I am having an interesting problem with charging my Dell axim x51v:
-Yesterday, it arrived in the mail, and I took it out of its box. I charged it before using it (until the power button was green). No problem...
-I worked most of the day on syncronizing it with my IBM laptop and organizing the files on it. I kept it in its cradle attached to the taptop via the USB cable. Last night, the battery reached the "critically low" point and automatically shut off. I promptly disconnected the axim from the laptop, attached a wall charger to the cradle, and plugged it into an outlet. The power button become solid amber. Once again, no problem…
-This morning I woke up to find that my axim still had not completed charging. The power button remains a solid amber color when on the cradle, but when I take it off, the power button has no color. I tried pressing the power button to see if it would turn on, but it did not.
-That’s when I started to get worried and found this website. I read some forum threads that had similar problems. I tried a few suggestions members mentioned earlier: I checked to make sure that the axim was not locked, I tried a soft reset, and I took out the SD card. No change…
What should I do? I’m very worried. It’s odd that it charged fine and worked wonderfully yesterday, but does not seem to want to work for me today.
I’d appreciate all of the help you all can give me!
-Maddy2
Try taking the battery out for a bit, several hours at least, and putting it back in. That will erase everything, however.
You can also put the battery directly into the back of the charger, and plug the charger into the wall (not your computer), to charge it directly.
Also, plugging it into your computer (and only your computer) DOES NOT charge your Axim, if it is on at the same time. In other words, if you are syncing, etc, it will not charge, unless you have the cradle plugged in to the wall at the same time (which is recommended).
Oh, and WELCOME TO AXIMSITE!!!
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Taking the battery out of a x51 won't do much unless there is some connection issue since it is running wm5. the only thing that will be lost is any running program data but it might help. A couple of things come to mind here. First, The power button only lights when it is either charging (amber) fully charged (green) and both of those conditions must have the AC adapter connected and it also blinks when you have some alarm or event happening. So no color is normal when it is off of the cradle. Is it possible that you actually have it turned on but the back light is off so you can't see the display? power on off is only a quick hit of the button but if you hold down the button it will turn off the backlight. If you put it back on the cradle with the AC adapter connected does it still go to amber and stay that way? You might try doing a soft reset (put the tip of the stylis in the hole on the back and push it in and release) while it is in the cradle connected to the charger. Sometimes that will wake it up.
Unfortunately, I've tried your suggestions, and it still is not turning on...
1) (while in cradle), I held down the power button for 5 seconds two times, and the axim did not turn on. It simply sat there with its power button an amber color.
2) (while in cradle) I tried a soft reset twice, also to no avail.
Yes, when I take the axim off the cradle and put it back on the cradle with the AC adapter connected it still is amber and stays that way.
I have installed a bunch of programs on the PDA and its 1GB SD, so will all the programs I installed be lost if I take out the battery to try and charge it separately?
The axim was also upgraded to windows mobile 6.0 before it was sent to me. Does this change things?
It is possible that the upgrade has gotten corrupted some how. Can you return it? Maybe the person who did the upgrade can direct you to a way to reflash it with wm5 but if it won't turn on at all you may not have that as an option. Definately contact the person who sold it to you though. and no, removing the battery will not erase any programs. Since WM5 and later versions, the memory doesn't get erased when you remove the battery.
OK, so I removed the axim from the cradle, removed the battery, and then put the same battery back in. I tried turning it on, and it did-but then a message came up that the battery is critically low and would be shutting down in 10 seconds. It shut down, and I put it back on the cradle.
1) It seems like the axim works, but there is instead a problem with either the battery or the charger.
2) Which do you think it is? Should I try getting a new battery and charger?
3) I contacted the seller for help.
based on what you just said it seems that the charger isn't working. Take the battery out and put it in the slot on the charger for a while and see if that helps. If it is charging then the light on the dock should come on as it is only for the rear slot. you should also be able to put the door back on, close the latch without the battery and put it in the dock and it should turn on I think. I am not 100% sure of that last point but can try it here in a while to verify on mine.
This is going to sound really stupid, but I cannot figure out how to attach the battery to the charger. Here is more info on the battery and charger I have:
Cradle:
-Rated Input: 100-240V
-Supports Hi-Speed USB 2.0 data transfers
-Green* LED power indicator.
*When I was looking at charger pictures and descriptions online, it looks like they all have Blue LED power indicator and not the Green LED power indicator like mine. Is this significant?
If you go to this page Dell Axim X51 PDA reviews - CNET Reviewsand scroll down about half way you will see a Dell cradle. I think yours is a 3rd party one and may not have the rear slot in it. The only other suggestion I can make is to unplug the ac adapter, disconnect the usb and then with the pda out of the cradle plug the ac back in then put the pda on the cradle. Does the power supply have an output rating on it in either Amps or MA? Maybe it isn't powerful enough to charge up a very low battery.
Unfortunately, the charger I have does not look like the one on the CNET website. It’s much more rounded, like a semi-circle. It seems like it does not have the extra battery charger. I guess I’ll be investing in some new accessories.
My house has the common outlet voltage (120V), so it should not be a matter of whether it’s receiving enough power…
I tried your other suggestion:
1) Taking the PDA out of the cradle, unplugging the ac adapter, disconnecting the USB;
2) Plugging the ac adapter back in, plugging the adapter back into the cradle, and then plugging the PDA into the cradle-
But, it didn’t work.
I’ll buy a new battery and a new charger and see if this makes a difference. Thank you everyone for your wonderful support!!!
I don't know, but I got about 50 'rounded' cradles for X50's about 6 months ago. No battery charger.... just the pins for the pda, a usb connector, and the a/c plug.
They where actually shipped directly from Hong Kong.
I ended up throwing about 30 of them away. Needeless to say, they really were weak.
I don't know if you and I got the same thing, but mine were def rounded, very light weight, and overall cheap.
As for your batter - I can't say anything about that brand. We have good luck with batteries from Laptops for Less. They sell a bunch of other stuff besides batteries.
Unfortunately, the charger I have does not look like the one on the CNET website. It’s much more rounded, like a semi-circle. It seems like it does not have the extra battery charger. I guess I’ll be investing in some new accessories.
My house has the common outlet voltage (120V), so it should not be a matter of whether it’s receiving enough power…
I tried your other suggestion:
1) Taking the PDA out of the cradle, unplugging the ac adapter, disconnecting the USB;
2) Plugging the ac adapter back in, plugging the adapter back into the cradle, and then plugging the PDA into the cradle-
But, it didn’t work.
I’ll buy a new battery and a new charger and see if this makes a difference. Thank you everyone for your wonderful support!!!
~Maddy2
What I meant was the power cord itself for the charger. It should have some marking on it somewhere on the 'wall wort' that says how much power it can deliver and usually is in either Amps or MA (milliamps). It has to be more than 1A or 1000MA to be able to charge the battery when the pda is turned off. if the battery has run down like you said in your first post then it needs to be closer to 2A to recover the battery in a reasonable time even when the pda is turned off. It probably won't charge by the usb connection since most usb ports only put out 500ma and that won't work very well on a discharged battery. If I remember correctly the original Dell charger is able to put out 3000 MA.
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What should I do? I’m very worried. It’s odd that it charged fine and worked wonderfully yesterday, but does not seem to want to work for me today.
