TF,
It could be as simple as the battery meter losing track of the battery.
When was the last time you run the battery down to the point where the PPC shuts off? If you don't do this once every 30 charges followed by a full recharge with the device powered down, the power meter can't track the battery properly. With a LiOn, by the way, forcing a full discharge is NOT recommended as it will damage the battery, and LiOn's have no memory to worry about like the old NiCad's did
If you are occasionally cycling as I describe above, the problem probably is the battery, but you may be able to make sure that its not something else by tracking power draw during various operational configurations. If power draw seems reasonable, then the battery is toast. If not, perhaps you can find the bad component as you turn things on.
To do this, I like to use acbPowerMeter (
http://www.acbpocketsoft.com/Product...verview-2.html), which charts the real-time usage.
It would be best to start with a clean slate, so go ahead and hard reset before installing acbPowerMeter and testing (install nothing else after the hard reset, as we don't want to get confused by an errant piece of software, or a registry hack). Once that is done, start the testing with SD removed, backlight as low as it goes and in airplane mode. Don't forget to go into power properties to disable timed backlight and device standby when on batteries was well as turn off IR.
By way of comparison, over a 2min reference interval, I observe the following on no2chem 2.2 prev 5 ROM while the device remains idle and SD card is in:
Airplane Mode: 79 mA average, 68 - 73 Ma typical
Phone On (no data): 87 mA average
Phone + BT on (no data): 94 mA average
Phone + BT + Data: 86 mA average
Phone + BT + Data + Wifi (wifi searching for router): 295 mA, spikes up to 488 mA - Yikes!!
If you are getting numbers like this, and the battery still drops quickly in airplane mode, the battery is toast. If your airplane mode numbers are much higher than mine, your phone is probably hosed, although it could still be the battery. Other operational modes will give you a sense of which radio component might be the culprit if airplane mode looks normal.
Then install your software, and see if things go wacky.
-Doc