When I last used by Axim A5 over Christmas, my battery was at approx 60%. Left it for a few days and when I tried to turn it on the battery was reading 0% and yet I hadn't used it. Anybody have any ideas as to this mysterious drain.
Also, when I tried to rechard using my USB link, it red charge light would flash for a bit and then give up. Eventually, my backup battery drained and I lost all of my data.
Eventually, I managed to recharge successfully with the mains charger when I got back to the office, and regained all of my data when I syncronized.
Has anyobody had any similar problems with (a) mysterious loss of battery or (b) problems with charging via USB lead.
Is a call to the Dell Technical helpdesk necessary (bearing in mind that I will probably be kept on hold for 30 minutes or so!)
Make sure you don't have any minimized programs that aren't actually closed, this will cause battery drain as the Axim is never really 'off'...just in case you didn't already know.
further to that, another thing that can waste an ax's batteries unless you've specifically configured it not to do so is alarms and notifications - by default they turn the ax on and make their little noise and just sit there until the inactivity timeout. this ate up my battery and wiped my data a couple of times before I managed to track it down.
also, with regards to charging via usb - not all usb ports supply enough juice to charge the axim under all circumstances.
Even if all your programs are actually closed and not just minimized, and even if you don't have any reminders, the axim still uses power. It is best to leave it in the cradle or plugged in when you are not using it, even if it doesn't "need" charging.
As Place-GUID-Here noted, many usb ports don't have the power to charge a discharged axim; some warn that if your axim is under 80% they may actually discharge it.
Further on USB ports. NONE of them actually have enough power to charge the Axim, unless the Axim is nearly fully charged already. The Axim can draw 2,400 mA to charge (see the rating on the mains charger at 2410 mA). USB ports provide either 100 or 500 mA, no more. If the Ax is nearly charged, 500 will top it off. 100 will never charge with it "on," as the Ax takes 200 mA or so to run, but with it off you have a very slight positive so it will top off from about 80% or more to 100%. Below that, the power requirement exceeds the USB ability to provide so the main battery is actually discharged instead of charged.
Wow...you guys are great. I saw my Axim dropping from 50's to under 10 and thought I'd gotten a bum deal on eBay. I was even more baffled after charging it in the car, and finding it was again charging, rather than discharging, on PCs. I was a bit freaked, since my original AC adapter is 600+ miles from me, and my only other option is to sneak into co-workers' offices and use their chargers! Oh, yeah, and now I know why it would never top 95-96% battery levels. I will have to be vigilant...and email my mother to send me my danged adapter!
:)
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alarms and notifications - by default they turn the ax on and make their little noise and just sit there until the inactivity timeout. this ate up my battery and wiped my data a couple of times before I managed to track it down.
So is the resolution to switch alarms off ? or to make the inactivity time out really small ?
switching the alarms off prevents the alarms from turning the axim on but doesn't do anything about notifications.
for notifications go to Settings > Personal > Sounds & Notifications > Notifications. from there make sure the "Flash light for" option is unchecked for all the events.
Also, be vigilant of ActiveSync running in the background. I've found on a few occasions where ActiveSync tried to sync during the night. I would wake up in the morning to find ActiveSync active and my battery drained to 50%.
I now have ActiveSync set to manual synchronization rather than on a schedule. I'm also in a habit of shutting it down when I'm finished syncing.
Hmmm... Let's put things into perspective. Even if you turn off alarms and notifications you will still get some battery drain. For one, the RAM draws power so that you data will not be lost since RAM is volatile memory. Two, even if the alarms and notifications are off the internal clock still has to run. This draws power. It is the internal clock that is checking the notifications database to see if there is anything to trigger. I don't think just turning off notifications will stop that process but it will suppress notifications from going off. There is also a document that I read somewhere stating that WM2003 (and I believe PPC2002) does some housekeeping to the notifications DB at midnight.
So you will have battery drain no matter what. Turning off alarms and notifications might help some but not by much IMHO.
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Mysterious battery drain & charging probs
Senior Member
