Registered: Jan 2002
Location: Portland, Oregon
Posts: 10

Battery Life on Prism is Awful

Does anyone else have difficulty with the battery life on the Prism? I'm averaging less than 3 hours of time before I get the "recharge" message. This last time I got only 2 hours! Handspring has been great about it! They had me do a hard reset and run the Prism without anything extra in it to see if it was another program. It wasn't. So they sent me a replacement Prism (new). Now I'm having the same problem again, and am again trying the Prism without any extra programs. I usually only run Datebook 4, MemoPad, and Diddlebug, so it's not as if I'm doing anything fancy.

Yes, I have downloaded the Contrast program and adjusted that. Yes, I have turned off my beaming and turned off sound effects (OK, the alarm is on medium, but all other sounds are off). Yes I did adjust brightness too. And yes, I did fully charge both new Prisms before loading anything.

Could this be a recharging/cradle problem? The green light blinks properly and the little battery symbol has the correct lightning icon and then seems to be "full." The Prism also hotsynchs correctly to my USB port.

Any suggestions would help me. Am I just expecting too much out of the Prism battery in general? Could it really be the recharge? Would the Palm software have had anything to do with this? I'm at my wit's end. With 2-3 hours I cannot even get through taking notes in a business meeting!

Thanks for any response...

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Cynthia

Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Them Twin Cities
Posts: 1758

Sounds odd. I've found that decreasing the brightness to something under 25% dramatically increases battery life...

...under contant use, 3 hours may actually be just about right on the Prism... maybe you're going to want to trade it in for a mono device so battery life isn't an issue?

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Registered: Oct 2001
Location: Macau
Posts: 52

Even with three hours of constant use, my prism rarely drops below about 65%. I do have the brightness set down to 25% or so, and extended usage is not with graphic-intensive/color intensive programs. As long as your brightness is set way down, you should definitely get much longer battery life. In case the Prism isn't actually charging, you might try a soft reset in the cradle. That has helped me when my Prism stopped charging. Hope it helps!

Registered: Feb 2002
Location:
Posts: 5

This thread reminds me of a question I've been meaning to ask anyone here. Handspring says the batteries on their rechargeable PDAs have a life of two years (which can be extended, though they don't say for how long, through constant charging). For those of us who bought Prisms when they first came out, late in 2000, this is THE year. What will happen? Will we simply find out our PDAs won't work? With Handspring exiting from PDAs how will we get replacement batteries? Does this mean we now have to start scouting around for replacements?




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Registered: Nov 1999
Location: Wichita, KS
Posts: 29

2 Years with a Prism

I bought our Prism 10/2000. When I upgraded to a Clie N610 after a year (10/2001), my husband was the lucky recipient of my Prism.

Lately he is noticing that the Prism is charging erratically. Soft resets seem to help, but then the battery seems to have a "memory".

I'm going to try some of the suggestions in this thread, starting with a hard reset (thankfully we have the Backup Module)...but yes, it would be interesting to ask about those 2 yr old Prisms...

Registered: Apr 2001
Location: Aloha State, Honolulu, HI
Posts: 35

Darn batteries........

I am running a VisorPhone in my Visor Prism. Both batteries are not at their greatest at this point. I bought the VisorPhone new back in May 2001 and bought a new Prism in July 2001. The battery life of the VisorPhone sucks big time, so everytime I charge my VisorPhone, I have to charge the Prism.

My VisorPhone battery is at it's worst. I have to charge once daily, making very few phone calls. This in turn recharges my Prism and I noticed the battery life of the Prism is starting to stuck as well!

Stan

Registered: Jun 2000
Location: Santa Cruz, CA, USA
Posts: 44

Lithium Ion battery care

Hi,

Some geeky facts about Lithium Ion batteries to help:

Typical battery life of a Lithium Ion is about 500 full charge/discharge cycles. That sounds like very few but then you realise that your Prism/Vphone/Treo is only partially discharging the battery during any charge. So the reality is that you should get around 1500 charge/discharge cycles from the batteries Handspring use.

Most people have got a 'memory effect' themselves from their use of NickelCadmium batteries over the past ten years. These batteries did have a memory effect reducing their chargeability unless you fully discharged them. The opposite is true of Lithium Ion batteries. They much prefer to be topped up rather than discharged way down and then recharged. I dont think that the circuits in Visors will let the batttery discharge very much more than about 30% below top anyhow. But to get the most life out of the battery, your best bet is to keep topping off rather than waiting to see the charge warnings.

The only way to permanently damage a Li Ion battery thru misuse is to let it get really hot. Leave any Li Ion device in your car in Arizona during the summer a few times and you will see a marked degradation in the batterys charge capacity. Cold does not have the same effect - sub zero temperatures temporarily reduce capacity but unless you get really extreme the capacity always returns when the battery is warmed up to > 0C.

As to the original posting, I do expect to have to get the battery replaced in my Prism this year. I see a slight reduction in capacity but not worriesome yet. I am out of warranty now so I suppose HS will see it as a repair. Still I really can't live without my beautiful bright Prism or my new Treo (it rocks!) for that matter :-)

MetaD

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: Wichita, KS
Posts: 29

thanks, meta_dave!

That's the beauty of these boards-now I know that lithium-ion batteries don't have the "memory" problem...thanks for the info, meta_dave!

Registered: Aug 2000
Location: South Carolina
Posts: 1062

Re: Lithium Ion battery care

quote:

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Originally posted by meta_dave
Hi,
Some geeky facts about Lithium Ion batteries to help:
...The only way to permanently damage a Li Ion battery thru misuse is to let it get really hot. Leave any Li Ion device in your car in Arizona during the summer a few times and you will see a marked degradation in the batterys charge capacity. Cold does not have the same effect - sub zero temperatures temporarily reduce capacity but unless you get really extreme the capacity always returns when the battery is warmed up to > 0C.

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