Our Wireless Sales Technical Support (WSTS) team is a call center based in the Denver area that supports our SE's. They also support our Try/Buy program where customers can trial a device and solution prior to rollout to make sure it will fit their needs and requirements. One thing WSTS is starting to see is a trend with some customers complaning about battery life on the ES400 ranging from 3-6 hours depending on whether standard or extended battery. Obviously there are factors such as frequency of GPS ping, running processes, etc and that may vary from 3rd party app to 3rd party app, device settings may also be a factor, etc. I'm wondering if anyone else is hearing reports of this, if Moto engineers have any suggestions on how to mitigate battery life problems on the devices, and if you are aware of any particular questions that the customer should be asking of the app developer to help control battery problems. These are proven industry applications and not badly coded customer proprietary apps as far as we can tell. Any help would be appreciated. Here is a breakdown on the problems per a WSTS Team Lead:
We currently have multiple Try-Buy opportunities at various stages with the ES400 and I am starting to see a trend in battery life as being a concern with these devices. Our current reports are that the standard battery lasts for only three hours and the extended for roughly six.
Examples of the above feedback are as follows:
- Oregon Department of Human Services is trialing the ES400 for use with EMSystems software for scanning patients at ambulances, hospital emergency rooms, etc. Initial feedback was that a fully charged (standard) battery lasted only from 9 am till noon.
- Joerns Healthcare is also providing feedback that in initial testing even the extended battery will not last for a full workday. They are currently using Cheetah software.
Motorola makes vehicle chargers and also a cradle, but does not manufacture a standalone battery charger. I’ve found one generic battery charger that might work, but I would not recommend this model as a permanent solution. Here is the link to this charger:
http://www.factorydirectcellular.com/home/universal/universal-battery-o…
Possible alternate accessories: For other devices, Motorola makes cradle chargers that include a separate slot for a battery and also a charger designed to charge multiple batteries.
7 Replies
In Sprint builds, we had to enable a SD registry, that keeps the Storage card driver alive during suspend resume. Not sure whether your customer does suspend/resume in the tests, if so : i would suggest to disable this registry and see the battery life. Only side effect of this is : if you have a media player running : it will keep popping up message box "storage card found..." Use the attached reg - install it and test it
Here is the EMScript tool and after the earlier note to not use it, we got clarification from Moto that SE's and WSTS are free to use it, provided that the entire ZIP file including the EULA is sent, especially to external customers and that the EULA is read and understood. There is also no real support for this tool, but if needed we can bring in Moto TA's to assist on a case by case basis. Instructions are above in an earlier part of the string.
OK but since I can't access Compass I also can't access the EMScript download itself per the instructions so can't pull logging against the battery usage. Can someone please post the download for EMScript here or email it to me at matt.d.valenzuela@sprint.com? Thanks.
One thing I have found that will drain the battery fast is having WIFI on and not being connected to a network. This will casue the device to keep trying to connect and thus that battery life will suffer.
Can someone from Moto please chime in here and give me some feedback on what may be going on here? I'm expected to deliver an update on this to our WSTS team on Wed 3/23 but have not seen any responses since my original post date of 3/9. Thanks in advance for any assistance on this.
I can't speak to the accessories but take a look at the estimating battery life doc at http://compass.mot-solutions.com/go/ECSG-Whitepapers Using the techniques in the doc you should be able to find out why the battery is not lasting.
I have attached the document here since the Sprint associates cannot access Compass. Thanks.