PocketPlus reports less than 4 hours battery life with extended battery

[stevehiner]

I just got my iPAQ back from HP and as an apology for forgetting to send my battery back they sent me an extended battery. Or course that means I'm going to have to buy a normal battery anyway since now it won't fit in my case or my cradle.

Anyhow, SPB Pocket Plus now reports that I have 3:51 battery life on a full charge. Since my old batter typically showed 6 hours on a full charge I find this surprising. Is there something I need to tell Pocket Plus to get it to recognize the extended battery? Is the battery faulty? Am I just out of luck?

Thanks for any ideas.

[Janak Parekh]

It calculates the practical runtime of the battery over time, so if you wait a few weeks, it'll update itself and should be accurate. (Although, I personally find it simpler to leave it in the % mode and not use its time extrapolation...)

A full uninstall/reinstall might "reset" the existing averages, or a quick registry hack might as well, if it bothers you - not sure what precisely, though.

--janak

[stevehiner]

Thanks for the clarification Janak. I was planning to set it looping an audio track or movie to find out how much time I could actually get out of it but it helps a lot to know Pocket Plus is just guessing. Maybe doing that a few times would force it to update it's estimate. I suppose in the long run it won't matter since I just bought a normal battery and the extended one is only going to be used as a backup.

By the way, this is a totally fresh install. HP chose to repair my iPAQ by upgrading the ROM to version 1.10.7 so I decided it would be a bad idea to restore a backup from the 1.0 ROM. All my apps are freshly installed now. Most likely Pocket Plus defaults to a setting appropriate for a normal sized battery.

[Janak Parekh]

Thanks for the clarification Janak. I was planning to set it looping an audio track or movie to find out how much time I could actually get out of it but it helps a lot to know Pocket Plus is just guessing. Maybe doing that a few times would force it to update it's estimate. I suppose in the long run it won't matter since I just bought a normal battery and the extended one is only going to be used as a backup.
Yup, it averages over time. If you're going to exchange the two batteries, then I suggest you ignore the runtime entirely, as it's not going to ever guess it right - by tapping on it, it changes to a %, and I prefer that as there's no guesswork there. :)

--janak