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Old 05-24-2011, 11:26 AM   #1
StanByk
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battery drain

Hi,
I have been using my Prs-650 for about 7-8 months now and everything was working fine. A couple of days ago I recharged the battery using my mains charger and all of a sudden the battery drained within a couple of hours of reading (maybe a few hundred page turns). I recharged the reader and the same thing happened again, this time I was reading a different book.

Has anybody else had this experience? Is there a way to change the battery? Is it worth contacting Sony about this?

The puzzling thing is that this happened suddenly. Its not like the battery was gradually loosing capacity due to just getting older and going through several recharge cycles.

Yesterday, I deleted all my books, did a reset and charged the reader over night. I don't know yet if that will make any difference.

Any help would be very much appreciated.
Thank you,
Robert
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Old 05-24-2011, 03:32 PM   #2
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It happened to my prs-650 as well. It seemed to be a software glitch. I removed all the books and the problem was gone. After a week it all started again. I installed system update and again battery was OK. I hope it stays that way.
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Old 05-24-2011, 05:55 PM   #3
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Exposing the battery to high temperatures for a long time might cause this problem to appear suddenly.
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Old 05-25-2011, 03:22 AM   #4
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Lot's of other users have had experience with rapid battery discharge on the 650, but it can usually be fixed by a full reset, so it's good that you tried that before jumping to the conclusion that the battery has suddenly gone bad.

This has happen to me, but only once so far. Like you, I had recently charged my PRS-650, and came back to find it completely discharged.

I suspect that what is happening is that due to a minor bug of some kind, a erroneous zombie process is getting spawned and running with a high CPU load in the PRS-650's internal Linux OS. When this happens, apperently this bad sub-process doesn't 'sleep' properly or shut down, so in just a few hours it completely drains the battery.

I know for a fact that the PRS-650 is a bit twitchy about stray user inputs; for example, it's rare, but you can completely lock-up the PRS-650 sometimes by simply double tapping to open a book (instead of using a single tap as is correct).

This makes me wonder if the situation that causes this 'rapid battery discharge' situation might also involve stay inputs that arrive just at the wrong moment (which may be what spawns the zombie 'battery sucker' process).

So now I am careful to always single click, when single clicks are needed, and I also avoid accidentally hitting any other keys (or the touch screen) when sliding the power switch and shutting down (on the theory that such inputs, just as the reader is trying to shut down, could hang a process, and create a zombie battery sucker process).

Maybe this theory is totally wrong, and it's just good luck, but since taking these measures, it's been a couple months now, and I have has ZERO problems with sudden battery discharges.

Edit: Another potential battery draining situation could occur if there is excessive dust on, or around the edges of the touch screen. This can trigger stray touch inputs, and increase the CPU load, as it has to wake up every few milliseconds to try to figure out what is gong on.

Normally, when the touch screen gets a stray input that can't be processed properly, a little circle with a bar, like a wrong way sign, shows up on the status bar at the bottom right. Not sure if this is always the case, so if there is gunk around the edges of your screen, and your battery life is short, it might be a good idea to clean around the screen.

Last edited by delphin; 05-25-2011 at 03:39 AM.
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Old 05-25-2011, 09:40 PM   #5
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What do you define a "full reset"? Do you mean to reset to factory defaults?
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Old 05-26-2011, 11:25 PM   #6
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What do you define a "full reset"? Do you mean to reset to factory defaults?
My reader responded to a simple 'paper clip reset' and a restart, so I didn't loose any of my loaded books or settings.

If that doesn't work, you could try the setup menu option that resets the reader to factory settings, but this of course will cause you to have to reload all your books and settings.

As a last resort there is also a hard reset key sequence, but this also clears your books and settings, so like the above option to restore factor settings, this too should be used only as a last resort.

Last edited by delphin; 05-26-2011 at 11:29 PM.
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Old 05-27-2011, 02:50 PM   #7
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Several people (including me) have reported similar issues on the 350/650/950 models. Here is a link to another thread discussing this weird battery behavior. I think that the root cause is software related.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=127177
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Old 05-28-2011, 02:04 AM   #8
StanByk
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Just to give you an update. So far everything seems to be fine again. I didn't read that much since I charged the battery, but the reader seems to hold the charge and still shows 4 bars.
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Old 06-21-2011, 10:51 PM   #9
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battery drain - possible reason - incorrect USB dismount

I've recently experienced the battery drain on PRS-650 and have a reason to believe that the incorrect USB dismount causes the drain.

Most likely what happens is that when the reader is plugged in the PC, the USB drive volumes are mounted automatically (reader, config, and memory card if present).

When the reader gets unplugged without dismounting the drives (in the system tray - 'safely remove hardware and eject media'), the filesystem under certain conditions gets corrupted, and (my guess - most likely) some filesystem related process (either the indexing or filesystem repair) would keep running and drain the battery. Soft reset and recharge by itself don't seem to fix the issue.

This does not happen every time.

Being in a hurry, I've unplugged the USB cable without dismount, and the reader drained on the plane after about an hour of reading. Later I've done a soft reset and charging from both pc and charger, and it kept draining at the rate of about 1 bar per 12 hours in sleep mode without reading.

After reading posts in this thread I've done soft reset again, then plugged in the pc and charged, but this time I was careful to dismount all volumes from the sys tray. Battery drain stopped. Been using the reader in normal regime for 3 days now (about 1.5 hours reading / day, then sleep mode), and still on 4 bars.

Hard reset should be able to fix this issue too (haven't tried myself - no need) as it will probably reformat and restore partition and filesystem to the vanilla state.
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Old 06-25-2011, 12:59 PM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LifeJam View Post
I've recently experienced the battery drain on PRS-650 and have a reason to believe that the incorrect USB dismount causes the drain.

Most likely what happens is that when the reader is plugged in the PC, the USB drive volumes are mounted automatically (reader, config, and memory card if present).

When the reader gets unplugged without dismounting the drives (in the system tray - 'safely remove hardware and eject media'), the filesystem under certain conditions gets corrupted, and (my guess - most likely) some filesystem related process (either the indexing or filesystem repair) would keep running and drain the battery. Soft reset and recharge by itself don't seem to fix the issue.

This does not happen every time.

Being in a hurry, I've unplugged the USB cable without dismount, and the reader drained on the plane after about an hour of reading. Later I've done a soft reset and charging from both pc and charger, and it kept draining at the rate of about 1 bar per 12 hours in sleep mode without reading.

After reading posts in this thread I've done soft reset again, then plugged in the pc and charged, but this time I was careful to dismount all volumes from the sys tray. Battery drain stopped. Been using the reader in normal regime for 3 days now (about 1.5 hours reading / day, then sleep mode), and still on 4 bars.

Hard reset should be able to fix this issue too (haven't tried myself - no need) as it will probably reformat and restore partition and filesystem to the vanilla state.
I also think this could be the cause. I came here looking for anyone else seeing this. My PRS-650 has just come back from repair as a "no fault found", but there clearly IS something wrong, as I shouldn't have to charge the reader 3 times in 14 days to finish a 300 page book.

I actually experienced the battery drain a couple of days back, I was charging the reader from my PC using the USB cable before a long flight and wanted to be 100% sure it was full up, so I left it charging from a laptop, however the laptop went into standby whilst charging it, in the morning the reader was almost totally drained. I think this backs up this theory that PC connectivity and unmounting/shutdown related.

Last edited by clashcityrocker; 06-25-2011 at 01:03 PM.
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Old 06-25-2011, 01:27 PM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by clashcityrocker View Post
... I left it charging from a laptop, however the laptop went into standby whilst charging it, in the morning the reader was almost totally drained. I think this backs up this theory that PC connectivity and unmounting/shutdown related.
What happened in this case is that the reader discharged while still connected to the PC. This happens when it's connected, but not receiving any charge. When the laptop went into standby it stopped charging (sending current to the reader), but the reader sensed it was connected and probably tried to communicate with the computer and that is what drained it. Something similar has happened when I used a faulty USB AC adapter.
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Old 06-25-2011, 01:32 PM   #12
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Haha, that sucks
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Old 06-25-2011, 02:25 PM   #13
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Battery drain, when connected to sleeping/in standby (ie not active) computers, is a known fact and nothing to do with incorrect dismount which can also cause battery drain as certain housekeeping tasks keep operating...
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Old 06-25-2011, 04:27 PM   #14
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When I went on my recent trip, I read on the plane, drifting in and out of sleep. When I tried to show my mom my reader upon my arrival, nothing worked. I plugged it in for a while, nothing worked. I was panicking and trying to get info, searched this board, found a few threads, tried a soft reset, nothing.

The next day (after being plugged in for over 24 hours), it worked, everything was there, it was just like nothing had ever happened. I wonder if, when drifting in and out on the plane, I had inadvertently touched the screen over and over and caused a complete battery drain? I'm not sure why it took so long to recharge, but I'm so glad it's back in working order.
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