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Forum Discussion
AirCard 771S/Netgear Zing battery issues
I maintain about 20 of these 771S aircards and was in need of replacement batteries for them. I purchased (2) different lots of 5 off of eBay from different sellers (they are reputable). I am unable to get any of the 10 batteries to charge up. I have tried them in multiple aircards with no luck. When I put one of the batteries in and plug it in via AC, the screen comes on and says starting up but then it just goes black. If I press the power button, the device appeared to be off and starts up again. I contacted one of the sellers and they said that they had complaints from other buyers and said it was a Sprint issue with some sort of update they did on the aircards that caused issues with Netgear batteries. The sprint rep had me do a factory reset on one of the aircards to see if that would solve the issue with the batteries but that did nothing. Also, if I plug the aircard into my PC and open the interface to it, it shows no battery even present. I also have cleaned the contacts on one of the aircards and took the SIM card out and then put the battery back in but still same issue.
I contacted our Sprint representative and they had never heard of this. I was able to get a refund for those 5 batteries but I find it hard to believe that all 10 batteries I purchased are bad? I know anything is possible though, just hard to believe. Has anyone had these issues? Any other ideas to try or thoughts on this are appreciated. Thank you.
Chris
1 Reply
I have the netgear zing 771S and the cradle for it. I've found the Zing only lasts about one year until it starts to report false battery failures. It starts off with the device being plugged in and reporting "no battery". When this happens, it freezes the data connection and the screen cannot be touched to rememdy situation. Pulling the battery out and putting it back in clears it up but the problem will eventually return again. Once charged up and unplugged, the device will also display "low battery" at some point, even though the battery is not low. Same thing, freezes data connection and pulling the battery out and putting it back in clears up the issue. Once booted up, the battery always reports good charge. I too have bought replacement batteries thinking it was the actual batteries' fault, but this is not the case. The last time this happened, almost exactly a year ago to date from last device failure, sprint replaced it at a $75 charge. Unfortuantely, this is now an End of Life device with sprint so I had to "upgrade" to their pocket wifi. The pocket wifi gets half the signal as the zing on the same band, even if the zing is out of cradle. I really wish Netgear would step in and back these devices when they fail. it is NOT a sprint firmware upgrade. I haven't seen one of those go through my Zings in a very long time. You can google search and find others that have posted the same issues with the device.