How bad is your A730 battery?

[The Blur]

No... i'm no idiot and i'm not talking about a color.

[have both loox and a730w]

I have seen your question whether I still have plastic cover on the screen or not.
The answer is both units have screen protector (expensive one) same type on screen. I also notice that the asus a730w screen doesn't give the smudge effect when the stylus is dragging on which is better than loox but the importance of this is not much because I cannot see it if I don't look on it very carefully. I concern more on the digitizer which loox give much better result (if you don't believe try to write long word using transcriber or caligrapher on your a730w. you will see that the characters of your word are not as smooth in its shape as when you write it by pen on paper.... but the Loox can give this feeling which is very great)

more comparison is about the speaker: Loox speaker give louder sound without any noise even I set to the loudest.

[Guest]

Yes, you have the 1800mah battery which would give you much longer life..... when you add the extended battery to any pocket pc they get bigger.....

Of course they get bigger with an extended battery unless the manufacturer decides to include a battery with a very battery capacity that will allow more usage between charges/battery swaps ie loox 720 and hx47xx.

And carrying around the extra battery isn't bad if you're going to need twice the battery life. The battery is pretty darn small and could fit in your wallet if need be. Asus fit a heck of a lot into the 730 and thats the bottom line. If you don't like it, thats your right but I don't see people bitching that they made the worst choice of thier life when referring to the 730..... I have however heard that when referring to a LOT of other things, including some recent pocket pcs.

It's true it may not be that bad but that's an opinion. If you're fine with having to carry more although it may be a small item, is it necessary to carry more? There needs to be a step forward with the ppc world where we have pdas as powerful tools that we may use everyday for almost whatever purposes without having to worry about items that shouldn't be of major concern like having a message pop up just when you might be getting into the jist of things telling you that you need to charge your ppc or having to carry more. If you carry around keys, a cellphone, wallet, pda, and then a battery, it begins to add up.

With the current sets of PPC, the smaller it becomes, the less functional it becomes. The A730W is for serious PDA owners only.

And what does this include? Watching a movie or playing games with emulators? Surfing wirelessly or VOiP? You might want to re-evaluate your definition of a "serious PDA owner."

more comparison is about the speaker: Loox speaker give louder sound without any noise even I set to the loudest.

Fujitsu brought back an idea that was smart to begin with, placement of the speaker facing the user.

[PROPortable]

Do you like copying what everyone else said?

[Guest]

Oh I'm sorry if you didn't realize that I was trying to reply to what you and some others posted. I failed to properly set up quotations. I figured that you see that those were your exact words so you'd know that I was replying to you.

[Registered]

Dell's Axim has only 1100 mAh or near that and it can easily last 10 hours at 208 MHz.

The 1100mAh battery supplied is rubbish.

Not that you'd want to use it at 208 MHz for 10 hours.

Assuming you're talking about the X50v (which you should be as that is the only VGA "Axim") that's not true at all. You get approx. 8 hours on Power-Saving Mode (208/104Mhz) playing music with the screen off.

It is a bit odd, however, that A730 users are getting 45 mins of battery life because I know that I cannot get my X50v to last less than an hour no matter what I do (eg. 624Mhz, Dual wireless, streaming a video being decoded using the 2700G accelerator chip), excluding over-clocking of course. Maybe another batch of bad batteries like what happened with the launch of the A716?

[PROPortable]

no, not a chance.... first of all the "bunch" of bad batteries that 716 had were limited to maybe 25-50 cases in north america.....

As far as the 730w is concerned... it comes with two batteries.. the chance of two batteries being bad is unlikely. Either a motherboard or a user who can't adjust settings..

[MyAsusA730W]

If I go to a long meeting with my Asus, I have to make sure its fully charged, and I either bring the spare battery or my AA battery adapter, and more often than not a spare power cord.
I use it to take notes using a BT keyboard. I also check/send emails using wifi during the meeting. And I use the camera to take pictures of the white boards.
The two hour rule is accurate for the Asus in this scenario. I also usually drop the CPU speed down to low, as I don't need the speed for this. The extended battery is not an option, as then its too big for my pocket.

Playing games kills the battery. If I am waiting for something (doctor, son's activity, etc), the battery will drop 30% in about 15-20 minutes. This is with speed set to standard and screen set to 3rd notch. (2nd notch is way too low for me, and turbo just eats the battery up). When I am out like this, I don't carry the spare battery or cords. I want the ppc to be small, to fit in jeans pocket, as my ipaq 3970 was too large (but the battery lasted well over a day of high use). I really doubt you could get through a whole movie on this thing.

My friends dell 50 has similar dismal battery performance, plus he soft resets a few times a day.

If you take the back cover of the 730 off, you can see lots of wasted space. The stylus slot is too big, the full size back cover takes up quite a bit of space, and the bottom lip of the battery slot could be smaller and a drop in type instead of slide.

I love the screen, all the features, and I use them all fully. Its just the battery kills this thing. I just do more work than it can provide power for.
Maybe I should cut down

[MyAsusA730W]

oh, and I have every intention of still keeping and using my Asus

[Guest]

Justin... Calm down. You're overreacting, and it doesn't do your credibility a whole lot of good.

The fact is, the A730W's battery life is very poor, even compared to other batteries the same size. If you look at the table under the Battery section on the included link, there's a comparison of three VGA PocketPCs using the same testing methods. The Asus doesn't compare favorably.

http://www.bargainpda.com/default.asp?newsID=2401

[PROPortable]

Again, a guest posting... if you guys want to hide behind a screen of anonymity, you really should go somewhere else. Bargain PDA has yet to do a review that came close to impressing me and for that to be a good review and Pocket Matrix's maybe isn't... I think that is a direct aim at the credibility of Matt Keys and his reviews.

To start... Those battery readings are BS..... both on the low and hide side for the 730w atleast. I haven't heard one person tell me that the dell screen came anywhere near to the quality and brightness of the 730's...nor the wireless range as long. Hence the much lower readings at full brightness and with wifi on.

On the other side...... with both units set to 50% brightness and an "active process" (meaing in the same program it should be scaled to the same speed)... 50% backlight on the 730 is not the same as 50% on the Dell.

The best test to compare "the battery" would be to run the dell and the asus with the screen off, at the same speed..... and come up with a number. They will be the same if not slightly better in Asus' favor. There is a reason the dell is less expensive.. and it has a lot to do with the components they use.

Justin

[chileu]

Well, for me, I was going to buy the Asus A716 for it's battery life. But then I realize that I didn't really need much battery usage per day. So I am aiming now for VGA PDAs. I have been reading many reviews and looking for the different products. Finaly came down to FS Loox 720 and the Asus A730W.
The only thing stopping me from buying the A730W is the fact that it does not have the battery charging slot on the cradle. Also there doesn't seem to be a charger like the A716 had. Loox 720 does come a charger on the cradle but not with a battery, so I am willing to buy a battery.
The only downside on the Loox 720 is that it would be hard to get customer service for the warranty since I am in the US. The Loox 720 also does not have a chinese compatibility program like the Asus (Monster chinese). If the A730W had a place to charge the extra battery I would have considered the A730W with a higher priority.

[Guest]

Agreed!

Dell's Axim has only 1100 mAh or near that and it can easily last 10 hours at 208 MHz.

The 1100mAh battery supplied is rubbish.

Not that you'd want to use it at 208 MHz for 10 hours.

Assuming you're talking about the X50v (which you should be as that is the only VGA "Axim") that's not true at all. You get approx. 8 hours on Power-Saving Mode (208/104Mhz) playing music with the screen off.

It is a bit odd, however, that A730 users are getting 45 mins of battery life because I know that I cannot get my X50v to last less than an hour no matter what I do (eg. 624Mhz, Dual wireless, streaming a video being decoded using the 2700G accelerator chip), excluding over-clocking of course. Maybe another batch of bad batteries like what happened with the launch of the A716?

But the music power uses battery power more than the screen. I'm under 100 milliamperes in normal setup but at 208 MHz. I project that I can run 10 hours. I will not, however, do this in real life unless I have lots of free time like some here.

[PROPortable]

true... volume level does play a big part.

[Lukas44]

I have both loox720 and a730w and found out that....


for screen: I think the color on a730w screen is very pale compare to the Loox screen which is very colorful. But one thing asus screen give better is that the white color is real white compare to yellowish white on the loox.

For the touchscreen: I cannot write the smooth line of characters in a730w (there is some zigzag happen). it seems like it doesn't detect my dragging stylush on every pixel on screen. But the loox can give me very good writing and drawing it's like it detect every pixel on screen that my stylus move on.]

This is real experience from me with both units.
My unit may be not as the same as other so don't complain about what I said. this is only experience.

I held back on this dam thread (4pages!) untill now, AND I AM complaining because I believe you are untruthful...!

I dont believe you because you say colors are "very pale"..!
No WAY IN HELL!!!!!
I have had enough PDAs to know and compare to, to swallow that load of bull...

AND... as far as screen sensitivity goes, either something is wrong with your Asus, or you caused the problem...RIP OFF any sticky screen covers?..Did you drop it?
Do yourself a favor and send it back, along with whoever said they have a power-drain prob...

Anyway, isn't that what a REPLACE-ABLE battery is for?
Looks like some people like find things to comlain about...

Dont like it, then contribute rather than complain, or move on 2 another PDA.
An exaple of "contribute" would be to see how we can charge the spare without the PDA..

Sometimes you just have to live with what you have...
Take the HP4155... some PDAs are easy to love and overlook their shortcommings.

This PDA has made me very busy upgrading to VGA, but I havent encountered a problem yet, so far so good with the Asus730w
I bet this guy still likes his Asus too!