Battery life? Early adopters?

[flyingtablet]

It's been a couple of days.

Anyone knows more about the battery life now?


Thank you!

[pthwaite]

Can't really comment yet other than to say mine has never shown the battery as full. It has been on & off the PC like a fiddler's elbow trying to get software & dictionaries to work, pointlessly...
I am now leaving it for a most of Saturday with a different mains charger to see what happens as I will be busy this weekend.

[cjp]

I've posted a few threads since I received my Reader last Thursday, 10/9. I've had horrible battery life thus far. I don't know if it's the "breaking in period" or what. (I'm beginning to think it's the 'or what')

As I wrote in another thread about problems with the battery; today I used it primarily for reading. 3 hours then the battery was kaput! After some issues again, and some frantic discussion here and on iRex forum, I was able to get it up and running (thought it was dead!).
Currently,
It has been on - NOT USED, just on - for the last 4 hours. I am down to one bar.
4 bars lasted 15"
3 bars lasted 90"
2 bars lasted 100"
1 bar lasted .... I don't know yet, it's been going for 45" so far.
(I'll update the post tomorrow and give a final reading on how long it lasted.)

Given the times above, I do not see this Reader lasting any longer than 6 hours and again, that IS NOT BEING USED. It is just sitting here on my desk while I work on my computer.

This cannot possibly be normal. If so, as an expensive devise, this will not do. I easily spend 10-12+ hours reading journals and papers every day. If I have to carry the briefcase of papers with me as a 'backup', what good is this Reader?

That said, I think my Reader might have some problems that are not common with other owners of the DR1000S, which may be contributing to the very short battery life. Otherwise, I do enjoy using (what little I have) this Reader, and it is rather wonderful!

How is everyone else's battery life holding up?
CJP

[flyingtablet]

Thank you, CJP, for the detailed benchmark.
Irex should PAY early adopters for all the testing & frustration.

Originally Posted by cjp

How is everyone else's battery life holding up?
CJP

Based on other posts, I suspect that the reader works about 4 hours
with regular page turns.

This is NOT acceptable, given that the screen does not use power once
a page is shown.

Take the smartphone/PDA as an example, we turn it on, draw a page,
suspend it. If it takes a while to finish this page, the device
remains in power-saving suspend state. My smartphone can work in
standby mode for 7 days (with GSM on).

I don't know why it is so difficult for them to implement this "suspend"
feature in the initial product release. As a very basic example, they can
support a "reading profile" which just does "on-display-suspend".

Hanlin v9, for example, weighing just 320g (with battery), has a much
much longer battery life.

Another problem is the boot time. EEE PC 901, with a modified boot loader
from Intel engineers, can boot the Linux system in 5 seconds. Irex has
a less powerful CPU, so, how about 15 seconds?

I still believe in Irex with their wonderful hardware. It is the software
that causes so much trouble.

With the coming of Plastic Logic Reader, the only idea I have for Irex is
to ask their system engineers to work harder and get some experts.

If they can't, release their source code, so that someone else can
help.

[cjp]

Again, after all the time charging-recharging (I've spent more time doing that or tied to an adapter to charge it than I ever have using it!) here's the latest on battery life.

After a full charge AND NOT USING IT - AT ALL. I'll repeat, NOT. AT. ALL.

4 bars lasted 15" (6:05-6:20pm)
3 bars lasted 90" (6:20-7:50pm)
2 bars lasted 100" (7:50-9:30pm)
1 bar lasted 80" (9:30-10:50pm)
0 bar lasted 35" (10:50-11:25pm)

At 11:25 the message displayed, "The battery is almost empty. Connect to a power source as soon as possible to begin charging."

The flashing orange light turned red and then at 11:40 the DR1000S shut down.

So, NOT USING IT the battery life (after a few full cycled charge-recharges) is ~5 1/2 hours.

This just cannot be right. What devise runs out of power - doing nothing, after less than 6 hours???

So, by these calculations and by simply reading PDF's today, I can only expect it to hold a charge for a few hours? Someone tell me you are getting much m-u-c-h longer battery times than I am.

If this is all the DR1000S is capable of, then it is pretty useless even for all its great qualities of a full size PDF reader.
CJP

[kacir]

Hi CJP.
Welcome on board.

I see you are new here (By looking at your join date! There is nothing wrong with your posts ;-) ).
If you search the archives for discussions dating to the iRex *Iliad* release you will be much less surprised that the new reader from iRex does not deliver the promised battery life and other features (like, for example, stylus calibration issue on iLiad) you might expect.
Like the thread here https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7093
By the way, the promised firmware update did come eventually, but it turned out the hardware itself did not support any dramatic battery consumptiom improvement
Search forward from here https://www.mobileread.com/forums/for...r=desc&page=27

And as I see the history to repeat itself here, I would not recommand to you to hold your breath for a firmware update that would miraculously dramaticaly improve battery life ...

[allovertheglobe]

So you got about 5 1/2 hours, as I had posted from my own experience in the other thread. Seems to be the ballpark figure then.

As I also mentioned, as well as iRex did on their forum's FAQ, power management is not really implemented yet. That means that the reader itself (CPU and all) runs at full power for those 5 1/2 hours REGARDLESS OF YOUR USAGE. The screen technology alone plays very little into that.

No surprise there. You are buying a product that is the bleeding edge of ebook technology, from a fairly small company (compared to Sony for instance) that has a long history of struggling to meet their user's expectation (see the whole Iliad forum) But they also DID work on their code and improved things after a while.

I realistically hope for a USAGE time extension (via CPU underclocking etc.) to about 8 hours so it gets me through a normal working day. Once the advance power management is implemented, it will be possible to quickly turn it "on" and "off" while greatly extending the battery life i.e. "days".

(As happens with Sony reader when you use the sliding button at the top. This reader also, when completely shut down via a special menu, takes quite a while to start up. And I had some battery indicator issues with it as well, noticeably shorter than Sony claimed, and their own firmware update improved things too.)

But it's probably going to be a while before they release the firmware with these improvements (and many more) It's a work in progress and will require some patience on our part. Or a request for a refund. I'm not making excuses for iRex, their biggest blunder is once again making big promises that they will be hard pressed to live up to (aka marketing) and rushing a product to market before it has matured sufficiently.

I made this purchase knowing the above full well, and the trade-off is worth it to me. I'm honestly sorry if you got into this unaware of any of this.

As far as FlyingTablet's comment goes:
Those comparisons are not realistic. No cellphone can display full PDF files in a useable manner. Cellphone tech has a billion-dollar industry behind it with legions of engineers that have been squeezing out every bit of battery life for years. Recently a Newsweek editorial complained about how it's not possible to get through a day using the fancy iPhone without recharging, a common problem with the new generation of powerful PDA/phones.

Also, as a longtime Linux user, I'm very familiar with the longtime struggle to get APM to work properly on most laptops. Open Source is not a magic solution (esp. if the hardware makers aren't supportive) Speaking of laptops, which ones get 5 1/2 hours of usage? Especially without a big "Extended" battery... my EEE PC certainly doesn't (and the screen is tiny)

I have yet to see a true Hanlin V9 (the big one) early adopters review like ours here, so claims of their better battery life are at this point every bit as much hype as iRex's, assuming it will even offer the same level of actual performance. Plastic Logic is another bit of pure speculation at this point. (I'm really looking forward to our forum members getting their hands on all this cool new technology!)

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by cjp

As I wrote in another thread about problems with the battery; today I used it primarily for reading. 3 hours then the battery was kaput! After some issues again, and some frantic discussion here and on iRex forum, I was able to get it up and running (thought it was dead!).
Currently,
It has been on - NOT USED, just on - for the last 4 hours. I am down to one bar.
4 bars lasted 15"
3 bars lasted 90"
2 bars lasted 100"
1 bar lasted .... I don't know yet, it's been going for 45" so far.
(I'll update the post tomorrow and give a final reading on how long it lasted.)

Hi CJP,

I was very confused by your posts until I realised that you're using the incorrect symbol for minutes. 15" means 15 seconds - if (as I assume) you mean 15 minutes you should write 15'.

[smp_iliad]

5 1/2 hours ? wow, I can't believe it! If that's really so, I'll have to cancel my order. I've had iLiad and it lasts at least 12 hours...this is more than frustrating!

[cjp]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Hi CJP,

I was very confused by your posts until I realised that you're using the incorrect symbol for minutes. 15" means 15 seconds - if (as I assume) you mean 15 minutes you should write 15'.

Funny! In the US, " is minutes. But you hightlighted the point that I should be more aware that this forum is international, thus to avoid confusion, it would have been more appropriate just to write out "minutes."

It is a good thing to keep in mind.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by cjp

Funny! In the US, " is minutes. But you hightlighted the point that I should be more aware that this forum is international, thus to avoid confusion, it would have been more appropriate just to write out "minutes."

In what notation? Using sexagesimal notation minutes is notated with ' and seconds with ''. From Wikipedia:

Modern time separates each position by a colon or point. For example, the time might be 10:25:59 (10 hours 25 minutes 59 seconds). Angles use similar notation. For example, an angle might be 10°25'59" (10 degrees 25 minutes 59 seconds). In both cases, only minutes and seconds use sexagesimal notation — angular degrees can be larger than 59 (one rotation around a circle is 360°, two rotations are 720°, etc.), and both time and angles use decimal fractions of a second.

I'm in the US and have always seen 1 tick to notate minutes. As said about these notations are not often used... most common usage is in specifying geographical locations.

BOb

[cjp]

Allovertheglobe, I have been very grateful for your continued discussion. First, I really am so enamored with the DR1000S. Very much. However, it is true that I was lead to believe (press releases?) that the Reader could go for at least a full day, which would have been great. Disappointed is an understatment in the realization that most likely nothing is wrong with my DR1000S, that's all it is really capable of.

This very short battery life really is problematic for me. If you don't mind giving me a little advice, I'd appreciate knowing what you think if I returned the DR1000S (just the thought makes me sad!) to exchange it for the iLiad Book Edition. (I have no real use for WiFi etc. I am connected either at home or at the university, so what I want is a PDF reader, that will work for at least a full day without needing to be charged.)
What are your thoughts?

Anyone else who has an iLiad to use for academic work (PDF journals) please feel free to send along your input too.

That said, you present a fair picture of iRex and their quest to develop the newest technology. I'm not angry or anything, but had higher hopes for a great deal of money spent. I know that I am committed to finding a PDF reader (no time for anything else to read!) and so any contributions about DR1000S vs. iLiad would be appreciated.
Again, many thanks for your interest and help.
CJP

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by cjp

This just cannot be right. What devise runs out of power - doing nothing, after less than 6 hours???

It is probably that in actual use you would get the same usage out of it. Since the eInk screen uses very little power, and only needed to display a page change. The bulk of the power is being used keeping the CPU running.

BOb

[Mambo]

Hi,

This does not sound very good. The original iLiad started with 4 hours as well. With all powersaving and what not, finally they reached lousy 12 hours!
My PRS 505 (which I believe has a crap battery) lasts for 2-3 weeks. Irrespective of that it is on or off, how many page turns do you make.

And also what you want to do with the iRex is to scribble for a full day as a minimum. When scribbling obviously powersaving makes absolutely no sense. So this means even if they implement power saving you are not going to get more than 5 hours scribbling.

My view is that do not believe that you ever going to get the 24 hours. I'm not going to buy this reader in the current state. All coputers should be able to go to stand-by, this is a standard.

I recommended from the very beginning: put in a huge battery if you can not implement power saving, like 10400mAh for EEE PC, but they said no because the device would be too heavy! What's the point with a light device that is useless? Rather be heavy but usable. For me 750 g would be still light in case of an A4 device, but they know better!

[Gogolo]

Im very disappointed iRex again messed it up with battery issue. You remember all the discussion about the iLiad?

I just can't believe they did it again. Glad I didnt buy one.

iRex, get this suspend thing on the way, now!

Gogolo