If its powered OFF why is it STILL ON????

[garlic]

I dont get it....
Why cant they make a PDA that when powered off it actually turns OFF?? :confused totally:

Pocket PCs are NEVER off unless you remove the battery. Powering them off with the power button simply puts them in a stand-by mode like in a PC or laptop.

The problem is I HATE it when my PPC runs out of battery power when im not even using it and everything gets wiped out. Then you got to go through the whole backup/restore thing...sigh...

AND why should the battery drain when im not even using it!!!??? :evil:

Anyway, is it SO hard to make a Pocket PC that actually turns OFF and not simply go into a standby state????

Sure standby state is great. Press the button and you're instantly ready to use the PPC, BUT in my opinion there should be a TRUE power off option where the PPC completely shuts OFF.

Yes I understand that alot of people have programs installed into the RAM part of the pocket PC and if powered off they would loose them.

Here is my thought. WHY cant they have an option where you can truly power the unit off and everything will be backed up into non-volatile memory automatically?? Then when powered back up it would boot like a regular PC. We could have the best of both worlds! We could completely turn off the PPC like a laptop from the OS by going to Start/Shutdown.

Then hit the power button to power it up after that the "power" button can continue to be a stand-by button as it is now...

1. This would save battery power.
2. You would NEVER have to worry about manually restoring the PPC due to a dead battery.
3. No, I wouldnt mind having to wait the 30 seconds for it to boot.

[Darius Wey]

It doesn't power off completely because it still needs to retain the data you have on there. A complete power off (as can be demonstrated by taking out the battery) will wipe your data because the memory is volatile.

I don't think it's a huge issue. The battery drain is negligible, so you can leave it in standby mode for days and you'll lose very little battery power... Unless that's the problem with your device - is your battery always at 0% if you leave it untouched for a few hours?

[kozak]

They need a hybernate feature that XP has. It would just copy the RAM contents to like the File Store that's on most PPC's. Have it as an option for people that want more battery life at the cost of Instant ON.

The reason for Powering RAM is so that you get Instant ON. PPC's compete with Palm devices which turn on intantly, the only way to be able to do that is with a powered RAM.

[garlic]

They need a hybernate feature that XP has. It would just copy the RAM contents to like the File Store that's on most PPC's. Have it as an option for people that want more battery life at the cost of Instant ON.

The reason for Powering RAM is so that you get Instant ON. PPC's compete with Palm devices which turn on intantly, the only way to be able to do that is with a powered RAM.

EXACTLY why cant there be a hybernation feature??? Its not that hard to do....and it would really help...

[garlic]

It doesn't power off completely because it still needs to retain the data you have on there. A complete power off (as can be demonstrated by taking out the battery) will wipe your data because the memory is volatile.


Thats exactly the problem im addressing. What you just described is a problem and a poor design and it simply DOSNT have to be this way...

We need a hybernation option to protect data and extend battery life....its such a simple idea and so simple to impliment it makes you wonder, why didnt they do this???

This is one of the biggest problems with PPCs....and its amazing they dont impliment such a simple solution...

[IpaqMan2]

That is the beauty of the Pocket PC.

Pocket PCs, Palm OS PDAs, and basically any other PDA is a Personal Digital Assistant, first. In other words... from the days of the Apple Newton to today, PDAs have always been and hopefully will always be a PIM device or Personal Information Managment device 1st, than anything and all else second.

PDAs are designed for instant on at a press of a button to have access to your information. Can you imagine being at the bank teller window and forgetting your bank account number and turning on your PDA only to wait another 30 seconds for everything to boot up to just get your information? It wouldn't work. If this were the case, the entire PDA market would fail. That is why the early Palms were so successful. They didn't play mp3s or videos, but they turned on fast and you had access to all of your information right away.

Now it sounds to me that you don't use your PDA as a PIM device from what you've post, because if you did, you'd be using your PDAs far more often than just once every few days where the battery goes dry. If this is the case.... than I could see how a power switch or something could be useful for PDAs when storing them over a period of time much like the original 3635 & 3650 iPaqs had from Compaq when they released them. But to change PDAs so they can BOOT up is a bad idea and would rather see people go to a multimedia device like the Archos AV420 that can do basic PIM functions, but is heavy on the Video and MP3 abilities than to see the PDA market destroy it's self.

[Sven Johannsen]

It's not just instant on and memory refresh. PPCs process time for appointments and alarms. They can be set to do updates at set intervals as well. These features require the processor to be processing. Possibly you don't want, need or use those features, but they are part of the platform.

[garlic]

That is the beauty of the Pocket PC.
PDAs are designed for instant on at a press of a button to have access to your information. Can you imagine being at the bank teller window and forgetting your bank account number and turning on your PDA only to wait another 30 seconds for everything to boot up to just get your information? It wouldn't work. If this were the case, the entire PDA market would fail. That is why the early Palms were so successful. They didn't play mp3s or videos, but they turned on fast and you had access to all of your information right away.


Wow you're blind. Did I say to remove the stand-by feature? No...Thats what you are implying I said.

Obviously if you have the PPC on you in your pocket and you're on the move you would want to keep it in a stand-by state alot of the time BUT not ALL the time.

Whats the point of having it in a stand-by state when you're sleeping??? Do you use your pocket PC in your sleep? ROFLMAO

Whats the point of it being in a standby state if you leave it in your car? Does your car use the PPC? LOL!

Whats the point of leaving it in a standby state if you KNOW your not going to use it till later in the day whe your on the move????

I know your response is going to be "Well I would just leave it in the charger"

and thats exaclty the problem. If there was hybernation we wouldnt have to!

Why must we leave it in the charger all the time when we DONT have to if there was a hybernation state.

Anyway your arguement of needing instant-on ALL the time is week at best......

[Menneisyys]

Whats the point of having it in a stand-by state when you're sleeping??? Do you use your pocket PC in your sleep? ROFLMAO

Whats the point of it being in a standby state if you leave it in your car? Does your car use the PPC? LOL!

Whats the point of leaving it in a standby state if you KNOW your not going to use it till later in the day whe your on the move????

I know your response is going to be "Well I would just leave it in the charger"

and thats exaclty the problem. If there was hybernation we wouldnt have to!


No PPC PDA has ever implemented real hibernation (really zero power consumption).

There is only one PDA that implemented this in reality: the Sony Clié UX50 with its dedicated backup flash ROM-based memory, but it also requires a maybe lengthy (dunno, should check this in Palm forums, but I don't have time for that now) backup/restore process before you completely hibernate your device.

[garlic]

It's not just instant on and memory refresh. PPCs process time for appointments and alarms. They can be set to do updates at set intervals as well. These features require the processor to be processing. Possibly you don't want, need or use those features, but they are part of the platform.

"These features require the processor to be processing. Possibly you don't want, need or use those features, but they are part of the platform."

and there you see the PROBLEM...like I said before, it DOSNT have to be like this...

A very simple implementation called the alarm clock can be added to the PPC design. CMOS clocks use almost no power and they can trigger the PPC from a hybernation state to notify you of appointment or what ever.

Updates in a standby state have zero benefit to you. It would be the same thing if you power up from a hybernation state, just the updates would occur right after power up which would take a split second anyway. Makes no difference....

[garlic]

No PPC PDA has ever implemented real hibernation (really zero power consumption).


Its a shame isnt it....there is so much I cant teach them....such a shame.....

[surur]

Garlic, calm down.

You make a good point, and there are ways you can implement what you want e.g backup with sprite and restore. There were some pocketpc's with a switch which you could disengage the battery with e.g the Loox 600. No OEM has implemented the whole package however.

I believe (and I may be wrong) that smartphones can be swtiched of completely, using no battery, and then restart where you left off. Its clearly possible, but has not been an urgent feature to implement.

As some-one said higher up, it has been much more of a priority getting better run times. If you dont use your pocketpc you could leave it for at least a week on standby e.g the Siemens SX66 has a 1500mAh battery, and with the GSM radio on the whole time, can get 192 hrs (8 days) standby time. Imagine the standby time with the radio off.

http://www.letstalk.com/product/product.htm/depId_1/pgId_100/prId_28064.htm

So in essense, like a lot of things, your solution is possibly, but does not appear to be worth the effort. Its like the government constantly telling us to switch off our TV's completely instead of putting them in standby. Yes, it will save us £2 per month, but the inconvenience is not really worth the effort to most people.

Surur

[surur]

Another example. The horrible HP H6300 series pocketpc phone has the following stats

300 hours of PDA standby time (all radios off)
210 hours PDA/GSM standby time
200 hours PDA/WLAN standby time
12 hours PDA/GSM talk time
9.5 hours PDA/GPRS browsing
9.5 hours PDA/GPRS browsing
3.5 hours PDA/GSM Talk/WLAN browsing/Bluetooth transfer
http://www.ipaqabilities.com/reviews_articles/articles/0104-coming_attractions_h6300.php

So if you used your ppcphone just as a PDA you would get 12.5 days of standby time from a full charge, and even using it as a phone you would get 8.75 days of standby time. The HP4700 has a larger battery than the H6300. If you cant remember to put your device on the charger in all that time you really should not be using a PDA. Remember even the current PALM OS devices also reset to blank if you dont charge them.

In short, yes, it seems an obvious design oversight, but its not really half as much a problem as you think it is.

Surur

[IpaqMan2]

Wow you're blind. Did I say to remove the stand-by feature? No...Thats what you are implying I said.

Obviously if you have the PPC on you in your pocket and you're on the move you would want to keep it in a stand-by state alot of the time BUT not ALL the time.

Whats the point of having it in a stand-by state when you're sleeping??? Do you use your pocket PC in your sleep? ROFLMAO

Whats the point of it being in a standby state if you leave it in your car? Does your car use the PPC? LOL!

Whats the point of leaving it in a standby state if you KNOW your not going to use it till later in the day whe your on the move????

I know your response is going to be "Well I would just leave it in the charger"

and thats exaclty the problem. If there was hybernation we wouldnt have to!

Why must we leave it in the charger all the time when we DONT have to if there was a hybernation state.

Anyway your arguement of needing instant-on ALL the time is week at best......



Speaking of being blind....

What do you use your pocket pc for? Do you use it for decoration? Do you use it to show off to your friends that you’re just a cool person with a really cool toy? Because that’s excatly what it sounds like… Let me help answer some of your questions…

Do you use your pocket PC in your sleep?
Yes I do… I keep my PDA by my bed side and use the alarms on it. I also use it at times when I wake up to jot down or make voice reminders for the morning.

Whats the point of it being in a standby state if you leave it in your car?
But this is the point… I don’t leave it in my car.. I actually use my PDA as a tool, not as toy and only show it off when I think someone will be around to look..

Whats the point of leaving it in a standby state if you KNOW your not going to use it till later in the day whe your on the move???
Again… I use my PDA and I have it clipped to my belt and though I don’t know when I may need it.. it’s there ready to be turned on..

Why must we leave it in the charger all the time when we DONT have to if there was a hybernation state.
Again.. this seems to be a problem that only you seem to be facing because at best.. it sounds like you don’t use your PDA but as a toy… Everyone I have ever known who used their PDA (even the idiots who don’t know what to do with them) still don’t seem to have a problem charging it daily because they use it to some degree daily. So let me return the favor and laugh in your face.. Perhaps you may find this PDA to better suit your needs because obviously I have no idea why u even have a Pocket PC to begin with.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005V3LW/qid=1110194700/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-6518118-0600065?v=glance&s=toys

[Stephen Beesley]

...I believe (and I may be wrong) that smartphones can be swtiched of completely, using no battery, and then restart where you left off. Its clearly possible, but has not been an urgent feature to implement.

...

Surur

I think the simple reason that this is possible with Smartphones is that they do not use volitile memory for RAM. Therefore even when no power is being supplied the memory would retain the data.

The Newton used the same arrangement. Powering off the Newton with the switch would put it in a hibination mode much like the PPC, but if you want you can leave a Newton unpowered for as long as like but when you supply some power again it all your programs, data etc will still be there. The effect of unpowering the Newt and then retuning power would be much like rebooting a desktop - with the reboot time depending on how many packages (Newton terminology for programs) you happen to have installed etc.

In practice of course you would normally just let the ol' Newt "sleep", but it was always good to know that even if you did run out of Juice everything would be there waiting for you when you re-applied the power.

[kozak]

The point is to have it as an OPTION. Not everyone uses Hybernate mode on their laptops. It's there as an option. You don't want it, don't use it, but dont' argue against it for that reason.

[surur]

The point is to have it as an OPTION. Not everyone uses Hybernate mode on their laptops. It's there as an option. You don't want it, don't use it, but dont' argue against it for that reason.

Its not that we dont want the option. Its just not as simple as you think it is. Firstly, the "hibernate feature" wont just work like that. It takes me 20 minutes to backup my pocketpc using sprite backup, and 10 minutes to restore it. Thats far from the 30 seconds that Garlic would find acceptable.

The alternative is to store everything in ROM (like the hard drive on a desktop) and use RAM for RAM. That way off would be off, and your pocketpc would boot up from a complete off. It would be possbile to boot up in 30 seconds, and there is some hope that the next version of windows mobile will work that way. It would require a complete re-achitecturing of the platform however.

Thirdly, non-volatile RAM could be used. This ram is however dead slow, and would cause out pocketpc's to be sluggish.

So as you can see, to have what you want would have a lot of inintended consequences, and would require a number of changes and take a lot of resources. At the same time the problem you are aiming to solve is quite small, and does not cause diffiuclty to most people.

Its all about cost and benifit.

Surur

[Cybrid]

Casio Be-300 had NAND? flash which meant it did not erase. You could run the battery dry, put it in a drawer for a week and it would still work after being plugged in. It should be do-able....
With sprite and a big enough file store you could run a PPC with little or no data loss without ever worrying about the battery.
It is slower though.

[uzetaab]

I can see the advantage of having a zero power option, but most people wouldn't use it.

In zero power mode the device would not give you reminders. Sure you could set an alarm at bios level, but the device would still use the same amount of power to be able to process when all your alarms are due. Or there would be a limit to how many alarms it prepares for.

The primary use of PPC is PIM, so most people would not use a zero power option. If I was running MS, HP or Dell. I would not spend my resourses on a feature that would rarely be wanted or needed. I'd rather spend it on things like better batt life, larger ram, faster speed etc.

Mind you, as a consumer, it would be nice to know that if I accidentally ran out of power I would not lose my data, which is a much more universal problem.

[frankenbike]

Actually, hibernate wouldn't have to back up the full RAM every time you powered off. It would just have to back up the RAM that had changed, where it could keep a mirror of RAM in Flash (of course, more Flash should be supplied, considering how cheap it's become...1gb for $70 retail or so). When you boot up, instead of loading every program into RAM all at once before starting, it only has to load the OS files, and can reload programs either when they're started or bleed them in slowly (which could be user settable).

In any case, I've read that WM2005 will actually have hibernation to Flash (ROM) as an option, supported by the OS.