Clip+ Dodgy battery indicator and charging

[Sykes]

I've bought my C+ shortly before X-mas, so it's about 3 weeks old. I find the battery indicator to be really crap. It's all over the place, sometimes dropping, then recovering. I thought it's an aspect of a new battery, but that should be sorted out by now.

Last night, I gave a shot at 'reformatting' the battery (shouldn't hurt, since it's still new). I gave the player a full charge, let it play until it turned off. Then I connected it to a PC on standby (USB is still powered, so it registers as a charger, but not as a computer). Immediately I check the battery on the C+ - it shows 21%. WTF? I expected less than 5%. I turn on the PC, 2 hours later, C+ shows full battery icon. I disconnect the C+ and check the battery - it's just at 81%. I reconnect the C+ and it keeps charging.

Is it the usual C+ behavior or is it fit for RMA? The battery life seems okay, it gives me some 10+ hours on OGG and FLAC files, so that's fine I guess. But the indicator is really weird.

Using latest firmware, 16 or something.

Second, unrelated question/problem: on about two occasions so far, the music didn't start to play - playback was on, time was advancing, but there was no sound. All it needed is restarting the playback (<< button) and suddenly the sound was back. On both occasions, this was right after turning the player on. Did this happen to anyone?

Thanks for advice.

[CrowdAds]

[Sykes]

Nobody? I could use at least the information whether yours behaves the same, or the indicator is reliable.

[skip252]

The few times I checked I didn't find the indicator info in the system settings to be very accurate. The indicator bar and the info in the system settings sometimes agreed and sometimes didn't. There were times I knew it was fully charged and the system info said it was 88%. Other times when the Properties in Window Explorer while connected in MTP said it had less than 20% charge it showed as being over 60% on the player. I tried to reset the battery indicator by doing a full drain and things stayed pretty much the same. That was with one of the earlier firmwares.

For the heck of it I just put it into MTP and checked. I'm using a firmware patched for Rockbox, 01.01.18, but I've always found the OF behavior to be the same on several other Rockboxed players. The system settings report 88%, the indicator bar says it's fully charged. The properties in MTP and MusicBee says 98%. Rockbox says 97%. I've done a battery benchmark using Rockbox and it seemed accurate in it's battery indications so I'm going with that.

My use pattern isn't the average so I can't say if my results are average. Someone that uses just the OF may have different results, IDK.

What I can say is that when I did the drain in both the OF and the Rockbox battery bench the battery life was what was expected. It lasted a good long time. It was just the amount of charge the OF indicated that was erratic.

[Sykes]

It seems to have sorted itself out now. I've made a few full charge/discharge cycles and now it shuts down at <10% and charges to full 100%. The discharge pattern seems to be quite steady too.

Well it took longer than in most Lithium battery powered devices. Probably just a cheapo dealextremish battery and circuit. I sure hope it doesn't overcharge.

[Mikerman]

Rare to hear of any overcharging--you likely are set. Congratulations!

[Sykes]

Now it's back at it The battery is definitely nuked somehow. Battery life is down to maybe 5 hours and it lasts like 15 minutes on the last 65%.

That's why I hate non-replaceable batteries. If this happens 6 months down the road, I'll have no choice but to throw the player out. Now I can only hope they'll honor the warranty on a 4 weeks old player.

Anyway... What's the battery indicator supposed to do during charging? Mine blink at cca 90%, then drops to the current charge value for 2 secs, than blinks back at almost full... Is this how it's showing it's charging properly or that it can't decide what the charge actually is?

[Mikerman]

If you are exchanging via SanDisk, they have a good track record in customer service in that regard.