tsmathews1945

Just having gotten my Axim last week, I was very interested in how it was going to perform. As I drive a bus and occasionally do what's called "standby," meaning I sit downtown waiting for someone to break down or be so late as to need help, I might actually be sitting for a full ten to twelve hour day. Needless to say, battery life is important to me but I couldn't find one review which gave specifics...only reports that it was excellent.

So, I just completed a test for anyone else who might be wondering. I put a movie on my unit and set it to play continuously. I set my screen brightness to just above the halfway point which is, probably a touch brighter than I'd normally use. By doing my test this way, I was making sure my unit would run at it's maximum 400mHz speed and keep the screen backlit--obviously, I shut off the dimming feature for the test. I want to know what's the worst I can expect in terms of battery life. Here's how it went with the two batteries.

I started the movie running and timed it until the battery warning came--which occurs at 20% power remaining.

With the standard 1440mAh battery, I got 4 hours, 30 minutes.
With my optional 3400mAh battery, it went an astounding 9 hours!!

Needless to say, I'm ecstatic. Under normal operations doing mail, reading etc, the cpu will probably set itself to 200 mHz so my battery life will actually be somewhat longer.

I'm amazed that even if I play movies I can carry a computer in my pocket which will run for over twelve hours and, as I said, these times are only until the 20% warning came on so I probably had at least another hour on the standard and possibly another two on the optional battery.

So, while it is a little disappointing that there are a couple of minor shortcomings for the Axim, I couldn't be happier with my purchase.

Tim