VERY Rapid battery drain, high pitched noise when screen is on

[supersharp]

Hello,

Recently, my LD began to experience incredibly fast battery drain - I can watch it drain 10% in a matter of a minute or two. When the screen is on, there is an audible high-pitched humming noise. This rapid power drain seems to be intermittent, and only occurs when the screen is on - I can let PocketTunes play with the screen off while at the gym and get reasonable power consumption.

Has anyone heard of a problem like this? Edit : Quick Hard Reset Performed, "whiney" screen still persists.

Is the high-pitched noise normal? It is clearly audible when the screen is on and I hold it near my ear. I don't remember this in the past, but this could simply be an oversight.

Thanks in advance,
Kris

[xd515]

Hello,

The noise you hear is the inverter for the LCD backlight, usually in a PDA there is a tiny flourescent tube that requires about 90 volts AC to light up the screen (any of them use white LEDs yet? ). The inverter takes the nominal 5 volts DC from the battery, and switches it on and off many hundred times a second, and feeds the pulses of electricity into a coil. The other side of the coil produces the high AC voltage. Normally these are silent, but if the coil or its ferrite core are loose, then they vibrate, I bet if you alter the screen brightness, the pitch of the wining noise will change..

Although if the coil / ferrite is loose, it shouldn't take any more power.. only a fraction of extra power is used to make the sound. You are more likely to have an intermittent fault on the low voltage / oscillator side of the inverter that is draining the battery..

I doubt a hard re-set would fix it, as that only re-sets the software... the inverter is hardware..

Kind regards,

Paul.

[supersharp]

Thanks for your insight Paul, definitely not something I'd have known! After playing with the brightness settings (while holding the device to my ear, which was an interesting task...), I was unable to perceive any audible difference in pitch. However, since you mentioned it, it does sound like there is an almost tapping noise, as if something very small might be vibrating.

Does anyone know if this sort of repair might be covered in the 1 year warranty?

Thanks again,
Kris

[skaf]

I sent my E2 to Palm for repair twice, and they exchanged the screen. In my case, the buzzing was so extreme that I could hear it from metres away. The new screens eventually started buzzing too, but nowhere as intensely as the first one.
I find it interesting that no PDAs from other companies seem to have this problem. Even my old Sony TJ25 was almost silent.

[SoS]

the whine is due to the screen or a component thereof resonating at the same frequency as the cpu or bus...under or overclocking often solves the problem!

[dmitrygr]

warpSpeed fixes whine :)

[Igor Porto]

Warpspeed is awesome, I've been using it since my T3 days. Since then, I've had a T5 and now the TX. And all of them whine, although the T3 was the worst of them.

[05Edge]

I tried WarpSpeed and it didn't seem to do anything for me so I uninstalled it the same day. I decided to give it another try recently (now that I know a little more about my LD) but I couldn't because the "trial period" was up.

Palm considers the screen noise "normal" according to their site. Basically that means they'll do nothing about a small whine.

[Igor Porto]

Are you sure you went to WarpSpeed prefs, checked the "Silence screen noise" box, and turned the software on? It should work.

[supersharp]

After installing Warpspeed, checking "silence screen noise," and enabling the program, screen noise was unchanged. After playing extensively with the clock settings, I was unable to eliminate the whine, although the pitch and volume did change with different clock settings.

Still a great program, highly recommended for those who'd want to improve battery life or boost performance.

[Igor Porto]

strange... it has killed the whine in my last 3 palms.

[05Edge]

Are you sure you went to WarpSpeed prefs, checked the "Silence screen noise" box, and turned the software on? It should work.

That's what I thought I did. It was unchanged, and shortly after I think I had a reset or something, so I took it off. When I wanted to try i t again, the code I guess had left something behind, so I was unable to do so.