[Leetransform25]

I have no clue why, but for the past few days the battery on my A45 seemed to have seriously degraded. I can usually go for 3 to 4 days on a charge, but now I can barely manage two. Even the first bar which usually lasts over a day depletes in just 4 to 5 hours now. Anyone have an idea of what's going on? I've been using this DAP as I always have, and none of the settings have been changed prior to this.

 

[kismetsky]

I have no clue why, but for the past few days the battery on my A45 seemed to have seriously degraded. I can usually go for 3 to 4 days on a charge, but now I can barely manage two. Even the first bar which usually lasts over a day depletes in just 4 to 5 hours now. Anyone have an idea of what's going on? I've been using this DAP as I always have, and none of the settings have been changed prior to this.

Do you have "Battery Care" turned on in the settings? If so, you can try turning it off for a few cycles to see if a full exercising of the battery capacity helps.

Otherwise, I've seen lithium batteries suffer a severe hit in capacity if its left to die completely (complete exhaustion).

 

[Leetransform25]

Do you have "Battery Care" turned on in the settings? If so, you can try turning it off for a few cycles to see if a full exercising of the battery capacity helps.

Otherwise, I've seen lithium batteries suffer a severe hit in capacity if its left to die completely (complete exhaustion).

I do have Battery Care enabled, so I'll probably disable that and see if anything changes. I don't understand the second part of your response, though. What exactly do you mean?

 

[bandario]

I do have Battery Care enabled, so I'll probably disable that and see if anything changes. I don't understand the second part of your response, though. What exactly do you mean?

He's saying it's bad to discharge lithium batteries below their nominal capacity which is true. In my experience the NW-A45 seems to have protection so that you can't do that whilst the unit is in operation, it will shut down. If you left it dead flat for an extended period of time though I guess you could enter this territory.

 

[Leetransform25]

He's saying it's bad to discharge lithium batteries below their nominal capacity which is true. In my experience the NW-A45 seems to have protection so that you can't do that whilst the unit is in operation, it will shut down. If you left it dead flat for an extended period of time though I guess you could enter this territory.

So are you saying it's best to charge my DAP before it completely dies?

 

[Koolpep]

So are you saying it's best to charge my DAP before it completely dies?

https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries

Very good advice..

Batteries are least stressed In a window between 40-80% charging and discharging in this window does stress the batteries the least.
The most stressful for your batteries (remember it’s all chemical reactions inside a battery) are the extremes, fully charged and fully discharged.that cause the most damage to them over time. Batteries are the happiest when kept in the optimal window..... hope this helps,... Sony’s battery care prevents the fully charged one but only you can prevent the fully discharged state....

 

[Leetransform25]

https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries

Very good advice..

Batteries are least stressed In a window between 40-80% charging and discharging in this window does stress the batteries the least.
The most stressful for your batteries (remember it’s all chemical reactions inside a battery) are the extremes, fully charged and fully discharged.that cause the most damage to them over time. Batteries are the happiest when kept in the optimal window..... hope this helps,... Sony’s battery care prevents the fully charged one but only you can prevent the fully discharged state....

Thanks for the explanation! I've ways known that batteries tend to degrade, but this situation has me worried as the battery just seemingly got worse out of nowhere.

 

[N0BOX]

I have no clue why, but for the past few days the battery on my A45 seemed to have seriously degraded. I can usually go for 3 to 4 days on a charge, but now I can barely manage two. Even the first bar which usually lasts over a day depletes in just 4 to 5 hours now. Anyone have an idea of what's going on? I've been using this DAP as I always have, and none of the settings have been changed prior to this.

Other than possible battery problems, there is also how "hard" you are working the player. Have you loaded any hi-res music that is of a higher sample or bit rate, like 24/192k or 24/96k when you normally play 16/48k? Is a lot of your music in AAC or MP3 format, but you recently started upgrading to FLAC/ALAC or to DSD? The more data you are shoving through the DAC the more battery you are going to use, so higher bit rate and/or sample rate source files are going to require more power to process.

You will trade more accurate sound quality for less battery life, which is generally not a bad deal if your ears can appreciate it. If you haven't changed what music you have on your DAP, or if you haven't been listening to higher resolution files already present in your collection more often, then it would make sense to suspect the battery or some of the charging or power delivery electronics in the player.

 

[kismetsky]

Thanks for the explanation! I've ways known that batteries tend to degrade, but this situation has me worried as the battery just seemingly got worse out of nowhere.

Make sure NFC and Bluetooth are off as well.

Is the player dying after two days or just showing low battery after two days? The reading could just be off in which case a few full charge/discharge cycles could help.

 

[Leetransform25]

Other than possible battery problems, there is also how "hard" you are working the player. Have you loaded any hi-res music that is of a higher sample or bit rate, like 24/192k or 24/96k when you normally play 16/48k? Is a lot of your music in AAC or MP3 format, but you recently started upgrading to FLAC/ALAC or to DSD? The more data you are shoving through the DAC the more battery you are going to use, so higher bit rate and/or sample rate source files are going to require more power to process.

You will trade more accurate sound quality for less battery life, which is generally not a bad deal if your ears can appreciate it. If you haven't changed what music you have on your DAP, or if you haven't been listening to higher resolution files already present in your collection more often, then it would make sense to suspect the battery or some of the charging or power delivery electronics in the player.

I'm not certain, but I doubt that's the case since I've been strictly playing high-res files for a couple weeks now.

Make sure NFC and Bluetooth are off as well.

Is the player dying after two days or just showing low battery after two days? The reading could just be off in which case a few full charge/discharge cycles could help.

I almost never let the battery die, but I suspect it would die after 2 days if I let it run till depletion.

 

[Leetransform25]

How much extra battery do you get when disabling battery care? I just disabled it this morning and even after 4 hours of charging the last bar (75%-100%) still isn't full yet (not four hours of charging the entire battery, four hours of charging just the last bar). I thought BC only caps the last 10%, but I'm really starting to question that.

 

[phower]

Do you have "Battery Care" turned on in the settings? If so, you can try turning it off for a few cycles to see if a full exercising of the battery capacity helps.

Otherwise, I've seen lithium batteries suffer a severe hit in capacity if its left to die completely (complete exhaustion).

Which no competent designer would do these days. The cut-off voltage is 3 or 3.2V. Sony invented the commercial lithium-ion battery in the early 90's, so I don't think that is the problem here.
It could be something else. Lithium-ion batteries die only if left at 10% or below for several months(6+).

 

[N0BOX]

I'm not certain, but I doubt that's the case since I've been strictly playing high-res files for a couple weeks now.

I don't mean that it would degrade the battery, just that playing Hi-Res files uses more power than regular CD-quality files do. So, say you were only playing CD-quality files up until two week ago and you were getting 4 days of playback on a charge, then you switched to Hi-Res files. You would expect to only get 3, or maybe even only 2 days worth of playback time on a full charge (depending on how much of that battery life was split between playback and standby). As a matter of fact, if you switched to higher-quality files, or even just that you now have new music to listen to, you might also be listening more often or for longer periods of time.

In any case, if your battery life dropped near the same time you changed the quality of the music files, it would make sense that the battery life issue may be caused by the quality change. Also, as noted by @kismetsky, if you turned on Bluetooth at some point or used NFC to pair your A45 with a Bluetooth device, you might want to go back and turn NFC and Bluetooth back off when you aren't using wireless devices with the DAP. Even if the device isn't paired, it will be using battery life to keep the Bluetooth controller and radio turned on (if it has been paired with a device, it uses even more battery while it periodically searches for paired devices), and NFC is always sending out radio beacon-like pulses to try to discover other NFC or RFID-enabled devices nearby, so it is slowly using extra battery life, too.

None of these situations would mean that the battery has suffered any loss of functionality, it's just that the amount of battery you are using has risen, so your battery just gets drained faster. Even using the device outside the "sweet spot" of 40-80% battery life isn't going to suddenly degrade the battery. Lithium-ion batteries have 500~1000 charge cycles, and the 0% battery that the DAP reports is not 0% remaining charge on the battery. It is just that the battery is considered "empty" at 3.2 volts or so. The player isn't going to allow you to drain the battery to a dangerously low voltage, and there is going to be a decent amount of "padding" built into the battery monitoring circuits so that 0% on the DAP's screen is still well within safe limits. The only way to discharge a battery in the DAP to a dangerous level would be if you drained the battery until the DAP shut itself off, then stuck it in a drawer for a month or two without charging it. While the battery sits not being charged, it will very slowly lose charge, and it will eventually get down to the point where it can no longer be recharged, or if you charge it just in time, it will have degraded so that it now has a lower maximum capacity than when you bought it. Unless you let it sit for a long time at 0% and didn't charge it during that time, I highly doubt that the capacity of the battery has been "suddenly" damaged.

The only other situation where a battery could be damaged would be if there was some sort of manufacturer defect in the battery protection or charging circuits. If the DAP allowed the battery to be charged "beyond 100%" or discharged "below 0%" then damage could occur, and that could cause battery life to be impacted.

 

[Leetransform25]

I don't mean that it would degrade the battery, just that playing Hi-Res files uses more power than regular CD-quality files do. So, say you were only playing CD-quality files up until two week ago and you were getting 4 days of playback on a charge, then you switched to Hi-Res files. You would expect to only get 3, or maybe even only 2 days worth of playback time on a full charge (depending on how much of that battery life was split between playback and standby). As a matter of fact, if you switched to higher-quality files, or even just that you now have new music to listen to, you might also be listening more often or for longer periods of time.

In any case, if your battery life dropped near the same time you changed the quality of the music files, it would make sense that the battery life issue may be caused by the quality change. Also, as noted by @kismetsky, if you turned on Bluetooth at some point or used NFC to pair your A45 with a Bluetooth device, you might want to go back and turn NFC and Bluetooth back off when you aren't using wireless devices with the DAP. Even if the device isn't paired, it will be using battery life to keep the Bluetooth controller and radio turned on (if it has been paired with a device, it uses even more battery while it periodically searches for paired devices), and NFC is always sending out radio beacon-like pulses to try to discover other NFC or RFID-enabled devices nearby, so it is slowly using extra battery life, too.

None of these situations would mean that the battery has suffered any loss of functionality, it's just that the amount of battery you are using has risen, so your battery just gets drained faster. Even using the device outside the "sweet spot" of 40-80% battery life isn't going to suddenly degrade the battery. Lithium-ion batteries have 500~1000 charge cycles, and the 0% battery that the DAP reports is not 0% remaining charge on the battery. It is just that the battery is considered "empty" at 3.2 volts or so. The player isn't going to allow you to drain the battery to a dangerously low voltage, and there is going to be a decent amount of "padding" built into the battery monitoring circuits so that 0% on the DAP's screen is still well within safe limits. The only way to discharge a battery in the DAP to a dangerous level would be if you drained the battery until the DAP shut itself off, then stuck it in a drawer for a month or two without charging it. While the battery sits not being charged, it will very slowly lose charge, and it will eventually get down to the point where it can no longer be recharged, or if you charge it just in time, it will have degraded so that it now has a lower maximum capacity than when you bought it. Unless you let it sit for a long time at 0% and didn't charge it during that time, I highly doubt that the capacity of the battery has been "suddenly" damaged.

The only other situation where a battery could be damaged would be if there was some sort of manufacturer defect in the battery protection or charging circuits. If the DAP allowed the battery to be charged "beyond 100%" or discharged "below 0%" then damage could occur, and that could cause battery life to be impacted.

I already understood that playing high-res files or changing the way I use the DAP only affects the usage of the battery and not the lifespan of it, it's just the fact that nothing has changed that's confusing me. Perhaps I could have a gotten a defective, but hopefully that's not the case. Sorry if I wasn't very clear.

 

[bandario]

Recent replies do touch on a bit of a sore point for me. If you DO use the hi-res codecs that you bought the damn thing for, the NW-A45 battery life is pathetic. Honestly, they should have made it twice the volume and doubled the battery size. I would rather it was a bit bigger and heavier, anyway.

Still sounds good, but I have to find a very specific usage case to choose this over my Note9 when they both do LDAC and I can use an equaliser with LDAC on the Note9 via Viper or Dolby Atmos.