VisorCentral.com - Prism battery life

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VisorCentral.com (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/index.php)
- Visor Prism (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/forumdisplay.php?forumid=19)
-- Prism battery life (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/showthread.php?threadid=10638)

Posted by darton on 01-06-2001 12:35 AM:

I'd like to know what kind of battery life people are getting on their Prisms. I just got one for xmas and its great, but Handspring says the battery should last 1-2 weeks with normal use. I don't know what they consider normal use, but it took me an hour just to win my first hand of solitaire. Seriously though, after about 3 days of use, I am down to ~20%. I have a couple of 1 hour meetings a day for which I must take notes. Throw in another 30 minutes a day just for fun. I don't think this is a lot to ask from my "personal assistant". I haven't got close to 1 week without need for a recharge. I've tried lowering the light level to 50% but that didn't help much.
Also, after reading about the battery power Easter egg, I kept tapping it and would see the battery power fluctuate up to +/- 10 percentage points with each tap. Does this make sense?

Thanks.

Posted by rdinterm on 01-06-2001 03:08 AM:

I have found the battery % to go up or down 5% at any given time. Mine goes from 100% to 95% in about a minute, but seems to level off.

If I use my Prism heavily throughout the day (including time on OmniSky), I'll burn it down to about 60%-70% in a day. I purchased an extra Cradle, so I just top it off each night whether at home or at the office (I travel alot). I wish Handspring would come out with a USB/Sync Cord travel charger all in one. However, I actually HotSync'd via IR with my laptop when I was traveling this week. It worked great, dropped the battery about 5% in one Full Sync though.
Overall, I am pleased with battery life...I just hope it does not deteriorate quickly.
I keep my screen at just less than 50%, gives me plenty of backlight.

__________________
Ray
m505

Posted by darton on 01-06-2001 03:32 AM:

That sounds a lot better than what I'm getting. My wife just finished playing Hardball for an hour and a half after a full recharge, and the battery is now at 74%.

Posted by rdinterm on 01-06-2001 03:46 AM:

I'm not familiar with HArdball, but if is a program that uses lots of changing colors, it will suck down the battery life much faster. I use Chrome to enhance the non-color applications, and found when I had it set with a scheme with lots of color (including the background) battery life drained much faster.
So I went back to a white background, and use highlight color all around.

If you don't have it, you should get it...really nice color enhancements.

__________________
Ray
m505

Posted by darton on 01-06-2001 03:49 AM:

Hardball is a freeware game like the old "Breakout" game on the old Atari's. It's black and white.

This is not looking good for me.

Thanks for the help.

Posted by Babylon5 on 01-06-2001 05:00 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by darton
I'd like to know what kind of battery life people are getting on their Prisms. I just got one for xmas and its great, but Handspring says the battery should last 1-2 weeks with normal use
...
Thanks.

I also don't seem to be getting much life out of mine. I charge it full and do just a few things and it goes down. I doubt I will get 3 hours or so let alone 6. I have never left it get below 50% though. it was low today, about 52% and I just recharged. I am going to charge it full again, then reset runtime (program that keeps track of on time) and let it get low to about 50% again. Then see how long I get.

Can others try this as well? Runtime will still work as long as we don't charge it in between 8o)

If I get 3 hours runtime then 6 should be about right for 50%.

This is with the brightness at 25% BTW. We have to have some kind of stardard

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Posted by darton on 01-06-2001 02:27 PM:

I've been looking for a timer like that. Where can I find "Runtime"

Posted by sanchan on 01-06-2001 08:10 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by darton
That sounds a lot better than what I'm getting. My wife just finished playing Hardball for an hour and a half after a full recharge, and the battery is now at 74%.

Ummmm, wouldn't that be good? I mean, a full hour of gaming and a loss of just 25 percent power? Doesn't that fall in line with about four hours total continuous use? Or does the indicator percentage value rise as the power drains? I dunno, I have a Visor Dlx and an hour of gaming (pocket chess) depletes my triple A's about that much. (I think.)

Posted by vtaia on 01-07-2001 09:26 PM:

I have just used my Prism in my first "real world" test of battery life. Yesterday I was in a class for 8 hours using my Prism off and on with a Stowaway using mainly WordSmith 1.0 to take notes. I am very happy to say that the Prism made it through the day with flying colors (no pun intended At days end I had about 35% left, but I must say I used it substantially all day.

Recharged in less than an hour, ready to go for Monday. If you haven't purchased WordSmith yet (www.bluenomad.com) you are missing out on the best word processor for Palm.

Reid

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Posted by VTL on 01-07-2001 11:20 PM:

I'm not getting anywhere near a week's use. That said, I use AvantGo as my main source of news, so I probably spend a solid hour to an hour and a half reading articles; I regularly get online with my Visor (either via a Minstrel or SpringPort); and also use it for journaling purposes, to track phone calls, meetings, etc. So I doubt my use is typical.

Posted by Babylon5 on 01-09-2001 04:34 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by vtaia
I have just used my Prism in my first "real world" test of battery life. Yesterday I was in a class for 8 hours using my Prism off and on with a Stowaway using mainly WordSmith 1.0 to take notes. I am very happy to say that the Prism made it through the day with flying colors (no pun intended At days end I had about 35% left, but I must say I used it substantially all day.

Recharged in less than an hour, ready to go for Monday.

How many actualy hours would you say you used it? Mine would not last at all long anough to do 8 hours of classes.
Mine seems to drain rather fast. My Deluxe also sucked batteries, even brand new ones like ultras or just regular duracells etc... I think I keep getting bad Visors or I have some software that somehow is sucking the life right out of them. I even keep my stowaway driver off as that is supposed to drain the Visor faster even when not using it.

quote:

If you haven't purchased WordSmith yet (www.bluenomad.com) you are missing out on the best word processor for Palm.

Great program, been a beta tester all along. Purchased it for $19 since I was testing it early

Recommend it. One thing is it is a huge application. Oh well..
[/B][/QUOTE]

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Posted by ruexp67 on 01-09-2001 08:31 PM:

Chiming in with my $0.02

I noticed that in th efirst week I owned it the battery life was a little shore. I only had one cradle (at home) and I remember BARELY making it through one particular day. However, I was playing a ton of games that day including Rally 1000 with is color with a bright green background. I also had the brightness at the default setting.

I now have a cradle at work so I charge it periodicaly throughout the day. Two minutes on the cradle really does a substantial ammount of charging. I do not travel, so I do not have to worry about it running low when away from a cradle. I have also since knocked the brightness down to about 25%, which is still more than enough in virtually every condition.

I think HS's assumtion about "normal usage" would not apply to anyone that regularly scopes out online discussion boards about the device. To paraphrase Groucho Marx, "I would not join any club that would have ME as a member!" I think we are all out of thier "norm" by definition.

I have read interviews with Hawkins and some Palm people that threw out staggering numbers like 80% of Palm users do not load any third party apps. I find this impossible to believe, but that is what they said. I guess they are targeting this at them.

Posted by darton on 01-10-2001 01:57 AM:

OK, So I used Runtime (a truly useful utility btw) and I got 5:50 to 20% battery power with the brightness at a half setting. So I guess Handspring got it right there. But this only translated into 2 1/2 days. My problem is what Handspring must consider "normal" use. Are they really going for the business user? The student? This isn't going to cut it. If I use this thing infrequently enough to stretch that 5:50 over a week (never mind 2), then I really wasted my $400.
I think what they mean by "normal" use is using it for 6 hours in a day and dropping it in the cradle overnight. They could have then said that under "normal" use the batteries have a life of 2 years.
I can live with this though. I'm enamored enough with the color, and the possibilties of expansion (if those darn springboards start dropping in price), and the large number of Palm apps available to keep it though.
How about a battery pack spring board to give me an extra 6 hours for those long flights?

Thanks for the replies.

Posted by gadgetguru on 01-10-2001 02:50 AM:

There is an emergency charger available from a company. It uses a cable and plugs into the sync port. I think there is a link on the VC home page to a review.

Rick

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www.visorsolutions.com

Posted by Matthew Nichols on 01-10-2001 04:39 AM:

I think normal use might be considered if you only use built-in apps. Most programs take more power than they do, plus they didn't go to any trouble to color enable the built-in apps so they should take even less.

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Posted by nitehawk on 01-10-2001 04:46 AM:

I'm perfectly satisfied with the prism battery run time...

After having a vdlx for a year and feeding it alkalines and then trying to keep a set of nimh batts charged (they would only last a couple of days)the prism is a dream to use.

I agree with the previous post regarding HS basing life on only using built in apps.

Whats the prob? Just pop it in the cradle every other day or get a travel charger and keep it by your bedside.

Posted by Babylon5 on 01-10-2001 07:25 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by nitehawk
I'm perfectly satisfied with the prism battery run time...

After having a vdlx for a year and feeding it alkalines and then trying to keep a set of nimh batts charged (they would only last a couple of days)the prism is a dream to use.

I agree with the previous post regarding HS basing life on only using built in apps.

Whats the prob? Just pop it in the cradle every other day or get a travel charger and keep it by your bedside.

The problem for me is I don't even get that 6 hours. I don't mind charging it overnight but if I am out for the day with it, I want to get my 6 hours. Even 5 would be nice before I need to charge it again. Mine seems to be dropping fast and I don't think I could get 3 hours of actual runtime with it.

I can't even test it as it drops down to 50% so fast I am scared to let it get lower.

I need to play and see if I actually get more time from it and maybe the battery meter is just scaring me.

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