Hi, just a couple of questions.
Ive been using my palm for around 2hours and the battery power is around 81% (using "Battery Info 1.2) and it says i have a Lithium battery installed.
Id like to know how come it is draining so fast and what sort of battery should be in my Zire 71 (got it on monday).
When it a good battery tester for the palm out there? (shouws what kind of battery you have etc).
P.s: Ive only really been using "palm Reader" and about 30 minutes of "Bejeweled"
madkins007
09-04-2003, 10:55 AM
The battery in a Palm Zire 71 is a factory installed Lithium Ion (LiIon) unit. You should not need to verify that.
A depletion of 19% after 30 minutes of use doing something as graphics intensive as Bejeweled (especially the newer version with sound, etc.) does not strike me as particualrly bad. The downside to flashy colors, fast screens, sound, twinlking animation, etc. is that it sucks batterys a lot faster.
The bigger question is your overall battery management practice. LiIon batteries shoudl be kept topped off as much as possible. Are you charging often, or rarely, long charges or short. Good AC connection or only via battery (including a travel USB into a regular computer)?
It is best to give it a decent daily charge in a cradle or charger designed to tap into AC, or be prepared for a much longer charging time using batteries. Periodically (weekly or so) let it charge overnight.
Avoid letting the charge run below 80% or so, and try hard to not let it drain dry. Long, deep charges will hurt it more than frequent shallow charges.
Also- avoid doing too much battery intensive stuff without a backup charging strategy. Things that suck juice include:
- Bright backlight
- Sounds, especially playing MP3
- Frequent card access, as with reading a book stored on the card.
- Full screen redraws- movies, animations, lots of color, etc. all mean more computing cycles, which means power usage.
- Lots of calculations- maps, heavy text editing, or other things that make the PDA 'think' a lot.
- Beaming, or even leaving beaming 'ON'.
- Some device drivers, such as the keyboard or lots of alarms, require that the PDA frequently check them to see if they need attention (interrupts). These take power as well.