PRS-600 Battery Life

[MelC]

Not normal in my experience either. I got rid of the memory card because of a frequent lock up problem I was having (I have been lock up free for over a month now). However, without commenting on the effect the memory card might be having, my device maintains its charge for a long time and I never power it fully down. Last week I inadvertently left it on standby mode at a vacation property and when I retrieved it the following weekend it had not lost any bars that I noticed.

Mel

[Coreman]

Okay I'm back...I get down to (1) bar on my 600 after ~600 page turns. When I get to (1) bar I recharge as I don't want to run out of power as I have a daily commute on train where I like to read.

After reading some of the posts here, I am beginning to think my charge life isn't too far from normal. I don't have MP3s or a memory stick...should I be concerned?

[fghxu]

My 600 seems has short battery life as well, I usually read book about 30 minutes a day, and the battery seems goes away 1 bar/day. meaning I need to recharge it for about 2~3 hours(or 300~400 page turns) of reading. definitely less than a week. The book I am reading is a self made PDF file (converted from a chm file). So, some time when I turn the page, the e-Ink screen refresh twice, (instead of once). My hypothesis is taht : the Sony PRS 600 spend lot's power on processing to display the PDF file.

Just wondering if it is normal, what do you think?

[NSqirrel]

Originally Posted by grooks

You need to kill the battery then fully charge the device a few times to 'calibrate' the power meter...

Perhaps a 'quick' way to do this is to leave the unit repeat-playing a piece of music overnight; that will run the battery down quite quickly, then recharge.

[caddie]

make sure you power the prs 600 down properly. you need to hold the off slide - swtitch for at least 5 seconds to shut down properly or it just goes in to slow sleep mode.

[caddie]

Originally Posted by fghxu

My 600 seems has short battery life as well, I usually read book about 30 minutes a day, and the battery seems goes away 1 bar/day. meaning I need to recharge it for about 2~3 hours(or 300~400 page turns) of reading. definitely less than a week. The book I am reading is a self made PDF file (converted from a chm file). So, some time when I turn the page, the e-Ink screen refresh twice, (instead of once). My hypothesis is taht : the Sony PRS 600 spend lot's power on processing to display the PDF file.

Just wondering if it is normal, what do you think?

make sure you power the prs 600 down properly. you need to hold the off slide - swtitch for at least 5 seconds to shut down properly or it just goes in to slow sleep mode.

[Kolenka]

I've noticed that certain features will drastically drain the battery compared to simply reading. If you take notes on the book, that will draw quite a bit of power (as there are at least 3 page refreshes involved, so one highlight can easily equal 3-4 page turns just on the eInk). Looking up a word in the dictionary is roughly equal to 1-2 page turns as well. All this adds up rather quick. If you like to browse your library a lot, having them as thumbnails that haven't all loaded will hurt battery life due to refreshing the display, as well as all the refreshes from the browsing itself.

And this is ignoring the extra power draw from using the touch screen to do all this.

I was seeing about 4-5 days worth of battery from a 600 as well, but that also includes doing a LOT of annotation on a book that I had OCR'd when I found errors, and using the scribbling feature quite a bit.

[NSqirrel]

Originally Posted by caddie

make sure you power the prs 600 down properly. you need to hold the off slide - swtitch for at least 5 seconds to shut down properly or it just goes in to slow sleep mode.

I wonder what the trade-off is between power down and sleep. As power up seems to take far longer than sleep (obviously) it must be using more power.

On my '600 Power down takes approx. 10 secs, allowing for quick interaction with yes/no dialog. Power up takes roughly 30 secs. Sleep off and on takes about 1 sec each. These times may be dependent upon the number/ type of books stored. To make a real comparison I would still need to know the battery degredation on sleep over long period....

[twinszz]

I have been having the same issues with my PRS 600 as far as the battery life. I started powering down last night and will see how long my charge last and posts here. Has anyone else had improvement with battery life from powering down?

I have been trying to figure out how to disconnect the battery to recharge and see if this would work. I do not like having to power down in order to have the two week charge.

If someone would please give me step by step instruction on this I would appreciate it. Thank you.

P.S. I still love my PRS 600!!!!

[grooks]

I power down and have experienced better battery life compared to just sleep mode. I only power down at night before going to bed, otherwise I use sleep mode between reading sessions during the day.

Also, I wait until the batter has zero bars and it gives the warning message before charging.

[TimNeo]

Full charge on Christmas day on USB. I then used it a bit, spent another 6hrs giving it a good charge using my xbox360.

Read two books, perhaps 800-900 pages and it was down to two bars. Not 7,500 page turns.

I was using an SD card reader and was using the touch screen.

I've got a USB charger now, I'll give it a full charge on that, then I'm going to read books using only the buttons but putting it into sleep mode, not a full shut down.

Unless it takes an absolutely huge amount of charge to open an ebook, I'd expect to see at least three to four thousand page turns. If I don't get at least two thousand, I may consider getting it returned as it's not getting anywhere near the miles to the gallon that's been quoted.

Also it crashed about halfway into one of the books, I plugged it in for a second to the USB charger and it came back to life, but the battery was still showing full and I continued to use it for another 600 pages before it dropped a bar - a definate battery/ebook unrelated fault, looks more like it was a software issue.

[Patricia]

New Readers often need a few recharging cycles before the battery meter calibrates itself.

I prefer mains charging because it is much more reliable: if your computer hibernates or powers down then the device will stop charging, which is annoying. and it could mislead people who think that the device ought to be fully charged.

[healton]

Hello. I've got serious problem with battery, almost can't use reader. I bought it 2 month ago, did 2-3 full charge/discharge cycles (except charging while copying books), lifetime was about 2 weeks. Two weeks ago i started to use device only for audiobooks for a week, until i've found reduction of lifetime from 3 days (using player) to 1 day, so i stopped listening and deleted all mp3's. But lifetime still was reducing quickly to a hour of reading (100 pages). Moreover, after full charge, when i disconnected USB, it showed immediately 3/4 battery, now it's only 1/4 just after disconnect. Charging (red light) still takes ~1.5h, i disconnected just after red light is over, so there was no drain by USB cable.
I formated memory, removed SD, cleared settings, reinstalled firmware, tried to charge via PSP adapter, but all of this have no effect. Now after full charge and 10-20 pageturns i get "low battery" message, and 100 extra turns before shutdown. I'm thankful for any ideas.

[NSqirrel]

Obviously, if under warranty go back to Sony. If not, have a look at this interesting link about disconnetcing the battery and then reconnecting. MobileRead Forums > E-Book Readers > Sony Reader> PRS-600 Replacement Battery (https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=83381)

I hope that this helps you.

[elcreative]

Why 2-3 full charge/discharge cycles... not recommended for lithium batteries (and that's from the battery manufacturers).

Have you ensured that mp3 playing is no longer active... been known to discharge very rapidly.

Why charge for ~1.5 hours until red light goes out if having problems... this only indicates 80% charge at max (see manuals & Sony website)... if it's charging from USB then it won't discharge by leaving it connected after red light goes out UNLESS you switch computer off or have it set to sleep/hibernate.

Try PSP charge for at least 4-6 hours, ignore red light going off, you can't overcharge as it will stop charging when full (built-in battery function). I always charge mine overnight while I'm asleep from a mains PSU... If all else fails then try the battery disconnect/reconnect and/or replacement

Originally Posted by healton

Hello. I've got serious problem with battery, almost can't use reader. I bought it 2 month ago, did 2-3 full charge/discharge cycles (except charging while copying books), lifetime was about 2 weeks. Two weeks ago i started to use device only for audiobooks for a week, until i've found reduction of lifetime from 3 days (using player) to 1 day, so i stopped listening and deleted all mp3's. But lifetime still was reducing quickly to a hour of reading (100 pages). Moreover, after full charge, when i disconnected USB, it showed immediately 3/4 battery, now it's only 1/4 just after disconnect. Charging (red light) still takes ~1.5h, i disconnected just after red light is over, so there was no drain by USB cable.
I formated memory, removed SD, cleared settings, reinstalled firmware, tried to charge via PSP adapter, but all of this have no effect. Now after full charge and 10-20 pageturns i get "low battery" message, and 100 extra turns before shutdown. I'm thankful for any ideas.