Backup battery warning!

[Osiris]

I strongly advise against removing your main battery from the Axim. I had been reading around about the backup only lasting a minute or two before completely dying and losing all data. As a test, I tried pulling my main battery for 30 seconds. When I put it back in, the Axim warned me that the main battery had been removed. Fine.

I turned on the unit and went into "Power" in the settings, my backup battery now has 70% power left! It lost 30% in 30 seconds. The backup isn't rechargable either, which is absurd.

So at this rate, your Axim will last around 90 seconds on backup, before you lose all your data. :o

Way to go Dell!

[Racer X]

You sir, are a daredevil. I look forward to your next mod/tweak/upgrade/stress test and or rant. :P

[hkoyuncu]

what this means is that you should change your main battery VERY quickly ;)

[Pacman]

The battery is probably a cheapie, generic one to keep the cost down. What kind of battery is it? I haven't received my Ax yet but if you could pass along the info on the backup battery I could go and get a better one before my Ax get's here. That is if you think that would help. Do you think it's a cheap battery or a bad design by Dell?

[hkoyuncu]

It's a standard CR2032 battery. You should be able to get it pretty much anywhere. Mine was missing when I got the Ax. Bought one from the store and it works beautifully.

However, it is not surprising to me that the backup battery is drained when the main battery is not in.

[Talador]

That very weird. When I got my replacement Axim (d-pad problems originally), I took the old battery off the defective unit so I could continue to play, and let the new battery charge in the cradle over night. The next day, I put the old bettery back in the bad unit, and checked the backup battery life. It was down to 30% (from 90%) in a matter of 16 hours I would say. My 2 cents...

--Talador

[SkyVoice]

I would suggest then that you may have a defective back up battery. It is only intended to serve as a backup until one can get the main battery recharged within a reasonable amount of time. Once the main battery is removed or is discharged from use it is only reasonable to assume a far more rapid drain on the backup battery.

I would consider a new back up battery and get it into your Ax to avoid potential problems. Will the Ax turn on and run with the main battery out as long as the back up battery is in place? I would hope not. There should be an interlock that prevents that... otherwise if the Ax turned on while the main battery were out the backup would be drained in very short order... minutes.

Curious... good find. Design flaw... maybe... perhaps more to it than that.

Ciao,

Ron

[NMkiD]

Dude look at the backup again, sometimes it says the power went down, but it didnt. When I first got my 3400 battery I swapped them out and upon turning the unit back on I got that same error but the unit hard reset itself, don't know why that happened but its never done it again since, and I swap out the battery daily depending on whether or not im using my wireless card.

Also sometimes I get an error that I have almost no backup battery power left, and upon a reset it shows I have 100% backup battery. I wonder if there is some way that the battery contact gets lost or loose or something, hmm, kinda wanna crack it open to check...naw. :D

[andsoitgoes]

I'm with NMkiD - My backup battery has flip-flopped from 100% to 80% and then back to 100% about 3 or 4 times now.

Give it a day or two, if it's still showing 70%, you may feel the need to go out and drop about 3 bucks on a replacement...

BTW - I've switched batteries and had no battery in the unit for about 10 minutes with no problem at all...

<shrug>

Nick

[enob]

Same here I have also tested and not seen that problem and my backup battery sometimes goes down to 70% and then back to 100%