Battery Life (Drive)

[PDAJah]

When I first received my LD I didn't charge it; I waited until the battery was low and then I charged the LD for 7.5 hours. I repeated this three times - complete discharge and then charge for 7/8 hours.

In the last two days I have used my LD as follows and I have 10% battery charge left:

- ebook reading: 3 hours
- one sync Avantgo over WiFi (really hits the battery with 10% loss in charge)
- full hotsyncs: 5 including 2 s/w installs
- PIM and other application : 30 minutes
- web over wifi: 10 minutes
- email over wifi: 5 minutes
- BT keyboard with LD: 10 minutes

In summary, wifi with an Avantgo sync really kills the battery. But overall I could just about get 2 days of use. How does this compare with your experience and what was your battery management strategy?
:)

[alcoolj]

Well, charged when I got it completely. Many hours. Then I used it for lots of different things, mostly playing installing, testing wifi and so on.
When the battery was empty, I recharged for about 7-8 hours, then I tested my favorite action: playing mp3 while i let the screen always on. I had no time to read ebooks, but I think it must be quite similar because the screen has the biggest energy hunger and the hd was rotating for playing the music anyway.
All together: 4 1/2 hours then 4 percent energy left. After 15 minutes (everything off) I turned on and had 8 percent again. I could play another 15 minutes then I recharged.
For me its quite enough. Probably it will be better after some more complete recharges.

[Adrenochrome]

I just watched my first full-length movie at full screen and full frame rate using TCPMP. A 1:45 minute movie brought my battery from roughly full charge down to 73%. Not bad.

[Kelanth]

Oh! No! The battery of LifeDrive is Lithium-Ion. This battery as the battery of portable telephone, don't demand cycles of loads discharge. Indeed therefore the battery is damaged, in how much does not have effect memory.
For the best life of this battery, NEVER discharge completaly.
Is better charge the battery once to the day or however as soon as it comes down under 60%. It will last very more.

From Web-Site of Palm:
The battery in a LifeDrive mobile manager is a 1600mAH Rechargeable Lithium-Ion battery. Unlike older batteries, the LifeDrive mobile manager battery does not require you to run the battery down between charges. It is designed for high power devices and can be recharged whenever it is convenient for you.

Kelanth

[PDAJah]

@Kelanth,

okay - but why is the battery life improving after each discharge/charge cycle? I used my LD today for a wifi Avantgo sync and 45 minutes of ebook reading and the battery went from 100% to 98%! I did not have this level of performance after the first charge. I have also found that the discharge/charge also improved life of my replaceable Nokia 9500 battery (I used two batteries and one lasts 30% longer than the other because I discharged/charged three times before normal use).

[Kelanth]

Is normal when the battery is new.
After some charge/discahrge the battery takes to work in optimal way. I repeat, for chemistry of the batteries to lithium to unload them completely is harmful for its average life.
Your speech is valid only for the old Ni-Mh batteries.
Therefore as it is useless to load them for seven eight hours the charge of battery stops to load the battery after two or three hours (it depends on how much is unloads the battery).

[SoS]

Is normal when the battery is new.
After some charge/discahrge the battery takes to work in optimal way. I repeat, for chemistry of the batteries to lithium to unload them completely is harmful for its average life.
Your speech is valid only for the old Ni-Mh batteries.
Therefore as it is useless to load them for seven eight hours the charge of battery stops to load the battery after two or three hours (it depends on how much is unloads the battery).

this kind of use will not completely discharge the battery! The machine will power off with ~40-60% or so of battery capacity left anyway...check out some of junglemikes posts on this topic...he is the batterymeister.

[SoS]

I just watched my first full-length movie at full screen and full frame rate using TCPMP. A 1:45 minute movie brought my battery from roughly full charge down to 73%. Not bad.

Not bad??? That is very good I would say. I have seen a complaint that someone couldnt play all of LoR on a single charge so this is a great result. btw what were the encoding parameters (size, framerate, bitrate etc etc)

[Kelanth]

this kind of use will not completely discharge the battery! The machine will power off with ~40-60% or so of battery capacity left anyway...check out some of junglemikes posts on this topic...he is the batterymeister.

For to close the question:

Batteries in a portable world.

www.buchmann.ca

In Particular: Chapter 10 "How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries"

Little post from web-site:

Simple Guidelines

Charge the Li-ion often, except before a long storage. Avoid repeated deep discharges.
Keep the Li-ion battery cool. Prevent storage in a hot car. Never freeze a battery.
If your laptop is capable of running without a battery and fixed power is used most of the time, remove the battery and store it in a cool place.
Avoid purchasing spare Li-ion batteries for later use. Observe manufacturing date when purchasing. Do not buy old stock, even if sold at clearance prices.

[carltonb]

Is ther an application that will keep track or monitor battery usage/life, like the one I use for my laptop?

carltonb

[palmgoondo]

hi, any one can advice me where to download tcpmp for my LD? does it really help in watching movies? i tried watching a movie on the default media but there is a lot of lags.... :confused:

palmgoondoo

[Unreg1stered]

I just watched my first full-length movie at full screen and full frame rate using TCPMP. A 1:45 minute movie brought my battery from roughly full charge down to 73%. Not bad.


I'm assuming the movie was on the SD card and not on the HD?

Another reason why I think they should've just gone with a dual slot design instead of a HD. That or have a removable battery, but they chose to do neither. I like my LD but am hoping the next high end palm will improve in this and other [dynamic heap] areas.

[Adrenochrome]

I'm assuming the movie was on the SD card and not on the HD?

Another reason why I think they should've just gone with a dual slot design instead of a HD. That or have a removable battery, but they chose to do neither. I like my LD but am hoping the next high end palm will improve in this and other [dynamic heap] areas.
Nope. Off the HD. It looked fantastic. I don't know how TCPMP does it, but it plays at full frame rate and it adjusts the size on the fly. After watching half the movie in standard letterbox, I decided I wanted to zoom in just a little, so I chose "Best Fit +20%" on TCPMP and it zoomed in to about a regular HDTV aspect ratio, and still looked fantastic.

[Adrenochrome]

By the way, viewing an entire 1:45 minute movie off the HD on full brightness only knocked the battery down to about 72%.

[Unreg1stered]

By the way, viewing an entire 1:45 minute movie off the HD on full brightness only knocked the battery down to about 72%.

Can you give some more specs on your setup? Was it right after a reboot, film size, frame rate, format, encoding, etc. I want to believe it but I just watched 20minutes at half brightness and it took my battery down ~15-20% from a starting point of about 85% (Xvid toon-176MB, 44kHz Stereo, 640x480, 23.98 fps). I of course get about your performance if I run it off the SD card though. Did you also look at the battery a few moments later as there is sometimes a lag in it's refresh.

I'd be interested in seeing if I can duplicate your results on my LD.

thanks

[Adrenochrome]

Well, I've already deleted the movie, so I can't say for sure what its specs were. It was 699mb. I've got it on my home computer, so I'll check it tonight for you. It was an unconverted xvid.

The battery was charged by sitting in a cradle for several hours, so I'm sure it started at 100%. I have noticed sometimes, though, that even when fully charged, the battery will read as low as 90%. Not sure why, but often after a lot of use, it won't have moved much, so my guess is that on mine at least, the LD has trouble telling when the battery is above 90% or below 10%.

I didn't check the battery later, but in my experience the battery tends to rebound rather than degrade after the LD has been off for a while.

I'll try to get you the specs on the movie tonight.

[Adrenochrome]

Turns out I do have a copy with me, but I can't extract the info from it you want. It's also an avi and not a dvix, and 1:37, not 1:45, if any of that makes a differenece.

Aside from plain "properties," is there a way to find the resolution, etc?

[prayer4eev]

Adrenochrome
1. download free software "gspot". it will show you all information about specs of your avi file. and divx is not file format, it's codec. avi file can be encoded using divx, xvid, etc.
2. well, charge drops not linear (and also battery indicator on palm1 devices i think is not very precise)... so u can work with your pda 5 hours and battery charge will drop to 50% but then u will loose 50% of charge left - in 1 hour, like example. so it would be really good if u could make test till point where LD would turn off.

as i understand on LD it should be about 3 hours from HDD and more (i dunno how much) from SD for movie playback :)
same like on T5.

[PDAJah]

Okay - just achieved 4.5 hours of ebook reading over 2 days including my average wireless (wifi & BT) and PIM usage and I had 8% battery life left. I know a few people suggested that you don't need to discharge (e.g. 8%) before you fully charge (for over 6 hours) to obtain good battery life. But my battery is getting better by the day and the discharge in not that irregular either. Between 100 and 80% takes a long time, between 70 and 50% is a bit quicker but from 50% to 10% the loss is nearly linear. Perhaps theory and real life experience can differ!
:)

[prayer4eev]

PDAJah
well, and again... "average wireless (wifi & BT) and PIM usage" can be 10min. and can be 2 hours. right? ;)

well, not linear is it.. all i wanted to say that from 100% to 50% it takes more time than from 50% to 0%.

[PDAJah]

@prayer4eev - sorry mate, I meant wireless & PIM as described in my first post, which is about 20/25 minutes in total for wireless and 30/40 minutes of PIM. Overall, as long as you avoid heavy HDD writing (e.g. Avantgo sync over WiFi) then the LD battery life seems very acceptable.

[Adrenochrome]

For what it's worth, I just watched an hour of video and the battery is at 73%. 576x240 at 24fps.