98 replies to this topic

[toon9]

Further to my earlier post whch can be found here : http://www.modaco.co...222771-s15.html

I received my replacement C550 replacement, Tuesday 19th.
It was charged for fully 16 hours before I began using it on Wednesday 20th
My usage on day 1 saw the battery drain from 100% @ 06:30 to 60% @ 16:30 (loss of 40% @ 4% per/hour)
My phone was synchronised with PC on The Wednesday eveing thus charging it as well, I guess for a period of approx 45 minutes.
Phone turned off overnight.

Phone battery level at 51% when turned on at 07:00 Thursday
Down to a critical level of 5% as of 11:20am on Thursday
Thats a loss of 46% in a 4 hours 20 minutes (approx 11% per hour !!)

The call times as of the time when I had to being recharging on the Thursday were as follows:
Total of 1 hour 10 minutes and 43 seconds ( Yes - virtually nothing !!!)
Broken down as 16:09 Incoming, 1:46 outgoing and 52:48 data

During all this period of time - Bluetooth has never been activated and signal has always been reported as full strength

At this rate, which can only be described as light usage - the battery would only last a maximum of 25 hours a minimum of 10 !!

Suffice to say I have been on to OCS & upgrade department. Upgrade deferred & C550 (second one) being returned.
I really did hope the the first instance of the battery life being poor was going to be an isolated case, as I could have got used to living with the C550.
Unfortunately though the second one has suffered from the same problem and it is somethign I personally cannot live with.

A bit frustrating really.

I can see by both by the lack of issues with the C550 being posted here and elsewhere - coupled with the postings of support for this handset - that my case is probably a one off.

I'd really like to hear from other users if this turns out to be something a bit more widespread.

Now......wheres my faithfull C500............aaahh, back to normality.

Cheers.
Any views are welcome.

[Dr_StrangeTrick]

Hi Toon9, I received my C550 on 15/07/05 and it did not finish its first 16 hour charge until lunchtime the following day.

Since then I have been using it daily (approx 10 mins calls, approx 6 activesync's over the air and a few hours sat nav) and my battery gave out today (21/07/05) again at lunchtime.

[hotphil]

My battery life appears excellent. I fear toon may have been unlucky.

[toon9]

hotphil, on Jul 22 2005, 04:35, said:

My battery life appears excellent. I fear toon may have been unlucky.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm feel that way too.
Cheers for the replies. Just out of curiosity How long was your initial cahrge for ?
I must confess to not seing it documented anwhere.

My first handset, more through luck than good judegement therfore had an initial chrage of somewhere in the region of 17.5 hours.
The second was less than that - aroundabout 14 3/4 hours.

I'm pretty sure that should have been sufficient, certainly in the case of the first handset.
Is it documented anywhere - the initilial charge period? - I've looked again and can't find it.

[paulrw]

The clue is in the GPRS usage - look at the battery life estimates in the manual and it says 5 hours calls, 2 hours GPRS.  Your experience seems to fit with that.  I only normally use GPRS for mail sync, and got over 3  days without charge before I got below 50% battery.  Don't really understand why GPRS should be so heavy on the battery, but personally can't see an hour a day of GPRS as being light usage.
I have now got into the habit of syncing/charging every morning, takes about 2-3 hours to get a full charge from a USB connection.  Can't speak for the initial charge as my battery arrived fully charged.

[guanche]

No problems here with my C550.. I use my phone for listing to music quite often; sync'ing once a day; calling 10-15 times a day and leaving the phone on at night... Now i'll have to recharge after every 4 or 5 days.

I did notice when I leave Bluetooth on, i'll have to recharge every two days.

[pd.ryder]

My C550's battery seems unstopable! Bt on all the time, left on overnight, mp3's for an hour at a time several times a day and a few calls of 5 mins each. Charging about every 3 days.
I didn't give it an initial charge either as it arrived 100% and ready to go.

[Chris Edwards]

paulrw, on Jul 22 2005, 00:29, said:

The clue is in the GPRS usage - look at the battery life estimates in the manual and it says 5 hours calls, 2 hours GPRS.

I agree, your 52 minutes of GPRS usage is why you're seeing such short battery life.

[ptwilliams]

I experienced similar problems to this with my first handset.

I was using no GPRS at the time.

It had a 12 hr charge (even though it was delivered 80% or more charged)

Didnt even manage til 8pm (from about a 9am startup) before battery low errors were appearing.

I am now on my 3rd handset and this one seems ok.  One charge and now battery is lasting 2-3 days.

[toon9]

ptwilliams, on Jul 23 2005, 16:21, said:

I experienced similar problems to this with my first handset.

I was using no GPRS at the time.

It had a 12 hr charge (even though it was delivered 80% or more charged)

Didnt even manage til 8pm (from about a 9am startup) before battery low errors were appearing.

I am now on my 3rd handset and this one seems ok.  One charge and now battery is lasting 2-3 days.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well in a strange kind of way I'm glad you had probelems - 'cos it confimrs I'm not cracking up !
You are teh only one that has reported any problems similar with the C550, cheers.
I can't believe there is nothing wrong with it !

I'm glad you hit luck 3rd time round - I just didn't have the confidence to go for a third handset.
Subsequently today I've been checking out other handsets available on Orange, namely the Nokia 6680 - apologies of the bad language.
Nothing, however, I think will compete with the Windows operating system on the smartphone.

I'm thinking of trying for third time lucky with the C550..............mmmmmm

One thing I do miss, is that when using a bluetooth headset and the keypad is locked on the C550 - it will still voice dial a number - the C500 fails to do that. The keypad needs to be unlocked on the C500.

[Thumper Net]

ive had my C550 from friday. did not charge it as the battery had it linkeed to the computer while i installed and uninstalled games ect . saturday on all day no extra boost in the battery from the lappy , made a few calls , visited modaco on the internet as well as msn and all i lost was from 9am till 23.30 was 1 stripe off the battery meter, seems to me better than the c500 which on the same test lost half the battery , remember batterys are not their best untill they have had a few full charges  

[TheBadger]

I got mine on thursday (21/7), fully charged on arrival... The battery ran out early this morning (24/7) and I've been playing games and watching movies and listening to mp3s pretty much solidly... so the battery life doesnt appear to be too bad.

[Pagemakers]

Phone on charge all night last night.

Today - NO phone calls or web browsing.

1pm - 3 Bars
5pm - 2 Bars

My old C500 is still on full......

[Pondrew]

  Sorry to hear it Pagemakers. Here's hoping that the batterylife improves with time...

[Pagemakers]

This C550 I'm sure has us all confused as hell.

On one hand the screen is absolutely stunning and T9 is better.  On the other hand the keypad is absolutely awful, the screen keeps going so dim you can't read it and the battery seems 30% worse.

Like most people I talk to they still use BOTH phones - old and new.

Roll on the SDA II family.  Same as the 550, but with what looks like a decent keypad.

(Only my opinion of course).

Edited by Pagemakers, 25 July 2005 - 06:04 PM.

[Pondrew]

SDA II news item

  No camera?!

[Pagemakers]

SDA II Music....  Camera

[Pondrew]

SDA II Music.... Media buttons    

[Pagemakers]

Pagemakers, on Jul 25 2005, 16:08, said:

Phone on charge all night last night.

Today - NO phone calls or web browsing.

1pm - 3 Bars
5pm - 2 Bars

My old C500 is still on full......

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Today:

The same as above apart from the C550 went to 2 bars at 1900.  The C500 next to it is still smirking away on full.

Maybe tomorrow I will try swapping the batteries  :idea:

[pd.ryder]

Replacement 550 received (cus of probs with in-call volume control) with 90% charge already in the battery. Charged to full at 1900h then left on overnight with BT on discoverable, about 3 calls today but little else. 25hrs later 3 bars or 79% left. E200 would have been down to 1 or 2 bars by now.

I'm not too displeased with my upgrade (oh, and the in-call volume works now    )