Battery Problem

[ignos]

Hi,
little warning. my English is not the best.
I have the following problem: When the clipzip is after 8 -10 hours listening at 44%, the battery is empty less than an hour. not matter what firmware. Is this normal?

[CrowdAds]

[skip252]

Welcome to ABi

Several things affect battery life. What type of files, what bitrate those files are, if you use the equalizer reduce battery life. The biggest drain is the screen. The more you turn the screen on and the longer it stays on the quicker the battery drains.

Nobody ever actually gets the full rated 15 hours as far as I know. That's based on 128 kbps mp3s playing continuously with the screen turned off and no one turning on the screen by changing tracks or playlists. Unless that's how you use your player you can't expect to get that. 12 hours with decent bitrate files and minimal screen use should be possible though.

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by ignos

Hi,
little warning. my English is not the best.
I have the following problem: When the clipzip is after 8 -10 hours listening at 44%, the battery is empty less than an hour. not matter what firmware. Is this normal?

I just answered you in the other forum too, but yes, the battery meter is not very linear towards the end. When I ran one of my battery tests for my review, found elsewhere on the site here, I had the same thing happen after seeing 44%...the player shut down less than one hour later.

So best be prepared to charge soon after you drop below an indicated 50%, just to be safe.

[ignos]

Hello, thx for your answer.
my problem is not the battery time, 10-13 hours are ok. My problem is that the battery takes 8-10 hours to be at 44%. When it is at 44% then the battery is empty about an hour. the discharge is not linear.

EQ: anything on middle
Screen: 10-50%

____Edit___
@Marvin
So it´s normal!?! OK Thanks. I will take care

[skip252]

It may be what's occurring but it's not normal. The other sandisk DAPs I have aren't 100% accurate but they aren't off by nearly half. Lithium batteries work best with short, frequent charges but but having to stop and charge any time you drop below 50% could get inconvenient in a hurry.

A DAPs battery meter should have some type of relationship to the actual amount of battery life. Imagine an automobile with a fuel gauge that didn't let you know until you had only a few miles left before you ran out. The manufacturer telling you later that the fuel gauge wasn't linear wouldn't mean much if you wound up running out of gas in the middle of nowhere.

This appears to be another one of those issues that sandisk could address in a firmware update. That would require that they put it on the list of known issues. I don't see it there now.

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by skip252

It may be what's occurring but it's not normal. The other sandisk DAPs I have aren't 100% accurate but they aren't off by nearly half. Lithium batteries work best with short, frequent charges but but having to stop and charge any time you drop below 50% could get inconvenient in a hurry.

A DAPs battery meter should have some type of relationship to the actual amount of battery life. Imagine an automobile with a fuel gauge that didn't let you know until you had only a few miles left before you ran out. The manufacturer telling you later that the fuel gauge wasn't linear wouldn't mean much if you wound up running out of gas in the middle of nowhere.

This appears to be another one of those issues that sandisk could address in a firmware update. That would require that they put it on the list of known issues. I don't see it there now.

I guess I shouldn't say it is normal for everyone's Clip Zip, but it certainly occurred with mine. It's no longer an issue for me anymore of course, because I did get the firmware upgrade I wanted.

[Mikerman]

At batteryuniversity.com, they state that a full discharge can help reset a battery gauge. Unknown if this would assist with the Clip Zip, as the issue here seems to be a systemic one with the player.

[bertrik]

For the rockbox project, I've looked extensively at the hardware of various sansa players and never saw any evidence for a battery gauge component. The battery does have a wire additional to the plus and minus wires, but that appears to be a battery temperature sense wire.

[saratoga]

Originally Posted by bertrik

For the rockbox project, I've looked extensively at the hardware of various sansa players and never saw any evidence for a battery gauge component. The battery does have a wire additional to the plus and minus wires, but that appears to be a battery temperature sense wire.

I think in this context the "gauge" would be software based. I think some more advanced devices (e.g. phones) continually record time/voltage measurements, and if you fully discharge the battery they can then use the values to update the battery calibration. I don't know if simple devices like the Sansas do it though.