w376g users – check out these battery tips
Over the past week or so, it seems that there have been quite a few comments regarding problems with the battery life on the w376g. I have not personally experienced this problem, but the number of comments about it seems to indicate that it is something to consider. So, I racked my brain to come up with a few tips about keeping your w376g batter charged and ready to use. I’ve already posted some of these ideas in the comments section, but not everyone reads the comments so I decided to organize them into one place. Here are my tips:
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Even though this is rather obvious, and part of the reason that some people have complaints about the battery life, the simplest solution is just to make it part of your routine to charge your phone regularly. I keep my phone in my pocket pretty much all the time, so at the end of the day I simply empty my pockets and place my phone on my dresser. I keep my charger near the dresser, so I charge my phone overnight 2-3 times per week. Another suggestion for people who have a desk job is to keep the charger near your desk, and plug in your phone during your workday.
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If you have a daily commute, or use your phone most frequently while in your car, a car charger might work for you. There has been some discussion of this in the comments section, and it sounds like chargers for this model of phone are available from various sources. The tricky part, though, is that the car chargers are not specifically labeled as being compatible with the w376g. However, a charger that works with the Motorola RAZR, as well as the lower-tier TracFone models w175 and w260 will also charge this phone. The best tip that I’ve heard on picking up a car charger is to look at a dollar store or other retailer for a RAZR charger. I’ve heard from a few people that they found a charger for $1 at a dollar store. Another option would be eBay, where there are a few options available. But, be careful with small electronics like this – some unscrupulous sellers will try to sell you something at a great price, but then drastically overcharge on the shipping to make a little extra profit. So keep your eye on the total price.
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Also, as I mentioned above, this phone uses the same charger as the w175 and the w260 TracFone models; it also uses the same battery. So if you pick up a w175 for $10, which is the suggested retail price, you’ll have a spare battery and a spare wall charger – you can then use one at home and one at work, or some other combination. Then keep the spare battery in your car, purse, desk drawer, or whatever, to have it handy. It may seem like a lot to spend on a spare battery, but keep in mind that you can also activate the w175 to receive 20 minutes of talk time and 60 days of service. Then transfer those minutes and days to your w376g for a little extra bonus. Also, if you want to consider buying the w175 from TracFone, click here for my advice on how to get a solid deal on the spare parts phone, plus 360 minutes for $40.
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If you like the idea in #3 above, but use more minutes, you could also consider getting the 450 minute bundle from TracFone. With your double minutes for life, you can get 920 minutes plus the extra charger and battery, for $80 plus tax. Click here to find this deal.
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Finally, you can use a USB to Mini-USB cable to charge the phone from your computer. This might be more for people that are a little more technically inclined, as it requires knowledge of which cable to use as well as installation of a special driver onto your computer. The cable you will need has a standard USB connector on one end, and a Mini-USB, which will fit into your phone, on the other end. Then install the driver, using the instructions found here, to make sure your phone will charge from the computer. Lastly, you will need connect the phone to your computer’s USB port using the cable, and wait for your phone to charge.
Well, those are my suggestions for keeping your w376g battery fully charged. Also, keep in mind that bluetooth use, on any phone model, is particularly hard on battery life. If your battery is running low, try to avoid using bluetooth if you can.
I’m sure that there are other possibilities, or clarifications on my instructions, so please do share any input you have using the comments section below. Thanks!
Just face it the W376g is a piece of crap As soon as I use up my minutes I will be through with Tracfone because of this piece of CRAP.
JB
I am currently doing some battery tests with a BT50 (SNN 5766A) I received recently as a spare – I ordered a BQ50 but got the BT50 instead (from negsm.com by the way) and so far it is performing much worse then even the BQ50. From a full charge overnight, phone on standby (no call or messages etc.) to one bar showing on the main screen flashing the amber warning the next morning. More to follow if anyones interested…….
Good tips, suggestions! For this and any other phone. My concern was that Tracfone is advertising this phone (w376g) as having a standby time of 10 days. But I am not getting anywhere near that. However, mine is not near as bad as some of these other people. I still like this phone – but my basis of comparison is the Motorola v60i that I was using for several years, and it was a matter of putting nearly $35.00 of repairs into fixing that phone (with no DMFL, and charged 2 units when roaming and for long distance, and no camera, no color screen), or buy this phone for $49.99 with all its features. It was a no-brainer for me. Others have a different situation I understand, but I am OK with it so far. Maybe these people should complain to Tracfone and ask them to send a replacement battery – that’s exactly what I would do – since they say the phone is supposed to have a much longer standby time. In fact, I am going to do that and see what happens….
Good suggestion on contacting TracFone, Ortizmro
One other thing that occurred to me – I know that on my old V170, the battery seemed to get sapped VERY quickly when the signal was weak or non-existent. My experience is very unscientific, but it almost seemed as if the phone had to “work” extra hard to look for a signal in those cases, and that resulted in poor battery life. I wonder if this is contributing to the problems that some people are having?
This happened to me yesterday. I’m glad you confirmed this. I was fishing on a lake yesterday were my dad and I could not get a signal. My w376g was fully charged when I got there. Around 7 hours later, I was down to one charge bar. Of course I was concerned. My dad has the LG 225 and didn’t have that problem. Even though he wasn’t getting a signal either.
I just got my W376 today. I sure wish the radio would play without the wired headset.
Good tips about battery life – I think a regular charging schedule is key – I do try to charge M,W,F at work.
Re: item #5 – there is no link. Was it to the one on Howard Forums or the Motorolla site? I tried the one pasted in the Howard Forums (the driver) and it got through most of the install process and then quit on a few different computers – saying the registry value didn’t work or something like that.
It’s kind of aggravating – I’m not trying to hack the thing – just trying to get the USB cable from a computer to charge it.
Did you successfully download the driver and get it to work? Can it be done while the phone is on?
I have reason to believe that the batteries shipped with these phones are simply recycled/reconditioned, shipped with a few new sticker. My battery has little to no problems, and will hold a charge in stand-by for days, that is until I plug it in. Once plugged in, it seems to “zap” the life out of it and requires it to remain plugged in until fully charged again. Please note that this phone is only a couple weeks old.
What it seems is that they’ve cycled old batteries that resulted in “good” testing, slapped a fresh sticker on them, and shipped them out. Some of these batteries still tainted with there original “charge spots” embedded on them, even though they’ve been reconditioned.
As far as charging and draining instances, I believe there is truth in what pbushx2 is saying. These phones have a power saving mode that attempts to reduce output power when it’s not needed. So when you are far from a tower, and got a weak signal, your phone has to work extra hard to respond to that remote tower and requires more battery power. You add a weak charge on top of a “not so good” battery, and your battery life will be minimal.
pbushx2; Not about battery life.
Just like your opinion, did you ever hear of jott? My typing is not that great on a phone, and this translates what you say into typed words. you can also use it to send photos to your email.
I came across it while reading at Howard Forums, and don’t know if it works with tracfone?
If you would like to check it out, here is a link to the Q-A page.
http://jott.com/jott/faq.html#
If it works with tracfone, you may want it do a write up on jott to let others know about it.
Thanks Skip:
Hi Skip
Very good point about Jott. I’ve used this service a little and it does indeed work with TracFone. In fact, just as you mentioned, Jott is at the top of my “future blog post topics” list. Problem is, with all these new phones being released by TracFone, it seems that’s what people want to talk about more. Maybe I should do a very brief post just to introduce the service to those who may not have heard of it, then do a more detailed post again in the future?
After a few tries, I have gotten the driver hack from the Sudhian site to work – so my W376g can now be charged from a running computer’s usb port.
Thank you so much for that link!
A charger from another pay as you go service does work with the W376g – the charger for my Motorolla i425 from Boost. (The Boost however can be charged from any USB source – computer, regular charger, generic car USB charger, battery usb charger, etc.)
Some of my experiences with the W376:
You can put one of the mini headset adapters into the jack and the radio will work – however the reception won’t be very good. It uses the wires from the headset as an antenna – so plugging in something that doesn’t have wires will not give good reception.
There seems to be a slight delay with key presses (mentioned by another reviewer here as well) – my C261 Tracfone had a similar keypad and software and the keypress/response time in the menus was much faster. I’m not in a texting championship or anything so it isn’t a huge issue – but it is weird – like the phone is a beat behind.
Compared with the C261 – the menuing is better in some ways – worse in others.
The biggest improvement is that the center button usually will trigger the select in whatever menu/icon chooser you are in. It isn’t 100% though – some menus or applications require the left soft key to hit select – very annoying.
Speaking of annoying – they disabled an ability on the previous phone – the ability to use the up arrow to reverse the direction of a selection – it’s most glaring in the phonebook section. Let’s say you had a contact with a Z name. On my C261 – you could up arrow from the main phone book page and start at the end of the alphabet. You can’t do that on the W376g – you have to scroll down through all your contacts to get to the last one. DUMB!
That last comment above – incorrect if I understand it correctly. In my w376g, I can definitely use the up arrow to reverse direction in my phone’s address book. In other words, I go to the address book and I want to go to the Z section. Two ways to do it – either hit the 9 keypad 4 times (w,x,y,z) to get to Z, or use the up arrow to instantly go to the bottom of the address book. Works like that with mine, anyway.
I found the problem.
Settings -> Intial Setup -> Scroll Settings.
Mine was set to “Up/Down” and it should be set to “Wrap Around” – then any menu can be traversed from the bottom using the up arrow.
Yay!
Here’s a direct link to download the driver to use to enable the USB charging on the w376.. http://rapidshare.com/files/64288250/W375Driver.zip.html
unzip the files to a folder on your computer. DO NOT INSTALL THEM!
Plug in the phone and when you get prompted to load the driver, browse to the folder where you unzipped the files and select the .INF file and the driver will be correctly installed.
You should then be able to successfully charge the phone via the USB port.
I’m able to charge my phone via the USB port using a Mac without drivers. I just plugged in the cable and the phone began charging.
for the FM radio, if anyone has a sirius radio car kit, they give a FM antenna for wireless FM connection. this works on the W376 if you dont want to use headphones. its just a wire that plugs into the mini-jack on the phone so you can use speaker.
I just got this phone yesterday. I love the phone, it’s so cool…..but after fully charging it yesterday, I had to charge it two more times, then again this morning. I think maybe I didn’t leave it in charging for long enough so I’m going to leave it charging for 5 hours or so today to see how much the battery lasts. The problem about searching for a signal and using up extra battery doesn’t apply to me, because I always have all of the bars up. I think I just didn’t charge it for long enough.
Does anyone here know where I can find a case for the W376G that wraps around the complete phone [when opened] and stays on it when it shuts.like a fitted leather or canvas cover that opens and closed with the phone? Thanks
One key element to battery life is the initial charge and drain. When you first get the phone, charge it completely and run it completely dead before recharging. It deepens the cycle of the battery and you will find that future charges will last longer.
Rickey
i done a google search and found where you can possibly find the wrap around case for your w376. goto discountcell.com. i hope it works for you
Another normally happy Tracfone user with a W376g phone that dies way too fast… makes me nuts.
Rickey, I got my case at one of those stands in the mall. He pulled it out of the package to make sure it fit and I love it. Leather and clear vinyl, with a detachable belt clip. Perfect. Maybe $15?
I’m deep-discharging my battery right now in hopes of getting it to last even 5 days. 10 day? That’s just a dream.
If you lose the battery and haven’t gotten a new one yet,
can you use the phone with the AC adapter (charger)
plugged in but without the battery in place?
Would this possibly cause damage to the phone?
…
Wilbur – I have no idea whether this would work or not – I guess the only suggestion I have is to give it a try and hold your breath. My suspicion, however, is that it won’t work without the battery there to complete the electrical circuit.
Warning! Long post.
W376g
I had my battery die unexpectedly. I bought this phone (W376g) on 10/7/08. I expected 2 to 3 years on a lithium ion battery (my assumption is that all cell phones use this kind of battery.)
Battery died on 11/13/09. The need to recharge had shortened drastically from over a week on standby to less than 2 days. I dont use blue tooth or the web browser. However, I don’t get a good signal in the building that I work in. I usually have to step outside to reconnect the signal. Based on other comments here that may be why this battery went down so quickly. On Friday morning screen read “Charge Complete”. This was at 7ish AM. By 9AM the low battery indicator came on. Inside of 10 minutes the battery went completely dead. Put it on the charger and the charging indicator did not light up. NADA. Hmm wasn’t completely sure it was the battery, however, the shortened recharge cycle seemed a good indicator. I have had other lithium batteries die but they seemed to give me more warning by the recharge dropping slowly to 1 day or less.
Looked for batteries for 376g. OMG $29.99. I could buy a new phone for that. New 376g from Tracfone site 29.99. No deals there. And I would have to wait days to get my phone.
I wish I had found this site before I went out shopping on Sunday 11/15/09. I had seen 376g on sale at Family Dollar for $19.99. Nope. All gone. Time for some serious shopping. Closest shopping malls to go thru the stores one by one. Dollar Tree – doesn’t carry any cellphones. All items in store really are a dollar. Next Target – only $29.99 available. Next KMart had the phone on sale for $14.99! I had a $10 gift card. Eureka! After the gift card I paid $5.81. Home. Pulled the battery from the new phone and put it in the old one. Charged new battery in old phone. TADA. Back in business. Though I have no idea what I will do with the body of the new phone. I can use the extra charger for spare for out of town trips. I felt pretty smug until I ran across this site. So I got a just a reasonable deal.
I was resigning myself to just losing the extra time 20 mins and 60 days. I haven’t yet read how I go about transferring days and minutes from one phone to another. I don’t use Paypal. So I cant get your little booklet. I am reading thru the entire blog. I assume that the time and days will wait til I find that on your blog.
Thanks for all the help already!! (I thought that long thin rubber strip on the side was to help me grip the phone better! Didn’t realize it changed ring tones! Color me embarassed.)
Thanks so much for all the information on Tracfones