so how reliable is the batt meter? like the gas tank thats got spare gallon?

[phritosan]

my 4155 starts complaining about data loss when it gets to 30% batt life, according to sprite pocketmon.

how much life do i really have after that? how low can i go before im relying on the backup battery?

thanks!

[Jason Dunn]

Yeah, Pocket PCs start complaining fairly soon when the battery starts to get low. It really depends on what you're doing and how much drain is on the battery, but you can expect to get an hour or more out of the unit before it goes dead. The backup battery should keep it alive for 48 hours or so.

[Kowalski]

you should check out the power applet found in the settings, and can change the setting, so your pocketpc will be shut down to prevent data for 1 day or 3 days. i set this value to minimum, because i dont need the device to watch over my power drain and i want to see more runtime left when i look at the battery meter :)

@jason: i thought the back up batteries can maintain the memory less than 1 hours. are you sure that 48 hours is maintained by the back up battery? or can it be the main battery itself?

[Jason Dunn]

@jason: i thought the back up batteries can maintain the memory less than 1 hours. are you sure that 48 hours is maintained by the back up battery? or can it be the main battery itself?

It varies from device to device. It definitely should be longer than one hour for any device, but not all devices will be 48 hours. I was thinking of the scenario where the Pocket PC is so dead it won't stay on for more than a couple of seconds, and with both batteries a device should last for around 48 hours. I've had Pocket PCs where I remove the main battery to hard reset it and six hours later it's still not hard reset because the backup battery has kept it alive. So it's longer than one hour, I can promise you that. ;-)

[Kowalski]

However, the Pocket PC has a small internal backup battery that
allows you to change the main battery without losing RAM data
(user-installed programs and data) as long as it is replaced within
10 minutes. If the battery is removed from the unit for longer
than 10 minutes, you will lose unsaved RAM data and need to
reset the unit.

this text is taken from the user manual of my 2215, so you can see why i thought back up batteries last for less than one hour, maybe HP is beeing deliberate on data loss

[Jason Dunn]

this text is taken from the user manual of my 2215, so you can see why i thought back up batteries last for less than one hour, maybe HP is beeing deliberate on data loss

While I'm sure the backup battery would last longer than 10 minutes, HP is erring on the side of caution because they don't want people to think that the backup battery should be relied on for anything other than swapping out one main battery for a replacement battery.

What were we even talking about?? :lol:

[Sven Johannsen]

We were talking about how much time you have when the battery meter says low fuel, before you are running on fumes (the backup battery), which degenerated into how long the backup battery actually lasts, which was met with the suggestion that you really don't want to get to the point the backup battery is what you have left, which turned into how long does it last...really?

The X30 says 30 minutes, BTW

[pnjm]

Incidentally:-

I have a batterypower vs PDA-usable time left utility plugged-in on my Today screen.

I notice that just because the meter says your batt is at say 30% charge that doesn't mean that you've got another 30% of maximum time possible left ie. it's not a straight-line relationship between drop in battery power and PDA-usable time left.

At 30% you may have only about 15 minutes left of power although at 100% the meter indicates a good 2+ hours.

so it may not be a good idea to set your low-batt warnings too low.

I have an NEC Mobile Pro P300.

PN

[Kowalski]

What were we even talking about

we we just chattin' :)

[Darius Wey]

I notice that just because the meter says your batt is at say 30% charge that doesn't mean that you've got another 30% of maximum time possible left ie. it's not a straight-line relationship between drop in battery power and PDA-usable time left.

At 30% you may have only about 15 minutes left of power although at 100% the meter indicates a good 2+ hours.

That's exactly the case with a lot of laptop batteries. A lot of the time you get low battery warnings at around 10-20%, at which you think you can get at least another 30 minutes to 1 hour out of it, then suddenly, it comes and bites you and says you have less than 10%, at which point, it decides to hibernate.

The battery levels are definitely not linearly related to actual power, but I find that when you get a warning of 30% on the Pocket PC, you can get around another hour out of it, depending on what you are doing and what model you have.

I have an iPAQ h1940 and I find that when I get my first battery warning which I usually get when I've been playing MP3s for a while, I can still have my MP3s running for another hour before I decide that I should really stop before the battery dies (this is around 10%).

But yes, it really does depend on the model of your Pocket PC and what you are doing at the time.