this has always happened with mine since day 1. Thought it was normal. Doesn't happen if battery is only out for a few seconds, but does if battery is out for longer.
My N900 is bought together anextra battery in June. I have this habit to swap the batteries weekly. It did not ask me to set date & time until yesterday.
Yesterday I upgraded the browser from Firefox Mobile to Firefox 4. I found Firefox 4 very slow; it took forever to load a web page. I uninstalled & reinstalled it but no help to its performamce. Then, for some reason, I went into Setting and tried to access the ProfileMamagerX, for the 1st time, I obtained a error message - "Internal Error ........". So I decided to soft reset it by switching off and removed the battery for some seconds and then turned it back on. Starting from that time, N900 asks me to set time & date. Besides, its ringtone also resets to default "Nokia tone" but it does not reset the customized tone for SMS.
I guess this is not a back up battery issue but caused by software conflict.
In my last feedback on October 24, I commented the time & date reset issue on N900 after swapping batteries could be software issue instead of its back up battery.
Last week, I received SMS from NOKIA informing me the launch of the new firmware. After the firmware was completely installed, I realized it was not an upgrade but full installation because my N900 asked to download and install all the apps. I used to have and it took me about an hour. I had no complaint about that as I thought it might be good to my N900 in case there was any software problem previously.
During the weekend, I did as usual to swap the batteries. When I re-powered up the N900, it still asked to reset time & date. So, I guessed I was wrong in my last feedback, it might be a bad back up battery issue.
Last night, I was playing the Labyrinth Lite game, then I went into a conversation with a friend without closing the game. After the conversation, I found the N900 hung up; no key responded including the Power On/Off button. My only option was to remove the battery to set it off. While doing this, I thought I would have to reset the time & date again. However, surprisingly, all settings were kept after rebooting this time.
My N900 _always_ lost time & date since I bought it (6 months, running FW 1.1, 1.2, 1.3).
Last week I had to flash rootfs [first time] cause my optification-trial script was buggy an messed up /usr/share
The day after I took out the battery to put in my SIM-card again and -WOW! - the device *did* remember the correct time & date!
Anyway, the next battery-outs brought back the old well-known annoying time & date prompt.
Since it happened only once and never again in months,
it imho cannot be a hardware-related issue [secondary battery broken/fixed/broken again ;].
Has anyone asked Nokia support /local NSC yet?
I'd be interested in any offical answer related to that annoying issue.
Could be I was pretty wrong when thinking about blaming Nokia for that annoyance and was pretty right when stating it is imho a software problem.
When the N900 booted up once wihout t&d prompt, the only thing that was different from all the other battery-out-boots was: No 3rd party software, esp. no extras-testing,no extras-devel. Fresh and clean as a new born, no backups were applied etc.
So there comes the idea that some 3rd party app breaks t&d continuity. Could this possibly be a problem with paths a/o read/write permissions? I'll take a close look at log files the next days.
So: all of you happy owners of a user-friendly N900 that remembers time and date as it is supposed to: do you have rootsh and /or sudser installed? What other 3rd party software?
Can you find coincidence between the system's t&d 'behaviour' and the installation of a special appliction?
To swap batteries quickly, I have the replacement battery ready in one hand (in the correct orientation) and pull the old battery out with the other hand.
If the battery is out for longer than about 2 seconds, I lose the time & date. It's always been that way for me.
Mine didn't use to.. now it has started.. since PR1.3... very very irritating.. bought mine last year on launch day.. Seriously, if a backup battery can go flat in under a year considering the total time my phone has been without a battery inserted or totally flat is about 5 minutes, something is very wrong
