Garmin Battery Issues

Can you share what knid of problems.

I would be interested to know if you leave your gps in the car overnight... Really cold temperatures can severely degrade battery life.

... what i am experiencing is that since most of the new GPSrs have traffic receiver, we all keep it plugged in most of the times... which might degrade battery life!!

....on what you mean by "really" cold.

Battery "life" is usually not degraded by normal cold, say down to -20 F. or so. LI batteries are especially good with cold temps. The performance while STILL cold may be a little less but it recovers when warmed and charged.

Now EXTREME heat is another matter and can damage any type of battery over long periods.....say above 120 F. for days. Again, LI batteries seem to be able to stand this extreme better too.

My sons unit would not hold a charge for more that 20 minutes max even though it was fully charged.

My unit when it is plugged into the cig lighter uses the battery instead of from the connector even though I know the plug is working. My unit also has a very limited life even when fully charged (approx 1 hour). Brightness at 50% and antenna off.

Most batteries need to be cycled. Meaning, It is good to occasionally let the battery run down and then charge fully. Some of the newer technology batteries are not this way. I dont know what Garmin uses, however old cell phones use to have this fact in the manuals.

Garmin uses lithium ion, as do most new cell phones. Lithium ion is much less susceptible to memory or cycling issues than the older rechargeable battery technology commonly used in these devices, nickel cadmium. Those you definitely had to cycle all the way down and recharge all the way back fairly frequently to keep them working well. LIon can benefit from an occasional discharge until they signal for a recharge followed by a full recharge two or three times to condition the battery, but often you can use them with charging after partial discharge without the more common NiCad issues.

LIon batteries are commonly good for about 200 recharges. After that, most begin to show a shorter full-charge life, and at some point will need to be replaced because they no longer hold a charge long enough to do what you want.

I agree with the poster who said that LIon batteries in Garmins do not do well when stored in a hot car. See our many threads here on security for other reasons you should not store your Garmin in the car. But leaving them in any car in summer sun in the US is bad, and leaving them in hot climates is bad year-round. Where heat can damage them permanently, cold weather weakens LIon temporarily (and the LCD display may not work well, either, temporarily, in below zero air).

I believe Lithium Ion batteries also should not be left connected to the charger 24/7 even after they're charged, for maximum battery life. I'm not sure what effect leaving a GPS connected to a charger plugged into a cigarette lighter port will have when the car is turned off. Probably depends on the car's system. Sometimes when you leave a device connected to its charger and the charger is not receiving power-- I've seen this with an iPod that's turned off but connected to a PC that's also turned off, which would charge the iPod battery if the PC were on-- the battery can actually deplete as if the device is powered up.

Li-ion batteries are temperature sensitive. The internal circuitry of the 750 will not charge the battery if it's temperature is above 120 degrees or below about 32 degrees. The best battery longevity seems to be when used, stored or charged at about 72 degrees. If your 750 sits in your car, plugged in to a lighter socket, over night in the winter then it probable isn't being charged. However there are other reasons why the battery life might be low. Try some experiments.

With your car's engine running and the GPS turned on and plugged into a lighter socket, is the battery-charge icon displayed at the upper right? If you don't see it, then the unit is getting external power. Turn off the engine, if the message comes up that says "External Power Lost" and asks if you want to turn the unit off, then the lighter socket's power is being switched off by the ignition switch. Goes without saying that if the external power is lost, it can't charge the battery.

If you do see the icon then the GPS isn't receiving external power. Check the fuse in the tip of the lighter plug on your power cord. Check the lighter socket to see if there might be a problem with it.

Good Luck.

Jack J

I tend to leave mine plugged in pretty much all the time it's on, so no battery issues noticed on my part.

From what I've seen on YouTube (on how to replace nuvi batteries), I'd say the batteries are lithium polymer, a variant of the lithium ion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_polymer_batteries

From what wikipedia suggests, these batteries can be good for 500+ cycles. Can anyone confirm the batteries used by Garmin and their suggested lifespan?

How did you come by that information ??
I think it's a fair bet that it's not mentioned in the users manual !!

I think most batteries benefit by using them and not just having them sit on a charger. Typically it's a chemical reaction that causes the battery to give it's power. When it is always on a charger that chemical reaction is one way and eventually the reactive chemical is all seperated out (for lack of a better way of explaining).

This is also true of using a battery too much and allowing it to come close to zero volts. It may handle it OK the first few times but eventually the battery will not handle the charge any more.

I've noticed with my laptop battery that as I get lazy and don't unplug the laptop the battery will eventually have a very short usage cycle (20 minutes) vs when I kept using it on battery and it had a long, 1 1/2 hours, use time.

I've also seen both the constant charging and the total discharge on other types of batteries as well for various types of medical equipment and it does kill the useful life out of the battery.

Of course we won't go into battery assemblys that have date chips in them ...

It isn't mentioned in the manual. I got it by researching Li-ion batteries. My Palm T3 uses one and I wanted to find out how to treat it for max life.

Jack j

I've had problems with dramatically shortened battery life if the display is set too bright.

I completely agree that it is good for the battery life to let it run down over night until it dies and then charge it fully, without unplugging it all the way. Doing this occasionally has kept my batteries working very well, while others I have seen with the same battery that died because they did not do this. It's ok to top it off once in a while but I have gotten a lot of mileage out of doing this.

If you want to do a bunch of reading on Batteries check out these, it has been discussed in depth and anything you want to know about them is here.

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/15117
http://www.poi-factory.com/node/2562
http://www.poi-factory.com/node/18645
http://www.poi-factory.com/node/1212
http://www.poi-factory.com/node/11212
http://www.poi-factory.com/node/20422

Or, a google search for 'li-ion battery storage' will bring up lots of information.

The optimum storage temp for a li-ion battery is 32*F.

The more heat it is subject to, the faster it loses it's capacity. That is why notebook batteries don't last long, because they are stuck inside a heated box.

I heard this as well.

That is for the ni-cad battery, the lithion does not need recycled like that, they wont retain memory like ni-cad do. Do some reading on the batterys, look at some of the links i posted in a couple of posts up.

If you want to understand everything about batteries, http://www.buchmann.ca/ is a good reference book that can be purchased or read online.

then you should stand down, and just read. Because mis-information can damage a unit, or even hurt a member or this community.

A lithium-ion battery provides 300-500 discharge/charge cycles. The battery prefers a partial rather than a full discharge. Frequent full discharges should be avoided when possible. Instead, charge the battery more often or use a larger battery. There is no concern of memory when applying unscheduled charges.

Although lithium-ion is memory-free in terms of performance deterioration, batteries with fuel gauges exhibit what engineers refer to as "digital memory".

Want to read More? Time to get your home Schooled:
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm

Thanks for providing the battery information, very informative!

The article you refer to was written in 2003 and updated in 2006. Don't you think there have been improvements, etc in the battery technology since then? Just curious if this info is still viable.

The article you refer to was written in 2003 and updated in 2006. Don't you think there have been improvements, etc in the battery technology since then? Just curious if this info is still viable.

Tried my 780 on vacation for the first time without the car charger (I forgot it at home!)... Battery life was terrible, luckily I had my phone wall-wart to charge it at night. At most I was able to use it for 1 1/2 hours before I got the low battery warning.

I never ran it comnpletely dead, but did go about 1/2 hr more on 'low battery'.

Before this, I always had mine on the charger in the car.

Larry

Yes, it is still good info. That time frame is about when the LI batteries came into wide use in things like cell phones and then spread to portable music players, GPSs, etc.

And, no, there hasn't been much improvement since then.......at least not any that has made it's way to the consumer market yet.

My Nuvi 200 has issues also with the battery life. I noticed that when the battery goes dead, I can take it out of the unit for an hour or so and then charge it, I can increase my usage time by an extra hour!

You were doing fine until you got here. Don't remember hearing that before. Reference please?

Oh, and about those laptops.....are you sure they have LI batteries? Not many do, even new ones.

The battery in my 750 would not take a full charge. I had it plugged into my cigarette lighter for 15 straight hours on a trip and when taken off, the battery only showed 50% charge. Garmin said to plug it into the computer overnight as it would give a better charge. That was no help either, so Garmin had me send it in for repair but they just replaced the unit with a remanufactured one which is working great.

Interesting site. Thanks for posting!

Of course a lot of these problems could have been easily prevented if Garmin just would have designed user replaceable batteries on the Nuvi's other than the 8xx series.

I don't often complain about Garmins, but this is something they should remedy.

lithium-ion is what we are talking about, the technology has not changed, until a new battery hits the market for consumer use, the data still holds true at the link below.

http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm

My current laptop has a LI battery. It is the first one to have one, and It is only six months old.

It would seem, then, that a slight rephrasing is in order:

If the laptops in question are more thatn 6 months old it is likely that they do NOT have a LI battery!

I'm guessing that the one(s) that do are probably high-end ($$$) units.

My laptop was purchased in July of 07 and it has a "Rechargeable Li-ion Battery, Rating 10.8V 4800 mAh" and made in China. And it wasn't the top of the line either.

Li-Ion batteries are becoming much more common. There are even cordless power tools that use them now. They have a lot of advantages compared to Ni-Cd or Ni-MH. The biggest advantage is in power density. But they also have some major short comings. They demand a closely monitored charger and if mistreated they can explode or catch fire. They have a lifetime that starts when they are manufactured, not when first used. They have a limited temperature tolerance both in usage and storage.

Google Li-Ion. There is a LOT of good information on the care and feeding of them.

Jack j

See figure 2 and the related text at http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm

Thanks for posting this. My nuvi 750 which is only 11 months old has really gotten bad lately. Bad enough that I sent Garmin Tech Support an email yesterday.

Mine has gone from maintaining a full charge and working well for over an hour before I get a low battery warning to a full charge and then using the unit the very next day and only having two bars when I turn it on.

I have used my 750 like I have used my laptop. Never leave it pluged in all the time... use it on battery power as much as I can so not to damage or overcharge the batteries.

So... having a full charged unit and then letting it set over night and turning on only to find two bars is not cool. I will see what Garmin comes back with.

Cheers,
Ronnie

Hi Ronnie,

Try running the unit on it's internal battery until it turns itself off. Then place it on charge for at least 6 hours. This will reset the 'fuel gage' battery icon.

Jack j

Maybe not exactly on topic, but close. I'm planning to use the GPS in pedestrian mode while city touring this summer and one obvious concern is battery life. Has anyone tried this:

http://www.gomadic.com/garmin-nuvi-760-emergency-aa-battery-...

or something like it and have any recommendations or comments? The plan is to get something like this to be able to recharge it during the day while walking around. I'm expecting maybe 3 hours out of the battery from scratch but that probably won't be enough for a whole day, even if turned off when not needed.

What do you mean by place it on charge for at least 6 hours. Do you mean plug it into your car, without turnning on the gps or your car?

That would work in my Ford, but my Honda shuts of the pouwer plug when you turn the car off.

Plug it to 5v charger with mini usb connector (like some of those use for cell phones) or to usb port in computer (computer has to be turned on all this time).

You should have an ac charger also it will charge it till fully charged. If not then you will need to either plugh it into your cig liter and turn the key to acc or drive around for a while to get it recharded. Leave it off while you are trying to charge it.

Didn't realize the USB cable charged the unit. Sure helps if you read the manual.

I've recently seen my 760 warn of low battery, when I've just turned it on. I hadn't really thought about the fact that it's been sitting in the garage all night. I'll have to do some further study to see if there is an association.

Mine doesn't charge while the car is off, my lighter sockets aren't powered unless the car is running, or at least in accessory mode.

I meant what I said: "Place the unit on charge for at least 6 hours." If your Honda shuts off the lighter plug then obviously you can't use that unless you want to either run the car or leave the key in acc. for that length of time.

Plug it into your Ford lighter and turn the unit off. It should tell you it's charging the battery, no back light on the screen. Or you could hook it up to your computer's USB port and use that to charge it (computer has to be turned on).

Jack j

Thanks Jack... I will give that a try and see how it works!!

Have two 750's....sent them both in for replacement as the batteries were not holding a charge.