Sage Battery dies suddenly - fixable?

[Aleron Ives]

You might also check any books you sideloaded just beforehand. It could be that a book is malformed in some way and is causing high CPU load as Nickel tries to parse the book. Malformed books have been known to cause major battery drain like that in the past.

[Uncle Robin]

My new Sage is all setup, and hopefully keeping it at no more than 27% brightness will help delay the battery death. It's got to be better than 48%, I'm thinking. The attached photos show KOReader on the left and Nickel on the right, both in more or less my usual reading environment. If I can get away with turning it down further, I will.

[Aleron Ives]

Can you get a reading lamp for your location so you can just turn the frontlight completely off (or at least way down)?

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

Can you get a reading lamp for your location so you can just turn the frontlight completely off (or at least way down)?

I normally read on a couch with lights on the other side of the lounge on. By turning on the lights directly above my reading couch, I've got it to 18 (photo), whih I think is about as low as I'm going to be comfortable with

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

Can you get a reading lamp for your location so you can just turn the frontlight completely off (or at least way down)?

I turn the frontlight higher, not lower, when the ambient light is brighter. Usually I read on my Sage in a very dim light, so I'm able to keep the frontlight low. When I read on my Libra in broad daylight, the light is up at 50-90%.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

My new Sage is all setup, and hopefully keeping it at no more than 27% brightness will help delay the battery death. It's got to be better than 48%, I'm thinking. The attached photos show KOReader on the left and Nickel on the right, both in more or less my usual reading environment. If I can get away with turning it down further, I will.

Just to let you know, KOReader will use more battery then reading ePub or KePub with the Kobo software.

[rashkae]

Originally Posted by Apollyon202

There are some charging habits which wear out the battery fairly quickly. For example, leaving the device on the charger overnight.

I really doubt that will have much of an effect at all. Charging it *every* night would be bad, (as the battery would very rarely fall under 90%.)... but even then, I would expect overall to have only slight impact over a 5 year period. I would not think twice about leaving a kobo plugged in for 24 hours. The battery will not 'overcharge.'

[Quoth]

Modern chargers don't charge at all when the battery is charged. This has always been true for LiPoly/LiIon as they may go on fire if trickle charged past "full".

[lexic]

Originally Posted by lexic

So.. my frontlight is only 6-9% as I only use the Sage in bed.

Maybe the sync is the issue. I always leave WiFi on. Maybe a book I purchased or an Overdrive book is "stuck" or something. I think that I've only read purchased/library books and not anything sideloaded since the issue started. (Although I have used Calibre to add some books.)

I'll turn off WiFi for now and see if the drain happens again in a few days. *crossing fingers*

No sudden death for me since I've disabled WiFi. Most likely it is/was a sync issue in my case. Thanks.

[Apollyon202]

Originally Posted by rashkae

I really doubt that will have much of an effect at all. Charging it *every* night would be bad, (as the battery would very rarely fall under 90%.)... but even then, I would expect overall to have only slight impact over a 5 year period. I would not think twice about leaving a kobo plugged in for 24 hours. The battery will not 'overcharge.'

I didn't say any of that.

It's the constant 100% charge that kills the battery. A fully charged battery holds over 4 volts, which fries the cells quickly. After a year, you'll see significant capacity loss if you keep it near full most of the time.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Apollyon202

I didn't say any of that.

It's the constant 100% charge that kills the battery. A fully charged battery holds over 4 volts, which fries the cells quickly. After a year, you'll see significant capacity loss if you keep it near full most of the time.

How much is "significant"?

[Apollyon202]

If I notice I can read less pages per charge, that's significant.

[Fat Abe]

In the US there are plenty of service centers that specialize in replacing lithium batteries in cellphones, tablets, watches, and e-readers. Finding a replacement battery is the hard part. I do not see any listings on ebay today for a Kobo sage battery, but if a fellow member of this forum who has done this before could provide the mAH rating (1200?) of the battery and its dimensions, the rest of the process should be easy to accomplish.
A youtube reviewer mentions a power cover. Is this a way of supplementing the charging process?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufd7CjhNkfI

[Sirtel]

The Sage power cover never worked correctly. Yes, I had one. It was a total failure.

[Quoth]

The battery (really a cell) is very generic. The Sage is also easy to open.