Brand new X51V got *very* hot

Corinoco · 10-06-05, 02:15 AM

Well, I took the early-adopter jump and bought myself a Dell X51V. It is a sweet little thing! It replaces my Palm T2, which while very nice, finally screwed my Contacts list one time too many.

The X51V is my second PcoketPC, my first being a Toshiba e570 from early 2002, so I know all about the quirks of the PocketPC OS. The e570 is still around, but the non-replacable battery only lasts an hour or two these days.

I have had it 3 days now, and have had a few glitches. The first was the 'won't turn on after an hour' glitch. Once I removed the demo and trial software from the Dell disk it went away.

The next glitch occured this morning, and was much scarier. Last night I installed the trial of the latest version of Resco Explorer 2005. This was mainly becuase I couldn't find my rego details for Battery Pack, which I purchased way back when I was using the e570. Anyway, I left the X51V on charge overnight, as I was fooling around with the wifi for a while.

I picked it up off the cradle this morning, fully charged. It was fine, not hot or even warm. I put it in my bag, and went to work, a 45-min train ride. Halfway there, I thought I felt something warm in my pack, but thought it was just sunlight. When I got to work and got the X51 out - WOW! It was too hot to touch! I yanked the battery out right away, and let both the X51 and battery cool down. I checked for anything like a staple or piece of foil that might have shorted the contacts... nothing. I tentatively put the battery back in... The X51 booted properly, no data lost (flash ram is so cool!) and it works. It started getting warm right away though... I looked at the battery meter display on the Resco icon bar thingy - it was dropping as I watched! 1% every 30 seconds or so, and was down to 17%. No wonder it was hot, LIpolys don't like this kind of treatment. What had changed since yesterday? Resco Explorer 2005. I uninstalled all of it right away, and soft-reset.

And guess what? The battery cooled down right away, and the power bar (now from settings panel) stopped it's scary plummet. It has been working perfectly all day, with 16% power showing. (BTW, my old Toshiba would have had only a few minutes left, even in sleep, before all my data vanished)

Luckily, no damage done. The lesson seems to be 'wait till a few more developers have got their heads around WM2005'.

The mix of new hardware and new OS always produces problems like this.

The software I have installed on it that does work is:

Pocket Stars - worked perfectly, look wonderful on the bigger screen

Microsoft Reader - works, and is readable, though the silly activation app seemd to fail from my PC, it works fine on the X51

Adobe Acrobat - works, but is UNreadable, looks like some major font issues.

I tried Rocket Elite and it loaded and ran, but locks up trying to start a game. Sigh, looks like I will just have to get Quake for the X51V!

Cheers,

Corinoco · 10-06-05, 11:36 AM

Did some more testing tonight - it wasn't entirely Resco Explorer's fault it seems.

I had also tried the SPB Powerbar thingy, and had left that installed. It seemed that the two battery-monitoring programs combined to produce my wildly overheating Axim. Needless to say both have been uninstalled.

comptonOG · 10-06-05, 11:56 AM

lo-poly's are famous for catching fire but are you sure you have them my axim came with li-ion. I was thinking polys require a whole different charger system too.

**ctitanic** · 10-12-05, 04:04 PM

Originally Posted by Corinoco

Did some more testing tonight - it wasn't entirely Resco Explorer's fault it seems.

I had also tried the SPB Powerbar thingy, and had left that installed. It seemed that the two battery-monitoring programs combined to produce my wildly overheating Axim. Needless to say both have been uninstalled.

Do you still have this problem? I had it in mine around 3 times already. I have the SPB Battery meter in the top bar but I don't have the Resco Today Plugin enabled.

**ctitanic** · 10-12-05, 04:05 PM

Another question? are you using the original battery or the Mugen Power 1800 battery?

Corinoco · 10-12-05, 08:01 PM

Well, being the tinkerer I am, (also wanting to find out if it actually was a problem with my unit) I tried reinstalling those two software suites.

For info, this is the original Dell 1100mah cell.

Installed Resco Explorer, full install. Problem appeared after about 1 hour - unit gets HOT, battery discharging very fast. Uninstalled resco piece-by piece. The problem stayed until all resco components were installed, and immediately went away.

Installed SPB Powerbar - no problems at all. I have had it installed now for 1 week and the Axim has been performing flawlessly. Not even any 'won't start' problems.

My guess - people don't now how to code for WM2005 yet, and also don't understand changes to Axim X51V memory. I think the Resco components are trying to do some tricky 'powersaving' function that worked on an X50, but be warned - it looks like it will cook your X51V.

Corinoco · 10-12-05, 08:03 PM

Oh, I forgot - I did NOT install the SPB battery meter along the top thing - just the icon menu for the Today page, and the explorer addins.

**ctitanic** · 10-12-05, 08:08 PM

If you don't have the Resco Today addin there is nothing of Resco running all time in the back ground, this is why I'm more inclined to think that the problem is with the SPB battery top bar.

Corinoco · 10-12-05, 08:53 PM

I am beginning to think that it is anything that tries to 'monitor' the battery status. It looks like there are some hardware changes in there that these monitor programs are screwing around with.

For info, I have had an SD card (Pretec 128mb) in my Axim from day 1, so in my experience there doesn't seem to be any trouble with the SD card.

The trouble I have had has come from any software that tries to be 'utility' software. I have MS Reader, Pocket Stars and Adobe Acrobat installed, all of which work fine. Any of the hardware management software, in particular battery management software, seems to produce the 'hot battery' problem, and I would guess most of the others.

Apart from the above mentioned apps, and the SPB icon menus, my Zxim is still 'vanilla', and I have gone over a week now without ANY problems, freezing, locking, rebooting, etc.

The old "did you fix it? nah, I just stopped fiddling with it" effect!

Hard to say whose fault - I actually side with MS and Dell on this one. MS released emulators and SDKs for WM2005, and I am guessing that some of the software writers have not done a good job of porting things yet. Sure early days, hard to transfer code, etc.

Daz · 10-13-05, 06:40 AM

Wow! I would have thought it should be impossible for software to be able to fry the Axim!

**ctitanic** · 10-13-05, 12:09 PM

Originally Posted by Daz

Wow! I would have thought it should be impossible for software to be able to fry the Axim!

well, that a real weird case.

I have disabled the SPB Battery Top bar meter and so far I have been a happy camper for 16 hours. I'll give that 2 days more and I'll report back my findings.

SiGriffin · 11-02-05, 06:48 AM

I've hit this issue with my x51v on the last two days - previously no problems (bar a 2.5 hour battery life...) and I haven't installed anything new for about a week.

The unit got red hot whilst turned off in my pocket and the battery discharged itself. I phoned Dell and they are sending me a new battery tomorrow.

I now read this thread and wonder if it could be due to Resco's Battery Pack Lite which came with the unit and I installed on day 1? However I do wonder why it hasn't had this problem before now?

Si

c00lk1d · 11-02-05, 07:17 AM

I got resco running, my Axim stayes quite cool... well its a bit warm when charging but nothing wrong with it.

sgtsampay · 11-02-05, 07:36 AM

This is wierd. I have installed the same program on my PDA and no heat problem. I'm using a Dell 1100, X50v with WM%. This is so odd. Also I'm not haveing any of the problems like other people are.

The Specialist · 11-02-05, 07:50 AM

I was having issues with Omega one's battery pack pro with my 51V.
E-mailed Omega tech support, and received the following e-mail.

Hi Mike

Thank you for your email. There is a transparency issue in Battery Pack Pro that we are aware of (this affects the title bar). Our Developers are working on this and they tell me that this will be resolved in version 3. I believe the plan for this is to release before the end of the year but I don't have a confirmed date for this at present.

Best regards

Alexa
Omega One Software LLC

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