Battery life with exam mode

[Mic]

TI Planet finds a very short battery life when the exam mode is on. About 15 hours with no use of the calc.

https://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php...203#p18820

Do you have this issue ?

Maybe a bug in the last firmware to fix ?

[hpfx]

For the ones who don't read french,
Battery life for HP Prime in exam mode is about 15 to 20 hours. (checked several times, with different hardwares and different firmwares)

While TI-83 Premium CE lasts 15 days !
TI-Nspire CX CAS lasts 18 days and half with the 1060 mAh battery and 35 days with 1230 mAh one.
and even worth, it lasts up to 70 days with a Samsung 1200mAh battery!
yes, not "hours"... "days" !

[whilealive]

Actually, several of my students have trouble with their newly ordered HP Primes. Their device seems to be stuck in exam mode without any option to end it and battery life goes down quickly even when switched off. Some of them tried connecting it with a PC, and in some cases exam mode finally ended after connecting it. I'm having quite some trouble there...

[StephenG1CMZ]

(09-02-2015 12:39 PM)whilealive Wrote:  Actually, several of my students have trouble with their newly ordered HP Primes. Their device seems to be stuck in exam mode without any option to end it and battery life goes down quickly even when switched off. Some of them tried connecting it with a PC, and in some cases exam mode finally ended after connecting it. I'm having quite some trouble there...

See also the thread "top bar changes from blue to orange" - cyrille describes how to exit exam mode.

[whilealive]

Quote: See also the thread "top bar changes from blue to orange" - cyrille describes how to exit exam mode.

Sorry, missed that. Thanks a lot!

[Tim Wessman]

(09-02-2015 12:39 PM)whilealive Wrote:  Actually, several of my students have trouble with their newly ordered HP Primes. Their device seems to be stuck in exam mode without any option to end it and

Hello,

Could you please send an email to calchelp at hp.com. I'd like to try and get some more information from you as to when/how/is it resolved, etc. I can also get you connected with someone who can help (should you not already have that contact info) with other questions as they come up.

[debrouxl]

We went out our way to test battery life in exam mode on three different calculators of different hardware revisions (DVT, lightly used HW-A, recent HW-C), multiple times each, and all tests yielded consistent results. Therefore, it would be have been highly surprising to see no other Prime users experience the same issue on their own Prime calculators
The battery life variation between runs on the same model can be attributed to the battery indicator's accuracy and amount of trust put in it: up to a point, if the calculator charges for some more time after the battery indicator states 100%, the battery life in exam mode is longer.

The Prime's battery life in normal mode is usually good, but the dependability oddity in exam mode costs the Prime the #1 spot in our recent series comparing, from the point of view of a French high-schooler aiming at school and exam mode usage of calculators, the calculator models featuring support for that counter-productive exam mode craziness unfortunately recently imported from other countries, which can be bought as of today on the French marketplace. The topic linked above is part of that ~18-part series, the summary is at https://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=17145 .
Unsurprisingly, the more expensive high-end models (HP Prime and TI-Nspire CX CAS) top the list, and cheaper old technology (old TI and Casio designs which saw an exam mode being bolted on without improving hardware characteristics, and sometimes even reducing firmware capabilities, as occurred after deriving that TI-82 Advanced stinker from the old 84+) trail the list.
The fact that from 2018 onwards, the exam mode is supposed to be enabled for the main French standardized test, is creating unwelcome differences of treatment against pupils, based on their wealth. Better features for those who pay more and use the right models, no more access (during the exam) to community programs for slightly raising the capabilities of the inferior models and making them less uneven with the higher models... sounds totally fair and sane. A good thing for the calculator manufacturers' sales figures, though.

[Tim Wessman]

I've been asked to post this - "Thank you for your feedback on HP Prime. We value customer input and will do our best to review and address it in a future release."

So in our parlance here - it is "on the list". Personally, thanks for the detailed information you all at ti-planet provided. Always nice to get things beyond "it doesn't work".

[debrouxl]

You're welcome, Tim

[gteague]

is there any way out of exam mode other than hp-connect? i detest windows and won't use it unless all else fails.

the docs say you can get out of it with a password or that it times out after 8 hours. if i leave it on (or off?) for 8 hours, will it time out of this mode?

oh, nearly forgot. the reason i discovered this was that last night the calc was fully charged and it went from full to completely discharged in way less than one hour of use today.

tks, /guy

[gteague]

i gave up and connected the prime to windows. it's not at all clear how to get out of exam mode. and why would you want to create a new object called 'exam mode'?

i'm wondering if my charging circuit is fubar. when i charged i yesterday it took about 2.5 hours and the charging was normal in that it started at around 600mah and ramped down to about 6mah before i declared it charged. i read the battery was 1500mah, so 2.5 hours at 600mah is nearly exactly right for charging time. then, as i said in the previous post, with hardly any use the battery completely drained over the course of the day and it shut itself off.

today i charged it for 2 hours and it never left 660mah and it said 50%. and now and i'm trying to get it to 100% and another 2 hours and it's still drawing 600mah. this doesn't seem right nor consistent. i think when i was exploring it (with the getting started guide in hand) i did something to put it into exam mode although i don't know what. and when it went into that mode it screwed up the charging algorithm.


/guy

[gteague]

also, if i reset the calculator at some level of reset it seems to revert to exam mode. which means there is a default password somewhere. i realize it can't be posted, but if anyone has it, can they pm it to me so i can get out of this annoying useless mode without connecting it to windows? it's about to make me abandon the calculator before i even use it if this and the charging issue continues. i have ordered an s3 battery, but now i'm reading they don't fit.

/guy

[cyrille de brébisson]

Hello,

Exam mode is for exam situations (such as SAT, IB...) a person in the normal use of his calculator has no needs to use it.

Basic exam mode (designed in accordance to the French ministry of education specs, and please do not start blaming the French here:-)) can only be turned off by connecting the calculator through USB (which is what you did). I believe that this is written on the setting page 3 when it is enabled.

Exam mode is designed to resist pretty much anything (reset, reboots, memory wipe...)

Other exam modes have more ways to exit, password, timeout... this is configurable by the user (normally a teacher).

Cyrille

[retoa]

Same problem with battery life in exam mode here in Switzerland.

Fortunately we don't need it, but sometimes a student activate it.
If the calculator stay in exam mode overnight, in the morning the battery is empty and you can not turn on the calculator.

As said for us it is not a problem as we don't have limitations during the exams (we have one part of the exam without calculator and one with graphical CAS calculator).

[gteague]

thanks guys! but how do i avoid it going into exam mode at all? ever? in two days it's gone into that mode twice and each time i swear i wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary. i dislike not having control of my own device and i own a soldering iron i'm willing to use!

/guy

[retoa]

It never happened to me, nor to my students, it always happened because they choose the exam mode option in the settings, without knowing what they were doing.

[gteague]

(03-21-2016 09:31 PM)retoa Wrote:  It never happened to me, nor to my students, it always happened because they choose the exam mode option in the settings, without knowing what they were doing.

i'm pretty sure i did trigger one of them by hitting /start/ in the soft menus while i was attempting to set a timeout and a password. but in that menu the default is 15 minutes and it didn't turn itself off in the 20-30 minutes i waited.

the first time it went into exam mode after i did one of the resets i found in the forums. i'm still unsure whether the 'official' full reset is holding down 'fco' and /on/ with or without the reset pin in the bottom, but i did get a message indicating it had been reset and then it came up with the green light blinking.

/guy

[cyrille de brébisson]

Hello,

normally, 15 minutes timeout means 15 minutes time out and this seems to work fairy well.

Doing a full reset While in exam mode will change the timeout to 8h (the max duration of an exam). This is due to the fact that the full reset will erase the clock, so there is no way for the system to know 'when' is now, so it defaults to 8h.

Normally, no reset system will exit exam mode (by design). However, USB connection to a PC should kill the 'basic' exam mode (green LED) and timeout will kill any other exam mode (<8h).

What baffles me is that people manage to place the calc in exam mode 'by accident'. It takes a number of keystrokes to start exam mode so it seems weired... but anyhow, it happends!

Cyrille

[gteague]

speaking for myself only, as a beginner who isn't yet familiar with the needed protocols and keystrokes, first, the exam mode is 'tacked on' to the 3rd page of settings and thus you can encounter it easily just by not knowing what's on the 3rd page.

second, for a newbie who isn't used to the keystrokes to exit the settings menu, you are offered at least 3 choices: /ok/, /start/ and /enter/. if you deliberately go into the exam menu, as i did, to set a short timeout and a password so i can get out of it (i had no idea a reset killed the countdown timer), it sort of makes logical sense to hit /start/ to 'start' the changes you made.

bottom line is that i found it way too easy to put myself into that mode. and i truly detest going into windows to clear it. i have two dozen radios connected to my mac feeding into a windows7 virtual machine under vmware and trying to install another virtual usb port sometimes scrambles up the usb bus and i have to re-install the connection for one or more radios. i have at least 4 usb hubs with nearly 3 dozen usb slots and nearly all of them are filled. it's a pain in the ass for me personally, in other words.

/guy

[chromos]

(03-22-2016 06:01 AM)cyrille de brébisson Wrote:  ... What baffles me is that people manage to place the calc in exam mode 'by accident'. It takes a number of keystrokes to start exam mode so it seems weired...
Cyrille

It isn't so difficult to mistap, unfortunately. A few millimeters decides what happens.