A Fully charged new battery will go dead in about a half hour when inside the camera. The battery will not hold a charge when inside the camera but will hold outside the camera

How long have you had it charging ? New batteries can take a long time for the first charge - is this mentioned in the manual at all?

charger fault, had it myself

I think that your batteries may have expired due to old age and are refusing to hold a charge.

Ni cad batteries have a shelf life and once that time limit has expired, you need to replace the batteries with new ones which will begin counting down to their expire date and also go dead.
once ni cad batteries have expired and past their time limit
nothing can be done to revive them ,they are forevermore dead and must be replaced.

that is the reason why i buy 120 volt ac drills instead of battery powered drills which are always dead by the time i need to use them and wont hold a charge when i try to recharge them.

my cordless radio phone batteries go dead after 1 hour on the phone, when they were newer,i could talk for 4 hours and still have 1/4 charge left. soon they will only last 30 minutes and need a 12 hour recharge to come back to 4 bars.
so i expect to have to pay 4 new batteries by christmas.

One other option may be that your charger is not working properly and developing the required voltage.
that also happens but not as often as dead batteries that wont hold a charge.
if you have a radio shack nearby, even if its a 20 mile drive
they can test your batteries and also test your battery charger. just ask for a salesman that has a battery tester and a vom [volt,ohm,milli amp meter] also called a multi meter. The vom will test your charger and came also test your batteries, but most salesmen dont know enough about the vom to use it as a battery tester .

PS a battery tester is just a vom scaled down for battery testing only, made easy to use for dummies.

kindly leave the battery for long duration in charging position let the red light blink and then see after like 16 hours or 24 hours if it works and charge otherwise change the battery with the same specs , and next time when u leave battery for long duration likea month or weeks charge it to full or half so it can hold some power to re charge again , ur battery is in Coma state nearly dead so it might come back or not

pls rate me well

Regards

Zohail

If the troubleshooting section in the back of the user guide doesn't help, I sugget getting in touch with Sony and asking them if it's normal, the only thing I can suggest in the meantime, is taking the battery out while it's not in use, or recharge it a few hours before you're due to use it. Phones get like it after a few years and with technology advancing the way it is these days, you'd expect a battery life lasting longer than a week, not a day.

Things to consider:
1. When it's off, is it off or left on standby?
2. Where did you buy both the camera and batteries from?
3. When you charge it up, do you charge it up with a half charged battery or a totally dead battery?

BATTERY TIPS

Now a days in LITHIUM BATTERIES are used no memory effect

always charge battery for 16 hours when first use new

never keep ur battery fully discharged for long time when u store ur camera always keep it half charged or fully charged when storing for longer period

it is good to fully discharge once in a month but dont make it ur habit

pls rate me FIXYA for help

from theslug on another thread. Thi worked great for me...

"Hi,I just found a soultion on another website and it appears to have worked for me.Apparently the battery loses it memory when fully discharged,to fix this take a 9v battery and place the terminals + to + and - to - with the camera battery for 30 seconds or so then put the battery back in the camera and charge as normal.I just did this and it seems to be charging and the red light is solid.hope this helps."

The way to properly break in a lithium Ion battery is to run it dead before you recharge it. Then fully recharge it and run it until it's dead again. Do this about 3-5 times and then the battery is properly broken in. If you charge it before it dies on a new battery you can build what they call a "memory" where the battery thinks it's fully charged however it's only maybe half charged and you will lose alot of life out of your battery. So make sure you properly break it in.

how old is the battery? if it's more than 2 or 3 years old, it may not hold a charge. swap a known good battery and see if it works.

Sorry this isn't a solution, but I wish my 8700 would last even as long as yours does. 2 hours, period. on or off, taking pictures or not, two hours & it's a stone dead battery. Just on the off chance it will help I'm about to upgrade the firmware to 1.3 (I don't really think it will help). After that I've decided to take the camera apart & try to find the problem or possibly just a hack that will let me turn it OFF without removing the battery. I'd as soon have a bunch of bits for the project bin as have to put up with this 2 hour battery life problem. Good luck with your problem, and if I find anything worth while I'll post back.