Battery Problem

[Budrho]

My iQue 3600 battery rarely shows full charge and drops like a rock if I turn the backlight full up. I'm fairly certain I know what the problem is but I don't know how to permanently fix it, short of modifying the design. The battery power travels to contacts on the motherboard from fingers extending from another component that is mounted to the back cover. I suspected a high resistance connection because of the symptoms. I took the iQue apart, cleaned the contacts, and tweaked the fingers to apply more pressure. This worked great for a while and it was like a new PDA, but slowly the symptoms came back. Has anyone else had this problem? What can be done short of soldering wires to the fingers and motherboard contacts?

[Budrho]

I noticed that I didn't write the symptoms very clearly. The battery charges inconsistantly. If I turn the brightness up the charge indicator drops nearly instantly but rebounds as fast if I turn the brightness down. The biggest clue that the problem is these contacts is that pressure on the lower back cover can change the charge indication.

[NewQ]

Battery level dropping quickly with high backlight on and then rebounding when backlight turned low ... my iQue has done this from day one and I think everyone elses does too - nature of the beast? Never tried pressing on the back of case to see if that changes anything though.

[Budrho]

I agree that the battery indicator always drops some but when the contacts are clean it is less than 20%. When the contacts are not making good electrical contact it may drop 70% or more. This poor contact prevents the battery from charging right. The iQue may not charge noticebly even when connected all night. It will never lose ground over night because the charge light will be lit and the PDA is powered from the charger through the connector on the motherboard. To charge the battery the current has to pass through these faulty contacts. I've seen the battery lose ground day after day even though it was on the charger all night. Then for some reason she will charge completely. My theory is that the iQue gets bumped just enough for the contacts to make better contact for a while.

[Ken in Regina]

That's not normal. As Rick mentioned, we all get a noticeable drop with high backlight setting, but not in the order you are seeing. Call Garmin tech support and get an RMA for a replacement. You may wish to omit your "theory" about the contacts when speaking with them ... in particular, the part about confirming it by opening up the case. :)

...ken...

[Budrho]

As for being normal, I wonder if this happens to varying degrees with all iQues. It might explain the poor battery reliability. For me it is not always bad. Once it was so bad it wouldn't charge enough for me to use it and I went as far as getting a RMA number, but it miraculously started working the day I called tech support. Since I was dreading being without my PDA so bad I couldn't justify sending it in when it was working fine. Now it is working acceptably well, but not nearly as well as when the contacts where cleaned. The warranty is up now.

Buddy

[NewQ]

I agree that the battery indicator always drops some but when the contacts are clean it is less than 20%. When the contacts are not making good electrical contact it may drop 70% or more. This poor contact prevents the battery from charging right. The iQue may not charge noticebly even when connected all night. .....To charge the battery the current has to pass through these faulty contacts.
You may be onto something here - people have been complaining for years about poor charging - our answer was to use the "perilous pin" connection and the travel charger. I wonder if the charging path is different from that pin.
It will never lose ground over night because the charge light will be lit and the PDA is powered from the charger through the connector on the motherboard.
I don't think you're talking about an "electrical ground" here, are you?

[Budrho]

The pin connects directly to the motherboard just like the universal connector does, but there are eight contacts between the motherboard and the mysterious component that connects to the battery. I'm looking at a picture of the component. Lets assume for a moment that there is no common ground(this time I mean electrical ground) that would mean two contacts for the battery. Two for the vibrator(heh heh). Two for the speaker? Not sure about the speaker because the picture isnt clear, but anyway that leaves at least two unused. I think the component is too far away for a temperature monitoring circuit. A voltage monitoring circuit would blow my theory out of the water since any voltage drop across a high resistance contact would not be detected here. Maybe the pin has it's own contact.
You may be onto something here - people have been complaining for years about poor charging - our answer was to use the "perilous pin" connection and the travel charger. I wonder if the charging path is different from that pin.
When the universal connector hasn't worked for charging, did the LED light? If the charging light lit, the only thing that makes sense to me is that the perilous pin has seperate contacts.

[NewQ]

When the universal connector hasn't worked for charging, did the LED light? If the charging light lit, the only thing that makes sense to me is that the perilous pin has seperate contacts.
I think that charging through the cradle was not working as well as it should have - you can search here on charging and see all the problems/prescriptions/results.

[wa5ngp]

This is only somewhat related, but. Way back I had a PalmIIIC. What happened to it was that when I turned up the brightness the graphiti would hardly work. I took it appart and found that there was a pressure contact on the touch screen for ground return on the screen/digitizer. I shimmed that contact so that pressure from the case was applied to the contact and that made better contact so that the voltage drop was much less and it worked again. Over time the plastic fatigued and the contact became bad again. There was no way to fix it so finally it became worthless. My point is that perhaps there is some kind of pressure sensitive contact in the Ique that is marginal. I'd like to see some pix of what this looks like. Mine is still in warranty so I'm not gonna take it appart to look.
This actually makes more sense than so many units having bad batteries. Surely these batteries aren't that bad. Maybe they are never charged well and after operatin in the low charge zone they fail prematurely. Maybe surely I'm wrong too.

Don