K3 battery life stinks... what?

[Skydog]

Originally Posted by Ervserver

If I had received 2 defective units I'd likely move onto another brand...but on the other hand these are new models so first buyers beware until the bugs are worked out

If I "moved on to another brand" every time I experienced a snag, there would be a lot less time to enjoy life. I've had a total of six Kindles in 2 1/2 yrs. and one or two glitches are not a big deal. With the massive number of units shipped, I would expect a few misfires to slip through.

Amazon excels with their customer service - replaced immediately, overnight.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Ervserver

If I had received 2 defective units I'd likely move onto another brand...but on the other hand these are new models so first buyers beware until the bugs are worked out

It does give one pause.

The 3rd one should be the charm. If I can find it. It seems to have arrived at my office today & promptly disappeared...

[brecklundin]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The battery doesn't need priming, but on many devices (and I don't know whether or not the Kindle is among them) it can take a couple of charge/discharge cycles to accurately calibrate the battery meter.

Exactly Harry...no Li-based battery ever needs "conditioning" rather, as you say, depending on the "smartness" of either the battery or the power management software on whatever the device might be a series of drains from the beginning will improve the accuracy of the visible meter. However it is not absolutely necessary as the meter, generally, has nothing to do with how long the battery will run. In fact if left uncalibrated, and just run down normally, the software should self-calibrated over time. The deep drops will simply serve to hasten the process. Good tip Sir Harry!!

Originally Posted by andavane

Indeed.
With a new Li-ion battery it's a good idea to deep-cycle by allowing 3 successive discharge--charges. Truer readings will follow.

I have always lived by the "it's never wise to fully drain your Li-Whatever batteries because every time one does this it affects the lifespan (as in longevity not run time) of the battery. But after talking with HP on my laptop batteries, one delivers 4-6hrs and the other 12-16hrs on a full charge when new and now after 5yrs they are sill in the 2hrs and 4-5hr range...but HP said to simply run them down a couple times so the battery gauge can calibrate for those specific batteries. Their point was a couple full discharges are not going to have a significant effect on lifespan but to do everything possible to avoid ever running them below 80% in the future...and their help seems to have served me well...so it's basically what I do and suggest to anyone. But in general deep-cycling will only lead to replacing a battery far sooner than normal. I have known friends who still clung to the always run them to as close to zero as possible then complain the batteries only hasted 4-6months. And when talking about a 12hr batter that costs $400 that is just, well stoopid!! But people still do it...I guess when their warranty will replace it as a defective battery they don't care. Of course people like that are why a lot of mfgs no longer warranty Li-whatever batteries more than 6-months.

Oh, for those out there who have run across it, there is no such animal as a "reconditioned" Li-whatever battery...lithium batteries cannot be reconditioned, the cells can be replaced and the battery rebuilt but that's as far was it goes. So be wary...

Originally Posted by TomF

If you truly understand the technology behind e-ink you'll realize that "shut down mode" doesn't save any more power than sleep mode. A tear down of the K2 indicated that when power was completely removed the screen continued to display the last image. That's the way it's designed to work. With Wi-Fi off and no indexing being done, the only time a Kindle uses power while reading is when it does a page turn. It doesn't operate like other electronic devices and there really is no "off".

Actually in "sleep" mode the wireless should stay active. This is how system updates and backups happen if you have backups enabled. If you do this i would just plug in the power every night. I won't hurt the battery because charge cycles for Li-whatever batteries refers, confusingly, to full discharge-recharge cycles so if you recharge a 20% empty battery that supposedly equals 1/5th of a full charge cycle not one of your allotted 1000 or whatever charge cycles.

Originally Posted by Skydog

I have a really weird battery problem with one of my new K3s - it's overheating. First noticed when charging and it became just short of HOT around the lower right hand corner. Unplugged, I noticed that with use of the right-hand next page button the surrounding area began to heat up again.

It's being replaced (before it ignites).

Now, on to sort out the freezing problem on the other K3.

Yeah, whenever your battery heats up, that means it's likelywearing out or when new very likely there is a defect in the battery and/or charging circuitry. When it happens during use it's likely a bad battery cell when it happens during recharge then the defect is in the charging circuitry and the battery is either over-charging or the current supplied to the battery is too high...no matter that real cause, a hot, even warm battery is a sign of potential danger as the battery can explode...of course if it also catches on fire, then hey, there is your backlight!! Plus it makes for a nifty heat source for Jiffy-Pop!!

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Harmon

Insulation.

Plus decoration. I mean, pbooks just look better on the shelf than ebooks do.

I saw your post on the first one--what was wrong with the second one (just curious\no need to share if you don't want to.)

I did read that Amazon had a boatload saved off against defects to ship out quickly. No idea how true it is, but people are reporting pretty quick change out.

Edit: Whoops, grabbed the wrong quote. The question was for Harmon, the purple guy with two defective K3s...

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

I saw your post on the first one--what was wrong with the second one (just curious\no need to share if you don't want to.)

I did read that Amazon had a boatload saved off against defects to ship out quickly. No idea how true it is, but people are reporting pretty quick change out.

Edit: Whoops, grabbed the wrong quote. The question was for Harmon, the purple guy with two defective K3s...

Purple Guy here. I like that. May have to change my moniker...

The second K3 had a defect in the right side page forward button. Sometimes it worked correctly. Sometimes it didn't respond. Sometimes it took me two, and occasionally three, pages forward rather than one.

Incidentally, on both K3s the support person first had me reboot to see if that corrected the problem. So anyone else who has a K3 problem might try a reboot before calling customer service.

My 3rd K3 arrived yesterday, & so far I haven't discovered any problems. I've been moving a lot of my Instapaper content onto the K3, using the Instapaper forwarding feature.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Harmon

Purple Guy here. I like that. May have to change my moniker...

The second K3 had a defect in the right side page forward button. Sometimes it worked correctly. Sometimes it didn't respond. Sometimes it took me two, and occasionally three, pages forward rather than one.

Incidentally, on both K3s the support person first had me reboot to see if that corrected the problem. So anyone else who has a K3 problem might try a reboot before calling customer service.

My 3rd K3 arrived yesterday, & so far I haven't discovered any problems. I've been moving a lot of my Instapaper content onto the K3, using the Instapaper forwarding feature.

Thanks, Purple Guy. Hadn't seen that one.

[altzone]

For those interested in the battery life when playing music (and presumably audio books too), I tested the life and was able to play music into headphones at normal volume for 24hours continuously before I got the low battery alert.

Dave.

[PhilK]

Er...I know I sound worse than a newbie (Im all of that) but I have tried to use both mobiread and Calibre and having huge trouble getting books onto my newly arrived Kindle 3. Mobi seemed to get a few across, (Calibre zero - there shows no mention of Kindle attached unlike Mobi) and then I see a "ebooks" folder, but can't see it when opening the Kindle. Search, but nothing shows. Only the books I bought off amazon.
Can anyone help this baffled newbie ?

[AdrianM]

Originally Posted by PhilK

Er...I know I sound worse than a newbie (Im all of that) but I have tried to use both mobiread and Calibre and having huge trouble getting books onto my newly arrived Kindle 3. Mobi seemed to get a few across, (Calibre zero - there shows no mention of Kindle attached unlike Mobi) and then I see a "ebooks" folder, but can't see it when opening the Kindle. Search, but nothing shows. Only the books I bought off amazon.
Can anyone help this baffled newbie ?

What version are you running? You need Calibre version 0.7.16 at least for it to recognize your K3.

[PhilK]

Its the newest version. It "sees" my Kindle3, and sends the books to the Kindle, but the Kindle doesn't admit the books are there.

[DiapDealer]

Search, but nothing shows. Only the books I bought off amazon.
Can anyone help this baffled newbie ?

Are the non-Amazon books drm-free mobi files?

Its the newest version. It "sees" my Kindle3, and sends the books to the Kindle, but the Kindle doesn't admit the books are there.

Can you verify that the books exist in the 'Documents' folder of the K3?

[grzzly]

I don't know if anyone posted this before but this tells you aaall about Lithium ion batteries

http://www.batteryuniversity.com/partone.htm

[PhilK]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Are the non-Amazon books drm-free mobi files?


Can you verify that the books exist in the 'Documents' folder of the K3?

From the newsgroups, someone mentioned to put them in the Documents folder, checked and some (the missing) were in an "ebooks" folder. transfered and...there.
Also found out how to transfer using Calibre. Baffled for a while (going back and forth to work didn't help) but sussed.
Only thing puzzling me now is "Where's the Zoom ?"

[PhilK]

Originally Posted by Skydog

Amazon excels with their customer service - replaced immediately, overnight.

.co.uk are excellent. I always actually TRY to buy first from Amazon because of this.

[shanghaichica]

Well I have about 2 thirds of my battery left and I've been using it for 3 days so far. Not sure if I had let all the books finish indexing when I unplugged it and I have been using the browser and text to speech features a bit over the last 3 days. Wifi is only turned on when using it. Im not sure it's going to last the full month as quoted. However a week would be fine on a single charge with wifi usage for me. Anything beyond 2 weeks and I'd be very pleased.