Does battery drain while PPC is off?

lzampogna · 04-26-04, 04:24 PM

It seems like my battery drains when my Axin off. Is this possible. I charged my Axim this am and had it on for about 2 minutes today and it says that I have 76% left. What gives?

ejones0310 · 04-26-04, 04:27 PM

How old is your battery? It could be that it is about to give up the ghost. Check the following site for information about keeping your battery in good shape. Some of our past charging practices are killing these lithium batteries.

http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm

psychoticpnut · 04-26-04, 04:31 PM

In addition to what Eric said, The PPC does use battery power while it is "off" to keep the info inside of it saved. but it uses such a minimal amount that you shouldnt notice it unless you leave your Axim sitting on your desk for a week.

reddythebaron · 04-26-04, 04:41 PM

ejones0310

Great link, thanks for the info. I didn't know that.

John Reeve · 04-26-04, 05:15 PM

Thanks for the info on batteries - very interesting, I wonder why they never tell us this stuff. Is the profit from new batteries that important.

Regarding the discharge I know this is what John Cleese would call "...the bleeding obvious..." but I fell for it. Check that you are turning your X3 off and not just dimming the screen. If you hold the power off button in too long it just dims the screen. To turn it off you just need to hold it briefly.

Troubled me for weeks this until I got help from this forum.

ejones0310 · 04-26-04, 05:21 PM

I can't claim credit for finding that link. I got it from another post that Mr. K had put up a while back.

Thank you Mr. K.

04-26-04, 05:49 PM

Something else to consider is that no PPC is ever really 'off', except for a few microseconds during hard resets, or for however long you remove the main and (if available) backup battery. Main memory is RAM, and as such is power-dependent. So 'off' in PPC lingo actually comes closer to 'suspend', and many software developers have taken to naming it suspend rather than off. Think of a notebook PC in sleep mode. It's going to eat through battery power pretty fast too.

My ancient iPAQ 3835 has a dying battery, good for about 2 hours. It drops to 75% in about a day of non-use, with nothing but the startup programs running (I use Dashboard, GigaBar, PocketMon, CityTime Today, FileDialogChange, FontOnStorage, a few other odds an ends...).

psychoticpnut · 04-26-04, 06:02 PM

yeah... thats basically a version of what i said, but put very nicely explaining it more in depth, very nice =]

04-26-04, 07:10 PM

Oops. Sorry. Guess I skimmed too quickly and missed that post.

psychoticpnut · 04-26-04, 07:35 PM

hehe, yours was much better put either way

MrKlaatu · 04-26-04, 09:23 PM

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Here's some LiIon Battery Information:

All Consumer LiIon batteries (other than coin-type) have circuitry in the battery itself, to prevent overcharging under any circumstances.

LiIon batteries are actually quite dangerous commodoties and the only way they were allowed into the Consumer market was to include this circuitry.

Quote:

From First Link:
The charge cannot be terminated on a voltage (Which is what the Axim's green light is indicating). The capacity reached at 4.2 Volts per cell is only 40 to 70% of full capacity. For this reason you need to continue to charge until the current drops, and to terminate on the low current. (Which is what the Battery's Sensing Circuitry is sensing, and then doing).

It is important to note that trickle charging is not acceptable for lithium batteries. The Li-ion chemistry cannot accept an overcharge without causing damage to the cell, possibly plating out lithium metal and becoming hazardous.

Lithium Ion Charging Basics

Lithium Ion Battery Storage.

How to prolong lithium-based batteries