Battery life again

[Guest m1.carson]

Hi,

I'm reluctant to post this as AWarner say's DONT, but it worked for me, perhaps I was lucky !.

To save you reading all the bumph of symptoms below, I ran Windows Media Player until the phone died,wouldn't even boot, dismissing all the battery alerts,[boring], pulled the battery for a few minutes, re-inserted it and it booted,and ran WMP again for about 20 mins. until the phone died utterly.

Put the phone on charge [without turning it on] till it was full, then used it normally until it died again, gave it another full charge and it appears OK now.

These were the two symptoms I was getting :-

WMP would play half a long track then stop, saying, "Windows media player is unable to play this file/track", and I'd have to re-boot it.

After approx. 24 hrs of light usage there'd be 3 or 4 bars left, I'd turn the phone off for three hours re-boot it and I'd be down to one bar and low battery alerts, if it was just this error I'd say the indicator was duff, but coupled with the first error it had to be a dying battery.

[Guest Pondrew]

Well, can't recommend against doing that strongly enough as the construction of the batteries is such that that could very well damage the battery. U seem to be assuming there is a memory effect which these batteries are NOT meant to have.

[Guest m1.carson]

Well, can't recommend against doing that strongly enough as the construction of the batteries is such that that could very well damage the battery. U seem to be assuming there is a memory effect which these batteries are NOT meant to have.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi pondrew, perhaps you should delete these posts to save others ruining their batteries, I know Li-Ion batts. don't have a memory effect, but will try almost anything to save a hard reset or buying a new one.

Another hard reset here I come ! !

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

Best to keep the post as long as people read the whole thread ;)

The best way to increase battery life is to fully charge the battery then do a hard reset. The phone takes the current value of the battery on a hard reset as fully charged and then manages to screw up what the battery is actually capable of :D

Also Li-ion like to be topped up and a long condition charge ie over night one in a while can be benificial (just don't leave the phone plugged in to the pc with the pc switched off as the pc will drain the phone's battery)

Seriously though if you do fully discharge a Li-ion battery you will cause damage as the battery will lose capacitance, this can not be repaired in any way and the after affect will be reduced charging and usable life.

As for memory effects, L:i-ion do suffer from this but it is much less pronounced and not noticable compared to other types of batteries like Ni-mh and Ni-cd.

[Guest m1.carson]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply, only you can't do an overnight charge on an Mpx200, it's got an auto cutoff, one site suggested that after a full charge remove and immediately replace the charger and it will continue to charge, nope, it charged for approx. 3 mins. and cut off again.

I've just been to several battery sites and they said give it a long charge then do the old discharge and re-charge cycles, they seemed to be talking Li-ion not Ni-cad or Ni-mh, although I must admit they didn't exactly specify.

Very Confucus he say ?

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

Correct it does have an overcharge circuit device but over the hours it will revert to a charge state again as the battery drains. It's this topping up that helps. I would not trick the battery into charging by unplugging it then plugging in again. The overcharge circuitry is there for a good reason, safety being one of them ;)

[Guest Motorola veteran user]

Concerning battery life there is one possibility I've never seen mentioned here:

my experience tells me that the biggest consumer in mpx200 is the display light, I use mail and internet a lot, but if the light is off, two days are almost guaranteed, when I read mails for a long time, the processor is not busy, but light kills the battery.

[Guest m1.carson]

Concerning battery life there is one possibility I've never seen mentioned here:

my experience tells me that the biggest consumer in mpx200 is the display light, I use mail and internet a lot, but if the light is off, two days are almost guaranteed, when I read mails for a long time, the processor is not busy, but light kills the battery.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Not quite, THE killer, is the infra red beam, you must remember to manually turn it off, if you want to see how quickly a 200 goes flat, turn the beam on, mine only lasted 4 hrs after a data transfer.