Official PlayBook OS v2.0.1.668 Announcement and Breathing Life back into a Dead Battery

Question

Where is it?!
Well, you can go to the software update page and discover that the only thing RIM indicates the update does is provide a security update for the Adobe Flash player,
http://ca.blackberry.com/support/tablets/playbook/software-updates.html
The details can be found here.
http://btsc.webapps.blackberry.com/btsc/viewdocument.do?externalId=KB31675&sliceId=1&cmd=displayKC&d...
That said, it would appear speculation related to wifi and browser improvements (among other things) is very subjective and likely as varied as individual user experience. Here’s a quote from a Crackberry News & Rumours Post
http://crackberry.com/whats-new-playbook-os-201668
Frankly, this sort of commentary drives me crazy. What company would make the kind of improvements identified above without documenting them for their existing and future customers, if they were real. Is it that we're all so desperate for good news from RIM that we have to make it up? If anyone can find anything official behind the article's claims, feel free to post a link in response.
A couple things do still confuse me though. Some users are claiming that the new OS v2.0.1.668 version has been pulled. My Playbook upgraded to this update without any issue on the first try. Didn't take hours and the whole process seemed quite normal. Smooth as molasses.
Didn't notice anything weird at all until last evening, a few days after the upgrade. I pulled off the charger cable and looked at the battery and it was 0%, dead as a door nail. Perhaps the magnetic head of the fast charger wasn't seated properly. I turned off the Playbook and then attached the fast charger. Left it alone and went back about an hour later and it was still at 0%! It was acting like it was still losing charge and getting weaker. This is not typically the case, so I shut down wifi, turned off backlighting, put it into airplane mode and tried again. No change when I checked back later. At some points, I couldn't even get it to boot to the main screen, just battery empty symbol, at best.
I read on this and other forums how others were having problems after teh update. Erasing their Playbook and reloading OS. I couldn't even do that, because the Playbook has to have enough power to update the software through the Desktop. While I could connect and see the device via Desktop, there wasn't enough juice to do anything at 0%. It seemed that there were folks holding the battery button for 10-20 seconds claiming that worked, but it didn't do anything for me.
To say the least, I was getting pretty ticked off after reading the forum and discovering that the battery issue I was dealing with might be related to a pulled OS upgrade that had screwed my Playbook. Proper QA and testing should preventthis sort of blunder. Even more ticked, if the update has been pulled and RIM has not made any official statement that I can find to that effect! If they have pulled it (which I still haven't been able to personally confirm), this information should be publically available and explained. The one thing they need to do is look after any loyal customers they still have left. Personally, I have loved my playbook, although RIM has definitely botched a great piece of hardware with inadequate software enhancements to the OS, that continues to this day. The fact that we still can't categorize browser favorites in folders at this point is inexcusable. Anyway, I digress.
Back to the battery. Here's what I did after about two hours of snarling and becoming increasingly frustrated with my dead playbook and not being able to find any way to breathe life back into it. I remembered what happens to my rechargeable batteries for my xbox controllers when they drain dead. They simply won't charge. They become un-rechargeable. I eventually figured out via an obscure internet posting, what no retail clerk or xbox support person seemed to know. I returned more than my share of brand new unrechargeable batteries, because they wouldn't charge when drained. This is what I discovered. You take the dead controller with battery and connect it to the charging cable. It lights red... but after 13 seconds it goes green. If you leave it connected it simply will not charge. Originally, I concluded I had a faulty battery that would not recharge. Not so. You must pull the cable off. Light goes out, connect it again. Light goes red, 13 seconds turns green. Pull the cable off. Light goes out, connect it again. Light goes red, 13 seconds turns green. Pull the cable off. Light goes out, connect it again. Light goes red, 13 seconds turns green. Pull the cable off. Repeat until you figure there is no point to this exercise, and then do it one more time. Pull the cable off. Light goes out, connect it again. Light goes red, 13 seconds later it stays red and doesn't go green, it stays red. Might be the 5th try, 20th try, 30th try, who knows, but eventually the xbox controller light will actually stay red and not switch to green and will then recharge. It's almost like each previous failed connection provides a bit more juice to the battery, until it has enough to finally be rechargeable again. Come back in a couple hours and what appeared to be an unrechargeable battery is fully charged.
So I took my Playbook, Turned it off. Connected cable. Light turned red, then turned green. Disconnected cable. Held power button to shut playbook off. Connected cable. Light turned red, then turned green. Disconnected cable. Held power button to shut playbook off. Connected cable. Light turned red, then turned green. Disconnected cable.  Held power button to shut playbook off. Connected cable. Light turned red, then turned green. Disconnected cable. Held power button to shut playbook off. Not sure how many times I went through this painful exercise. Maybe 15-20. Maybe I only needed to do it 5 or 10times. Maybe I didn't need to do it at all.
Frankly, in the course of doing it, it seemed like I was almost draining the battery more. I think there was a point where it almost was dead and wouldn't even light up. That had me spooked. By pressing and holding the on button and connecting the cable, I somehow got the red light to come on, then switch to green and it began pulsating. At this point, I didn't want to push my luck. Left it alone and went to bed. Got up this morning and it was alive and 100% charged. It went into an automatic reboot. The wifi password had to be re-entered and saved in order to get connected back to the internet, but everything else seemed to be fine.
I’ve used it solid for one hour and the battery dropped to 80%. This felt like a much faster drop than in the past. It's been in standby mode for an additional two and a half hours since and it is now at 60%. I never shut my PlayBook off. I keep mine in standby all day, with the screen on lowest brightness and wifi typically on. Do I think that the latest update has had an impact on battery life? Well, my Playbook originally died and ran out of charge, when I had it attached to the fast charger! Can't explain that right now. I suppose I could have improperly connected via the magnet and this was my own user error. Could be just coincidental that this happened to me after the update and at the same time others are complaining about battery issues. Personally, it does “feel” like my Playbook is draining faster in standby mode than it has in the past. I have my eye on this and if it goes dead again, I'll repost. Obviously, my recharging "technique" worked for me, so if it helps breathe life back into your battery dead playbook, I'd be interested to know.
If RIM has actually pulled the update and not updated their own web site to reflect a battery issue and not officially disclosed a known problem to their customers it would be at best totally unprofessional and at worst inexcusable. I'm still not sure what to make of everyone's comments and issues, when RIM still lists the v2.0.1.668 update on their corporate page.
gRIMace
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Answer 1

RIM exec Michael Clewley confirm that 668 was pulled because it has upgrading issues with Playbook with OS 1.0.7 --- and that is the ONLY reason why it was pulled.
http://twitter.com/michaelclewley