Battery Drain

[jstorm1031]

I have an NR-70, about 5 mos. old. The last few weeks, I have noticed a definite decrease in battery life. I used to be able to mess with it all day, and still have battery by the end of the day, but I got it down to 24% in a very short time today. Less than 2 hrs. to be exact. The only thing different is I added Yishow about the same time this all began. I really like Yishow, but if this is the cause of the problem, I will gladly dump it (haven't bought it yet, still in the test phase.) I do recharge the battery every day, and have never let it drain itself out. Could this be the problem? I know on my cell phone, you are supposed to allow the battery to drain completely every now and then. Is this the same for a PDA? Any ideas?

:confused:

[ryber]

Actually, draining a PDA battery will shorten the life of the battery. There is no need to drain the battery in this case. However, it sounds to me like you might have a defective battery. Hopefully your Clie is still under warranty???

[Unregistered]

I think your battery problem may be caused by YiShow. I have an NR70V and the battery was doing just fine until I installed YiShow. The first thing I noticed after installation was that it almost drained the battery by the minute. I had some other problems as well, so I uninstalled it and then installed it again a few times over. After the last time that I installed it (yesterday), the battery seems to be doing ok. I can at least say that it does not go down by 5% within a few minutes, like it used to do. Still, I will need to use YiShow a bit longer before I can say that my battery problem is definitely over.

I'd be really happy if somebody could explain why this problem is occurring.

[jstorm1031]

Thanks - what you described is exactly what I was seeing. I could sit and watch the % drop - about 1% every 1-2 minutes. One thing that may have increased this effect.... a few weeks ago I was trying a different launcher, which will remain unnamed, but it caused a complete lockup in my Clie. When I did a soft reset, it went into a reset loop, and my only choice was to do a hard reset. This is about when the problem started. Today, I noticed that the brightness was on full (I usually keep it at 50% or less.) I backed it back down to 50%, and my battery stayed at 100% all day, with Yishow. It may be premature, but this may have been the problem.

I was just wondering if having a full color wallpaper uses more battery than the plain white, esp. when backlit at full.

Jim

[trollmaster]

I use Yishow and the battery doesn't seem to drain that quickly, however for some reason the brightness suddenly increases when I put a new background on

[piannetta]

I installed Facer 1.6 on my Clie and experienced what you guys have with YiShow. It seems to me that these newer launchers are trying to get too smart and flashy, and the pay back is reduced battery life.

I dumped Facer and now I'm back enjoying decent battery life.

Cheers,
Pete

[vmax]

jstorm1031 when you have a problem with a loop after a soft reset you can also do a "warm" reset, this removes all the system exceptions (hack, other default launchers etc. will have to be reactivated)
But you will not loose any data:


To perform a warm reset:
[list=1]
Press and hold the Page Up button on your handheld.
Using the reset tip tool (or a similar object without a sharp tip), gently press the reset button inside the hole on the back panel of your handheld.
When the Palm Computing Platform logo appears on the screen, release the Page Up button.
[/list=1]

[jstorm1031]

Thank you very much. I have never heard of a warm reset. I will have to try that next time I get in trouble (which happens a little too often...I fancy myself a PDA hacker :-) )

[flighter]

Draining the battery in my case was caused by the audioplayer. I left the play in background option on. Even when no mp3 file was playing, i still heared a soft shhhhhhh in my headphones.

[jstorm1031]

I did an experiment today.... I kept the backlight at about 45% and used the Clie extensively throughout the day. No hit on battery, stayed 100%. Turned backlight to full, played one game for 10 minutes, battery dropped to 84%. That pretty much is conclusive - Yishow with full backlight takes a much greater power hit than the Clie w/o Yishow at full Backlight. And, Yishow with backlight at half brightness has no appreciable effect on the battery. With that satisfied, I will probably purchase Yishow, as I really like it's layout and file management capabilities. Thanks to all who responded to my post.

Jim