My 980 came with a 1000mah battery and I get 2 good days with it.

I'm still having issues with the electrical contact between the remote and the charger.

You can't just set it in there ....you have to PUSH the remote into the hole a certain way to get the status light to come on. Then, sometimes it loses contact after I walk away....and of course when that happen, the batterie doesn't get charged.

When it does get fully charged it will work for a few days, depending on how much the back light is fired up.

I am considering the purchase of a MX-980 and admittedly the battery life (besides the price) is a turn off.

However, I did find a high capacity 1400mah np-60 battery online. Japanese cells, no China stuff. Do you think this would be worth considering? That's a huge jump in capacity compared to 1050 or 1100mah...

[Link: bluenook.com]

Chris

This is not rocket science.

Clean charger and remote contacts with a fiberglass brush or good soft pencil eraser. Should be shiny and clean.

Check charger contacts - nothing bent, nothing "down" to where it would impede contact. Bend up slightly if needed.

Last possibility is intermittent connection in charger base. Take apart and inspect or return for repair.

No......but it is very annoying and i have better things to do with my time than to repair something I just bought brand new.


Don't you think it would be shiny and clean enough when I take it out of the box?
Again, I've had the problem from day one.


Charger contacts look fine....and I'm not ABOUT to bend on them. Do you honestly think URC is going to listen to me or swap it for another one if I give it back if the contacts are broken or if they look like they have been F'd with?


Like you said....it's not rocket science......guess I will try returning it to URC for another one. The hardest thing about this is giving up my remote while I wait for another one.

Can someone from URC answer this?

When the remote is not in use, does it go to 'sleep'? Is the RF transmitter always on? It would seem there might be some tweaks that URC could do to extend battery life on this unit?

Chris

Chris, This is the battery I currently run in my MX980. I was frustrated w/ my "dead in 30 minute" MX980 so I bought this battery. In the meantime I contacted URC and they happily replaced my bad battery. Props to URC for that. It's still in the mail.

I ordered from bluenook through amazon: I think it was cheaper by a buck or two, you get amazon.com piece of mind and you don't have to setup a new account if you have an amazon.com account already. Bluenook shipped fast and I replaced battery this Saturday.

Note the cell or packaging still says "china" so I don't know if the Japanese > China thing is pure bunkum? I pretty much bought the best battery I found because it's about $10 more than the low MaH unbranded cells. I figured I wouldn't obsess about $10 more on a battery powering or controlling thousands of dollars in equipment.

I can't speak to battery life vs. my old URC cells but since the Lithium Ion "self discharge" 1400MaH should go ~40% longer than 1000MaH.

Be careful with these and all Lithium Ion batteries!! DO NOT RUN THEM DOWN ALL THE WAY. I think my original URC battery died because I ran it down all the way. When the wife wanted to move the charger off of the console table she unplugged it and left it out. We went out of town for a bit and when I came back, even after charging, the battery was never the same. Instead of a few days between charges it was few minutes.

-- From batteryuniversity.com re: LithIon
Avoid frequent full discharges because this puts additional strain on the battery. Several partial discharges with frequent recharges are better for lithium-ion than one deep one. Recharging a partially charged lithium-ion does not cause harm because there is no memory. (In this respect, lithium-ion differs from nickel-based batteries.)
--

I now have the charge cradle in a cabinet. Increased WAF with no visible dock in the room. I dock nightly. Once you're used to docking regularly I don't think it's that bad.

Thank you for the information on the battery. Let us know how it works, I'd be curious to see how long you can go without a charge. I know most people said 2 to 3 days is what they are getting...

I had the same issue with the battery dying in less than a day. So I bought the 1400 mah batt from bluenook. Seems to be working well, but I've noticed that the status light on my cradle stays red. It doesn't change to blue at full charge. Doesn't affect the remote function, but still a little annoying. Anyone else experience this? Not sure how the battery in the remote could affect the cradle, but what do I know.

Guys:

We designed MX-980 expecting it to be charged every night. That's why there's a cradle. There's a pretty major processor in there for the size of the battery, plus the button lights, backlight, etc. However, in normal use, these batteries lasting for only half an hour are NOT typical of the MX-980. If you're getting that kind of performance, definitely contact our support department. The battery should easily last for a day of normal use, no matter what settings you've got the brightness at.

Best regards,
Dale

Has there been any recent progress on this issue? I have the same issue, MX-980i purchased in June 2009. I can set it on the table after a full charge and watch the battery indicator drop 2, sometimes 3 bars before the screen turns off. I expect much more from this battery. I am very good about charging it every night.

Has there been any information gained about a possible bad batch of batteries? My batter is a Roofer International Limited, lot number 07.12.

There is some swelling of the battery. I measure it to be about 1mm of swell from edge to middle using a dial caliper.

Any additional info on this subject?

As the thread states, either call URC and get a replacement battery or order one for a few bucks off the internet. There was a run of batteries that swells and/or loses charge. Your's is apparently one of those. I haven't had an issue since replacing the original battery in my personal 980.

Look at the battery, and tell me the name of the manufacturer right above caution box.

Sorry, missed that.

The Roofer battery is the issue. You should call your local dealer for a free replacement or call URC customer service for a free replacement. Make sure you indicate it's a Roofer.