Treo 680 Battery Drain Patch Released

I still am struggling. I have tried the fix that your site recommends, I have also downloaded the camera patch. I use my phone about 3 times daily to download email, and make about 5 2-minute calls. By the end of the day, my battery is almost empty. This is my second battery.
Do you have any ideas?
Thanks.

RELIEF ON THE WAY: Follow-up to my post of yesterday. I called PALM tech support. Hearing that I tried all of your and their suggestions with TWO batteries, they have decided to send me a new unit. So perhaps their later issues of the 680 have resolved a problem in the battery drainage that required a hardware fix? Anyway, Palm was very responsive, I am happy for that. And thanks to you for the information you provide.

After running the charger\battery removal fix and the camera patch yesterday, I lose about 5% per hour making lots of calls and running GoodLink to my Exchange server.

I will not charge it tonight and report what my meter says in the morning.

Prior to these fixes, my meter was reporting a dead battery in 6 hours.

I've already run the camera patch (though the battery performance was horrible even before I used the camera at all). I've also tried the "battery meter reset" procedure a couple of times. The battery life has improved somewhat, but I would say that my standby time is still in the area of 30 hours. Nowhere near the advertised 300 hours of standby time. Now, I'm not expecting 300 hours of standby, but 100 hours would be nice.

Come on Palm, get on the ball.

BTW, drive mode on the 680 would've been nice. My T5 had it. It seems every other OS out there, whether desktop or mobile, continually adds features. Adding them and then taking them away randomly is piss poor business practice.

Scott and Joe I am having the same problem, but thought it was user error. I too can only hear the person with the earbud. I figured I was doing something wrong. I don't know if it worked prior to the patch as I have never tried talking on the phone that way until the other night, which was just for fun.

Helen,

My device had to be RMA'd. Scott on the other hand solved the problem with a hard reset. Anyone having this problem should call palm directly. I talked with a tech named Jay (#M20275) so maybe he has investigated the problem.

Mike, I installed the "Card Reader" program to use my 680 in a drive mode similar to what I was used to with my T5. It works very well.

Referencing my comment in #28:

I squeeked by with 2 work days out of 1 charge on my 680. I have not had the chance to test standby time because I use it from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and don't turn the radio off (leave it on for Goodlink). This is the first Treo I've had (used Cingular 8125 and IPAQ's previously), and to me, 2 days of hard use on 1 charge is not unreasonable. I do not use bluetooth at all.

I've got a Treo 650. I recently bought a Seidio high capacity battery. I doesn't last as long as the original Treo bathery. I get at least a half day less. Would I need to do this reset thing originally suggested for the 680? I usually (including on first use) charge it in the Seidio desktop charge that I bought at the same time as the battery.

does anyone know if you have to reload the camera patch after you use the camera? i loaded the patch and my battery life lasted much longer. but after i used the camera it went back to being crappy. hopefully i dont have to keep re-patching!

I was able to find links to the camera/battery usage patch just by accident--I was googling reviews of the 680 to see what turned up about battery life, and within a few clicks I came across "blog.treonauts"'s links to the patch. Do you people have any persistience at all?

Anyway, before I installed the patch, I was a little bit worried about my new 680's battery life (I was losing about 40 percent of the battery after a day of moderate to heavy usage of the PDA programs, and a few calls and email checks--I was thinking I'd get 2 days between charges, should I need to go to the max), but, since I downloaded the patch to the phone via a hotsync with my Mac, the battery has been performing quite well Indeed, it's been better by far than that of my basic and simple LG phone, and much better than the battery of my old Zire Palm Pilot.

Of course, the Zire's battery has lost much of its ability to hold a charge compared to when it was new, but, neither was it a phone or internet device, as my new 680 is. Moreover, my new 680 has, like any cell phone device, a replaceable battery; do most Palm Pilot PDAs now have that? I'm guessing not--thus the 680 is a better deal, I think.

Also, I know that Apple, for instance, still isn't making iPods with replacable batteries, which means their business model is still based in part on what the Detroit auto-makers used to call "planned_ obsolescence." Though software advances may still render Palm devices like the 680 obsolete as well, at least the battery issue, in and of itself, ultimtely be a factor in a user's need to upgrade the device.

Hey guys! i have been looking at the treo 680 for some time and going back and forth b/w it and the blackjack, but i just cant get my mind off of the touchscreen, the advanced calender/planner, and that nifty stylus. I was just curious are any of these problems in which you guys are encountering significant enough to opt for the blackjack instead of the treo 680.Just looking for a few opinions.

(p.s.)-Any blackjack users out there, what is the organizer feature like, would you say that its funtion ability is comparable to the treo 680?

I stuck with my trusty 650 when I saw very quickly that the "upgrades" in real productivity, stability, practicality were minimal at best and downright insulting in all honesty (yeah, like a choice of colour really helps me do things more efficiently, great upgrade, that's worth spending $300 on top of what I spent to get my 650 in the first place....sheesh).

Palm may have generated some revenue from sales of these newer models, but until we get some serious on board memory upgrade, bigger screen, faster web-browsing, they won't get another penny of my hard-earned money, especially for superficial cosmetic fashion tweaks.

Scott, these problems are awful and I am selling my Palm because of it. I will never buy another Palm product again. As a user who doesnt even have internet or email set up on it yet, I get about 12 hrs of standby. I've done the patch, i've done the battery procedure, and i've turned just about every option I can turn off so it has basically become an overpriced phone.

Blackberry, here I come.

I think the Treo680 radio program has been changed from the Treo650. I notice that every time the phone "polls" for phone network beacon signals, it would momentarily "hangs" (ie. stops responding for a second to a few seconds). This is most noticeable after a reset when the phone tries to connect to a phone network.

It seems that the Treo680 looks for such network beacon signals a lot more frequently than the Treo650 (I had a 650 and it doesn't have the frequent no-response to any key problem).

Anyone knows if Palm is going to post a fix ?

Also, I encountered quite a few crash (reset) mysteriously. When I dial #*377 (ie. press #*377 and then the green phone key), it says the a crash occurred while running " HandlerState.cpp,
Line:1379, Unable to reset the radio (PWR ON)

So apparently, the program controlling the phone radio is causing it to crash.

I installed the camera patch. It seemed to help for a while but is now doing the same thing, quik battery drainage.

I also dii all of the calibrations. Doesn't help. I did the meter calibration 2 days ago and just a little while ago the phone messaged me saying the battery was too low, it would now shut down.

Normally I can just reset to get the proper battery reading back, normally 3/4 full. This time, however, the phone would not power back on. It was completely dead. I hooked up the power cord and after about 30 seconds, was able to power up the phone.

BTW, I use the Seidio 2400ma battery. 2 days and complete battery drainage is just silly.

I'm not very satisfied with this low-feature Treo. My 600 with its low res screen was trouble free compared to this junk. My 680 crashes a lot and the features like showing the number of minutes for each call don't exist.

I called Palm and let them know how happy I was with this new Treo. I'll be going to Blackberry or some other PDA/phone.