[Ashtiany]

Hey guys.

I currently have the Nokia 5230, very happy with it. Does have a few problems, but the one that bugs me the most is the really stupid battery meter. Its there to tell me how much battery I have left, I think we'd all agree on that.

Around the first 24-28 hours the first bar will stay solid, but after that I see the rest go down every hour.

I think the fact that its a 5230 is irrelevant, because many other of my past Nokia's have suffered the same thing and other users with Nokia's also have a similar problem.

Any suggestions will be highly appreciated, thank you!

[jcourcoul]

Don't know if this will solve your problem, but you could try recalibrating the battery, much like we do in laptops. Let it run till the battery drains completely and turns off. Then recharge fully till the charging light/icon turns off (at least 4 hours the first time when new). Repeat at least two times (i.e., three full discharge/charge cycles minimum). This will both tune the battery monitoring circuit for the characteristics specific to that battery, as well as "exercise" it for full capacity.

Successively, do at least one full discharge/charge cycle per month.

[sockatume]

Unfortunately this seems to be a historical issue with all Symbian handsets! I guess they're just too power-hungry for the meter to keep up, because it's less of an issue if I'm only using my phone in GSM mode for calls and texts. (as happens sometimes when I'm travelling).

[aName]

Got the same problem with my 5530. It stays at 7 stripes for a day and a half and when it went down to 6, it only takes like 10 mins to go down to 5, after that 1 hour to go to 4 and 3, but when it's on 3 stripes it suddenly takes 2 hours before it goes to stripe 2. It also takes 2 hours to go to 1 stripe. But when I turn him back on I get 2 or 3 stripes.

By the way, I've read that you should not let lithium batteries go down until the phone turns off itself, is this true?

[cjlim]

There is a critical charge level below which the battery cannot be recharged. You do increase the risk of this happening if you over discharge the battery but this should not happen because there are protection circuits built into the phone to prevent this from happening. .

Battery meter accuracy can be improved by periodically recalibrating the battery by running the battery down.

[Ashtiany]

This seems like a good solution, although the thing is, my phone told me it was fully charged after around an hour and a half, at the most about 2 hours. Considering you've said 4, could this mean its a problem with the battery?

[cjlim]

The charging duration is dependent on the phone, battery capacity, battery charger and the level of charge in the phone when you charge it. I don't think the 2 hours or 4 hours is an indication of anything. You should only charge until the the phone stops charging. The battery meter not moving for a long time and then suddenly moves a lot is a typical phenomenon with lithium ion/polymer batteries. The accuracy can be improved by calibrating the battery but it will never be accurate.

[Ashtiany]

Ah I see now, never knew there could be so much to a battery!

Could you kindly run through how to calibrate the battery?

[cjlim]

Calibrating just means to periodically let the battery run down until the phone starts to beep low battery before recharging. You only need to do this every couple of weeks. You will find the meter a little more "accurate" afterwards. I am using the word "accurate" in the relative sense. I used to do it for a while but have given up. Nowadays I just plug my phone in once the bars start to drop.

[Ashtiany]

Alright, well i've put it in charge after it told me low battery a couple of times anyway. I'll get back here with results

Thanks everyone!

[cjlim]

You are welcome. Keep us posted.

[Ashtiany]

finished a school day. started with a fully charged phone, 5pm, took it to school 2 hours of music about 150 sent 150 received messages in total up to now, and atm still showing all bars. Still not looking good..

[cjlim]

150 sent and 150 received? OMG! That would be me every 2 months. She'd better be worth it.

Like I said before, there should be an improvement but it will never be accurate.

[Ashtiany]

Went to exchange my phone today as it was still under the 28 day warranty, turns out they only have the pink in stock until friday :/

They're not all to one person haha but she most certainly is worth it

Anyway, decided to switch my phone off and on, about 2 hours before this posting this because i remembered that when i did so, the battery bars disappear, so i think by restarting it, it gives me a refreshed state of the battery meter somehow. after doing that, it went down another bar within the next hour..

[cjlim]

Pinks nice. You have to be very sure of yourself to be comfortable using a pink phone.

Getting a replacement phone sounds like a good resolution. Let us know how you get on with it when you get it.

[chanchan05]

Battery bars do indeed disappear when switched on and off since symbian eats a lot of power during boot up and shutdown.

[sockatume]

I don't think it's that, I've switched my N79 on and off a couple of times and it's gone from full power to losing two or three bars. If that was an accurate representation of power usage during restart I think the N79 would've melted. Could be that the battery voltage sags a bit when it's briefly left idle.

[aName]

Hmm, when I first had my 5530, it didn't come down correctly (staying at the same number of bars all the time long), switching on/off also didn't help because it showed again the same number of bars, until the battery was at 3 bars, then it suddenly showed it. I don't understand why, but a factory reset fixed it, the battery meter is now at least a bit more accurate...

By the way, I had that problem when I was still charging him "correctly" (when the phone said low battery).

[Ashtiany]

I was actually thinking to buy the pink one.. because the black one originally comes with a bonus pink battery cover, and to be honest it looks pretty good! Even some of the guys agreed.

I also agree with the fact that the phone would melt if 2-3 bars worth of power is used to start up the phone, so it clearly can't be for that reason.

I'm going tomorrow to exchange the phone, which I think is for the best, because also, the GPS seems absolutely useless. Not once have I locked onto a satellite, even after around 30 mins waiting whilst walking through town, just to see what it was like. Think its a firmware problem :/

This is also irrelevant, but for the first week of owning the phone, the RAM seemed really strange. I noticed that even after closing an application, it would still be present on the systems RAM even though it wouldn't show up. I found this out through the use of handy task manager. Result was that I couldn't even send a text whilst listening to music; it would give me that annoying error, memory full close applications blah blah. But now its gone after a format of the memory card via the phone, so if anyone's have a similar problem, try formatting the card, because I think it was to do with reading applications off the memory card..

[dontsimon]

Won't reformatting erase evrythging on the card? Is this safe?

My problem is the battery just drains down so quick. Yesterday I spent an hour entering contacts and changing settings, took about 15 pictures with flash, and that used up almost the entire battery. Half an hour of music after that and it was drained.

Today I charged it till full, then left music playing on repeat. After 7 hours there's just two bars left out of seven. 27 hours of music my foot!