Kobo Vox and Updates

[ne0rmatrix]

Well i am getting mighty annoyed by the lack of battery life due too the sleep of death issues that plagues my device, and many others. I have to disable power saving features within wifi options and leave the device with wifi enabled in order to prevent sleep of death.

I have seen 2 updates, one in November and 1 in December that claimed to address this issue in part, neither have made my device functional in this regard. I like the updates as they added features and tweaked others that were that were having issues like youtube and device performance.

I have not heard any mention of further updates. I understand companies like to keep these things close the the vest while undergoing testing. I just wish i had a better idea as to when a fix might be out. It would be nice to know if there is any progress with this issue.

I hope to hear from the kobo dev team respond to this thread or post an announcement as to the status of this issue. At this time my battery life is about 2 hours. This means unless i leave the device connected i cannot read at starbucks or on the bus without having the device die very quickly. And yes i have a kobo touch but i spent an additional 200 dollars CAD to get this device and would like to be able to use it without needing to pack its cord everywhere i go.

[GJSmith]

Something must be wrong with the battery. My Vox easily lasts 5 hours if just reading. I never bother turning off wifi either.
I never use sleep since SOD is an issue. Turn it off when not using and it can last several days and several reading sessions with out a charge.
Strangely though as of late my wifi symbol is greyed out, as if not connected, even though it is connected.

[oldyellr]

Originally Posted by GJSmith

Strangely though as of late my wifi symbol is greyed out, as if not connected, even though it is connected.

The number of arcs showing white represent signal strength. If they're all grey, maybe you're not close enough to your router. I don't worry about it anymore, but early on I downloaded Wifi Analyzer to check signal strength because I have a cheapie router in a big house with a steel I-beam and heating duct running down the middle, so I had to add reflectors to the antennas and mount it up in the suspended ceiling.

[mr_nobody]

Originally Posted by oldyellr

The number of arcs showing white represent signal strength. If they're all grey, maybe you're not close enough to your router. I don't worry about it anymore, but early on I downloaded Wifi Analyzer to check signal strength because I have a cheapie router in a big house with a steel I-beam and heating duct running down the middle, so I had to add reflectors to the antennas and mount it up in the suspended ceiling.

No, I've noticed this too. First of all, installing Market affects the wifi icon...sometimes it turns green once market is installed. But I've also seen the gray symbol while connected and I'm not sure if it started happening after I installed the silk browser or if it goes back to installing market.

[solwisesteve]

Originally Posted by ne0rmatrix

I hope to hear from the kobo dev team respond to this thread or post an announcement as to the status of this issue. At this time my battery life is about 2 hours. This means unless i leave the device connected i cannot read at starbucks or on the bus without having the device die very quickly. And yes i have a kobo touch but i spent an additional 200 dollars CAD to get this device and would like to be able to use it without needing to pack its cord everywhere i go.

I'm with you on this... the lack of a sleep mode that works is a real pain. I generally have wifi turned off anyway and use full power off/on mode. However it takes longer to turn the unit off and a lot longer getting it back on before I can actually start reading. The brief time that sleep mode actually worked for me (when I initially pruchased the product) it was great: Quick button push for off and then quick button for on and straight back to the correct page etc..

I contacted kobo by email about SOD and got fobbed off with telling me about battery life. Then I actually phoned them up and got a support ticket - that was a couple of weeks ago and nothing since. Just a reply saying that they recognise the issue and are working on a fix which they should have in future would be nice.

Battery life: I get about 6 hours before I have to recharge; that's just using it as a reader and music player (usually both operations at the same time) with no wifi. If I start doing things like checking emails and watching TV on it which needs wifi then I can half that time. As has been mentioned - the worse the wifi signal then the more power consumed.

[GJSmith]

4 feet from the router and my laptop shows full bars so me thinks it is a glitch in the symbol more then a lack of reception...... at least I sure hope so.

Originally Posted by oldyellr

The number of arcs showing white represent signal strength. If they're all grey, maybe you're not close enough to your router. I don't worry about it anymore, but early on I downloaded Wifi Analyzer to check signal strength because I have a cheapie router in a big house with a steel I-beam and heating duct running down the middle, so I had to add reflectors to the antennas and mount it up in the suspended ceiling.

[KoboJW]

I can confirm that we are still actively working on the remaining causes of failure to resume from sleep. Our previous updates addressed some of the causes, and the last few are still being tracked down. As always, I cannot make promises as to when they will be resolved at this time.

However, even with wifi constantly on, your battery life should be considerably longer than 2 hours. I would suggest you should get between 5-7 hours when sleeping with wifi always on (which seems to avoid the resume problem). If you are sure there is nothing else going on on your device that may be consuming power, I'd suspect there may be a problem with the battery.

[ne0rmatrix]

Us I dont think its battery. If I disconnect from router and set device to forget password it lasts about 10 hours. Its the apps that use wifi. I have google reader, twitter and gmail client installed. Their set to auto sync. If I turn off sync battery life is seven hours.

Oh I have wifi set to never sleep and sometimes forget to either power down device or set to forget my home network so battery gets drained fast. I apologize if I wad unclear before.

I just would really like not too have to jump through hoops to have device perform. I was griping as I really like device and would like to goto coffee shop without all the difficulties I am currently experiencing.

Edit: I appreciate the response from kobo and I understand why you can't give me reappear date. Thank you for creating and excellent device and I look forward to future developments with firmware.