Battery problem fixed?

[donkeyontheedge]

My wife's Revo Plus developed the "battery problem" over the summer, eventually leading her to go back to a paper based diary. Following instructions I found on the net, I dismantled the unit and then left it for several months. Over the festive period, I had time to sit down and look at it properly.

The battery pack was re-assembled with a small piece of paper folded double underneath the temparature sensor. This was then taped in place. I chose not to put back the black plastic that was originally around the batteries. Re-assembled the unit, fully charged it and it went all the way to 100%. I then left it on, using it whenever I was passing to save Word files, get a high score on Cascade, or anything that would effect a write to disk. It eventually switched off after around 12-15 hours.

Charged (whilst on), it went from 0% all the way to 100% again and I repeated the procedure 5 times. It seems to be fixed! :D

I am now giving it back to my Wife so she can do a restore from last backup, update anything from the last few months and then use it properly to see how it goes in "real-life".

I will report back in a few months to let you all know how it's going.

John

[MikeMcC]

I will report back in a few months to let you all know how it's goingA few months - now that really is optimism! ;)

[ohsix]

I thought I had my Mako fixed by doing the same thing, except using a sliver cut from an old credit card - as reported here and other forums. It worked fine for about a month. Now it's back sitting in its hard case in semi-retirement as the red LED started going off after about 2 minutes during a charge. I'll give it a try again, starting from scratch, in a few weeks.

Maybe because my credidt card is out of date. :D

[cangiante]

Ciao John!

Just read this post at symbcity.com and thought it might be of your interest:

http://www.symbcity.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1734

all the very best with your *new* Revo Plus

[donkeyontheedge]

One thing to add - I charged the Revo not via the dock, but by plugging the power directly into the back of the unit. I will be telling my wife not to charge it until it needs to be charged, and that the docking station is to be used for backups only.

John (still optimistic - hey, why not, it's a new year!)
:D

[ohsix]

I've never charged my Mako using the dock. LIke you, my dock is used only for backups.

[netBookBabe]

Originally posted by ohsix
Maybe because my credit card is out of date. :D ROFL! :D

By the way, Keith, glad to see you got the cycling avatar sorted - nice one! :)

Julie

[ohsix]

All thanks to you, Julie.

[Davidish]

Has anybody tried replacing the batteries on the Revo? (as explained by rueyloon here: http://www.portal-pda.com/guides/revobatt/revobatt.html

If so, did you notice if there is enough room to replace the 'AAA' batteries with 'AA's? If there is, then the battery life of the revo could be dramatically increased by performing this operation...

cheers,
David.

[donkeyontheedge]

There is not enough room for AA's There is only just enough room for the AAA's!
Somebody else mentioned replacing the 700mAH AAA's with higher capacity ones for a longer life, but I'm not sure if that was theoretical or they actually changed them.

(Revo up time: 2 weeks!)

John

[bobbitchin]

We are on our third Mako here.

I got my wife her first one a few years ago and we instantly fell in love with them.

Now she is on her second and I am still using my first.

We ran into the battery problem on both of our origonal units. I read everything and tried everything including that battery monitoring program but still had problems.

Here is how we managed to fix them.

Charge it all the way up, or until it stops charging.

hard reset it

discharge it all the way until it loses everything, two weeks or so.

turn it on and imedently do a hard reset.

Now charge it for at least 8 hours (overnight)

Do not do anything with it turn it off just plug it in and let it charge undisturbed.

restore it.

Now comes the important part.

From now on use it until it shuts off then recharge it for 8 hours undisturbed.

Recharge it only with the adaptor plugged directly into the unit.

Do not plug in the power to your docking bay.

Do not charge it in your docking bay.

NEVER not "top off" the battery charge.

Always discharge it fully and recharge it fully.

When I get down to 1 or 2% I just leave it on and let it run to low battery shut off.

We have not experenced the battery problem with either of our units for over a year now using this method.

[Davidish]

bobbitchin, what sort of battery life are you getting our of your revo now? I mean in standby mode?

[bobbitchin]

Lets see, the last time I charged it was December 30th. I have not been using it except for New Years Eve (Cocktail data base) and lastnight I backed it up.

Right now its got 1% charge left in it so I will probably charge it up overnight tonight.

So it looks like I get two weeks battery life in standby.

Under my normal usage I would say I only have to charge it once a week.

[mavic-zap]

In March 2000 my wife purchased two Mako’s from a dealer on eBay, previously we where both using 3c’s.
Both Mako’s are still working fine both mechanically and electrically, although I have not been looking at battery life specifically.
I will start some testing on the two over the next few days to see just how the batteries are holding out being 4 years old now! (I was very careful about charging when we got them as I had read about battery problems).
The comparison should be very interesting as our usage of the Mako’s is so different.

Basically my wife keeps hers as an address/phone number PIM and appointment reminder, it gets minimal daily use, is very seldom backed up or charged, and generally is completely flat (auto shut down) before she charges it.

My Mako is used on a daily basis for office appointments, agenda items, to do lists and spreadsheet viewing. It spends 90% of the working day in its dock station and is always powered and charging from the mains. It is synced with Outlook and backed up every day. The only time I use it away from the dock station is during meetings (one or two a day) and as an alarm clock to wake me in the morning.

I have recently defected from Psion so I don’t use my Mako now.
The lure of the Garmin iQue was too much, incredible features, but already I suspect not even close to the Mako in terms of basic stability.

I will post again when I have some battery test results.

M-Z

[donkeyontheedge]

My wife's revo is still behaving impeccably. Goes for about 2 weeks between charging. When the charge is less than 5% she leaves it on until it switches off then charges it all the way to 100% again, not with the dock but with the power in the back.

The only thing I would say is that she is not 100% confident in it again yet so is using it a lot less than she used to. Hopefully this will change as she realises it is working as it should!

John