Stylus 1 - not remembering date/time - return it?

[Ken Croft]

I have completely stripped 2 Stylus1 cameras, and I have not found a button cell anywhere.

Did you remove the main circuit board (the one on the right, looking at the back of the camera) and flip it over?

Not sure, I will examine the photos that I took.

 

[Vohasam]

Those are all somewhat larger ICL cameras, not compacts

Here's an example of a compact. See page 7.

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Ken Croft has been on this forum long enough for me to believe him if he says he has stripped 2 of these cameras and not seen a button battery.

Ken said he hasn't found the battery, but he also hasn't said he found a capacitor, and he has only ever posted to this forum photos of one side of the main circuit board. So, completely inconclusive.

Your reference to the Olympus which has a thread about a battery in the motherboard is also an ICL camera, and the lone thread for Olympus that refers to that kind of battery in that brand. All that said, If anyone wants to disassemble or look at the motherboard of a dead Olympus Stylus 1/1s and take a picture - I will accept that as the final answer.

I've disassembled three, and they have a battery. I changed it in one of them. If I get another one for repair, I'll take pictures to put this myth to rest, at least for this specific camera. But will the myth then persist for other cameras?

For practical purposes most compacts wouldn't need days of clock battery function because the main battery can be charged in the camera (the stylus 1/1s can't). I imagine there's the case of people without extra batteries or don't carry extras. But the camera is plugged in the same day typically. Which is why a capacitor might suffice, if that helps explain where the "myth" as others call it or perhaps "truth" came from.

Imagine you're engineering a camera: you know that some people, some of the time, will plug their camera into USB. It could be 10% of users, it could be 75%. But you also know that 100% of all people will always, every single time, have to put a lithium-ion main battery into the camera in order to use it, so what do you design the camera to use? The 10-75% possibility of charging the clock's power supply,, or the 100% guaranteed possibility of charging the clock's power supply?

I suspect the myth came about because many people are unaware that button cell lithium batteries are rechargeable. Some cameras use non-rechargeable and user-replaceable coin cell lithium batteries, so I think the idea of small lithium batteries being rechargeable seems odd to a lot of people, therefore they started guessing it was a capacitor and then stating their guess as fact. (If you google the model number of the button cell battery, however, you will find charging specifications.)

And now, the latest test result: in which I matched the settings precisely between my two Stylus 1s (one that maintains time for an hour+ without the main battery; the second which does it for 10 minutes), and allowed them to sit overnight with a freshly charged main battery. Does the second one now maintain time for an hour+? Nope. Now I'm plumb out of theories, so I'll end with this:

Your experiment that it takes hours to charge, not seconds or minutes, proves that it's a battery. You literally already proved it for yourself and everyone else - you're just so stuck on confirmation bias for your initial theory that you're misinterpreting your own results.

In any case - as to the OP's question: should he return the camera based on this function? I say no. Rather, I recommend buy some aftermarket extra batteries and a multi-battery charger. It takes less than a minute to change batteries and hopefully that is enough so your camera doesn't lose time. Even if it isn't, resetting time every battery exchange wouldn't bother me. Especially with the very long battery life of it's battery.

I agree. If you lost settings in addition to the clock resetting, that would be more of a hassle, but settings being lost is a thing that cameras haven't had to deal with in decades, since they switched from storing settings in volatile RAM in the late nineties and very early 2000s to non--volatile flash memory. However... it's another myth that persists, as we have seen in this very thread.

You'll also see a lot of times on this forum that people will suggest leaving the main battery out overnight or 24 hours or a week as a way to troubleshoot a camera that has a problem, saying that will reset everything. It will work for a 20-year-old camera, but not a modern one, yet a misunderstanding of how cameras are made now allow that bad advice to persist.

 

[Steve the amateur]

All very interesting, and all opinions welcome, facts even more welcome. I'm just glad both of my 1s hold clock time long enough to exchange batteries.

 

[Kerusker]

I have completely stripped 2 Stylus1 cameras, and I have not found a button cell anywhere.

Did you remove the main circuit board (the one on the right, looking at the back of the camera) and flip it over?

Not sure, I will examine the photos that I took.

Ken and Vohasam,

can you please post any photos wich can be helpful for disassembling the Stylus 1/1s?

I would like to replace the stuck lens unit of a spare 1s with the working lens unit of an older Stylus 1 (which has several button faults).

I would suggest a new thread for the photos.

I've tried this earlier

Stylus 1(s) Gear Talk - fix it yourself

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/67686175

 

[elliottnewcomb]

extra batteries and charger for sure, and hopefully it will hold the time while you switch.

Everything else works, great shape, I would not return it, just consider setting time part of the turn on process, cost of the great deal you got.

 

[OM mani padme hum]

Apologies for reanimating a zombie thread, but I have a variation of the same problem with a new to me Stylus 1. Just used it for 4 days at a music festival, and it would randomly (but frequently) ask for the date to be reset on starting up - despite not removing the main battery; I took the main battery out only to swap in another one, so only once a day for perhaps a minute tops. (I have GM5s with similar + other problems.)

I can't imagine OMDS will want to know about fixing things, so it's down to a random repairer or DIY. Does anyone know exactly what sort of battery is in there???

 

[GPSeascapeLandscape]

I am the original poster (changed my user name). And my camera has a new problem, that might be related?

I decided to keep the camera. In fact my wife also bought one.

Both cameras have now developed the date/time issue.

I used my camera a bunch over the last 8 months. Then stopped using it as much, but kept fresh batteries in it. Despite fresh batteries, it starting having the date issue more regularly when I did pick the camera up again.

And now there is a big new problem. The camera will turn on, the lens would extend, and then it would immediately turn itself off and the lens would retract. It makes the camera unusable. I don't recall the camera being dropped, or anything else happening to the lens.

I can still hold down the play button and access menus.

Nothing I have done seems to fix the issue, including a hard reset of all functions, and removing the battery and memory card for a period of time. I have tried tons of suggestions. The only thing I have not tried is hooking the camera up to the computer via USB, and maybe trying to flash the firmware.

I even checked the battery voltage to make sure there is not a problem with the battery charger (over 8 volts).

It makes me wonder if the internal battery issue could be the cause of this also?

As the camera is now worthless to me as is, I will either take it apart, to see about replacing an internal battery (if there is one, I am still unclear about that). Or just sell it for parts.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

 

[GPSeascapeLandscape]

I did find this from a similar post back in 2019, that seems to indicate that the camera uses a capacitor, not battery, straight from Olympus at the time.

"We are sorry to learn about what is happening to your camera. We would like to provide you additional information about this issue. This camera does not have an internal battery, what it has, is a capacitor that allows the camera to hold the power, but when you take out the battery or set the camera for any period of time , a week or so, it loses the power and does not keep information such as time and date and some other settings until you charge the battery and put it back.

.....Digital Technical Support - Olympus America Inc."

 

[GPSeascapeLandscape]

Since posting this, I found an old post with a reply from Olympus that the camera does use a capacitor, not a battery. I suppose I will need to tear it apart to settle this once and for all.