I charged the UX50 for the full time until the orange indicator light went off. This morning during my commute I connected via Bluetooth to my Nokia 3650 and surfed for 30 minutes straight and my battery indicator still shows 100%. I had the backlight on full for 15 minutes and then went down to about 25% because it was too bright in the dark hours of the morning. I am much happier with this kind of battery life because before I would have been down to something like 60-65% after this amount of time.

All I know is a co-worker had his Tungsten C (bought the same day I bought my Sony). My Sony hit critical levels mid-shift and was dropped on the charger. His Tungsten did not.

By the end of my shift the Sony’s charge lamp (approx 2 hours later) FINALLY went out, saying it was fully charged.

So I traded mine in. Brought home my new Tungsten, and within 24 hours had to buy my wife one, else I’d never get to use it at home.

She didn’t take more than a glance at the Sony, at that time she preferred her Palm 505.

Of course, this is all my opinion, and everyone else’s mileage with the Sony may vary. Obviously it will be someone’s perfect PDA, otherwise Sony has no clue.

Also, supposedly the Sony add-on is going to extend your battery life 3x normal. If the battery is only 1000 mAh (from the link you posted), I shudder to think that is three times the built-in battery.

Again, I am anxious for a thorough review by this site, and C|Net to see what they come up with in battery life tests.

I think the person who claimed over 3 hours full bright and Wi-Fi is seriously exaggerating.

As it stands, I don’t regret taking mine back. It didn’t fit my needs at all.

I don’t think it is ever good for this type LiIon battery to be used to such low levels. Everything I have ever heard has been that it would be damaging to the battery’s life.

If phillip (pt) is getting significantly better battery life than you are with the same settings and applications running, then you are probably right that yours is defective.

Judie :0/

It drops super fast and I wonder if it is good to constantly be taking it down to 10% before recharging.

Originally posted by Judie
We are shooting for Monday the 29th…so it should be more like 1 week from now.

I guess waiting until you’ve had a chance to really put it through the paces is what makes it a definitive gadgeteer review… >sigh<

I don’t have my unit anymore, but I had heard rumors from other ‘previews’ that the UX-50 internal battery is tiny (hence the overall size of the unit). That way that can get you to spend another $120 to make it ‘usebale’ buy forcing you to buy the extended battery.

When I returned mine to Best Buy and cited Battery Life and screen orientation as reason for return, their response was, “That is what everyone is saying.’

In the 10 days, I have never once used Grafitti to input anything and rely solely on the keyboard. I mean this is why I wanted a device with a thumb keyboard so why use the strange Grafitti area? While the display is a bit small, it is very evenly lit, bright, and images and photos looks so much better than on a Palm device. Multimedia rocks on the device with great sound output and fast video playback. The keyboard is very nice, but Sony could have done a better job with the drivers so we could simulate a OK, Done, Cancel button press. I know sometimes the Back button works for Cancel, but I want to leave the stylus in its silo all the time.

My battery life is absolutely miserable and I am going to CompUSA tonight to exchange my unit and get my 10% off refund (saving me $70 so I can buy the extended battery). I read that pt and others were getting decent battery life, but mine drops 50% after about 25 minutes of Bluetooth surfing and regularly is down in the teens within 2 hours. I have NEVER had to charge a PDA as much as this and I feel it is unacceptable for a connected device since you are trying to stay away from cables and not have to walk around with your charger. Hopefully, the replacement has a better battery life.

The jog wheel gave me issues, especially when trying to click it. I usually ended up giving it a nice spin. Also, my problem with Graffiti entry in general was the included stylus. It being collapsible, and small, led to me having it collapse on me quite a bit. This didn’t happen to my wife, so I chalked it up to having large hands.

I will agree that the audio from the Sony was excellent, but since I have an MP3 player for listening to music, I don’t find myself minding the mono output of the Tungsten C.

Judie :0)

The vertical Graffiti area feels very awkward to me. As a lefty, I was really hating it till I found that I could switch it to left side of the screen. Now I just dislike it intensely.

To Sony’s credit, the audio quality (listening to MP3′s) through earphones is outstanding!

My biggest (and pretty much main) complaint was that the screen doesn’t re-orient itself the way I would like.

When open in ‘laptop’ mode, I didn’t mind it too much. But when moving it to ‘PDA’ mode (screen rotated and folded back down), the screen stays horizontal. And the Graffiti area is vertical. ICK!

Also, battery life is DISMAL. Manual says 2.5 hours if you do nothing but solid Wi-Fi with the backlight off (pretty sure it was off). I got to less than half a charge in 25 minutes with backlight on.

I decided to take it back and swapped for a Tungsten C. Wi-Fi times are much better.