[aeriyn]

The battery on my Mini seems like it's not lasting very long.

The other day I used it for about 20 minutes on my drive to work, then let it power down and used it again later in the day for about 2 and a half hours straight without messing around with menus much.

The battery bar was almost completely down from that little bit of use. It was fully charged in the morning; I had just taken it off the wall wart.

I used it for another 20 minutes on the way home from work, and when I got home the battery bar was totally GONE except for a very small sliver.

I don't have the backlight on all the time (it's on 2 second Auto, but it only came on maybe a half dozen times the entire day) and the music on the unit is either 224kbps AAC or LAME -alt preset-standard.

So what's the deal? Do I have a bum battery? I figured six or seven hours since the quoted life was seven to eight. But just over 3 hours? That doesn't seem right.

 

[aeriyn]

I suppose I would've noticed this sooner, but this was the first time since buying the player that I've used it for longer than an hour and a half before recharging.

 

[sigma]

The battery bar isn't very accurate, you know. My 4G iPod lasted on 1 tiny bar for nearly 4 hours

You should try playing it continously to see how long it can go.

 

[aeriyn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sigma The battery bar isn't very accurate, you know. My 4G iPod lasted on 1 tiny bar for nearly 4 hours You should try playing it continously to see how long it can go.

I was considering setting it to play through every song on the iPod and connecting it with a mini-to-mini cable to the line-in of my soundcard and record with fb2k to get an accurate reading of how long the battery life.

But I dunno if it'll actually record a single file (low bitrate MP3, I don't care, just want the time from it) that's 7ish hours long.

 

[sigma]

How about uploading a 1 minute blank mp3 to the mini and playing it back repeatedly? The play count should give a reasonable indication of how many times it played.

 

[aeriyn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sigma How about uploading a 1 minute blank mp3 to the mini and playing it back repeatedly? The play count should give a reasonable indication of how many times it played.

Oooh, even better idea.

 

[Taphil]

That's actually not a good way to test the battery. If you do that, the hard drive won't spin up and use power, so the battery life would be much longer than expected.

 

[Bluez]

Maybe this is normal? Normally when people critisise the iPod they get quite a few responses saying "thats not right/ or its defect" so far no one has claimed you have a defective unit.

 

[aeriyn]

Well, Apple themselves claim that the battery gauge on the iPod is not very accurate. So I guess it's normal.

 

[Kixyll]

I've never actually timed it, but mine seems to run for a while before it needs recharging. I would guess at least 10 hours. Definitely a lot longer than my 10gig 3rd gen, that one seemed to go dead in a few hours.

One thing to look at is how you are using it. If you are constantly switching songs manually, your battery performance will suffer. I usually put on a playlist and leave it in my pocket.

 

[aeriyn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kixyll I've never actually timed it, but mine seems to run for a while before it needs recharging. I would guess at least 10 hours. Definitely a lot longer than my 10gig 3rd gen, that one seemed to go dead in a few hours. One thing to look at is how you are using it. If you are constantly switching songs manually, your battery performance will suffer. I usually put on a playlist and leave it in my pocket.

I generally select an album and let it run through it. I know I'm losing a bit of battery life as opposed to playlisting the entire storage of the player, but not by much.

 

[gerG]

I believe that the recommended procedure for Li-Ion batteries is to let the device run down every 20 charges or so. Nothing to do with the batteries, but it lets the power meter figure out where zero is.

I had a lot of problems with my mini early on. If I used it constantly I would get 8 hours or more of run time. If I used it every couple of days, it was rarely good for more than a couple of hours. Left for 3 days or more it would go dead on its own. This problem went away with the last firmware update (well, the last one that I installed, anyway).


gerG

 

[number1sixerfan]

The battery bar isn't accurate at all. I used my ipod mini for about 3 hours the other day off of a full charge and the bar read empty and it never ran out even after another hour and a half of use.

 

[aeriyn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gerG I had a lot of problems with my mini early on. If I used it constantly I would get 8 hours or more of run time. If I used it every couple of days, it was rarely good for more than a couple of hours. Left for 3 days or more it would go dead on its own. This problem went away with the last firmware update (well, the last one that I installed, anyway).

That's because before the firmware update, the iPod would still stay in standby for a full 48 hours. Now it's only 12 I think, before the unit goes into standby. Regardless, I always leave it connected to wall power unless I'm using it, which is frequent enough that having it connected to wall power that much doesn't hurt it.