3rd unit - same problem. It thinks the battery is dead

[neillm]

I had a problem with my original 214. When fully charged (showing 100% battery and green charge light) the device failed to switch on after being off for a while (and we're talking hours here, not days).
If I started it with the charger plugged in then it will fire up but the battery indicator shows 0%. However, after about 5-10 minutes charging it would suddenly leap up to 100% and the green light showed again.

I got a replacement and all was fine for about 4 days. It then started doing exactly the same thing. Now, the coincidence of having two duds that failed the same way is too great so I wondered what had changed and did major fault finding (putting apps on one by one with 2 days between etc etc)

Now I'm on my 3rd unit and after a few days it's doing the same thing! I've tried isolating the problem pretty extensively (http://forum.brighthand.com/showthre...ht=2nd+failed), but nothing seemed specifically to cause it.

I then found a sure fire way to trigger it - switch it on and off rapidly. I think this is why it appeared fairly random before. I think the switch on delay the 214 has may have caused me to press the power button quickly a 2nd time because I thought I hadn't pressed the button. Deliberately rapidly pressing the power button causes the failure to happen every time.

I now have a 2nd battery. So I tried switching the battery after the failure. This was to see if it is the battery charge level detection in the unit that is faulty. The device starts okay with the 2nd battery and indicates 100% charge. If I then put in the first battery, it goes through the start up cycle, gets to the green Windows Mobile screen and then switches off. If I then plug in the charger we're back to the same old thing - starts up, indicates the battery is at 0% and then 2 minutes later it jumps to 100%. Perhaps there is some circuitry in the battery itself that is getting spoofed?

[JakeRich]

There is indeed circuitry in the battery. In fact, I had the same problem as you and the HP Tech suggested changing the battery, not the unit. I got a new battery yesterday and now for about 12 hours I've had no problems. I tried the "double press" on the power button and had no problems with it at all. I think the problem is, in fact, in the battery.

[neillm]

Originally Posted by JakeRich

There is indeed circuitry in the battery. In fact, I had the same problem as you and the HP Tech suggested changing the battery, not the unit. I got a new battery yesterday and now for about 12 hours I've had no problems. I tried the "double press" on the power button and had no problems with it at all. I think the problem is, in fact, in the battery.

Well, I guess I'm on my 3rd battery and I've just made it do it with the new 2nd battery, so that makes four!
Switching it on and off rapidly kills mine everytime. Sometimes it takes a few goes, but it is repeatable. I think I only stumbled upon this issue in the first place because of the 2 second start up delay. Sometimes you think it hasn't switched on, so you press the button again just as the screen comes on. It then switches off 'cos you've pressed the button and then you naturally immediately press it again to switch it on.

Interestingly, when I first put in my new spare battery it was at 0%. It then appeared to charge normally, but when it got to 30% it jumped up to 100% with the green light. There is definitely something screwy going on here.

[RickAgresta]

neillm, I have no experience with WM devices, only Palm. But on Palm, when we need to perform serious troubleshooting, the first thing we suggest is a full backup, followed by getting the unit back to factory-fresh state (in Palm OS we perform a hard reset, don't know if the same terminology applies to WM). Starting from a known point is frequently helpful in isolating potential software conflicts, or in determining that it happens on a 'pristine' unit, indicating a hardware failure. Then, if the problem does not recur after a few days on pristine unit we'd suggest adding back in 3rd party apps, one by one, testing each in the same manner (that is, over a few days to ensure stability). Of course, this doesn't always pinpoint the problem -- sometimes a hard reset will clear out corrupted settings that, during the course of testing, are not re-created, thus the problem doesn't recur.

Again, not having WM experience, I don't know whether you've taken this sort of approach -- of course, I may simply have missed reading it in your other thread - apologies if that is the case. If you haven't tried, though, I'd think it is worth the time.

One other thing: since the battery is readily replaceable, does the unit run *without a battery*? if yes, then that would seem to be something to look at, too, as far as switching on/off rapidly.

hope this helps, RA

[Ed Hardy]

One thing to test here, when you change devices, are you also changing the power cable, and power strip (if appropriate)? A friend of mine burned out a couple of devices before he realized he was using a bad cable.
-

[neillm]

Thanks for the suggestions, but believe me, I have been very thorough. I am very experienced with Pocket PC devices having used them for over 8 years now. I helped Compaq trace a firmware bug with the 3950 a few years ago.

I have spent the last 4 weeks carefully ruling out software, cabling, card manufacturers etc. I have been sent three brand new boxed devices and can replicate the fault on each one. Each time I have added the apps back one by one leaving a couple of days between each change. I am running the same software that I have been running for years now and using the device in exactly the same way. Initially I thought it was the CF slot (the 16GB CF card thread), but I've since ruled that out. I was starting to think I was going mad as nothing seemed to change the apparent randomness. However, at the weekend I noticed that it failed after I did a double take on the power button. That was how I found that rapid switching on and off triggers the problem reliably.

I firmly believe this is some form of design fault either with the device or the battery. I have raised this with HP and after initial obvious suggestions they have gone very quiet.

If any other HP 214 owner is brave enough, try rapidly switching the device on and off.

[JakeRich]

I was brave enough. Ten times...no problems. I pressed the power button, then before the screen lit up, pressed it again. It still came up ok. I tried waiting until the screen was lit then immediately pressing it again to switch off. No problems. Was that what you were doing, or is it something else?

[JakeRich]

@RickAgresta, the HP won't run without a battery in it. It's not supposed to start with a 0% charge, but with the defective battery it did. That was the first clue to me that the battery was my problem.

[tanbam]

Since I am only about 1/2 mile from the place where I can swap units, I gave it a shot. I think I cycled the power button at least 500 times over the time it took me to make some toast.

No problems here, though in general, I don't think it's a good idea to rapidly switch anything on and off...

I am not even sure that the 210 even registers each press, since I could press it ten times before it would turn on, then it would turn off on the next press. I am not sure that this is your problem, and with the power on delay, you can't have been the only person who has pressed the button multiple times before the screen finally comes up. If it was the cause of a real problem, there would be a lot more complaining by now, in my opinion.

I've had a similar problem before, with the battery jumping from 0 (or some other value) to 100% very rapidly, but it was because of a bad connection between the battery and the pins in the device. Since it's happened to you with different devices, I'm clueless.

I've got a TV in our game room that sometimes breaks when you turn it on. It cost me $250 to fix the first time that it happened, but now I just replace the $7.00 part when it breaks. Because of this, I firmly believe that hardware can make to market with serious design flaws, so I'd encourage you to keep getting new ones and breaking them until you nail down the exact cause so the rest of us can avoid it...

[neillm]

Tambam, JakeRich - thanks for trying. Very interesting. Have you got any cards inserted? Have you got 214's or 210's?

I have a 16GB SDHC card loaded. On my first unit I had a 16GB CF. Perhaps there's a power on surge issue. I'll try without the SDHC card.

Thanks!