PRS-650 Battery problem

[tigrangh]

Hi! I have bought my Prs-650 few weeks ago. I am using it intensive, and battery goes to zero after 3 days (~1500 - 2500 page turns). Is it normal? And another thing: my device is charging from USB only in 2 hours ( manual says that it must charge in 3 hours ), I've tested it on several PC's. I am not using any memory cards, and I've tried to charge in both power off, and stand-by modes. I've also tried to format memory: no results. I have not yet tried to do hard reset. Please .

[Penforhire]

When you say "charging in 2 hours" do you just mean the charging light goes off? If so, keep it connected for another two to four hours. It continues to charge past that indicator light going off. Also/or perhaps your USB port on the PC's is going to sleep?

When you say "intensive" how many pages are you reading? Are you fast-forwarding pages much? These readers consume energy on page turns. If you hit, say, 7 to 10K page turns then your battery could be drained. Personally, I think 3K pages in three days is my record, lol.

[tigrangh]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

It continues to charge past that indicator light going off. Also/or perhaps your USB port on the PC's is going to sleep?

Really? Even if display shows that charge complete?
No USB port doesn't go to sleep mode.

Originally Posted by Penforhire

When you say "intensive" how many pages are you reading? Are you fast-forwarding pages much? These readers consume energy on page turns. If you hit, say, 7 to 10K page turns then your battery could be drained. Personally, I think 3K pages in three days is my record, lol.

Saying 2.5K page turns I mean ALL screen-full-updates ( e.g. navigation in menu, turning pages in books, using dictionary... ). It's pretty far from 7.5K or 10K page turns. Actually I'm "spending" only approx. 1.5K turns IN BOOKS in 3 days.

[elcreative]

Check out other threads on batteries but in short from, according to battery manufacturers, charge light usually goes out at 80% charge and full charge tales another 2-4 hours as Penforhire said...

[delphin]

Originally Posted by tigrangh

Really? Even if display shows that charge complete?
No USB port doesn't go to sleep mode.



Saying 2.5K page turns I mean ALL screen-full-updates ( e.g. navigation in menu, turning pages in books, using dictionary... ). It's pretty far from 7.5K or 10K page turns. Actually I'm "spending" only approx. 1.5K turns IN BOOKS in 3 days.

Originally I could knock mine flat in as little as three days, but after a few full charge/discharge cycles so the reader could more accurately calibrate the battery life, it's a bit better now.

Now, with heavy reading activity, I get about a full week of use, and can pretty easily get through a normal 350-400 page book on one charge.

That's with just normally distracted reading, which wastes some power due to long delayed page turns forcing the reader into standby using the standard power-save standby timer with no hard power shutdowns.

This is reasonable, because, if I don't set aside time for reading and read off and on very casually, I end up keeping my PRS-650 awake, and the touch screen active for maybe 8 hours or more every day, and 4 or 5 days of this is about the limit.

If I use both the normal standby-mode timer PLUS a hard shutdown when I know I will not be using the reader again for more than a few minutes (say several hours, or overnight), and get stingy about all none essential fiddling around and just read straight through, then I could pretty easily stretch that to a week and a half or two weeks, and two full novels.

The difference is in how long the reader has to stay fully powered up with the touch screen active in reading mode.

On a realated topic, is there a "How Could Sony be so Stupid?" thread somewhere with a list of features that Sony must have been suffering from brain damage to have missed ???

Like with GIGS of available flash memory, how about more than one default font option ???

IF SO, HERE'S ANOTHER SOLID GOLD FEATURE TO ADD TO THE NEXT SOFTWARE RELEASE THAT SHOULD HELP WHEN MORE BATTERY LIFE IS NEEDED . . .

Update the firmware, so that if you hit BOTH the < and > page turn buttons AT THE SAME TIME FOR TWO FULL SECONDS, then the PRS-350/650/950 will pop up a window and tell you that THE TOUCH SCREEN HAS BEEN DISABLED for page turns.

After that the reader could save a lot of power, by NOT having to keep the touch screen on all the time.

This mode would ONLY effect reading page turns and highlighting; the touch screen would re-enable and work normally temporarily whenever one of the menus like HOME, ZOOM, or OPTIONS is being used, and then shutdown agin when you return to reading, until the user re-enables touch page turns by AGAIN pressing < and > together for at least two seconds.

So the change would not effect touch screen operations at all when accessing menus, only when actually reading.

NICE

If Sony wasn't totally stupid in their hardware design, and used a processor architecture that can go to sleep, and wake ONLY when a key is pressed, then the above simple change would let them create a no-touch-screen-page-turns mode that would rival the kindle.

No doubt, this would be VERY popular with folks who need extremely long battery life, or those who just don't want use the touch screen for page turns.

So here's hoping that someone from Sony actually bothers to READ this forum.

P.S.
You want to use that Idea Sony, fine, it's yours, but you owe me a free PRS-350.
P.M. me here on Mobil Read and let me know where to pick it up.

[elcreative]

Horrible idea... I read, stop for a few minutes... slide switch and release... finish whatever... slide switch and release, carry on reading... how is complicating interface with multi-key ops an improvement over a simple slide and let go!

Each to his own...

[delphin]

Originally Posted by elcreative

Horrible idea... I read, stop for a few minutes... slide switch and release... finish whatever... slide switch and release, carry on reading... how is complicating interface with multi-key ops an improvement over a simple slide and let go!

Each to his own...

Take some time to READ what I proposed before you 'shoot from the lip'.

Your Idea SHUTS DOWN the reader to try to extend battery life, but will not save ANY of the power used by the touch screen while actually reading.

My idea would allow users to easily and quickly shift back and forth to a Kindle like "key-press-page-turn-only" mode that would still allow FULL USE OF THE READER, but with greatly extended battery life.

It's not something you would have to fiddle with every time you want to turn pages, because in the touch-turns-disabled mode, YOU WOULD JUST USE THE PAGE TURN BUTTONS, and would be no worse off than with readers like a Kobo or Kindle that lack touch screens.

It would be really nice to be able to switch modes if you happen to jump on airplane or cruse ship for a two week vacation, and realize that, although you remembered to load several books, YOU FORGOT THE CHARGER.

Having the OPTION to get 'Kindle like' battery life, with a 'Kindle like' key-press-page-turns would also highlight the fact that the Sony is not an 'inferior technology' when it comes to battery capacity, or power-saving design, it's just that having the luxury of doing touch-screen-swipe page-turns uses power that creates a slight but constant drain on the battery.

Lastly, I am only talking about an OPTION, that pin-heads who don't want to take the time to understand, and who don't mind charging their reader every three or four days, DON'T HAVE TO USE.

Edit:

Also, the method I proposed never disables the use of the touchscreen for pop-up screen menus HOME, ZOOM, or OPTIONS (only for page turns).

So, there could ALSO be a simple menu option under the main "settings" page for those who are befuddled by haveing to press two side by side keys for two seconds. (there are already several other options that can be set in more than one way, so this would be consistent with the other elements of the existing interface)

So, under "Page Turn Preferences" instead of just having an option for -

'Left-to-Right' and 'Right-to-Left' , we would ALSO be able to simply chose "Disabled".

This could also be added the "Options" pop-up menu that shows up while reading, so it could be popped-up and changed very quickly.

The key things to remember are -

1. Page turns would ALWAYS be available via the page turn buttons below the screen.

2. This would NOT disable the touch screen for control purposes or option setting ONLY for reading features like page turns, highlighting, hyper-links, etc. (so you could ALWAYS use the touch screen to quickly re-enable touch-page-turns for example).

It might be confusing that there would be a big power savings when the touch screen would still be available for control purposes, but this would be because you have to hit HOME, ZOOM, or OPTIONS, first and then the reader's firmware could take note of this and activate the touchscreen scanning ONLY while you were using those functions, and disable again when reading. This would save more than 99% of the power used to keep the touch screen active.

[natasha_fawn]

Originally Posted by tigrangh

Hi! I have bought my Prs-650 few weeks ago. I am using it intensive, and battery goes to zero after 3 days (~1500 - 2500 page turns). Is it normal? And another thing: my device is charging from USB only in 2 hours ( manual says that it must charge in 3 hours ), I've tested it on several PC's. I am not using any memory cards, and I've tried to charge in both power off, and stand-by modes. I've also tried to format memory: no results. I have not yet tried to do hard reset. Please .

Try charging for at least 4-6 hours after using up the battery, making sure your computer doesn't go to sleep while you're charging. (Some computers shut down power to the USB ports when they're in sleep mode.) Better yet, if you have a USB to wall plug adaptor, charge from the wall for 4-6 hours. If that doesn't give you longer battery life, I think there's a good chance you have a bad battery. I think Sony says you can go 10,000 page turns, though of course that's 10,000 in a row with no standby time. Has it been like this the whole time you've had it?

[elcreative]

Love the intelligent reply, insults always reinforce your point... point of touch screen is to use touch screen especially helpful for arthritic joints and/or carpal tunnel syndrome users who find button pressing exacerbates their problems and causes pain... and I read for several hours every day (anything up to 1,000 page turns) and recharge around 7-10 days when battery drops a couple of bars... really low life span!!!

And I did state "Each to his own..."

Originally Posted by delphin

Take some time to READ what I proposed before you 'shoot from the lip'.

Your Idea SHUTS DOWN the reader to try to extend battery life, but will not save ANY of the power used by the touch screen while actually reading.

My idea would allow users to easily and quickly shift back and forth to a Kindle like "key-press-page-turn-only" mode that would still allow FULL USE OF THE READER, but with greatly extended battery life.

It's not something you would have to fiddle with every time you want to turn pages, because in the touch-turns-disabled mode, YOU WOULD JUST USE THE PAGE TURN BUTTONS, and would be no worse off than with readers like a Kobo or Kindle that lack touch screens.

It would be really nice to be able to switch modes if you happen to jump on airplane or cruse ship for a two week vacation, and realize that, although you remembered to load several books, YOU FORGOT THE CHARGER.

Having the OPTION to get 'Kindle like' battery life, with a 'Kindle like' key-press-page-turns would also highlight the fact that the Sony is not an 'inferior technology' when it comes to battery capacity, or power-saving design, it's just that having the luxury of doing touch-screen-swipe page-turns uses power that creates a slight but constant drain on the battery.

Lastly, I am only talking about an OPTION, that pin-heads who don't want to take the time to understand, and who don't mind charging their reader every three or four days, DON'T HAVE TO USE.

[delphin]

Originally Posted by elcreative

Point of touch screen is to use touch screen especially helpful for arthritic joints and/or carpal tunnel syndrome users who find button pressing exacerbates their problems and causes pain... and I read for several hours every day (anything up to 1,000 page turns) and recharge around 7-10 days when battery drops a couple of bars... really low life span!!!

And I did state "Each to his own..."

To each his own indeed. A few days ago I read a post from someone who had a movement disorder, and the Sony's super sensitive touch screen is creating a problem for them because YOU CAN'T DISABLE IT DURING READING, so it works both ways.

Second, while I agree that you can easily get more battery life by making sure to shut down the device into standby when it will not be used for a few minutes, and shutting it down completely when it will not be used for hours or days, this is not a very friendly solution for those with joint pain either, since the main power switch is perhaps the WORST one on the device for these folks to try to deal with.

I HATE that switch on my PRS-650. It's too recessed, and requires more force than I think it should, and I can't get over the nagging feeling that, based on it's crappy design, if you use it every 5 minutes, it will probably be the FIRST thing on your reader to wear out and fail - just plain STUPID.

The similar slider switch on the Kindle 3 seems to be MUCH easier to deal with.

But getting back to the topic of the original post -

As I said, I can't speak for others, but on my own PRS-650 reader, I also ran into the issue of initially running down my battery in about 3 days, but now it's doing quite a bit better.

I think this is because -

A) When is was new I was also using it rather 'intensively'. Let's face it, the darn thing is so totally cool, that I couldn't stop playing with it.

B) The battery was brand new and had not had a chance to run through a few charge/discharge cycles and come up to full capacity.

C) The reader charge circuitry and battery gage were not yet fully calibrated based on the ACTUAL performance of the battery.

After a few weeks when I started playing with it less, and settled down and started actually using the PRS-650 as intended to read books, the battery life improved noticeably, though I can still run it down in a week or so if I work at it.

As long as it runs long enough to get through a full book, and does that without me having to 'ride the power switch', I think it's doing it's job as an e-paper/e-ink type reader.

So, overall I am fairly pleased, but that's not to say that I wouldn't appreciate an alternate 'Kindle like' long battery life mode. When traveling, I could live without the touch-page-turns, dictionary lookups, and hyper-links, while reading if it would guarantee three weeks to a month of battery life.

Correction - *Actually* based on what I was proposing, 'live without' isn't the best choice of words, since those features could be turned back on nearly instantly when wanted.

[vxf]

I found that the battery on my PRS950 can drain pretty fast when I have 3g/wifi on and subscriptions to download. On poor connections, it can take a while and sometimes downloads can fail, forcing the device to try to connect over and over.

I get two newspapers delivered every day. Even in standby, between reading and the automated downloads, the device won't last more than 3-4 days without a re-charge (I probably read about 3-4 hours per day on it).

But if I turn 3g and wifi off, I can go 10 days without recharging.

[tigrangh]

Thanks for response.
About Sony's "future s/w updates". I think there will not be any, because they don't make updates even for their phones and players... One word - SONY.)))
About my device: yesterday I've recharged it for 4 hours, now I'm using the reader normally and waiting for the battery to drain. Also I will power off device at nights. Wish it will give me at least 5 days of normal using - without worry for the battery.

And another question: on the first day I got my reader, I didn't charge it fully. ( I have connected it to my PC only for a half of hour ) Can this affect on the battery? Maybe all my problems are because of that?

[delphin]

Originally Posted by tigrangh

And another question: on the first day I got my reader, I didn't charge it fully. ( I have connected it to my PC only for a half of hour ) Can this affect on the battery? Maybe all my problems are because of that?

The PRS-650 is my first Sony reader, so I don't have any personal experience with updates, but from what I have read here on the forum, they DO at least occasionally have updates (I believe they have already done one on the 950).

Adobe is still messing with their Adept DRM to make it compatible with Barnes and Nobel's version. All the current Sony readers use Adobe's code, so we may all get a free update when Adobe get's this sorted out.

As far as possibly damaging your battery by running it down before it was fully charged goes - No I doubt you did anything.

Lithum cells can't stand really deep discharge, so the reader will not allow the battery to be run down to any kind of unsafe level (it just does a hard shutdown first).

I actually had to fully cycle my battery a few times before I started getting full performance.

There is no 'memory effect' at all in Lithum cells, and it's perfectly ok to 'top them off' at any time, even if they only are down to 3/4.

As a practical matter, I try to catch it just as it drops below half, because in my experience, lithium cells give somewhat better life if you try to keep them in the upper part of their charging range.

Occasionally letting them run all the way down to the automatic cutoff point won't hurt anything. In fact it may be helpful on some devices to let the battery discharge to the cutoff point every few months, because some devices need this to keep the battery gage calibrated accurately.

So the simple answer is EVERYTHING SHOULD STILL BE FINE.

If I use the reader A LOT , and don't do anything to conserve power beyond just letting the Readers Sleep Timer kick in and put it in standby mode when I am not using it, then I see pretty much the same things you described.

Remember some folks are going to be REALLY diligent about turning there readier OFF when not being used, and when powered down most of the time like this the reader can indeed run weeks and weeks on a charge. But this is NOT what MOST PRS-350/650/950 owners are doing, and consequently this is NOT the kind of battery life they are getting.

I am pretty sure that most folks are happy if their PRS-350 or 650 can run a week and get all the way through a book on one charge.

So, try to get a few more charge discharge cycles on your reader, and if it still seem like the battery life is just not what it should be, then by all means exchange it for a new one.

[tigrangh]

Ok, I'll try some more charge cycles. I'll write about results here. Wish they will be good, because I can't exchange it with new one: I live in Armenia, no any book-readers are sold here. I bought mine in Moscow, and even there Sony readers are not selled officially.
So thanks for answering, delphin.

[Pinecone]

Lithium cells don't need to be cycled to get full capacity. In high amp draw applications, it helps to treat the battery a little more kindly the first 3 or so cycles due to heat effects, but we are taking about applications where it takes 6 minutes or less to go from fully charged to minimum safe level.