Quote:
Originally Posted by jusmee
The battery meter is NOT conservative, it is wrong, when it claims 75% full after only 30 minutes of recharge from flat then is still not full after 4 more hours of charge. That's the opposite of conservative. This meter is not even accurate to the extremely poor resolution displayed.
|
I agree totally. As an electronics engineer I know it shouldn't be that difficult to get some better accuracy from this.
I have had other issues with this battery charge monitor where I have had the unit drop from 50% to the point that it cuts off due to low charge in minuets. I have also recharged the unit from a 50% charge to full charge where the battery meter shows the lightning bolt charging icon but then when it has a full charge not getting the plug icon showing that the battery is full and running on the ac adapter.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave_S
Yes, it definitely is a "Smart Battery", but does not mean that the charge indicator is capable of being more precise than what you are seeing. The charge state circuit is mass produced in the millions, as are the battery cells, and then they are joined together at the final manufacturing steps. During use, the charge state chip learns the batteries full charge voltage and it's empty voltage and a few voltages along the way, and probably not very much else.
|
I can understand that reasoning for a simple 4 bar meter type of guage but if your going to then add in a 0-100% numeric battery indicator then 25% increments are not accecptable. At least not an any other equipment that I have ever used.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave_S
It would certainly be possible to add more RAM and ROM memory to the monitor microcontroller in the battery so that very precise charge/discharge curves for the battery could be kept. But, why? The levels that it does store are sufficient to do the job and keep costs down, and the battery is going to change over time and temperature anyway.
|
Lets see the PP uses a 400Mhz Arm processor and has 32mb of memory....I used to carry a HP Jornada 520 that used a 133Mhz SH3 with 16mb of memory and it had a much more precise and accurate battery meter. The ARM processor has a much better instruction set than the older SH3 processor. So this argument doesn't hold much water with me.