Kobo Sage's Horrible battery: WHHHYYYYYYY????

[Dr. Drib]

So what is it with Kobo's miserable battery?

For those who are satisfied with the battery, then this thread may not be for you. But if you wish to engage in a conversation, then please substitute 'horrible' and/or 'miserable' for 'Jim-Dandy' and/or 'Are you insane!!?? My battery is fine!'

OK, now that that is out of the way, why is the Sage even available after all these frolicsome years? I don't own a Sage, but I want to buy - I've wanted to buy one for MANY years! - one that has a better battery than the current one. And I refuse to go through charging contortions with the device in its current incarnation.

Please, help me understand: Why is this piece of crap battery installed in what would otherwise be a FINE ebook reader? I just want to know why Rakutan keeps this device available.

[JSWolf]

Because Kobo is using only a 1,200mAh battery instead of a battery with more power. This is not enough of a battery

[Quoth]

It's not totally horrible. I can certainly read from dusk to dawn, or vice versa and have charge left. Might be an issue camping for a week without a power bank or other charge source.

However I don't use WiFi, BT or Front light.

Note large text uses up charge faster on all ereaders as the page turns are most of the power consumption if everything else is off.

I don't charge more than about once a week, partly because I don't rush to disconnect after connecting to Calibre the 2nd time when adding more ebooks.

I read daily.

Certainly while it would be nice for a bigger cell and ditching the 6 or 8 stupid big magnets for the power cover (which by all accounts I've read is useless compared to a power bank), I'll not hold my breath. I recently bought a second Sage, because it seems more decisions are made by crayon dept than anyone with sense, so I figure an 8″ replacement of Sage will be fatally flawed.

There is space in theory for a bigger cell, but the stiffening ribs of the alloy chassis are in the way. If the battery (really a cell) dies I may try using "Dremel"-like tool to remove ribs to fit a larger cell. Of course that's a risk to screen and a larger area without ribs makes flexing and thus breaking the screen likely.

I do have a Libra 2, Libra (best for doing narration or reading speech because button turn is 100% reliable), 7.8″ Mars. I did have Aura HD H2O, Elipsa, reMarkable and still have a Sony PRS350, Kindle PW3, K3 and DXG. I've had a nook ST, Kobo touch, iRiver Storybook Cover, Binatone, Kindle PW1, Kindle Basic, Nia and Sony PRS-T2. Some died and some passed to others.

I find the Sage best compromise of size, weight, functions and don't find the shorter than Libra battery life an issue.

Note the 8″ at similar brightness to a 6″ model with frontlight will inherently use a bit more than twice the power for that lighting (area and less efficient light pipe to cover greater distance from edges with even light). Page turns should be less often at same size font, but take nearly twice the power of a 6″ model.

So yes, it should have a larger battery (cell), but I'd not notice the poorer battery life compared to the Libra models unless I measured it.

Reading without built-in light, BT, WiFi and paperback book size font mitigates charge run time.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Please, help me understand: Why is this piece of crap battery installed in what would otherwise be a FINE ebook reader? I just want to know why Rakutan keeps this device available.

I suspect that they simply used the same battery they used in the Forma. For the Forma, I think it was picked to keep the weight down.

Sadly, the Forma's Freescale i.MX6 SLL @1GHz has better power management and a single core compared to the Sage's Allwinner B300 Quad Core @1.8 GHz. I tend to believe that the reason the original Elipsa was replaced so rapidly by the Elipsa 2E was the switch from Allwinner to MediaTek CPUs made power management a lot easier.

OTOH, my Sage lasts for ~14-16 hours of reading which considering the larger screen and smaller battery is not all that bad.

Would I love to see a new Kobo 8" B&W ereader with a MediaTek CPU and the 2050mAH battery from the Libra Colour? You bet your bippy!

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Because Kobo is using only a 1,200mAh battery instead of a battery with more power. This is not enough of a battery

And that, indeed, was my question. Why put a crappy battery in the Sage? Complaints about the battery could fill a phone book.*




* = If you're too young to know what that is do a search using Google.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I suspect that they simply used the same battery they used in the Forma. For the Forma, I think it was picked to keep the weight down.

Sadly, the Forma's Freescale i.MX6 SLL @1GHz has better power management and a single core compared to the Sage's Allwinner B300 Quad Core @1.8 GHz. I tend to believe that the reason the original Elipsa was replaced so rapidly by the Elipsa 2E was the switch from Allwinner to MediaTek CPUs made power management a lot easier.

OTOH, my Sage lasts for ~14-16 hours of reading which considering the larger screen and smaller battery is not all that bad.

Would I love to see a new Kobo 8" B&W ereader with a MediaTek CPU and the 2050mAH battery from the Libra Colour? You bet your bippy!

That and a Libra BW based on the Libra Colour minus the color layer.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

And that, indeed, was my question. Why put a crappy battery in the Sage? Complaints about the battery could fill a phone book.*




* = If you're too young to know what that is do a search using Google.

You could probably open the Sage and replace the battery with a better battery. I've seen it doe for the Libra 2. I read a post on redddit where someone replaced a Libra 2 battery with this one. And I did ask and it's working well.

[jlinear]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

OK, now that that is out of the way, why is the Sage even available after all these frolicsome years? I don't own a Sage, but I want to buy - I've wanted to buy one for MANY years! - one that has a better battery than the current one. And I refuse to go through charging contortions with the device in its current incarnation.

I not only wanted to buy one, I bought one. I fully charged it and turned WiFi, Bluetooth and syncing off immediately fully expecting poor battery life. The battery went fully dead after 1 1/2 days. I picked it up and there was a picture of a dead battery on the screen. My aged Aura One is still good for 1/2 weeks. And nobody is going to convince me that a series of Sage battery discharge/charges was going to make that battery worth a damn. I returned it in record time.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by jlinear

I not only wanted to buy one, I bought one. I fully charged it and turned WiFi, Bluetooth and syncing off immediately fully expecting poor battery life. The battery went fully dead after 1 1/2 days. I picked it up and there was a picture of a dead battery on the screen. My aged Aura One is still good for 1/2 weeks. And nobody is going to convince me that a series of Sage battery discharge/charges was going to make that battery worth a damn. I returned it in record time.

That's strange. Mine lasts for 15-17 hours; I usually read 2-3 hours a day and so I get about 5-7 days of reading before I have to charge.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You could probably open the Sage and replace the battery with a better battery. I've seen it doe for the Libra 2. I read a post on redddit where someone replaced a Libra 2 battery with this one. And I did ask and it's working well.

You can't without cutting away ribs on the cast alloy chassis. I did explain this earlier.

It is simply the size, not the quality.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

That's strange. Mine lasts for 15-17 hours; I usually read 2-3 hours a day and so I get about 5-7 days of reading before I have to charge.

I get more, but you have light on and I have have light off. More than 20 hours actual reading time.

Also depends on size of text. Smaller text is fewer page turns per hour. However I don't use as small text as others I know here.

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Please, help me understand: Why is this piece of crap battery installed in what would otherwise be a FINE ebook reader? I just want to know why Rakutan keeps this device available.

Kobo wanted to keep the weight down and underestimated how bad the power management is in the Sage's CPU. The Elipsa 1 has the same terrible CPU, but it also has a 2x larger battery than the Sage. We can only hope that a Sage 2 or Sage BW is in the pipeline and will fix the battery problems.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

Kobo wanted to keep the weight down and underestimated how bad the power management is in the Sage's CPU. The Elipsa 1 has the same terrible CPU, but it also has a 2x larger battery than the Sage. We can only hope that a Sage 2 or Sage BW is in the pipeline and will fix the battery problems.

This is why I say weight it irrelevant if it impacts performance and in this case it does.

[DNSB]

I did help one friend replace the battery in their Sage with a 1500mAH unit that was the same size. If they can keep from plugging their Sage in every time they read 15 minutes, perhaps this battery will live longer. After a couple of calibration cycles, it does give them about 20% longer reading time before the battery gauge drops to 10%.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

This is why I say weight it irrelevant if it impacts performance and in this case it does.

Weight is never irrelevant.