Battery Life Update

[ig88]

OK. So reading through the forum, there was
1) an initial "advertised" battery life
2) real life fell very short of this
3) recent firmwares improved life somewhat
4) new models will get bigger batteries
5) old models can get upgrades

So.

What is the real world battery life of the iLiad?
Not for WiFi, or lots of touch screen use.
But actual reading.
What is the measurement in page turns? The wiki comparison page lists page turns for all other readers, but hours for the iLiad.
What is the measurement in hours? (with a page turn at a reasonable turn rate?).

Does anybody have an extended battery?
If so, what are those numbers?
or what are they expected to be?

And lastly, when are the new models expected to ship?

[CommanderROR]

Well, last time I did any checks the battery-life was around 11 hours of idle (just lying on the desk). You can extend that a bit with the CPU-Throttling trick, but that is still a very basic solution.

Pageturns are pretty much irrelevant for the Iliad...if you do constant pagetruns at top speed you get around the formerly promised 10000. This is not practical for reading however since nobody can read a whole page in 2 seconds...
Your maximum Reading time is around 10 hours if you immediately switch the device off the moment you stop reading and then power it back up when you continue. That way it can last a way, if you leave it on you'll have to recharge it every night.

The new battery, combined with some CPU throttling is then supposed to reach 15 hours. I can't tell you when the news models will arrive, but it should be sometime this year (I think they said second quarter).
I'm still hoping that the introduction of reflash for users (supposed to be out real soon) will make some better powersaving possible, or maybe greatly decrease the booting time. I don't know how much can be done in those respects however...we'll have to wait and see.
With mobipocket Support on board now the Iliad is starting to become a lot more interesting again...but the base issues still remain... ;(

[bruce]

On my Zaurus (sl-3100 & sl-3200), I run OpenBSD with apmd. Under OpenBSD, apmd supports a -C option which causes apmd to monitor cpu usage and automatically raise or lower CPU performance as needed. My battery performance improved significantly after configuring this.

Do you know whether anyone has looked into doing the linux equivalent on the iLiad yet?

The other big hit on my iLiad's battery life is that I hate waiting through the long reboot. Often just leave it running rather than face yet another reboot in order to snatch two spare minutes of reading time on a busy day.

I'm hoping to look into the apmd option and instrumenting the reboot process as soon as iRex and IDS get on to sending the Shell Access Package to my iLiad.

[pdam]

Not answering your question ... but over the past 2 weeks I have been in a workshop where I have been constantly reading and annotating documents and using scribble to take notes. The battery from fully charged in the morning 8:30AM has been dead at about 5-6PM, generally with the device switched off for an hour over lunch ... so I've been averaging 7 - 8.5 hrs real world use when using scribble a lot ... it's about 2-3 hrs short for my needs currently (a full working day without having to think about it)

[ce3po]

Someone changed Iliad battery ? Why ?

Thanks.

[NatCh]

iRex has said they're bringing out an iLiad mark 2 sometime this year. The biggest hardware change on it seems to be a bigger battery. The reason for doing so is pretty much what you'd expect: more usage time per charge.

[Heather]

My battery life is averaging 5-6 hours tops...and I seem to have a bit of a buggy unit with respect to battery charging. I have it plugged in, the little red light indicating the charging process is ongoing turns itself off and the machine (presumably) ceases to charge...but when I turn my iLiad on, it only has 2/3 or maybe 3/4 battery charge according to the icon. Even when I charge it overnight, I'd say about half the time it doesn't have a full battery (as indicated by the icon) in the morning. Second problem: my machine will seize up in mid-page-flip when the battery gets down to about 1/3 charge (according to battery indicator icon)...the way to fix the frozen machine? Plug it in and charge it.

So for purely reading purposes and almost NO stylus use or other functions, I am lucky if I get 6 hours. This seemed to improve a bit (i.e. I can now read a whole book on one charge) with the new software version update.

My one request/wish list item for the future is either a much better battery (how about as advertised??) or a less clunky way to read and charge the battery at the same time.

I've contacted tech support about this problem (along with the screen stripe that is multiplying/reproducing daily) and was told to "send pictures." Ah, right.

FWIW, I haven't read about anyone else having battery issues like mine. Not sure what is going on there, maybe I just got a bad battery. It happens. Like my bad screen...I'm going to be mightily peeved if I have to send my 3 week old iLiad back to Europe for repairs/replacement.

[vranghel]

Originally Posted by Heather

My battery life is averaging 5-6 hours tops...and I seem to have a bit of a buggy unit with respect to battery charging. I have it plugged in, the little red light indicating the charging process is ongoing turns itself off and the machine (presumably) ceases to charge...but when I turn my iLiad on, it only has 2/3 or maybe 3/4 battery charge according to the icon. Even when I charge it overnight, I'd say about half the time it doesn't have a full battery (as indicated by the icon) in the morning. Second problem: my machine will seize up in mid-page-flip when the battery gets down to about 1/3 charge (according to battery indicator icon)...the way to fix the frozen machine? Plug it in and charge it.

So for purely reading purposes and almost NO stylus use or other functions, I am lucky if I get 6 hours. This seemed to improve a bit (i.e. I can now read a whole book on one charge) with the new software version update.

My one request/wish list item for the future is either a much better battery (how about as advertised??) or a less clunky way to read and charge the battery at the same time.

I've contacted tech support about this problem (along with the screen stripe that is multiplying/reproducing daily) and was told to "send pictures." Ah, right.

FWIW, I haven't read about anyone else having battery issues like mine. Not sure what is going on there, maybe I just got a bad battery. It happens. Like my bad screen...I'm going to be mightily peeved if I have to send my 3 week old iLiad back to Europe for repairs/replacement.

Yes...pictures is the best way to go. I posted some pics in this forum with the darkened screen, then sent irex an email with the pics, and then they told me to send the unit back.

I have never read of any problems similar to yours on this forum. Maybe you've got a 'special' broken unit. In any case, get the camera ready, tell your iLiad to smile, and send those photos to iRex.

Best of luck

[raevyn1]

@Heather: You are definitely not alone in the issues you are having. I did not detail my saga with defective iLiads here, but I am currently on my third device. After six months, my first succumbed to a display defect (a thin persistent line) which I might have lived with but suspected it was only the harbinger of much worse things, so off it went for repair. It returned with a newer display with enough ghosting to make jealous a haunted house. Again, off it went to Germany, to be replaced by another device with a faulty battery meter and lousy battery life (wouldn't hold a charge). Sigh. Off that iLiad went. Finally, I received my current device, and while #3 will never hold the special place in my heart that the first one did, it seems to be behaving normally, for an iLiad (6-8 hours battery life?). Therein lies my current disappointment. In the long absences of the iLiad, I controlled the withdrawal symptoms by using the Sony Reader with its superior power management, and now I'm torn between two devices... a story for another post. Overall, my experience with iRex TechSupport and the repair process was actually very good, but patience is definitely required. Fortunately, it was under warranty and I only had to pay customs duty once.
vranghel is correct about the process. A picture (or a video) is worth a thousand words.
Good luck, Heather!

[bojan]

Originally Posted by Heather

FWIW, I haven't read about anyone else having battery issues like mine. Not sure what is going on there, maybe I just got a bad battery. It happens. Like my bad screen...

You battery problems are not that uncommon, early Iliads had lot of this.
Take a look at the most recent:
http://forum.irexnet.com/viewtopic.php?t=926
http://forum.irexnet.com/viewtopic.php?t=928

[kusmi]

Funny - even the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) claims to have 12h battery life in ebook mode:

http://laptop.media.mit.edu/laptopnews.nsf/latest/news

and should be less than $200 :-)

So this device could beat the iLiad :-)

Sorry, couldn't resist...

[scotty1024]

Well one positive for the iLiad, no need to hand crank it to boot it, although at times I wish I could get out and push to help it boot faster.

[digman]

there are more things to be done in control of the battery in iliad.

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by scotty1024

Well one positive for the iLiad, no need to hand crank it to boot it, although at times I wish I could get out and push to help it boot faster.

I dunno, a hand crank would have a hard time being less convenient and portable than the "travel hub."

[vranghel]

Originally Posted by nekokami

I dunno, a hand crank would have a hard time being less convenient and portable than the "travel hub."

But it also could be more convenient in some situations: You are on the plane/train/on the move and the battery is dying and you havent finished that interesting novel: crank the handle for 5 mins=x hours.