Battery life

[deelight_7]

AArrhh!
The battery life ..... in a word SUCKS!
Folks. It is a 1200 ma battery. It lasts a minute
I hope some company like seidio or anybody else creates a longer life battery.
In the meantime I have 2 car chargers for both cars and two home chargers for both work areas.

Deelight_7
signing off

[ericlaurence]

does the battery charge if you connect via usb?  if so, i can just leave that at work to keep mine charged up all the way.

[deelight_7]

Yes,

It will charge when connected to the USB port.

Deelight_7

[mistercoffee1]

Seido says they will be making two versions of the extended batteries.

[mariobac]

Well, I join in the comments.  I got a 680 and compared to my old 600, the battery life on the 680 is beyond sucky!  It was fully charged this morning when I picked it up and without a lot of use, it is now down to about 60% charge.  My 600 would hardly go down to 90% charge after a good days use.

Question to the group; is the Treo 650 extended battery from Seido compatible with the 680?

Thanks

[JAndrews]

Question to the group; is the Treo 650 extended battery from Seido compatible with the 680?

Well, it is compatible from the standpoint that you can put a 650 battery into the battery compartment of the 680 and the phone will work. But since the 650 battery is twice as think the factory 680 battery cover cannot fit over the battery.

[cyberface]

I have been using a 650 since I could get hold of one (well before the UK launch, cheers MobileFly!!!) and have recently been using it with ChatterMail and my company IMAP server to achieve full Push email, Blackberry style.

I've just upgraded to a 680 because of the memory and lack of aerial (and because I like new toys) and have noticed 2 things (apart from the great low cost - the 650 cost me around £600 ex. import duties whereas the 680 was less than £300 all inclusive).

Firstly, the stylus is poor, I can't wait to get an all-aluminium pen stylus like I had in the 650. Presumably the vendors need time to get the 680-specific products out.

On topic, the biggest problem is the battery life. My phone is using the GPRS network constantly to achieve the push-email functionality, and I find that the phone is down to 20% capacity when I get home from the office and plug the phone back into the charger.

This is without ever using Bluetooth, so I can't imagine that I can get a full day's work out of this phone with Bluetooth active as well. There is no way I could take the phone anywhere for a weekend without the charger or more batteries - I've never experienced this with any previous device, both the 600 and 650 would last a weekend at least.

Let's hope someone produces a good capacity replacement battery for the 680. If you use push email and work long days / are away from a charger every day, then I can't recommend the 680. The poor battery life really is a problem with this phone.

[eeeemc]

Thats's bad.............
I hate low battery.
Sorry to hear that, And it is great point to make me do not look at this antmore (until new battery double size comes up)

[Fred*]

It looks like someone is going to be selling a lot of replacement (better) batteries (and styluses!)

[jaytee]

The 680 battery is 2/3 the capacity of the original 650 battery and 1/2 the capacity of the extended capacity 650 battery sold by seidio.  I was told they (seidio) expect to make both an extended capacity and a super capacity battery, which would require a replacement cover, for the 680.  The extended one will be the same form factor as the current 680 with (hopefully) about 30% better capacity (1200 -> 1560 mAh).  No word on the capacity of the super battery.

[cyberface]

Have to add to this thread to express great disappointment. I had to work yesterday and got to the office (with fully charged phone) at around 9 am. By 4:30 pm, the phone was alerting about low battery, and by 5 pm the phone was dead. I made 3 short phone calls all day.

The phone is using ChatterMail for IMAP push email, and I even turned down the settings to maximise battery life (not ideal as I want my email pretty much immediately, not 1 minute later). This is the primary reason I own a Treo.

Basically if my phone can't last one business day then it's utterly useless to me. I don't really want to carry multiple charging devices everywhere, or a load of additional batteries (and the accompanying battery charger to replenish the batteries out of the Treo).

My 650 never had the problem, and my 650 would last an entire weekend away (i.e. fully charged on Friday morning, arrive back on Sunday afternoon to recharge).

As a business tool, the 680 is a worthless pile of crap. I'm angry because I absolutely love the 680 form factor - the lack of aerial is great, the scallops on the side make it *much much much* nicer to hold both when using the screen (internet / email) and when using as a phone (to your ear). I even prefer the keyboard.

I'm just incandescently frustrated that they let the damn thing out of the door without a battery man enough to last just *one business day*. What the hell is the point in that????

I will have to go back to my 650 for the time being. Shame.

(FYI I run *no* system hacks, no funny software and don't make long phone calls. It's primarly Chattermail IMAP push mail and Palm productivity / organiser apps. I don't play music and always use silent alerts (no annoying ring tones for me) - it's a business tool)

If the battery consumption remains the same, then hopefully a Sendio (?) aftermarket extended battery will do the job and I'll acquire one and return to the 680. However any aftermarket battery that requires a bulging rear clam and weighs substantially more is simply not acceptable.

Perhaps I've wasted my money on this, shame because it could have been pretty much perfect.

Just a warning for anyone planning to use one for an 8 hour day with push email. It's not up to the job. Palm really dropped the ball here. Smartphones should be able to do push email, it's not as if Blackberries have this problem. 

[Fred*]

Cyberface -

I can certainly understand your frustration about this.  Who makes a phone that won't even make it through the day on one charge?  All I can say is maybe the *third party* (how ironic is that?) better battery will solve your problems.  Also, do you have bluetooth activated?  That seems to be a big power hog. 
As for me, I think I'll stick with my 600 for now.  Sure, the screen isn't that great (but I still watch movies on it) and the reception often isn't good enough, but it works and I can get through a few days on a charge. 

[cyberface]

Cyberface -

I can certainly understand your frustration about this.  Who makes a phone that won't even make it through the day on one charge?  All I can say is maybe the *third party* (how ironic is that?) better battery will solve your problems.  Also, do you have bluetooth activated?  That seems to be a big power hog. 
As for me, I think I'll stick with my 600 for now.  Sure, the screen isn't that great (but I still watch movies on it) and the reception often isn't good enough, but it works and I can get through a few days on a charge. 

No, I only ever use Bluetooth to hotsync, and I didn't on Saturday.

More annoyingly, my girlfriend was trying to get in touch with me that evening (as I was working late) and she got all worried because none of her calls got through. So I had aggro to deal with when I got home.

I've resorted to bringing the USB cable with me to work, the phone is now connected to my laptop to trickle charge, but this is *not* a solution for weekend use etc.

I hope that the third party companies get extended batteries out there ASAP - I'd really like one soon or the phone is useless to me.

As I said, it wouldn't be a problem if the phone was junk, I'd just throw it away, but it's so much nicer than the 650 to use and hold that I know that if I go back to the 650 I'll be annoyed by it.

Palm are simple fools releasing a business phone that can't last a business day. Anyone claiming that it's a 'consumer' phone because it comes in different colours is crazy - the feature set is a business feature set first and foremost.

Their other Windows offerings are irrelevant, I would rather dig my eyes out with a blunt spoon than use Windows on any platform. The Palm OS smartphone should be offered as a usable business tool at the same level FFS. 

[eugarps]

Unless you use it a lot, try turning off the IR "Beam Receive."  It may help your battery life.

[krets]

I completely agree with the frustrations expressed here so far. I've basically retrained myself to plug my phone into my car charger even if I'm only driving 10 minutes just to add a little more juice to the battery. I have two chargers at home (one upstairs and one down) and one at work just to make sure I always have a place to fuel up.

I'm another one who doesn't have many apps running in the background. The main app I use is Chattermail and as a previous poster mentioned, I have it set to use as little power as possible. Even with all of that, I left my house at 11:00 AM for a volleyball tournament yesterday and by 9:00 my 680 was almost sapped. I hardly even used the phone all day.

I'm pondering returning the thing until they get a fix for this. It's very annoying.