Post-update battery weirdness - Page 2

astra · 02-21-2007, 12:11 PM

What is a difference between hard reset and soft reset on the reader?

NatCh · 02-21-2007, 12:23 PM

A hard reset completely erases on-board (non-OS) memory, and a soft reset doesn't.

Other than that, the hard reset is harder to do (requires a Vulcan nerve pinch), and takes a fair bit longer to run.

If, on the other hand, you're asking how to do the two types of reset, the answers you want are in the Wiki.

astra · 02-22-2007, 09:26 AM

Thanks a lot.
That's what I wanted to know. I didn't know that hard reset even exists.

Laurens · 02-23-2007, 01:05 PM

Still having problems with the battery indicator. After the reset, it nicely indicated four bars. Great, I thought, but no, it dropped to three bars after I turned it back on a day later, without any actual use. Then, after charging, it dropped to two bars!

Laurens · 03-05-2007, 03:19 AM

Any way to downgrade the firmware? I never had any problems with the stock firmware, but ever since "upgrading" to the latest version, the battery indicator is completely out of whack. Now it says the battery is completely depleted, even though I haven't used the Reader at all since (supposedly) charging it fully last week.

diabloNL · 03-05-2007, 09:03 AM

This makes me worry. I had battery problems before the update. The battery lasted like ~500 pages or so. Now, after the update I can almost see the battery meter going down.

The problem is that I don't know if I should replace the battery or not ( if I can even find it).

Laurens, did you try to do a hard reset?

Aprilbeginnings · 03-05-2007, 09:32 AM

We can't all be tearing open our readers to put in a new battery.

I noticed as well, mine still goes down, sure not getting the amount of pages as sony states. That is BS IMO and if anyone gets that many page turns I sure would love ot hear about it.

Could you see a reader recall here???????????

HarryT · 03-05-2007, 09:47 AM

I don't know how many pages I get on a battery charge, but it's certainly SEVERAL thousand, even if not the 7,500 that Sony claim. Since I last charged my Reader I've read the whole of a 2,100 page book, and I'm 500 pages into a 2nd book, and my Reader is still showing 3 bars on the battery meter.

Their claim is presumably under some sort of "ideal" test conditions, just like the "miles per gallon" claim for a car is made under the optimal conditions of driving around and around a race track at a constant speed, and bears little relationship to the way that you drive a car in the "real world".

I'm more than happy with the battery life of my Reader.

Laurens · 03-05-2007, 09:47 AM

Not sure if it's a hardware issue. My troubles started after changing the firmware. The original firmware went to three bars only once. Haven't tried a hard reset yet, though I've soft-resetted it every time after charging and it showed four bars.

NormB · 03-05-2007, 10:21 AM

I have the same problem with the battery level indicator after my firmware update. It will not show a increase of power level after chargeing unless I do a reset. I discussed this with a Sony rep on their talk site and his conclusion was "It may be a bad battery and you will have to send it in". As long as it works I don't want to send it off and find out I have to pay to get it back.

________
Norm

Aprilbeginnings · 03-05-2007, 10:23 AM

Then Sony put out a lot of readers with a bad battery!

jakeluck · 03-05-2007, 05:09 PM

2nd time full charge after the firmware upgrade. takes reset to get to full 4 bars from1 again,

KlondikeGeoff · 03-05-2007, 06:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aprilbeginnings

I noticed as well, mine still goes down, sure not getting the amount of pages as sony states. That is BS IMO and if anyone gets that many page turns I sure would love ot hear about it.

Had my Reader little more than 3 months. From beginning only got about 2-3000 page turns, and quit keeping track.

After upgrade and reset, kept track again and this time got about 3500 page turns. Not bad, but far cry from 7500.

My Rocket eBook with backlight goes longer between charges. Ah, well...

Aerlock · 03-05-2007, 07:02 PM

I just had the same problem with reader. I hadn't charged it since I updated about a week after the new firmware came out. My battery ran down and I got the low battery warning so I popped it onto the USB cable overnight and in the morning I still had the liow battery warning. I popped out my memory card and tried again. Same deal. Remembering that sometimes the system can get too low to charge off USB I busted out the AC adapter and again let it charge overnight, this time with the memory card out of it. And guess what!?! I still had the low battery warning. So being the industrious fellow I am (humble too

), I came on here and checked the forums. Finding a link to the reset instructions on the wiki I gave the soft reset a whirl. Surprise! It worked. After a wait that seemed like forever as it powered back on, my battery was back again at 4 bars and everything worked fine. Just another long wait while it indexed my memory card after popping it back in and everything was good to go.

So far it seems like the battery may be lasting longer since the reset. I've not actually measured but when it "died" on me I had about 300 pages left in the book I was reading and I'm about 250 into the next and the bar hasn't moved. Before the reset I seem to recall the battery emptying faster, again no actual measurments but I noticed the battery being about a bar lower after reading a 500-600 page book.

I definately agree that the 7500 page turns is under optimal conditions, 7500+ page book, start reading on a full battery that was charged after loading page 1, never turning the reader off or bookmarking a page, etc.

Also something that occurred to me while thinking about my battery issue, are they ($ony) calling a page turn one change in the screen or do they include the black flash that the reader does before showing the next page? If they're just counting page turns by saying to themselves (fake numbers here folks, I don't know the real ones off the top of my head) the battery has 7.5 watts and it takes 1 milliwatt to change the screen once, so therefore we (by we I mean $ony marketing) can say it's good for (7.5 watts/1 milliwatt= 7500) 7500 page turns, then in actual usage it'd be more like 3750 if the black flash is is a screen change too. Less if you count all the bookmarks, menu reads, power on/off switching, etc. that is done during normal usage of the reader.

RWood · 03-05-2007, 07:16 PM

Based on the effort it took to get to the halfway point a few weeks back it would seem that I am getting about 7,000 page turns per charge. Since the Reader uses almost no power between turns my reading speed is not a factor in the battery life.

All books are in the main memory with no SD card loaded and all books are in either the Sony CONNECT store BBeB format or LRS format. No MP3 music or pictures are loaded on the Reader.

It seems that there are major differances in page turns between Readers -- more than we would expecct given normal manufacturing varriances.

dstampe · 03-06-2007, 08:07 AM

I find the only way to get immediate "bar" gratification from a charge is to turn the Reader ON, then plug the charger into it.

The display is not erased while charging, so it might leavemore of a ghost later.

Interestingly, the displayed image seems to lose contrast over time when it is left displayed like this.

TadW · 03-06-2007, 01:27 PM

I haven't upgraded my Reader, but I also experience fluctuations in the battery bar meter. Some times the battery seems to deplate faster than other times. I have no idea what is causing this behavior.

HarryT · 03-07-2007, 04:14 AM

There definitely seems to be ongoing "battery meter wierdness" following the upgrade. Yesterday, my Reader was down to 2 bars on the meter, so I left it plugged into my PC all day until the "charge" light went out. When I disconnected the USB cable, the meter showed 3 bars. I did a soft reset and it went back to 4 bars.

Hope they fix this in the next update - it's a bit of a nuisance having to do a reset after each charge.

Strether · 03-08-2007, 01:37 PM

I attempted a chat with Sony Support this morning, but they told me there's no chat support for the Reader and gave me a phone number to call instead. So, I called to inquire whether Sony officially knew that there was a post-update problem with the charge meter not registering 100% without being reset. He said they had received a few complaints about it, but said that it would help the issue if there was a larger volume of calls complaining about it. So, for what it's worth, the phone number is 1-866-962-7669. They'll ask your name, phone number and serial number of the Reader. Reading between the lines, it sounded like the greater the number of calls, the faster a corrective update would occur.

Jim

Snassek · 03-09-2007, 10:38 AM

Yesterday was the first time I have had an issue with the battery indicator showing incorrectly. I let it charge the day before and after checking it after the light went out it still showed 1 bar. I thought maybe that it didn't charge so I plugged it back in overnight and when I turned it on yesterday, still the 1 bar was showing. I tried turning it off and then back on with the same result.

I have read a little about the soft reset, but before I came here to see exactly what was required to reset it and what issues may arrise, I decided to turn the reader on, plug the charger in and as soon as I did that, the battery indicator reset back to showing a full charge. No soft reset was required.

yvanleterrible · 03-09-2007, 12:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HarryT

There definitely seems to be ongoing "battery meter wierdness" following the upgrade. Yesterday, my Reader was down to 2 bars on the meter, so I left it plugged into my PC all day until the "charge" light went out. When I disconnected the USB cable, the meter showed 3 bars. I did a soft reset and it went back to 4 bars.

Hope they fix this in the next update - it's a bit of a nuisance having to do a reset after each charge.

Since the soft.update I find almost the same thing.

I've waited a bit, before I jumped in the thread because I found it childish to constantly count power bars; just like driving and keeping one's eyes on the gas gauge.

But in this case I admit there is a little something unusual. In my reader's case, when I put it to charge (usb) there is no change in the power display. Like you Harry, I left the reader plugged in for a whole day and there was no change of display at all. I had to resort to a soft restart to get 'full power' displayed.
If it were up to me I'd get rid of the display altogether and wait for the failsafe to tell me about charging. That could be an option!

NatCh · 03-09-2007, 12:14 PM

I prefer having the meter ... it let's me decide when to recharge so that I can do it when I don't plan to read in the first place, rather than having to charge whenever the battery runs out, probably at a a time when I want to read (otherwise, why would I have my Reader turned on?

).

Aprilbeginnings · 03-09-2007, 12:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NatCh

I prefer having the meter ... it let's me decide when to recharge so that I can do it when I don't plan to read in the first place, rather than having to charge whenever the battery runs out, probably at a a time when I want to read (otherwise, why would I have my Reader turned on?

).

I have to agree with NatCH on this one Mr. Terrible

(grinning).... although you are right we are probably wasting a lot of time watching the darn meter, if one was going on a trip and it just died, you are screwed. I would like to know at least if the battery is getting at a low point as well so I could have that puppy charged up and ready to go. I also see charging this thing that it takes about an hour for each bar..... four hours total...... or so my experience.

jakeluck · 03-09-2007, 01:26 PM

let me get this clear, so if i plug in the ac adaptor to charge while the reader is on, then the battery weirdness gets cured?

yvanleterrible · 03-09-2007, 03:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aprilbeginnings

I have to agree with NatCH on this one Mr. Terrible

(grinning).... although you are right we are probably wasting a lot of time watching the darn meter, if one was going on a trip and it just died, you are screwed. I would like to know at least if the battery is getting at a low point as well so I could have that puppy charged up and ready to go. I also see charging this thing that it takes about an hour for each bar..... four hours total...... or so my experience.

How about if the meter was in the menus instead of constantly in our face' we'd still be able to use it easily.
That thing caused enough paranoia to justify this thread. It's like your first baby, every giggle, google and butt whistle gives you worries!

Aprilbeginnings · 03-09-2007, 03:40 PM

Ha ha, what first new baby......... never had any of those headaches <G>

yvanleterrible · 03-09-2007, 03:45 PM

You did!... your PRS!

Aprilbeginnings · 03-09-2007, 03:48 PM

HUH? what is PRS? guess I just went brain dead. English please <G>

yvanleterrible · 03-09-2007, 03:49 PM

Sorry! PRS 500...aka the Sony reader.

NatCh · 03-09-2007, 04:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jakeluck

let me get this clear, so if i plug in the ac adaptor to charge while the reader is on, then the battery weirdness gets cured?

Some folks have seen that happen -- we're not entirely sure what the issue is, so it's hard to be sure what will fix it.

03-05-2007, 09:47 AM	#38
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,557 Karma: 93980341 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	I don't know how many pages I get on a battery charge, but it's certainly SEVERAL thousand, even if not the 7,500 that Sony claim. Since I last charged my Reader I've read the whole of a 2,100 page book, and I'm 500 pages into a 2nd book, and my Reader is still showing 3 bars on the battery meter. Their claim is presumably under some sort of "ideal" test conditions, just like the "miles per gallon" claim for a car is made under the optimal conditions of driving around and around a race track at a constant speed, and bears little relationship to the way that you drive a car in the "real world". I'm more than happy with the battery life of my Reader. Last edited by HarryT; 03-05-2007 at 09:51 AM.

03-05-2007, 07:02 PM	#44
Aerlock Member Posts: 15 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2007 Device: Sony PRS-500	I just had the same problem with reader. I hadn't charged it since I updated about a week after the new firmware came out. My battery ran down and I got the low battery warning so I popped it onto the USB cable overnight and in the morning I still had the liow battery warning. I popped out my memory card and tried again. Same deal. Remembering that sometimes the system can get too low to charge off USB I busted out the AC adapter and again let it charge overnight, this time with the memory card out of it. And guess what!?! I still had the low battery warning. So being the industrious fellow I am (humble too ), I came on here and checked the forums. Finding a link to the reset instructions on the wiki I gave the soft reset a whirl. Surprise! It worked. After a wait that seemed like forever as it powered back on, my battery was back again at 4 bars and everything worked fine. Just another long wait while it indexed my memory card after popping it back in and everything was good to go. So far it seems like the battery may be lasting longer since the reset. I've not actually measured but when it "died" on me I had about 300 pages left in the book I was reading and I'm about 250 into the next and the bar hasn't moved. Before the reset I seem to recall the battery emptying faster, again no actual measurments but I noticed the battery being about a bar lower after reading a 500-600 page book. I definately agree that the 7500 page turns is under optimal conditions, 7500+ page book, start reading on a full battery that was charged after loading page 1, never turning the reader off or bookmarking a page, etc. Also something that occurred to me while thinking about my battery issue, are they ($ony) calling a page turn one change in the screen or do they include the black flash that the reader does before showing the next page? If they're just counting page turns by saying to themselves (fake numbers here folks, I don't know the real ones off the top of my head) the battery has 7.5 watts and it takes 1 milliwatt to change the screen once, so therefore we (by we I mean $ony marketing) can say it's good for (7.5 watts/1 milliwatt= 7500) 7500 page turns, then in actual usage it'd be more like 3750 if the black flash is is a screen change too. Less if you count all the bookmarks, menu reads, power on/off switching, etc. that is done during normal usage of the reader. Last edited by Aerlock; 03-05-2007 at 07:06 PM.

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02-21-2007, 12:11 PM	#31
astra The Introvert Posts: 8,307 Karma: 1000077497 Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: United Kingdom Device: Sony Reader PRS-650 & 505 & 500	What is a difference between hard reset and soft reset on the reader?

02-21-2007, 12:23 PM	#32
NatCh Gizmologist Posts: 11,615 Karma: 929550 Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Republic of Texas Embassy at Jackson, TN Device: Pocketbook Touch HD3	A hard reset completely erases on-board (non-OS) memory, and a soft reset doesn't. Other than that, the hard reset is harder to do (requires a Vulcan nerve pinch), and takes a fair bit longer to run. If, on the other hand, you're asking how to do the two types of reset, the answers you want are in the Wiki.

02-22-2007, 09:26 AM	#33
astra The Introvert Posts: 8,307 Karma: 1000077497 Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: United Kingdom Device: Sony Reader PRS-650 & 505 & 500	Thanks a lot. That's what I wanted to know. I didn't know that hard reset even exists.

02-23-2007, 01:05 PM	#34
Laurens Jah Blessed Posts: 1,295 Karma: 1373 Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: The Netherlands Device: iPod Touch	Still having problems with the battery indicator. After the reset, it nicely indicated four bars. Great, I thought, but no, it dropped to three bars after I turned it back on a day later, without any actual use. Then, after charging, it dropped to two bars!

03-05-2007, 03:19 AM	#35
Laurens Jah Blessed Posts: 1,295 Karma: 1373 Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: The Netherlands Device: iPod Touch	Any way to downgrade the firmware? I never had any problems with the stock firmware, but ever since "upgrading" to the latest version, the battery indicator is completely out of whack. Now it says the battery is completely depleted, even though I haven't used the Reader at all since (supposedly) charging it fully last week.

03-05-2007, 09:03 AM	#36
diabloNL Gadget Force® Posts: 705 Karma: 2733 Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: The Netherlands Device: Sony PRS-300 + Cybook with funny screen :P	This makes me worry. I had battery problems before the update. The battery lasted like ~500 pages or so. Now, after the update I can almost see the battery meter going down. The problem is that I don't know if I should replace the battery or not ( if I can even find it). Laurens, did you try to do a hard reset?

03-05-2007, 09:32 AM	#37
Aprilbeginnings Guru Posts: 632 Karma: 404 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Southern CA Device: Sony PRS-500 /prs 650 soon	We can't all be tearing open our readers to put in a new battery. I noticed as well, mine still goes down, sure not getting the amount of pages as sony states. That is BS IMO and if anyone gets that many page turns I sure would love ot hear about it. Could you see a reader recall here???????????

03-05-2007, 10:21 AM	#40
NormB Definately Senior Posts: 29 Karma: 10 Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Sierra Foothills Device: eBookman,Dell Axim,PRS-500	I have the same problem with the battery level indicator after my firmware update. It will not show a increase of power level after chargeing unless I do a reset. I discussed this with a Sony rep on their talk site and his conclusion was "It may be a bad battery and you will have to send it in". As long as it works I don't want to send it off and find out I have to pay to get it back. ________ Norm

03-05-2007, 10:23 AM	#41
Aprilbeginnings Guru Posts: 632 Karma: 404 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Southern CA Device: Sony PRS-500 /prs 650 soon	Then Sony put out a lot of readers with a bad battery!

03-05-2007, 05:09 PM	#42
jakeluck Groupie Posts: 193 Karma: 3252 Join Date: Dec 2004	2nd time full charge after the firmware upgrade. takes reset to get to full 4 bars from1 again,

Advert

Advert

03-05-2007, 07:16 PM	#45
RWood Technogeezer Posts: 7,233 Karma: 1601464 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Virginia, USA Device: Sony PRS-500	Based on the effort it took to get to the halfway point a few weeks back it would seem that I am getting about 7,000 page turns per charge. Since the Reader uses almost no power between turns my reading speed is not a factor in the battery life. All books are in the main memory with no SD card loaded and all books are in either the Sony CONNECT store BBeB format or LRS format. No MP3 music or pictures are loaded on the Reader. It seems that there are major differances in page turns between Readers -- more than we would expecct given normal manufacturing varriances.

03-06-2007, 08:07 AM	#46
dstampe dstampe Posts: 50 Karma: 17 Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: Canada Device: Sony PRS-500	I find the only way to get immediate "bar" gratification from a charge is to turn the Reader ON, then plug the charger into it. The display is not erased while charging, so it might leavemore of a ghost later. Interestingly, the displayed image seems to lose contrast over time when it is left displayed like this.

03-06-2007, 01:27 PM	#47
TadW Uebermensch Posts: 2,583 Karma: 1094606 Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Italy Device: Kindle	I haven't upgraded my Reader, but I also experience fluctuations in the battery bar meter. Some times the battery seems to deplate faster than other times. I have no idea what is causing this behavior.

03-07-2007, 04:14 AM	#48
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,557 Karma: 93980341 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	There definitely seems to be ongoing "battery meter wierdness" following the upgrade. Yesterday, my Reader was down to 2 bars on the meter, so I left it plugged into my PC all day until the "charge" light went out. When I disconnected the USB cable, the meter showed 3 bars. I did a soft reset and it went back to 4 bars. Hope they fix this in the next update - it's a bit of a nuisance having to do a reset after each charge.

03-08-2007, 01:37 PM	#49
Strether Guru Posts: 765 Karma: 2825929 Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Fresno Device: Kindle 1; iPad Air; iPhone 7; Kobo Libra; Kindle Oasis 3	I attempted a chat with Sony Support this morning, but they told me there's no chat support for the Reader and gave me a phone number to call instead. So, I called to inquire whether Sony officially knew that there was a post-update problem with the charge meter not registering 100% without being reset. He said they had received a few complaints about it, but said that it would help the issue if there was a larger volume of calls complaining about it. So, for what it's worth, the phone number is 1-866-962-7669. They'll ask your name, phone number and serial number of the Reader. Reading between the lines, it sounded like the greater the number of calls, the faster a corrective update would occur. Jim

03-09-2007, 10:38 AM	#50
Snassek Connoisseur Posts: 58 Karma: 61 Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Covington, KY US Device: Sony eReader	Yesterday was the first time I have had an issue with the battery indicator showing incorrectly. I let it charge the day before and after checking it after the light went out it still showed 1 bar. I thought maybe that it didn't charge so I plugged it back in overnight and when I turned it on yesterday, still the 1 bar was showing. I tried turning it off and then back on with the same result. I have read a little about the soft reset, but before I came here to see exactly what was required to reset it and what issues may arrise, I decided to turn the reader on, plug the charger in and as soon as I did that, the battery indicator reset back to showing a full charge. No soft reset was required.

03-09-2007, 12:14 PM	#52
NatCh Gizmologist Posts: 11,615 Karma: 929550 Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Republic of Texas Embassy at Jackson, TN Device: Pocketbook Touch HD3	I prefer having the meter ... it let's me decide when to recharge so that I can do it when I don't plan to read in the first place, rather than having to charge whenever the battery runs out, probably at a a time when I want to read (otherwise, why would I have my Reader turned on? ).

03-09-2007, 01:26 PM	#54
jakeluck Groupie Posts: 193 Karma: 3252 Join Date: Dec 2004	let me get this clear, so if i plug in the ac adaptor to charge while the reader is on, then the battery weirdness gets cured?

03-09-2007, 03:40 PM	#56
Aprilbeginnings Guru Posts: 632 Karma: 404 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Southern CA Device: Sony PRS-500 /prs 650 soon	Ha ha, what first new baby......... never had any of those headaches <G>

03-09-2007, 03:45 PM	#57
yvanleterrible Reborn Paper User Posts: 8,616 Karma: 15446734 Join Date: May 2006 Location: Que Nada Device: iPhone8, iPad Air	You did!... your PRS!

03-09-2007, 03:48 PM	#58
Aprilbeginnings Guru Posts: 632 Karma: 404 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Southern CA Device: Sony PRS-500 /prs 650 soon	HUH? what is PRS? guess I just went brain dead. English please <G>

03-09-2007, 03:49 PM	#59
yvanleterrible Reborn Paper User Posts: 8,616 Karma: 15446734 Join Date: May 2006 Location: Que Nada Device: iPhone8, iPad Air	Sorry! PRS 500...aka the Sony reader.