a730/a730w battery life and other WinCE questions

[Fire_Ant_X]

I am considering buying a new handheld device, and found the a730 to be the perfect device for all my needs. After doing some resarch on the a730, I have found multiple reviews stating the battery life as good ie 3-5 hours, but have found conflicting ideas on this site. Therefore my question is how good is the battery life on the device for browsing the internet, watching a movie, playing games (snes emulated/games designed for ppc)? And also what improvments would a WM5 device have over a WM2003SE device? I have heard something about an improvment in the saving of information after a total battery drain. Since the a730 dosent have WM5 will it still lose its memory after a total battery loss, ir is there some sort of manufacturer included program which emulates this ability?

BTW: I am upgrading fomr a Sony Clie running palm OS so I am not very familiar with the Windows CE operating system.

[PROPortable]

Both models have been discontinued and if you can find them someplace that still has them, great. I know we ran out of 730w's a month ago and only have a handful of 730's left.

You're going to be lucky to get 2 hours out of the standard battery with the brightness of the VGA screen and everything else going on in the system. It's a great unit, but the battery technology just hasn't caught up with ppc tech quite yet. It depends on what you're going to be doing with it and how hard you're going to use it, but I've had and heard of battery life ranging from 1 to 6 hours on the regular battery............ depends on setting and use.

[Fire_Ant_X]

I'm mainly concerned with the battery use while watching a movie in TCPMP, and if it will be able to play a 2 hour movie without losing power in the middle or somthing. I know the version of TCPMP for Palm lets me watch double the amount of media over the included media player so I am hoping that it will have a similar effect on the a730.

As for finding it, eBay has some of them going at good prices - saw on auction end a few days ago in which a a730w was sold for under $300.

I was looking at the a730 mainly because of the combination of features it has such as a camera, wireless, and a fast processor in one package, but if there is a similar pda with the same abilities I may consider buying that too.

[tomdon]

[gblackham]

i have a 730w, it is useless... poor camera, ridiculous battery life, about an hour with wireless on if you are lucky! and mine has been back to asus twice, this time for a new screen and a new motherboard and they have had it 2 weeks and cant tell me when it will be ready! dont touch it with a barge pole!

[Fire_Ant_X]

[Lukas44]

It makes sense to me to Go for PDA with the older system 2k3SE, and upgrade to newer OS WMoblie 5 later, after you know which PPC programs you like, because most PPC progs are not yet optimized to run on this newer OS, and their are problems:






So the Axim 50v looks good, is cheaper, and can be upgraded at a later time.

If you dont mind having a faster, older OS, then I would stick with the Loox720 which has a decent battery life & better srceen than the Dell.
Dedicated user websites for the Dell and Loox, make them the best choice.

If you still like or have the Asus, get the bigger battery for it and even mod it here:


I own the Asus 730w.
It was my favorite PPC until I ran into problems.
Sending back for repair was painless, and I got my very same unit back fast...

I am thinking that having to charge batteries thru the unit so much more(because of smaller battery and no charger in cradle) must put a strain on the motherboard somehow. My prob was the unit resetting while charging battery.

[Fire_Ant_X]

the loox also seems like a good option, but the older OS will probably be phased out soon, so I would probably have to wait till FS releases their next PDA which is rumored to have WM5. Also the loox seems to be pretty hard to find.