Posts Tagged ‘Battery Issues’

Battery stay at low level even after charging overnight?

There are some phones with higher current need, for example iPhone 3G and 3Gs, HTC Hero and Magic, Google Nexus One, HTC HD2, Samsung Omnia i8910, and Motorola Milestone.

Sometimes you are might just be able to charge to around 50% – 60% of full battery, chances are you are using a USB hub or a bad AC adpator.  If so, you might need to use the original AC adaptor.  The rational behind this is that it cannot charge fully if the input ampere is lower than the requirement of the phone.  This way the electricity cannot be flowed to the phone and thus the phone cannot be charged.

Next time when you buy an AC adaptor with USB out, remember to check the output of the phone – a 500mA adaptor is unlikely to fully charge a phone which requires 1A input(1A=1000mA).

Sanyo Energy Booster USB Output Charger

This is nothing new, since it’s at least one year old, but we decide to write an simple introduction for this cute item.

The Package
The sealed package comes with a charger, 2 eneloop AA-sized rechargeable batteries, and a dual-use USB battery cable.

The Magical USB Cable
The USB cable has two simple uses – charging and discharging. When you plug in the USB side into the charger, you can charge most phone mobiles with the standard mini USB and USB-ext. Otherwise, you will need the original charging cable.
Conversely, you can plug in the USB side into the computer, and the mini USB side into the “DC IN 5V” slot of the charger, this way the charger will blink in blue, indicating the AA batteries are recharging.
Note: The USB cable is not capable to transfer any data, and is solely for charging/discharging purpose. The cable can, however, be substituted by another USB cable – in fact you must change the cable if you want to charge any device other than those with mini-USB jack.

Feature over other AA battery mobile chargers
There are many other choices around which enables to convert AA-sized battery into mobile device energy, sometimes as cheap as €3, so why did we pick this Energy Booster?
- the mobile devices with higher energy requirement (like iPod, but not iPhone^) can be charged. Read: Sanyo KBC-E1 can’t charge iPhone. With two batteries instead of one, the Mobile Booster is capable to add up the mAh of two batteries, so charging a piece of 1500mAh battery is no challenge. Two fully-charged batteries can charge an iPod Touch to around 55%.
- the charger can also be used as a AA-sized Ni-MH battery charger, albeit the speed is very slow. A full recharge of battery requires an overnight charging.

^ iPhone can’t be charged by this charger, but can be charged by the internal lithium battery version. You might be interested in Kensington’s Power Booster instead.

Stain issue
The white color might look elegant or beautiful, but its shell is very newspaper unfriendly. A slightest touch of newpaper will dye the machine to a disgusting yellowish color. To make thing worse, if you attempt to wipe the stain with a plastic rubber, the charger’s surface might scratch.

Infos
Official Site for Sanyo Eneloop

Extended Battery for HTC Diamond (Update)

Battery life for HTC Touch Diamond P3700 and Extended Battery

(Originally posted on 12 January 2009, update on 24 July 2009)

Original content:
HTC Touch Diamond (“P3700″) is a great phone with multimedia functions, but we’ve heard that most users are complaining the very short battery life of the handset. Even if you switch off GPS, Wi-fi and Bluetooth, it’s hard to sustain the battery for one day.

The original battery is 900mAh, which usually lasts for less than your daily usage. If you decide not to charge your Diamond in office, it seems inevitable to acquire an additional battery for your normal usage. You can find in the market some types of replacement batteries to beef up Diamond’s battery life.

1. The original extended battery, model “BP E270″, features a larger size 1350mAh battery. This still comes with a thick back, but it’s more elegant though. Warning: High price.

2. “Big” batteries. With capacity ranging from 1530mAh to 2000mAh, so physically big that the original back cannot be covered, and the dealer will include a rather bulky back along with the battery. This new back does not look as good as the original one, of course. The extended battery will affect reception of GPS due to its size. Don’t believe words like “works like original”.

Besides these two, you can always buy the 900mAh batteries. This is not recommended as you will soonly find yourself changing batteries several times a day.

UPDATE: We recently got a BP E270 for extensive testing on the duration of battery. The battery has significantly prolonged by around 40%. It still cannot support prolonged use of MSN Messenger so you either have to turn in off in long train trips or you really should bring along the original 900mAh battery.

With the software “WMWifiRouter” on, we enabled wi-fi sharing, and the machine is not as hot as using the original battery as there are space inside the thick back. We wish the final launch of WM6.5 include wi-fi sharing (like what ASUS P835 offers) though.
Click here for an extended reading on wi-fi sharing / ASUS P835 on our site

One more thing, the thick back makes the machine looks flat as is not as reflective as the original one. Basically the Diamond becomes lower profile, and and fingerprints are no longer attracted.