Willcom W-Zero3 [es] in the garage: Part Two

Before we proceed with reviewing the [es], bear with us as we digress into the issue of battery life. We hadn't envisaged launching in to the second part of this review with a complaint, but this is something we need to deal with up front.

First, the spec sheet: Sharp claims that the [es]'s battery gives 7 hours of talktime and 500 hours of standby (300 if the signal-strength LED on the front of the case is left lit). The manual also claims that around 3.5 hours is needed for a full charge, and doesn't make any mention that we could immediately see of needing to do the old 16-hour super-charge and drain-to-nothing routine that used to be recommended.

On Sunday, after charging the phone for perhaps 5-6 hours, we downloaded Skype onto it, set up and checked a POP email account, and then turned the phone off overnight. On Monday morning, we turned it on at around 9am, checked email a couple of times, and didn't do much else. At 2.30pm, we got a low battery warning (from a look at the power management settings, this indicated that the battery had around 1/6th remaining).

We switched off and took the [es] home to charge. We gave it around a 10 hour charge on Monday night, used it to check mail a few times and write a short blog post on Tuesday, then turned it off in the evening. On Wednesday, we switched it back on in the morning and checked mail. At midday, low battery warning.

On each occasion we charged the phone we noticed that no matter how long we left it, the battery charging light remained on. We couldn't immediately determine whether the light does switch off to indicate that the battery is fully charged, or not. This morning, seeing that the light remained on after a further 10+ hours charging, we decided to leave the phone at home on charge all day to see what happened.

Clearly things like the front-panel LED and keyboard backlight have an impact on battery life, but we had already disabled both before we used the phone on Tuesday. One other possibility that occurs to us is the phenomenon we noted a few times when waking the phone from standby, where it appeared to be in the midst of a data transfer--we're not sure whether this was to check mail or for some other reason, and it seemed to automatically disconnect again after a short period. However, presumably this would drain the battery if any data were being shifted back and forth. As we're not using the phone for voice calls as yet, we also disabled the SIM for good measure to see if this gained us any extra battery life, but as we were already running low on juice at that point the results were inconclusive.

To sum up, though, we have a nagging feeling that we're not simply missing a setting that would magically give us the promised battery life; we have to wonder whether the official figures themselves are not massively overstated. We'll reserve final judgement until after we've run the phone through an all-day charge, however.

Next, some more interesting stuff about the general look and feel.

Posted by aragoto at August 10, 2006 11:51 AM | TrackBack