Palm T3 BatteryLife

C

Chelsie K

New member
Have you T3 owners noticed how much of a power hog the T3 is? If I use it even any amount of time in a day, the best place for it when I get home is on the charger, or else I'll be pressing my luck with little battery life. Since I already had to get into it to reset the battery, I was wondering about 3rd party companies out there that may make batteries that will last longer on a charge.

I don't want to end up getting something from Bombay or Brooklyn for that matter as it could explode (Hehe, I'm being silly now, but really, one must be careful with generic batteries at 'too good to be true' prices).

I was pokin' around eBay and found this neat device to rechage on the go, if you're on a trip or something, stuck at the airport, and your battery life gets low. You can find it by typing into ebay:

Battery Extender Charger Palm Tungsten T W C

It looks kind of neat anyway, I guess you put AA batteries in the unit and it recharges your PDA via the AA batteries.

There's another little device I found here that's kind of pricey, but it supposivly can recharge your Tungsten 3-4 times from one charge:

http://store.l-f-l.com/cgi-bin/cp-app.cgi?pg=prod&ref=PR2-TUNGSTEN

These two items are external batteries though and not internal. Nonetheless, they are still kind of neat. Let me know if anyone here has found any 'reliable' replacement internal batteries for the T3, I'm interested in finding out.

Cheers,

mousepaws
 
I found that if I run the battery on the T3 ALL THE WAY DOWN and then charge for 3 hours (or better yet, charge for 3 hours when brand new - but it's too late for that now), I can use VERY OFTEN during the day for brief periods, with brightness at 25%, and it's only dropped one "click."

Playing video or moving files around, etc will drain it faster and so will backing up to the SD Card repeatedly.

However, compared to my 505 the battery life is at least DOUBLE and I can't really complain. Palm users have MANY different uses but if you disable bluetooth and lower the brightness, you can get around 5.5 hours (or 2-3 days of "intermittent" use) on one charge.

I too would like the "IPAQ" system of a rear clip extended battery but in practical terms don't know if I'd get full benefit from it - I'm seldom on mine more than 30-40 minutes at a stretch and most times just "on and off" to enter data.
 
I use the battery extender for a TT and works fine. Usually delivers 2-3 decent chargers but works equally well to supply power to the unit as a plug in power source. Decent NiMh batteries work best with it, are cheaper and better for the environment! Nigel
 
I use the "power to go" device and find it to work well... it will fully charge my T3 in about 30 minutes and will charge it 3-4 times on one charge....

I got mine on Ebay for about $25+ shipping and I am thinking about getting another.

Good luck finding what works best for you.
 
Using the T3 with the bluetooth switched on (even when not needed) drains the battery 4 times faster than when it is switched off.

I can use my T3 extensively for one day with BT off, but I quickly lose charge whenever I accidentally forget to turn my bluetooth off after using it. I also noticed that leaving the bluetooth on overnight drains half of the battery (even if the T3 and all bluetooth wakeup commands are switched off).
 
Dmyu: I didn't realise that by having bluetooth on and not being used still uses 4x as much power! I ALWAYS have bluetooth on, as usually, I'm always using it. (Getting online, hotsync, etc). well, now I know where my battery life went *GRIN GRIN!*
 
Mousepaws, it's not really that inconvenient to toggle the BT on and off by using the icon at the bottom of the screen. I am sure you will notice great improvement in your battery life once you get used to switching it off when not needed by the application you are working on (like games or word processors).

But I do admit that I sometimes forget to turn in on for applications that need it, and I get puzzled by an error message (until I realize that the BT is off). Some applications will ask you however if you want to turn your BT on.

I am certain you will also notice that your battery will not discharge as much when you leave your unit unused for a long time.

Regards.
 
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