Sunday, January 27, 2008

Treo 680 battery tips

Treo full charge problem

The first thing I've noticed when started to use the Treo, that it never charged fully the battery. Being connected to the charger the phone changes it's led color from red light to green light, when fully charged.  Checking the battery charge status (by taping the battery icon in the right upper corner) showed "Battery: 100%". But making the same check right after disconnecting the phone from charger gave the unsatisfying "Battery: 96%" result... I think that is unacceptable.

My Treo charge problem solution

I have been reading about Li-Ion batteries and their life cycle. What I know for sure these batteries do not need formating, like the old timer 16 hour first charge "do it or loose it". 
But I new a trick from my laptop. Even if the Li-Ion battery does not like to be drained  to 0%, it must be done once in a while for the sake of the computer. 
What is the meaning of this nonsense? Well the computer adapts is battery measuring system to the battery's minimum and maximum charge. This way it knows what charge percentage to show for the battery.
I suspect Treo works this way. So, the Treo's battery measuring system needs calibration. I have done the following steps:

Step1.  Drain the battery until the phone shuts down. (I did that by enabling bluetooth, and palying music through pocket tunes from the SD card).
Step2. Connect the Treo to the charger and fully charge it (do not disconnect the charger until the led changes to green color).

For me it worked, since than my phone shows "Battery: 99%" after a full charge.

Advice

It is not good for Li-Ion batteries to fully discharge them. Do not repeat this procedure often. Li-Ion batteries like to be charged as often as possible, so charge your phone often. But you can read this also in palm's Treo manual. Take care and have a full charge!