98 replies to this topic

[chedmaster]

im still on my first charge after 48 hours and cant get it to run down! its on 55% and have done a few infrareds but BT wouldnt work from c500 to this so i havent used it. bit o' music, few calls etc.

interesting that the c500 battery is 1050mah and c550 is 1150mah.

my first c500 had brilliant battery life, second one left a lot to be desired but still good (both charged in the same way throughout life) so maybe the batteries just vary?

[Pagemakers]

It's 2310 now.  Both phones not used all day from a full overnight charge.

(Disregard the screen time-out as nether phone was used).

Attached Files

•  500.bmp   113.49K   123 downloads
•  550.bmp   225.05K   119 downloads

Edited by Pagemakers, 26 July 2005 - 10:13 PM.

[drblow]

Do you use smartmonitor on your homescreen?  My battery has been behaving very oddly.  I went to bed with it fully charged & by lunchtime the next day it was reading 39%.  So I gave it a quick 30 mins charge, and it read 45%.  I then looked at it about an hour later & smartmonitor said it was at 59%!  :shock:

[toon9]

Pagemakers, on Jul 26 2005, 22:12, said:

It's 2310 now.  Both phones not used all day from a full overnight charge.

(Disregard the screen time-out as nether phone was used).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Excellent postings !
You have carried this discussion forward far beyond what I could have done.

My C550 has been boxed up since last Thursday !
My C500, from fully charged on Sunday morning, haevily used over Sunday, Monday and Tuesday has just warned me that the battery is low - 15%
Now - where did I put taht charger........?

BTW, what did you use for screen capture from handset ?
cheers in advance.

[Thumper Net]

i have done a test as well with my C500 and my C550 both were fully charged at the start , this satarted on sunday ,switched on at 8am till 1am , both phones have had a 18 minute call and ive played the wmp10 for 45 minutes with music and 30 minutes of videos , both phones had the same music and videos .monday phoned for 12 minutes and played games for 30 mins .
Battery state on the C500 is giving me the warning to charge the battery and the C550 still has just under half its power ( 2 bars in the battery are displayed ) so by going on that test the C550 is much better than the C500 in batterywise.
do remember a battery is not at its best till atleast a few full charges have been made, so really compairing the 2 phones at the moment cannot really be done fairly on the battery side that is , the rest is another story    

[Pagemakers]

I've swapped the battery over in the phones for today's test and will post  my findings later.

IMHO - The battery life of my 550 so far is just a bit better then my E200

Toon: I use Smart SS for the screen captures.

[Jay3gsm]

Why do you guys charge the batteries for 16, 17 hours initially? There's no need anymore. Same as recharging, why wait til the battery is run down? I charge my phone pretty much every day, give it a top up charge and it runs phone. The new lithium ion and lithium polymer batteries are pretty much designed to be used in this way, for better performance. As such I've had no battery issues with my C550, even over the weekend when I'd left my charger at work I lost one bar from Friday night to Monday morning.

[Pagemakers]

Pagemakers, on Jul 27 2005, 09:52, said:

I've swapped the battery over in the phones for today's test and will post  my findings later.

IMHO - The battery life of my 550 so far is just a bit better then my E200

Toon: I use Smart SS for the screen captures.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well here's today's findings:

As you can see above I have swapped my C500/550 batteries around to confirm if I had a faulty battery.

The results are staggering.....

Both phones charged all night and left at home while I went to work.

I have just arrived home to find the C500 still on FULL battery and the C550 has switch off with NO battery power whatsoever!

Needless to say the C550's going back tomorrow.

I am amazed why the battery on my C550 should drain so quickly in standby, yet other users are reporting much better battery life (well a few are).

[Confucious]

Well, I forgot to charge mine last night. It had been charged overnight the previous night and with light usage, no BT but checking for emails (really must remember to turn that off when I get home) the batterey was as the pancake this morning.

Not impressed.

My C500 would last 4-5 days with similar usage aklthough I noticed a marked degradation in the C500's battery life after the 4.2.11 upgrade - especially with BT usage.

Only 1 day of battery life is not acceptable -not sure wether to send the phone back within my 14 days - apart fgrom the appalling batery the phone is great!

[Pondrew]

If not an explanation then a contributing factor to the C550 quickly running out the C500 battery is that a C500 battery is just 1050mah while the C550 has a BETTER (read higher capacity) 1150mah battery.  :?:

Pagemakers, on Jul 27 2005, 21:55, said:

Well here's today's findings:

As you can see above I have swapped my C500/550 batteries around to confirm if I had a faulty battery.

The results are staggering.....

Both phones charged all night and left at home while I went to work.

I have just arrived home to find the C500 still on FULL battery and the C550 has switch off with NO battery power whatsoever!

Needless to say the C550's going back tomorrow.

I am amazed why the battery on my C550 should drain so quickly in standby, yet other users are reporting much better battery life (well a few are).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[george7]

From what I've heard, when you first get your phone, you should fully charge it, then use it until the battery is fully discharged, then fully charge it, then let the battery fully discharge. After this you shouldn't let the battery go below 30%

[Pagemakers]

I've found what the problem is!!!!

In power management settings there is an option for "Display Timeout" (It is a known problem (from user comments) on the C550 that even with this option set to "never" the screen does turn so dim it is unreadable after the time which is set by the "Backlight Timeout Option").  However, with the "Display Timeout" option set to "never" on the C550 the battery drains at a rate of 10% per hour giving your phone a  battery life of approx 10 hours!!!!

Turn the "Display Timeout" to anything other than "never" and your C550 battery will be almost as good as the C500's.

The problem now is WHY does the battery drain so dramatically on this setting.

I for one don't like my display going blank after 30/60/90 seconds etc and trust that someone somewhere is working on a fix.

Edited by Pagemakers, 28 July 2005 - 05:18 PM.

[Pondrew]

Pagemakers, on Jul 28 2005, 16:21, said:

I've found what the problem is!!!!

In power management settings there is an option for "Display Timeout" (It is a known problem on the C550 that even with this option set to "never" the screen does turn so dim it is unreadable after the time which is set by the "Backlight Timeout Option").  However, with the "Display Timeout" option set to "never" on the C550 the battery drains at a rate of 10% per hour giving your phone a  battery life of approx 10 hours!!!!

Turn the "Display Timeout" to anything other than "never" and your C550 battery will be almost as good as the C500's.

The problem now is WHY does the battery drain so dramatically on this setting.

I for one don't like my display going blank after 30/60/90 seconds etc and trust that someone somewhere is working on a fix.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Okaaaay. So you've been telling the C550 to keep the screen on at all times and wonder why the battery life is poor!?

The backlight consumes power, the screen also consumes power. Any device (MDA III, MDA Compact, E200, C500) will quickly run down the battery if you set screen turn off to never! Even if the backlight is off! Do a test on the C500 if you don't believe me...

As for the problem with a dim screen, I'm afraid it's due to the implementation/construction and technology involved (QVGA screen). The backlight is required for the screen to be visable until they redesign it.

Anyway, glad the problem is resolved and hope this helps the other guys with the same problem.

[Pagemakers]

No  I've NOT been telling it to keep the backlight on at all.

I've been telling it to keep the "Display" on.  IE: Turn the backlight off and keep the display on.  Just like I do with my C500 and that goes for days and days with the backlight off and the display screen on.

Just for info, I have 2 C500's here and if you keep the screen on there is virtually no difference in the battery discharge time between display on and display off.

I totally disagree with your comment that the display on "will quickly run down the battery".  The backlight yes, but not the display (although that obvioyusly isn't the case with the C550)

[Pondrew]

Pagemakers, on Jul 28 2005, 18:04, said:

No  I've NOT been telling it to keep the backlight on at all.

I've been telling it to keep the "Display" on.  IE: Turn the backlight off and keep the display on.  Just like I do with my C500 and that goes for days and days with the backlight off and the display screen on.

Just for info, I have 2 C500's here and if you keep the screen on there is virtually no difference in the battery discharge time between display on and display off.

I totally disagree with your comment that the display on "will quickly run down the battery".  The backlight yes, but not the display (although that obvioyusly isn't the case with the C550)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Wasn't accusing you of leaving the backlight on. Was referring to the screen.

Strange, must be a QVGA thing then. You can turn off the backlight and leave the screen on on a pocket pc phone but the battery dies VERY quickly also. That's why I was surprised at the suggestion this behaviour was peculiar to the C550. But if you've tested that setting on the C500 I take it back.

[Pagemakers]

I totally agree about a PDA, but honestly on my C500 I've never had the "display timeout" on anything other than "never".

Try it and a beer on me if your battery life gives any noticeable difference

Personally, I can't see why on earth you want to screen to turn off in the first place.  You then have to keep pressing the backlight on (using more battery) just to check for messages, appointments etc.

(No offence taken or suggested, just good old friendly banter).

Edited by Pagemakers, 28 July 2005 - 05:26 PM.

[Pondrew]

Pagemakers, on Jul 28 2005, 18:17, said:

(No offence taken or suggested, just good old friendly banter).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Agreed and non taken.

Will be interesting to see how other QVGA Smartphones behave with that setting...

[Killua110]

HEy i recieved my c550 today abnd i found something strange... when it came the battery had the exlamation mark stating its low then after a 5 min charge it was 100% ( maybe it was already fully charged?) anyway when i played with the phone taking several pictures listening to music... the battery bar didnt go down but on the power management it had gone down to 75% after 4 hrs.
Now i wanted to put it back to the charger to make sure it has a full charge but when i did and came back 2 mins later its back to 100%?????

So strange anyone help?

like in the above the display stuff aint on never also i wasnt using gprs only activesynced about 9 times, watched videos and music for 30 mins and took pics for maybe 20 mins?

Edited by Killua110, 28 July 2005 - 06:06 PM.

[toon9]

Pagemakers, on Jul 28 2005, 15:21, said:

I've found what the problem is!!!!

In power management settings there is an option for "Display Timeout" (It is a known problem (from user comments) on the C550 that even with this option set to "never" the screen does turn so dim it is unreadable after the time which is set by the "Backlight Timeout Option").  However, with the "Display Timeout" option set to "never" on the C550 the battery drains at a rate of 10% per hour giving your phone a  battery life of approx 10 hours!!!!

Turn the "Display Timeout" to anything other than "never" and your C550 battery will be almost as good as the C500's.

The problem now is WHY does the battery drain so dramatically on this setting.

I for one don't like my display going blank after 30/60/90 seconds etc and trust that someone somewhere is working on a fix.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I don't want to throw a spanner in the works here Pagemakers, as you know.
However, I've just got my C550 back out of it's box and the settings I had previously applied for "Display Timeout" was 1 hour. I was hoping it had been set to "Never".
I'm with you on the argument that I don't like having to press any keys to see the
screen on my phone.
I'm going to give it a try at the lowest setting and see if I can live with it for a few days.
To be honest though, I've just resigned myself to the fact I was going to have to stick with my C500.
I'm going to be in turmoil if this gets sorted out with some kind of work-a-round and then have to decide whether to just learn to live with the C550

It certainly would be interesting to hear from all those that have championed the cause of the C550 battery to find out what power mangement settings they have applied.

[Pagemakers]

Toon, I think an hour will drain your battery quickly still.

You need to set it at 1-2 mins.

Yes you will get a black screen after this time which is a real pain I know.

I honestly hope it's just a software glitch and not how it's going to be otherwise like you, I'll go back to my 500.