H3970 Battery Life

[Shadowcat]

Can anyone tell what battery life I can expect if I play mp3s non-stop with the screen turned off? What if I underclock it to 200MHz? What if I keep Bluetooth on?

Thanks in advance.

[shimmer]

I am using 3870, the duration is about 6 h if I play mp3s non-stop with the screen turned off.

As to 3970, I was told about 8h.

To my understanding, with bluetooth on will consume the power much more quickly .

[Shadowcat]

Thanks! Those figures are actually better than I thought!

[RickP in AZ]

My 3975...

Pocket Plus and Battery Bar estimate my runtime as about 10 hours when I use the auto backlight setting and do low resource things like writing documents and reading ebooks.

With Net usage that drops to about 7-8 hours.

These are rough figures as I have never seen the battery guage go below 40% after 6 hours of actual use.

[Shadowcat]

[quote="Richard Padgett"]My 3975...

With Net usage that drops to about 7-8 hours.

quote]

Sorry if it's obvious, but when you say "Net usage" do you mean connecting to the internet with a cell phone through bluetooth or something?

[RickP in AZ]

[quote=Richard Padgett]My 3975...

With Net usage that drops to about 7-8 hours.

quote]

Sorry if it's obvious, but when you say "Net usage" do you mean connecting to the internet with a cell phone through bluetooth or something?

Yes, sorry that was a bit vague. I mean "online" usage either connected to my t68 via Bluetooth, connected to a desktop to piggyback Net access, or via my CF 56k modem. All connections of that sort obviously use up more power than low impact tasks.

[Shadowcat]

Ahhh, thanks. Wow, the iPAQ's battery life sure increased a lot since its inception! :o The people who complain about its battery life are probably ones that never used a H3600 series!

[Janak Parekh]

Well, the battery has 50% more overall capacity (1400mah as opposed to 900mah), plus transflective screens use less power than reflectives.

--janak

[RickP in AZ]

Bingo, bango, bongo! Janak hit the nail on the head. The biggest reason for the long runtimes on the 39xx iPAQs (and the Dell Axims) are the lower power draws of the terrific backlit transflective screens. This is why that will be priority number one in my next Pocket PC. (Until the next screen technology comes along.)