In order to improve the battery life, I have enabled SmartReflex as described in:
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7633

I have had it on for about a day (so hard to judge battery life improvement) and noticed that the charging just takes forever - it never stops. I am charging it via the USB cable from laptop which never took more than 4 hours, but with SmartReflex it did not stop after 6 hours.

Could this damage battery? Is there a workaround for this (besides turning SmartReflex off again)

I have googled a little and found out that some other users have the same experience, cf. http://forums.precentral.net/palm-pr...ng-issues.html

Do you observe the same issue?

I've had SR enabled for about a month now. No charging issues here, but I normally charge with the wall adapter. I plugged in via USB a few times and it was charging but I have not tried a full charge. It should make no difference though.

I enabled it via editing "/etc/pmconfig", then rebooting the device. (Also described in your link.)

It hasn't caused any issues for about a week for me. (I didn't charge it with the USB cable from a computer, I always used the wall charger.)

However, since it is not enabled by default, and it is in a bug report which states there are some instabilities, you shouldn't be surprised.

As you can see in the comments section of that bug report, it may or may not work. There are some people for whom it is flawless, and some other who experience frequent crashes.

I have turned SmartReflex off again via "/etc/pmconfig" & rebooted and the device just keeps charging for another hour! Maybe I will try a hard reboot (turn off and on instead of using the reboot via DBUS signal).

The stability issues seem to be related to earlier firmware versions, I am using the latest firmware. Anyway, I have observed no stability problems (well one browser crash, but that may be coincidence), just the weird charging issue.

Has it crossed your mind that this issue is not related to SmartReflex?

The current coming from your laptop is way weaker than the one from the wall charger.

thx venemo.... i wanted to post the same thing..... i never got a full charge when it was charging with usb....
just an example....
its simple...

500mAh usb
dont know atm what the wall has ... lets say 900mAh

lets say the n900 consumes 170mAh in idle...
50mAh are lost through heat while charging...

on usb 500 - 170 =330 - 50 = 270 mAh charge...
on wall 900 - 170 =630 - 50 = 570 mAh charge....

that example tell me that usb will need more than the twice time to charge....

IF all the values are correct.... and they are not correct .... beacause i dont have no wall chafrger here at car.... and i dont know what the n900 is consuming while idle....

I have had the phone for about 2 months and never had issues with charging from the laptop. In fact, I do it every working day and always needed no more than 4 hours for full charge. When charging from the wall charger, it takes up to 2 hours.

Besides enabling SmartReflex, I have done two things with the phone in last 24 hours:

• edited /var/lib/gconf/apps/hildon/update-notifier/%gconf.xml to change the time of day when auto update occurs
• updated the pidgin messenger

none of these seem charging-related to me.

I will just have to see if the normal behavior resumes (turned SmartReflex off).. When I unplugged the phone now, i.e., after 8 hours of charging, the reported battery level is 74%. Yesterday, it was 96% after 4 hours of charging and 4 hours of being plugged in and reporting full (green led when idle).

Actually, there is one more thing I should mention. Today, after about 3 hours of charging, the status bar battery indicator stopped moving, it did not stay at full but at some 70%. When I locked the screen, the yellow light was still blinking and the X-term command reported that the N900 is charging. After reboot, the status bar battey icon started moving again. This may have been the first sign of something around charging going wrong...

This is another bug which I remember seeing somewhere. (Don't remember the ID, however.)
Conclusion: this in unrelated to SmartReflex.

I had problews with my phone rebooting with 32wd_to reason (bugs #6334 and #8229).
I had to disable deep sleep in /etc/pmconfig which caused reduction of battery life. To have somehow manageable time of running I have then enabled SmartReflex - and even though my device had reboots, they were never caused by SR.

I have had SmartReflex enabled on all available firmware F original, PR1.0.1, PR1.1, and PR1.1.1 - no problems with it.

Usually I charge by wall charger, but IIRC I have charged once over USB; this was however from my desktop.

Maybe this is reason of your prolonged charging - maybe your laptop does not provide enough power. If you have desktop, please try charging from it.