Battery No Longer Holds Charge

[swithin]

I think the battery may be failing on my m505.

Background: I've had it for about 13 months. Bought it new. Used it pretty heavily for work and home. Managed to recover from a SUDS failure (Suddenly Doesn't Sync) this past summer. Got the replacement cradle that was offered for free from Palm. All was well until a few days ago

I can charge it on the Palm cradle. It dies soon after (i.e. often within a minute or less). I can reset it in the cradle using the methods posted by others in this forum. The charge meter shows fully charged initially, then shows partial charge, then death. Makes a wierd whine when charging now; kind of like the white noise that comes from a computer. Have a Belkin charger at home which I've also used.

I'm wondering if the battery has just hit the end of its life. So here are my questions:

1. Does anyone know what the average life of the Palm m50x should be?
2. Does anyone know where I can find one for sale? (I checked out gethightech.com and they don't seem to have any listed on their site.
3. Has anyone experienced similar problems and resolved them by replacing the battery?

Parting Thoughts: Love my Palm m505. But I'm wondering if the extra 50 bucks I'll need to shell out for a battery wouldn't be better justified on buying one of those, uh, forgive me...Toshiba Pocket PCs.

Thanks for any help.
Swithin.

[JohnKes]

Sounds like your battery is worn out. The battery should have lasted approx. 2 years. Maybe it received extra wear from the SUDS fix - you drained it, right? Here is a site for batteries, however they seem to be backordered:
http://store.yahoo.com/laptopsforless/s3pdabatforp.html

Li-Ion batteries are more delicate than any manufacturers would have you believe.

If you can't wait, you can run it from a cheapy AAA battery pack from eBay ($7.95). Search under "battery saver m500".

[swithin]

As it seems that others are asking about Battery Life issues, here's an update:

I let the Palm alone for 2-3 days (while waiting on a new battery to arrive). I tried using it again and while I still get the message to delete all data (y or n) once in a while, it seems to be working okay otherwise. The battery is currently showing about 65% charged.

This surprise turnaround of events is happening, of course, after I ordered a new battery from Laptops For Less. I received the battery today. Complements to LFL. They included instructions, a flat head screwdriver and a T5 torx driver for the screws. Very nice! I was shopping around for a T5 in the local Home Depot and couldn't find one.

For now, I'm going to see what happens before replacing the battery. I may use it and let the battery run down as low as possible before charging it again--rather than let it sit on the charger after every 5-15 minute use. Luckily ;) , my relatively new (Palm replaced) "E" series cradle developed a problem in that it doesn't charge when the unit is seated normally in the cradle. I can insert a paper clip between the unit and the cradle and the charge light comes on.

More later.

[swithin]

Update.

The old battery held a partial charge. The new one doesn't charge at all. Took it apart again and checked the connections on the new battery--theres' only one way the connector from the battery can connect to the jack on the palm. So there's little chance of screwing that up. I'm thinking that the problem may now be getting the charge to the battery. Maybe my cradle connection isn' t good. Or maybe it's something internal. Next test is to try to clean the connections. If that doesn't work, I'm going to have to give up doing it myself and ask for professional help.

When it's in the cradle, it works fine, so I have little hope that cleaning the connections will make any difference.

Yes, it's possible that the "new" battery isn't really new. If I can replace the old battery and get a partial charge again, then the new battery is going back.

There's still hope, right? We all survived the SUDS issue.

[swithin]

uh...here's some advice that comes from experience. Be careful not to strip the torx screw head when trying to tighten it with the torx screwdriver. :(

[swithin]

Update: Gave up. Sent it to Palm. Decided to save $25 by refusing a replacement unit. ($125 for repair, $150 for replacement unit--send in broken unit once replacement is received) They also offered me an "upgrade" to an m515 for $275. Had to laugh at that deal. No upgrade offers for the Tungsten T.

Status of repair is "In Repair."

Still don't know the cause of the problems. Hopefully Palm will give me some info. I'll pass it on if I find out anything else.

From when I sent it (end of December), to the estimated ship date after repair (end of January), it will be gone a month. Woe is me.

...Contemplating firing up my Palm III in the interim. I knew I didn't sell that for a reason...

[donnjr]

I do not know if your problem holding charge mirrors mine, but two weeks ago...my 505 went 100% dead on me...the battery had drained completely. I have always "hot sync" everyday in the cradle, thus the battery was always being charged at that time.
After the battery drained, and the unit would not I tried to recharge the battery. Unfortunately, the battery drained 10% of it's charge every 30-45 seconds after the re-charge.
I repeated this step at least 5 times, with the same results...
the battery not holding charge. In my desperation, after a full charge...I then performed a hard reset(I had backed up on the previous hot sync). From that point, knock on wood...the battery has performed normally. This may have been a software issue, I am not sure. But I have no problems since.
If you have exausted other attempts, you may want to try this.
Donnjr

[Stardust]

The dying gasps of a li-ion, the moment we all dread. Perhaps it's a good idea to have a cheap monochrome PDA, even second-hand, running on AAAs as we grieve our loss and wait for a new or refurbished color unit to fill the void in our life.

[JohnKes]

donnjr,
You may have had an errant app, which refused to shut down. That would have prevented your Palm from going into sleep mode.

I tried out an IR-to-Nokia app once. It refused to stop transmitting until the battery ran out. If I had known, I would have Soft Reset to force that app to quit.

The Dragonball processor goes into sleep mode every time it finishes each set of commands. Different events wake it up, such as screen taps and IR inputs. That's why you should keep Beam Receive off. Stray IR will wake up the unit, no matter what the source.