Palm Support

• How to charge
• Charge daily and often
• Pay attention to alerts
• Is your screen turning on inadvertently?
• What uses the most battery power?
• Optimize battery life with these tips

• Plug your AC charger into a socket, and into your smartphone. When the LED glows green, your battery is fully charged.

• It is possible to connect both the AC charger and USB sync cable at the same time (see diagram). You can sync and charge simultaneously.

• Although your smartphone gets a small "trickle charge" from the USB sync cable, it's faster to juice up your battery through the AC charger.

• Using a sync cradle? Make sure it's compatible (more).

• Incompatible cradle
• Voice calls
• Sound & alerts
• Email and photo/video messaging

• Install the Treo 680 Update
• Pocket Tunes music player
• Web
• Screen brightness

• Playing or capturing media
• Bluetooth technology
• Using the Universal Wireless Keyboard
• Infrared (IR) beaming
• Add-on software

See Knowledge Library article 42891 to learn more. Come back here for more battery saving tips when you're ready.

To turn on or off wireless mode, press and hold Power/End . You'll see a Welcome or Goodbye screen, and then you can view the status of the phone icon at the top of your screen.

• If your battery is extremely low, turn off wireless mode. Until you can charge your phone, this lets you use the other features (calendar, contacts, reading/composing but not receiving/sending email etc.) without draining the battery as quickly. Incoming calls will go to voicemail.
• If you can, turn the wireless mode while watching a movie or listening to music. Multitasking two processor-intensive activities like phone and multimedia will drain your battery more quickly.

Go to Applications .

Select Prefs.

Under General, select Sound & Alerts.

Now you can select the application (Ring Tones, Phone Alerts, Calendar, Messaging, System) and its sound options.

• Reduce the volume of your ringer. Simply press the side keys while in any application to reduce the volume level.
• For other applications, such as Calendar alerts, change the Sound & Alert preferences to a lower volume, and the "repeat" setting to a lower interval.
• Turn vibrate mode off in all cases if you can. Vibration uses quite a bit of power.

Launch the VersaMail (Email) application and press Menu .

From the Options menu, select Preferences.

Adjust the settings below.

• In the Auto Sync preferences, you can uncheck the box for Mail (and, for Outlook EAS accounts, also Calendar and Contacts); this turns off Auto Sync, so you'll need to tap the Sync or Get/Send button when you want to check your email. Or, if you want to keep synchronizing automatically, increase the time range or number of days between synchronizations. For example, sync once every 30 or 60 minutes instead of every 5 minutes.
• In the Incoming preferences, select "Get: Subject Only." Select "Get only: Mail from last 1 day." Uncheck the box for "Download attachments." Set a low number for "Maximum message size" (around 5KB). Select "Message Format: Text." All these settings will reduce the amount of time your smartphone is connected to the Internet, saving you battery power. You can always download complete messages and attachments on an individual basis.
• If possible, avoid downloading large amounts of data like large file attachments. Same goes for sending out file attachments and data; when possible, keep files small to save upload data time and power.
• While reading or composing email, reduce the screen brightness: Option + P.

The camera may continue to draw power from the battery when the device is in standby mode. Treo 680 users should install Palm's software update to address this issue.

Who is your carrier?

• AT&T (previously Cingular): Software Update for Palm Treo 680 Smartphone for AT&T
• Rogers: Treo 680 Camera Update
• Unlocked GSM: Treo 680 Camera Update

When you listen to music with Pocket Tunes (pTunes), your smartphone's processor whirs and the speakers make sound; these both consume battery power.

In the Launcher , open pTunes.

Press Menu .

From the Prefs menu, select General Preferences or Advanced Prefs.

Select the settings below.

General Preferences

• Check the box for Turn off screen while playing, and reduce the amount of time. Choosing 10 seconds will save the most power.
• UNcheck the box for Unless the Palm is its cradle. This will get the most net charging of your smartphone while it's connected to the charger. With this setting, the AC cable should still charge the smartphone, even while playing music.

• Check the box for Blank screen while in other apps.
• UNcheck the box for Start playing on startup.
• Check the box for Stop playing on low battery power.
• You can use the Stop playing after… feature to save power if you set a time limit on playback, say, 20 minutes, so you don't accidentally leave pTunes playing for extended periods when you set your smartphone down or fall asleep.

• Reduce the playback audio volume, and use the headset jack to help save power.

• Avoid downloading large files, like big pictures (greater than a 200-300 KB).
• Use Fast mode. In the web browser, press Menu ; from the Options menu, select Preferences, go to the General tab, and select Fast Mode.
• When possible, use mobile-friendly versions of web pages. These contain fewer images and simpler formatting, reducing the amount of data your modem needs to pull down from the Internet.
• Use WAP enabled search engines, like wap.google.com or wap.yahoo.com. These search engines have efficient, smaller interpretations of web pages. They will also frequently strip out content that is bandwidth-hungry, like large images and complex formatting.

Go to Applications .

Select Prefs.

Under General, select Power.

• Reduce the Auto-off after setting to the lowest time. This will keep the screen on for the least amount of time when the smartphone is idle and not receiving input from the user (key presses, use of the touchscreen, etc.).
• Reduce the On a call, dim backlight after setting to 30 seconds. While on a call, the screen will dim to save power; the sooner the display is allowed to dim, the more power will be saved.
• Reduce the brightness (also accessible by pressing Option + P on your keyboard)

• Play audio at a moderate volume, even when using a headset. Pocket Tunes and the video player make it easy to quickly adjust the volume; while listening to music, press left or right on the 5-way navigator to adjust the volume. You can also use the up and down side keys, or tap the speaker icon on the screen. In the video player (while watching a video), use the up and down side keys to increase or decrease the volume.
• Before watching a video file, reduce the screen brightness (Option + P). Note that you cannot change the brightness while the video is playing; pause it first by pressing the Center button during playback, then adjust brightness.
• Keep video recordings short, if possible, while using the camcorder feature.
• Multi-tasking is particularly power hungry, like listening to music while browsing the web. Keep this in mind as you use your smartphone.

Is your Bluetooth turned on? If you don't use it regularly, turn it off to save power.

Go to Applications .

Select Prefs.

Under Communication, select Bluetooth.

• Turn off Bluetooth by selecting Off. All of your pairings and trusted devices will be intact, but you can save power by keeping Bluetooth turned off when you're not using it.
• Remember, frequently sending data to another device via Bluetooth, particularly large items like photos, can impact the length of a battery charge.

You can turn on the option for "Enable Power Saving" and limit the time that the keyboard driver stays on when you're not using the keyboard.

• See Knowledge Library 2141 for more information.

Go to Applications .

Select Prefs.

Under General, select Power.

• Turn Beam Receive off if you don't plan on using it. This will not affect Bluetooth beaming; it only applies to IR beaming.
• Also note that frequently beaming data to another device, particularly beaming large items, can impact the length of a battery charge.