Battery life test. Play this by me again...

[Bokkie]

Following on from the Great Battery Debate I have tried this.

1. My battery is 100%.
2. I launch the Palm OS Find. I enter: Shortcut Dot 3.
3. The Find dialog form displays [No Auto-Off].
4. Problem solved. I take the iQue out of cradle, ramp it up to maximum brightness and walk away.
5. I come back 20 minutes later. The screen is off.
6. I power it back on.
7. Battery charge is 52%.
8. So, I have supposedly [No Auto-Off] enabled.

So why did it? I'd have thought 52% battery was sufficient to not fool the iQue into thinking it was low on juice?

Puzzled.

[Bokkie]

I placed it back in the cradle. Maybe FileZ is lying to me. Within a few minutes the charge was apparently back to 100%. Is that possible?

Then I repeated the experiment and I watched through. This time, no auto-off took place. Screen on maximum brightness. The iQue died within 18 minutes.

What do you think?

[JMckie]

Bokkie, sounds like your battery is flaky. Not only does it run down too fast, it also can't report its status properly anymore. Maybe you tired her out by making her carry lots of heavy "heaps" and "stacks"? ;)

[Curious Cat]

Bokkie,
Many devices, including our iQue, seem to assume that if you have charged the battery for a while then it must be fully charged. It then starts to reassess the situation as time goes on. This, IMO, is the same reason that you can get a battery warning, turn the light way down and in a short while it will report that you have plenty of juice, relative to how quickly you are now drawing power. Knowing this is what caused me to wonder a while back if the battery bolt icon going off was a true indication of it really being fully charged. That, as you remember, turned out to be an excursion into the Twilight Zone. I think you need at least an hour to make sure its fully charged and more if it was close to depleted.

A simple more enjoyable test is to load up a book and read it, back light on full. The page turning, if you don’t fall asleep, will keep the light on and give you something to do while you are killing your battery. My subjective opinion, based on some of your previous posts, is that your iQue is under performing in this area.

[kenspice]

Try this. With a fully charged battery, read your book with the backlight on full. It won't take long and you will see the line on the icon start to go towards the low charge area. Turn the backlight to low and watch the icon go right back towards the fully charged zone. So, does the icon show the battery condition or does it show the amount of battery current draw? Beats me! If you do the above scenario a number of times the indicator will not come back up. It now shows the battery condition and needs a charge. If you figure this one out let me know. I think short charge times shorten the length of the battery life even though this type of battery is not supposed to have a "memory".

[Curious Cat]

Originally posted by kenspice
Try this. With a fully charged battery, read your book with the backlight on full. It won't take long and you will see the line on the icon start to go towards the low charge area. Turn the backlight to low and watch the icon go right back towards the fully charged zone. So, does the icon show the battery condition or does it show the amount of battery current draw? Beats me! If you do the above scenario a number of times the indicator will not come back up. It now shows the battery condition and needs a charge. If you figure this one out let me know. I think short charge times shorten the length of the battery life even though this type of battery is not supposed to have a "memory".

Here’s my “guess”. The battery indicates the amount of time left before being discharged, relative to the power being drawn at any given time with some averaging thrown in. This is why you can change how much battery is left by simply reducing the demand. Conversely, when the icon is indicating the battery to be a bit low, turn up the backlight and flip out the antenna and almost instantly it will warn you to plug it in.

[Bokkie]

Guys, in shortcut dot 3 mode the iQue went down so fast, it needed a reset to 'wake' it up again. Is that significant? Mine spends just about all it's life in the cradle so the chance of it being depleted are probably quite low. At work it's plugged in for 8-9 hours a day. At weekends if I dont use it in the car it sits in my cradle at home.

I want to present my case to Garmin in such a way that I can parry their arguments (if any) against RMA.

[JMckie]

Bokkie, that's the problem! Betty is spending too much time in the cradle not getting exercise. No wonder her energy is down. :)

Seriously though, I wonder if overcharging can cause problems.

[Curious Cat]

Originally posted by Bokkie
Guys, in shortcut dot 3 mode the iQue went down so fast, it needed a reset to 'wake' it up again. Is that significant? Mine spends just about all it's life in the cradle so the chance of it being depleted are probably quite low. At work it's plugged in for 8-9 hours a day. At weekends if I dont use it in the car it sits in my cradle at home.

I want to present my case to Garmin in such a way that I can parry their arguments (if any) against RMA.

Mine is on the charger 95% of the time, at home, work and in the car. When it's not in a cradle the battery lasts at least as well as anyone else has reported with their iQue. IMO, that's not the cause of your iQue's problem.

[Kit]

I think my battery is behaving like Bokkie's. It crashes very fast, but my iQue spends very little of its time on the cradle at home. While I was traveling recently I used a battery pack with 2100 mAh NiMHs, and a Gilsson antenna. The external power worked for several hours, but even if the Garmin were thoroughly charged overnight, by the time the battery pack was depleted I had very little operation time on the internal battery. Quite a few resets when I hadn't kept an close eye on the level. (I don't know what the brightness level was. I certainly am running with it much lower routinely now than I had been.)

Has anyone devised a test we can run to check whether our battery is behaving well enough that there's no point in doing an RMA? Or, to look at it another way, does anyone know how Garmin decides whether a battery needs to be replaced? Very frustrating being so unsure what I can count on--other than unpredictability. Kit

[Bokkie]

I tried my limited experiment a third time. Same result. Sitting in the charger for several hours, then unplugged. I did a hard reset. Again, she died this time in about 25 minutes, needing a reset to get her back. Time to RMA. I must pursue this actively next week. I must remove my Pan card as well.

That raises other questions. If they give another unit to me, what effect does that have on my CS6 unlock code? I guess I have to go through the unlock process again?

[kenspice]

I can't, for the life of me, understand why garmin does not take care of this silly problem of having a hard wired battery instead of a consumer slide in slide out type similar to the sd card. Or, 2xA's or anything else but what we have now. I hope the iQue 3601 has a different battery system. Garmin, are you listenin? If not, I'm afraid there are going to be a great many palm 6 + gps's out there to choose from....

[Franklee]

Bokkie, you know a lot more then me but I know to tell you something. You got rid of your Sandisk but your battery its a TURD!! :D :D

Joke-

Smart man-Take these pills it make you smart.
Dumb guy-OK. Hey this looks like a turd.

Smart gut-Take one more to get smart
Dumb guy-This smells like a turd

Smart guy-Take just one more to get smart
Dumb guy-Hey this tastes like a turd!

Smart guy-See you getting smart already! :D :D

I know you like the turd humor, so I thought of you.:)

[Bokkie]

Originally posted by Franklee
I know you like the turd humor, so I thought of you.:)

Thank you! I will print it off and send it to Garmin. Maybe I should send 'one' to Garmin as well! "Man," they'll say, "that's gotta be the best darned cigar I've ever smoked!":D

[jwc810]

Originally posted by Bokkie
I tried my limited experiment a third time. Same result. Sitting in the charger for several hours, then unplugged. I did a hard reset. Again, she died this time in about 25 minutes, needing a reset to get her back. Time to RMA. I must pursue this actively next week. I must remove my Pan card as well.

That raises other questions. If they give another unit to me, what effect does that have on my CS6 unlock code? I guess I have to go through the unlock process again?

For your information, I just found out once I unlock Mapsource for cf que it work on any unit.

[Bokkie]

Originally posted by jwc810
For your information, I just found out once I unlock Mapsource for cf que it work on any unit.

jw, I think I missed your point here. When you say it worked on any unit, are we talking about the second unlock code? I seem to recall that each purchase of CS for example allows two it to be used on two devices, with an unlock code on each. Sorry if I'm being a bit of a dork but I recall from somewhere that each purchase of the maps comes with two unlocks?:confused:

[jwc810]

Originally posted by Bokkie
jw, I think I missed your point here. When you say it worked on any unit, are we talking about the second unlock code? I seem to recall that each purchase of CS for example allows two it to be used on two devices, with an unlock code on each. Sorry if I'm being a bit of a dork but I recall from somewhere that each purchase of the maps comes with two unlocks?:confused:

When I was using unlock code from que 3600 it only works on que 3600, but when I reinstall MapSource CD from cf que and use it's unlock code it works on both cf que and que 3600.

[nickwalt]

We have been conducting some battery tests here in the office on our iQue's. We have found the following:

When the GPS is open, an SD card is present and the unit is switched on the unit will last for 2 hours before going completely flat.

We did some tests on the power and found out that the unit is drawing about 400ma. The battery inside must therefore be around 800mah.

We purchased a rechargable 6v battery and charged it up. This had a rating of 800mah. When connected to the Ique it then lasted for 4 hours.

We were using our own software which forces the unit to stay on over-riding the OS.

I think the 20 minutes that you experienced do sound like it's faulty. I think 2 hours is not brilliant, but if we need more we will use an external battery pack with a 2.5ah battery.

Hope this info. helps.

[JMckie]

What brightness setting were you on?

[nickwalt]

There is only one setting as far as we're concerned, thats full on!!!

[sync]

Would it be much work to create a battery life test program?

Here are my thoughts regarding how it could work. It would only run if the battery is at 100%. It would set brightness to max. It would disable or override auto shutoff. The program would write the time it started to a file. Then every 5 minutes it would write the time to the second line of the file. This would be the finish time. When the battery finally gives up you would have a file with a start and finish time.

If screen burn is a potential issue I guess that would need to be addressed.

This should give us a common basis for comparing battery life.

[apersson850]

Originally posted by jwc810
When I was using unlock code from que 3600 it only works on que 3600, but when I reinstall MapSource CD from cf que and use it's unlock code it works on both cf que and que 3600. Isn't that because the first unlock code, for the iQue, is still remembered? Then you added the second code, and now all map sets generated will run on both these two machines.

Check which codes you have installed. Maybe you find that there are two, which then explains this mystery.

[Curious Cat]

Screen burn should not be a problem. Sound like a good idea.

[jwc810]

Originally posted by apersson850
Isn't that because the first unlock code, for the iQue, is still remembered? Then you added the second code, and now all map sets generated will run on both these two machines.

Check which codes you have installed. Maybe you find that there are two, which then explains this mystery.

I did a complete uninstall of Map Source and reinstall from the cf que CD, I use the unlock code from cf que, both cf que and que 3600 share same detail map and there is only one detail map.

[JMckie]

Originally posted by jwc810
I did a complete uninstall of Map Source and reinstall from the cf que CD, I use the unlock code from cf que, both cf que and que 3600 share same detail map and there is only one detail map.

Uninstall often leaves remnants behind on the PC.. If you did it the other way around cfQue first, uninstall, then iQue you'll probably get the same result.

[jwc810]

Originally posted by JMckie
Uninstall often leaves remnants behind on the PC.. If you did it the other way around cfQue first, uninstall, then iQue you'll probably get the same result.

When I first receive cf que I install it at my work computer and it never have MapSource install.

[JMckie]

Originally posted by jwc810
When I first receive cf que I install it at my work computer and it never have MapSource install.

That isn't really the same test is it?

[donc13]

Originally posted by kenspice
I can't, for the life of me, understand why garmin does not take care of this silly problem of having a hard wired battery instead of a consumer slide in slide out type similar to the sd card. Or, 2xA's or anything else but what we have now. I hope the iQue 3601 has a different battery system. Garmin, are you listenin? If not, I'm afraid there are going to be a great many palm 6 + gps's out there to choose from....

Batteries are always a compromise between size, power, convenience, life and weight. Without making the iQue much larger, and much heavier...you can't have AA's in it. And, of course, there's always the ... "I changed the batteries and lost all my information!" because when you take the batteries out, you lose everything in the iQue.

That's the convenience issue. All late model hand helds that I'm aware of have rechargeable batteries, the iQue is no exception. It's capacity (the recharageable in the iQue) is a compromise between size and "on-time"

My *guess* is that Garmin presumed that the majority of us would be using the GPS function mostly in our vehicles, thus the Auto Navigation kit powers the iQue. No worries about battery life. The fact that some use the iQue for things like geocaching and hiking without buying an external battery pack...well, that was one of the compromises again.

At least that's my thoughts on the subject. I have no problems using my iQue as a "Palm" device for hours without a recharge, and no problem using it as a GPS for brief periods as a handheld GPS, and no problems using it in my car with the Auto Nav kit. And worst comes to worst, I've got an expernal power pack that plugs into the UPC and doubles my time. So for me, the current setup is quite adequate...and in fact, I'd judge it about perfect for MY uses. YOur mileage may vary.