Treo 680 Battery: Review Part 7

I have confirmed personally that turning off the time sync. saves gobs of battery life. Yesterday with time sync on I was down to 10% battery life by 1pm. Today with time sync off my battery is at 72% at noon. This is with chatter email (push) on.

What's weird is that even if you turn the phone off completely, the battery life is still really lousy. My 650 has been sitting around for 4 days and its battery is still at half charge. The 680 sits overnight with the phone off and loses 20%.

I just bought the Treo 680 and am looking for a source for the grafitti software that Palm omitted to install.

Thanks everyone re 680 battery tips - I followed some of the suggestions and turned off a few features and my battery life has definitely improved! Still not as great as the 650, but enough to make it through the day.

I had to return mine. I had two problems.
1) A bit of a lag every once-in-a-while (pressing a key would not yield anything for a few seconds)
2) Battery lasted 1.5 days in standby
I'll wait a few months then try it again.

Do you know if the extended battery covers will come in colors to match the phones? I have Crimson and wouldn't want a Graphite battery cover.

I just got my graphite unlocked treo 680 7 days ago.
It's fully charged at 7pm. No activity since but at 6am (that's just 11 hours of standby time), I couldn't even make a call because the battery needs to be charged again.
I turned of the bt and adj the brightness to almost dark the following night and tried the same test, still the battery needs to be charged again at 9am (14 hrs of standby time).

I called Palm and they will replace my unit because it is very unsual for my fully charged battery to get drained overnight w/ out activity.....Yes, the whole unit......

I have just upgraded from the treo 600 to the 680....after about 50 hard resets I got almost all my data transfered....ohh and if you use subfolders in outlook contacts...use keysuite or a 3rd party to hotsync! Anyway has anyone gotten AIM to work on the 680. Every time I try it disables my bt and deletes files causing the 50+ hard reset.

Now on my second treo 680, the last one kept having jarbled symbols where the service provider name should be, then if i tried to re-set it or take the battery out, it would just say ''network search'' for at least an hour, not letting me make or receive calls. hopefully this time around will be better.

Got a 650 personally (which I like a lot), and bought a 680 for my wife.
Without actually making a single phone call (the phone is switched on of course), and with all 'optimizations' done, she gets 40 hours of standby time.
This is really unacceptable. It means she has to recharge every night. 40h if a far cry from the official 300h. I can accept 150h, but less than 48h!
Come on Palm, you can do better than this !

There's been a big discussion on battery problems. How many of you actually calibrated the battery when you first got it? (like you're supposed to do for ALL lithium batteries not just treo batteries) Lithium batteries, are to be calibrated first before it functions at its full capacity. Brand new litjiums require 2-3 full discharges. Remember you must FULLY discharge to the point where you can't even turn your treo on and you must fully charge inbetween the discharges. You also should do a full drain (not twice like you do when you geta new lithium battery) once a month to maintain the full compacity of the battery. Trust me this will solve your major drain issues AND extend the life of your battery. Like you my battery drained 80-90% the first night. and just made it thru the first day. I'm a moderate user, (not a business user) using email, browsing the web and talking. Now, after clibration, I easily get 2-1/2 days before I need to charge again, 3 days if it's used lighter than I normally use. My settings are as follows: Screen brighteness 1 click under medium, Beam off, bluetooth off, auto-off 1min, and dim screen after 30 seconds on phone. Once my battey has been calibrated I've always charged my phonesevery night and I do perform a monthly calibration. It's amazing how much more of life you get out of these batteries. It always disappoints me when I see the batteries go before their time simply because the calibrations were never done.
Also, for clarification stand by time is with the phone off and the battery not being used. Hope this helps and clarify things for many of you.

I have no complaints. I get about the same results with my battery and my phone using the same technique.

The hard part was charging the battery fully when I first got the phone instead of playing with it. But, it does provide you with better performance.

With moderate use, a few phone calls a day, automatic e-mail checking ot my pop3 server, and just about the same settings as JC, I can get about 2 days. I prefer to charge everynight though because I prefer to have a full charge for the day no matter how long the phone is supposed to last. I'll probably get a second battery too.

For me the battery is not a big issue because I can always find a way to charge my phone whether at home, at work, or on the road. My concern is the reliability of the phone and so far the 680 is awesome. I don't even think I've had to reset it yet.

Are KB Light Off and Phone Technician compatible with the 680?

I purchased a Treo 680 one week ago and I returned it today, disappointed by the short battery life (even after applying all the tweaks suggested here). The Cingular tech told me I was not the first to return a Treo 680 for this reason.

For seven days I fully charged the 680 each night and with little to no use the battery would drain to unusability by mid evening of the next day. Today when I went back to my dependable Treo 650, it still showed 20% power after sitting in a drawer for a week. The 650 just looks and feels better built to me. It also lasts for the duration of a weekend trip.

Others have commented on some of the strange changes noticed in the 680's software, but I wonder why the Blazer web browser in the 680 no longer contained a "disconnect" menu command?

-SRE

Thank you, Casey Carter!

I was determined to stay with my 680 due to speed and feel, but, having used the 650 since release, the VERY short battery life on standby was looming as a serious inconvenience. I could not make it through the day on a charge.

Turned off the "automatic" date/time setting and now have a full day's charge in one battery.

Previously, was convinced that the time was less than 1/4 of that of the 650 with the 1800 battery. Now, it's somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3, which is quite livable until the extended battery comes out.

The drain created by the automatic date/time setting should be widely documented...I suspect quite a few returns would not be made if this were known.

HH

Hi
I am also having a frustrating time with my TREO 680 battery (dead after about 12 hours of light use). I am trying the various tips, but how do you turn GPRS off? Is it a matter of simply selecting GSM instead of GPRS network in preferences? Also, I have not turned email on yet, but maybe it is automatically on. How do you turn email off? I am using the standard email software (versamail) that came with the phone.

Also, I am ashamed to say I didnt do the battery calibration thing - I didnt realise that was still a requirement for Li batteries, and the instructions didnt mention it, but anyway, is it too late to do this after you have used the phone for a couple of days?
Thanks for any advice.
DG

I did the battery calibration thing - and everything else suggested - and am still losing almost all power overnight, after a full charge, with the phone turned off. So - I've returned my phone and purchased a 650 instead. The Cingular salesperson did say that it's probably some sort of software glitch, causing some type of software to keep cycling and drawing out all the power - and sooner or later, there will be a recall. I just can't live with minimal battery, such as DG talks about above, so - good by slim phone, hello 650, which is hopefully pretty darned good.
Anne

UPDATE.
I calibrated my battery (2 discharge/recharge cycles), turned off the various things mentioned above (time checking, GPRS, bluetooth etc), and 1.5 hours after turning it on, I am still at 99% battery capacity with the phone ON. Obviously it is still very early to be boasting about my new results, but this is a BIG improvement over the performance of my phone yesterday (roughly 8% per hour) and it should translate to at least 4-5 days of standby time with phone on, but that is not yet confirmed). Next I will try to use a process of elimination to see which factor was causing the poor performance and will report back when I have worked it out.
DG

UPDATE #2.
Well, 4 hours after turning my TREO 680 on (with phone ON), bluetooth off, and the last 2 hours with beam receive on, brightness at maximum bright, and GPRS ON, and my battery is still 99% charged! I have not made or received any calls as yet, but this is the sort of performance I was expecting when i bought this phone and I am (no longer) disappointed. DG

DG - thanks a lot for all the updates on the state of your Treo 680 battery life - like you I have been able to keep a very regular performance.

Other Treonauts considering the battery life on the Treo 680 to be too low for them should currently simply consider purchasing a spare battery.

Cheers, A.

after trying out 2 treo 680s with cingular, i have ended up returning both of them for a full refund. there are some serious software issues that prevent full use of the treos that i bought, which is disappointing, because i was in love with my 650, and have turned a lot of people on to treos. maybe after a couple months all the bugs will be worked out of the new software and i can ''come home'' to treo again.

FINAL UPDATE.
My expt is over, I tried various combinations of different features on or off over a 24 hour period, and I am pretty happy with the results. Note, these are only my findings for my TREO 680.

Bottom line (this is a summary of my findings with different modes on or off):
1. In standby mode (phone ON, Auto time check, bluetooth, IR, Email checking ALL OFF, and little/no active use), my phone loses around 0.25-0.5% battery power per hour. This fits pretty well with the rating of up to 300 hours standby time.

2. Power usage increases significantly in standby mode (Phone ON) with: Auto time checking ON, IR beam receive ON and Bluetooth ON, even with little/no active use. Each of these features seemed to contribute noticably to battery drain. Usage was between 2 and 4% battery power per hour.

3. Active use (eg. email/web/bluetooth activity and screen on for roughly 50% of the time the phone is on) drains the battery much faster, as would be expected. Usage under these conditions was between 8 and 14% per hour.

4. I think one of the most important things I did was to properly condition the battery as described by JC (entry 36) ie. FULLY discharge and recharge at least twice (without using it in between). My phone performance seemed to improve remarkably after this, although unfortunately I did not formally test it beforehand.

So, despite initial concerns on my part, I think the TREO 680 is performing as expected (for me at least). I hope this information is helpful.

Anyone know if PALM is doing anything about this? I mean why should we be doing "tweaks" at all to get more battery life. I never worried about charging my 650. Now I'm alwasy glancig at my battery meter. I work long hours some days and do not have time or acess to charge my phone. This is unacceptable.

UPDATE: The spare 1200mAh battery for your Treo 680 is now finally available in the Treonauts Accessories Shop.

http://shop.treonauts.com/content/accessories/8-37--1346.htm

Cheers, A.

Sedio has an extended battery for the 680 but that battery is 2400 mAh and makes the device look like it's pregnant. http://www.seidioonline.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=598