Battery issue on hw6515

[andybtsn]

Hi,

The battery on my HW6515, is rather worrying to say the least!

I usually charge it fully overnight, and then take it off charge at 8am. By 12 o'clock the battery is on about 30%, and this is with it not being used much!

I press the power button and it turns off, i did this at 70% battery level, turned it back on 15 minutes later, it was 61%.

I don't understand, how can i save the battery from dying?

Is there a better battery i can buy maybe?

Thanks

[mike142sl]

Do you have an SD card in the slot all the time, these can draw power at an alarming rate.

[Charlie]

I would imagine that have the phone function of the unit turned on is what is mainly draining your battery. You can also adjust the screen brightness to save battery power as well as disabling bluetooth etc when not in use.

[recrick]

My 6515 will quite happily last from Friday afternoon to Monday morning with the phone switched on and a mini-SD card in it. Bluetooth sucks the power though and also if I put the Ambicom wifi SD card in.

[briandlees]

I operate my 6515 with phone and bluetooth on, a mini-SD card and SD card installed. The cards don't use much power unless you are accessing them, which is most unlikely once the device is switched off.

The thing which burns up the power is a wifi card, and although I have never got that far I have worked out it could drain the battery in 4 hours.

With my configuration (minus wifi card) I would expect to charge it up at least once in 24 hours. The thing you have got to remember is that it is a phone, and the amount of time the battery lasts on 'standby' is rather disingeneous; if a manufacturer says it lasts 20 hours on standby, it may well do but if the 'phone rings in the last few hours you could get a few seconds of talk time before it goes dead. Hence how long it lasts when you do nothing to it isn't really the point - it's how much power you have left to use the device when you want to.

I have to say that I was myself disappointed in the battery life; the device is obviously designed to have frequent fast perhaps brief charges to keep topping it up. I have the USB dock (don't forget to enable fast USB charging on the device), a car adaptor and a battery backup which together mean that I don't really have to worry about battery life, unless I want to use wifi. I never use the wifi unless I have worked out in advance how I am going to charge it back up because it uses about 25% of the battery per hour.

My recommendation for a battery charger you can find at http://www.addonsworld.co.uk/section.php/2763/0

You may laugh at it, but it is very simple. At £5.99 it takes 4 x AA batteries and can recharge the iPAQ several times. Wherever you are in the world these days you can normally get your hands on some AA batteries in an emergency (or take them out of something else) so it's more reliable in my book that the more expensive alternatives. I sometimes use it when using the GPS on foot because that's another thing which burns up the battery.