
this cost batt juice
so if the xda or p800/900 had a harddisk you would not have much time to put in your data before the batt was flat

Pocket Backup Plus from Sprite Software, like stricker said , is the solution to all these problems ... use it and ....keep cool ! :wink:

Thanks for the link, didn't know about this program (as I always back up to PC anyway). OEMs should buy it and stick it preconfigured into their roms.

I've seen that backup prog recommended by others and in interest of doing as I preach I installed it. However I found an issue.... may just be affecting me tho. See the other thread I started, "spritesoftware backup package".

XDA2 backup and restore
I use sprite's backup program and backup every day to my PC. I copy this backup and of course the program to an sd card, and my webserver. That way I can be reasonably safe. Mine went flat today, but used one of those emergency chargers(takes AA batts), and was back in business in a few mins.

Does Hermes lose programs when battery dies?

I use/have used the Imate PDA, PDA2 and PDA2K... all of them lose all of their programs/settings (pretty much a hard reset) when the battery dies. Does the Hermes act in the same way? I was told by a sales person that since it has 128MB rom the programs install to that and you don't lose them when the battery dies like you do now. Is that true?

Hermes uses persistant memory. Won't lose apps in memory unless you hardreset. So your safe if battery runs out.
V

Good information, i have had a hard time with my i mate jam,,,,
thanks
asz

Great, thanks for the info vijay. Can Anyone expand on how it tells the difference between a hard reset and a battery going flat then? Any othere differences in relation to this?

ferni said:
Great, thanks for the info vijay. Can Anyone expand on how it tells the difference between a hard reset and a battery going flat then? Any othere differences in relation to this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Devices running Windows Mobile 5 change the area of memory information is stored. Its called persistant storage and is one of the major benefits of WM5. Its slighter slower but all information is saved if the battery dies.
Older devices (WM2002, 2003, 2003SE) used to save information to the RAM. Faster than persistant storage in WM5, but RAM needs power to keep the information stored within. Thats the reason why data used to be lost if batteries ran out in the older devices. There is a back-up battery in the device is case of power loss but tend to only last around 20mins unless you replace or charge the battery.
Think thats about right, im sure i'll be corrected if i'm wrong.
Hope that clears things up for you.

Thanks silent... So how does a hard reset work then? if the programs are stored in persistant storage?
Also, it can't just be software based can it? Ie if i put WM5 onto one of my Imate PDA2's then that wouldn't keep the settings if the battery died... it would have to be a combination of OS and hardware right?

ferni said:
Thanks silent... So how does a hard reset work then? if the programs are stored in persistant storage?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, the hard reset routine actively erases the persistant program memory. A bit like formatting a hard drive.
Also, it can't just be software based can it? Ie if i put WM5 onto one of my Imate PDA2's then that wouldn't keep the settings if the battery died... it would have to be a combination of OS and hardware right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes.
Cheers
Daniel

When the battery of a Tytn dies ALL DATA is savely stored.
you can however, reset the device if it won't start a program or if data is corrupted.
1. If the device still runs you can go to the settings menu and select system > erase memory. this will set the tytn back to factory defaults.
2. If the device locks down on startup you can also turn it on and after it has been turned on pres the power button again and keep the power button pressed and press the reset button simultaneously until the device reboots.

Actually, there have been "unofficial" ports of Windows Mobile 5 for the Blue Angel series of Pocket PC Phones and they do indeed use persistent storage, just like the "official" Windows Mobile 5 devices do. Your device needs to have enough persistent memory available to support this in order for it to work, and the Blue Angel does. It is tricky to do, but does work.

im a noob in this Blue angel > WM5 thing and i did it too.
its not that hard.
to bad the build of WM5 for blue angel was a little heavy for the processor.
the persistant memory was there, so i could keep my data when my battery died.
finally i switched back to wm2003 because it was much faster.
now i bought a tytn and gave away the blue angel because this one is better.

Great guys, Thanks heaps for the help.

my hermes hang !!!

I 'm now using 2 gb of memory. When i turn off my screen for a moment and trun on the screen. There is nothing comming up. I have to reset my hermes. Pls advise..what 's wrong ? Before i used 1 gb of memory, i never seen this problem.One thing i use calendar plus on the today screen.

After selling my Wizard to get the Hermes, I have discovered that the Hermes is a VERY unstable device.
I have experienced (and still do sometimes) what you are experiencing. From what I can see, this is normal for this device. If this continues, I'll have to sell this and get something else. The other day my device did this and I called it from my house phone to see if it would even ring, and it did not. I guess I could live with the PDA locking up, but if it interferes with the devices primary function as a phone, it's totally unacceptable.

jcute, i was having this problem for a bit, but my issue only occured when it was on the charger and i temporarily shut off the screen, it would then not turn on and would have to softreset every time
i noticed this problem occuring after installing some software including weather software (cant recall exactly which) and skype, not sure which one was the main problem but wasnt using either hence their uninstall and correcting of the problem
good luck, try removing some recently installd software and seeing if the problem persists and perhaps try removing the microsd card and running ur phone without it for a bit to see if the problem is the card

time for rom upgrade ?

thanks for info. I tried to unplug micro sd 2 gb and press power button again ..it 's work !!after that i plugin micro sd again but some icon 's missing at the today screen. Ex. resco today icon , psshutdown, photo contact.....So the question is that i have to do this everytime when screen 's off???

After upgrading to AKU 3.3 and installing my programs only to the main memory, I've noticed far fewer lockups as opposed to before when I ran many programs such as Pocket Player or GPRS monitor from my 2gb sandisk.
I guess the moral of the story is, try not to install programs that access your memory card while your phone is in sleep mode.

DonnieZ said:
I guess I could live with the PDA locking up, but if it interferes with the devices primary function as a phone, it's totally unacceptable.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would not get a Hermes if I wanted it to be a phone primarily. IMHO most of these devices XDAs, are primarily PDAs with a phone tacked on.
Just a humble observation
Mike

my problem is when i scroll or drag the side bar too fast (inside memory card),the device will hang and need to soft reset.
can anybody solve this problem??

Goto www.softwinter.com and try out storage tools. I've found that a regular repair and defrag help the load times from the storage card tremendously. Also, someone mentioned above that reformating your storage card with fat32 helps and I too can confirm that. Let us know if that helps or not.
Lance

one more thing, when i reset my hermes, it hangs at the welcome screen. I always get this problem.

Do you trust the Athena's MicroDrive?

I just want to see how many actually trust the MicroDrive on the Athena. I also look forward to hearing how long you've had the device and if you've had any issues with losing data under WM5 and also under WM6.

i have backups of all my data always anyways
but i just dont trust microdrives...
although i have had a 1gb microdrive for my dslr and its about 5 years old... still running strong... (rough use)

boinger66 said:
i have backups of all my data always anyways
but i just dont trust microdrives...
although i have had a 1gb microdrive for my dslr and its about 5 years old... still running strong... (rough use)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had a problem under WM5 where my drive lost ALL data. Have you had any problems with this? Also, do you use the drive heavily or just now and then?

i didn lose any data till date
but i also dont use it thattt much...
just watch a movie and listen to music every now and then ...

No, I don't
I am old enought to remeberber first ZIP devices... Microdrives IMHO are more or less the same, good for DIVX movies, downloaded MP3, to transport data from Home to Office and vice-versa. ANY byte I copy in the microdrive is safely stored in some other place!

I do trust it, but anything important is automatically backed up, ive learned my leason over the years of not backing up data.
Im not really using the microdrive to its fullest potential yet, as im still unhappy with the video playback, and do think my mda sounded better for music.

MD's are sometimish at best...
No issues or lost data to date via MD or SD. Having said that, I decided before I got the Athena that I would only use the MD for backup files, Music and Video - no system or any other applications....just can't trust theses MD's plus they suck too much power for my liking.
Shame really, coz these Hitachi MD's run bloody fast..5x faster than device and then some compared to SD cards.
Safe practise for me now is:
1) Regular backup to SD card (at least 2x a week if not more)
2) fortnightly SD & MD backup to PC
No probs to date.

Never had any problem, and i trust it...
If not, why i bought it??

the only problem I have had was a defect SD card approx. 4 years ago. from present to now the card was defect, nothing could read the card (or could format). anyway,
I really trust no more memory cards for lifetime, but I trust it if it was new and not so old...
And I also trust the Microdrive, because my old Hitachi Microdrive is running for more than 2 years (first in my old PDA, than in my notebook).

I do trust it but I am keeping in eye on it because of all the complaints I have seen. I had my X7500 a little over a month and I had one issue where the drive did not show up after installing a software that was problematic. I uninstall the software, then perform a soft reboot. The Micro Drive was back and has not disappear since then.
Due to power consumption I only keep pictures, videos, music, and a few application that I use occasionally.

Micro Drive...inaccessible.....
Well I've finally encountered a problem with the Micro Drive that I have been unable to resolve.
Read here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=1419142#post1419142
I should also mention that he used the MD solely and never invested in a mini-SD card as I had advised him. Even though I haven't this problem myself, I'm really interested in resolving this. Not for his sake alone, but all of our sakes if we have the mechanical MD, because it could happen to us.

After hearing about all the microdrive nightmares, I guess I won't be switching to an Athena anytime soon, unless 1+ yr old Uni decides to give up its ghost. Viva le universal.

Microdrives are generally very reliable. I have a Fuji M603 digital camera and I have a 2GB microdrive in it. For the last 3 years I've used it as a tiny digital video recorder (damn good one at that!) and it has never faulted. Hitachi are world renowned for the reliability of their MD devices.
The only problems you are likely to get are:
a. Faulty MD (this can happen to any piece of electrical equipment after all)
b. Rough handling causing data loss (this has to be quite rough)
c. Drive bearings 'wear out' this wont happen for a very long time
d. Magnetism 'wiping' the drive (in the Athena its well shielded anyway)
So all in all it's fine. I have a 4GB SDHC and the 8GB MD, plus I back up to my network drive just in case once a week - it's a computer after all - and it's run by a Microshaft OS!!

I have not had problems with the microdrive, although I use it sparringly because I am concerned with battery life. I use the 4GB SDHC mini for most data and file storage and I have found a problem with this that may also relate to the microdrive.
I primarily use Vista on a daily basis which involves the Windows Mobile Device Center. I have had two instances where I had the device connected and the storage card open in a minimized window and undocked my device. Apparently the FAT was wiped out, all of the files appeared to be gone, although the card was still showing the correct number of MB used on it. Files were recoverable but not useable. I keep vigilant backups so I did not lose anything.
I could envision a similar problem with the microdrive, it just happened when I was connected to the SDHC. For now, I close out of the device windows before undocking and have not had a repeat of the problem since.