Kindle 3 Battery Life-Compare info here

[Outrager]

Originally Posted by clintbradford

-Charging method - are you charging per Amazon's recommendations? And if not, how are you charging to ensure proper/complete charges?

What exactly is Amazon's recommendation? My understanding is that when I first received it I should charge it until the light turns green. Is that correct or should I have charged it for 24 hours or something?

[jstevens75]

This is not meant to be a scientific study. Just trying to give people an idea of what to expect in the real world. I see people posting battery percentages...is that just an estimate from the bar icon? Please keep posting your battery life usage stories.

Thanks!

[Tiersten]

You can get more accurate readings of the battery if you do ;dumpMessages and review the log. You'll have to search around for it though as the logs do contain a large amount of other information.

[Pastiden]

I bought a kindle 3 wifi two weeks ago. Initially battery life looked okay (loaded 11 books and a newspaper). Kept wifi on and I read approx 2 hours/day. First recharge was after 7 days.
I then took a trip through Heathrow. Whilst in the BA lounge waiting for my flight I tried to connect through the free wifi. This locked up my Kindle (went to clear screen). After attempting a reboot (slide the on-off switch and hold in the on position for 20 seconds) the Kindle restarted but the battery lift from then was awful - 3 day from full charge to empty. When back at home this cycle continued for two more charges i.e. 3 days from full charge to empty. I was about to return the Kindle to Amazon but first recharged the device and fully rebooted it again (as above). Since then the battery life has been excellent - after three days the battery symbol is still showing full. I think that my Kindle must have got into a processing loop and hence discharged the battery ultra-quickly. The Kindle now seems fine.
So, if you are experiencing battery life issues, go for a full reboot and battery recharge before sending the Kindle 3 back to Amazon - good luck!

[schechow]

I connect my Kindle-3 at least twice a day to transfer some ebooks from my laptop. Every time upon the connection,the screen will indicate that battery is not charged. Now here comes the question: why it is not being charged while the kindle is connected with the PC as we know usually the PC will charge the gadget when connected.

So in my understanding, it is charged when Kindle is plugged into the PC. Is it harmful,for example my Kindle's battery is alreadly 100% full of power, that I connect the kindle too many time a day with the PC?

[hellraiser06]

Kindle is always charged when connected to the PC. Also, it should not harm the device in any way if its already charged 100% and is still being charged. If it does, then before us, Amazon and all the other zillion manufacturers must have turned on some safety feature in the devices thay make. I have not heard about any device getting destroyed because of charging even when its charged beyond 100%. My iPod nano 4G generally remains connected to the wall all the time. Its still going strong for 1 and a half years now....

[Doug Huffman]

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/

[RexGalore]

My first charge with my kindle 3 WiFi gave me this:
*24 days of use
*25314 locations read, which boils down to somewhere in the region of 2500 pages with the size and font I'm reading (plus that I know I have gone back a few pages a couple of times).

So I'm very satisfied with the battery performance!

[Blossom]

I got my Kindle 3 WiFi+3G last Wednesday and charge it for 4 hours. I have had WiFi on and only added about 30 books to it using Dropbox or mailing to the free address. I read about every other day for about an hour. I use the lighted cover for two hours a few days ago that's it.

Tonight I was nearing the end of my book and the battery gauge was a little less then half when I notice page turns were suddenly blacker. Before the page turns happen so fast I didn't even notice a flash and the pages had more shadow of previous pages something that happen on my old reader when battery is low so I'm guessing this is a sign the Kindle's battery is low even though it's showing the gauge a little below half way?

I rebooted after reading here that helped them before charging and the Kindle is now plugged into the wall for it's second charge.

I guess I will now leave WiFi off only use when needed. I guess what I am asking is this normal for the 3G model? I upgraded to Kindle 3 from an ereader that I only charge once a month before it got cranky so only getting a weeks use after light use concerns me a bit.

[RexGalore]

Originally Posted by Blossom

I got my Kindle 3 WiFi+3G last Wednesday and charge it for 4 hours. I have had WiFi on and only added about 30 books to it using Dropbox or mailing to the free address. I read about every other day for about an hour. I use the lighted cover for two hours a few days ago that's it.

Tonight I was nearing the end of my book and the battery gauge was a little less then half when I notice page turns were suddenly blacker. Before the page turns happen so fast I didn't even notice a flash and the pages had more shadow of previous pages something that happen on my old reader when battery is low so I'm guessing this is a sign the Kindle's battery is low even though it's showing the gauge a little below half way?

I rebooted after reading here that helped them before charging and the Kindle is now plugged into the wall for it's second charge.

I guess I will now leave WiFi off only use when needed. I guess what I am asking is this normal for the 3G model? I upgraded to Kindle 3 from an ereader that I only charge once a month before it got cranky so only getting a weeks use after light use concerns me a bit.

I have noticed that it also flips pages a lot slower when it gets cold.

Since you charged it before it actually died it (to me) feels a bit odd to actually complain about the battery. I let mine run completely dry the first time, both to calibrate it and to see how much I could get out of it. When the battery starts running low you get a pop-up on screen warning of low battery. After this pop-up first appeared I still was able to read about a further 250-270 pages.

So loading it when it shows almost 50% and calling the battery bad seems weird.

But as stated in different threads here the lighted cover drains quite a lot also. I heard someone quote 20 hours reading with the light on. And I don't know if that was with wifi and/or 3G on either. So could be even less...

[Blossom]

I'm not complaining at all just a new Kindle user wanting some information please. I just had it for a week and wanted to hear from others to make sure it's not defective.

My only experience is with my old reader which got cranky like that when the battery was low due to buggy firmware you could not trust the battery gauge on the reader so I was asking if anyone else's reader got cranky like that and what it meant. I decided to charge it to see if that fixes the problem to confirm if it's a low battery or not.

It was acting very slow as well all of sudden besides blacker page turns, letter from previous pages faintly showing on the next page. On my older reader it did this when the battery was low so I just assume maybe the Kindle acts the same but from your posts it sounds like it works more like a netbook type battery then my previous reader acted just cranky when the battery was low.

Which brings me to next question. Will it shorten the battery life to not let the battery run down before charging it? On my older reader they told us to never let the battery go past two bars before charging. When it the best time to charge the Kindle?

[Solicitous]

Originally Posted by Blossom

I'm not complaining at all just a new Kindle user wanting some information please. I just had it for a week and wanted to hear from others to make sure it's not defective.

My only experience is with my old reader which got cranky like that when the battery was low due to buggy firmware you could not trust the battery gauge on the reader so I was asking if anyone else's reader got cranky like that and what it meant. I decided to charge it to see if that fixes the problem to confirm if it's a low battery or not.

It was acting very slow as well all of sudden besides blacker page turns, letter from previous pages faintly showing on the next page. On my older reader it did this when the battery was low so I just assume maybe the Kindle acts the same but from your posts it sounds like it works more like a netbook type battery then my previous reader acted just cranky when the battery was low.

Which brings me to next question. Will it shorten the battery life to not let the battery run down before charging it? On my older reader they told us to never let the battery go past two bars before charging. When it the best time to charge the Kindle?

My battery is just below half and I had a quick page turn test, it is a little slower than normal however it did speed up when I turned off wi-fi.

Some thread here (a search will find it) someone calculated the lighted cover will drain the Kindle battery in around 20 hours, so your 2 hours would have knocked off about 10%, plus whatever was used in indexing the 30 books you put on it. You also have the 3G, AFAIK when you turn wireless on both wifi and 3g turn on, and Amazon say 10 days reading with the wireless turned on for that model. I know when our first Kindle turned up it chewed through the battery in the first few days as I was web surfing etc (however overall we got 4 weeks).

I generally keep wireless off on my Kindle. I don't get periodicals and the simplicity of syncing the Kindle and being prompted to turn the wireless on etc is not a real issue given the increased battery life.

I don't think it is defective. I reckon you'll find after a few charge/discharge cycles it will look better. I don't believe the battery life will shorten, it has a similar battery to the Pocket Pro, and I personally feel the same methods should be used, charge/discharge fully 2-3 times to calibrate the battery, then charge from about 50% or so and every 10-15 partial charges do a full discharge/charge just to recalibrate.

[RexGalore]

Originally Posted by Blossom

I'm not complaining at all just a new Kindle user wanting some information please. I just had it for a week and wanted to hear from others to make sure it's not defective.

My only experience is with my old reader which got cranky like that when the battery was low due to buggy firmware you could not trust the battery gauge on the reader so I was asking if anyone else's reader got cranky like that and what it meant. I decided to charge it to see if that fixes the problem to confirm if it's a low battery or not.

It was acting very slow as well all of sudden besides blacker page turns, letter from previous pages faintly showing on the next page. On my older reader it did this when the battery was low so I just assume maybe the Kindle acts the same but from your posts it sounds like it works more like a netbook type battery then my previous reader acted just cranky when the battery was low.

Which brings me to next question. Will it shorten the battery life to not let the battery run down before charging it? On my older reader they told us to never let the battery go past two bars before charging. When it the best time to charge the Kindle?

Like previous poster said: you don't need to worry about the battery. I say it might be a good idea to let it run down once, but that's mostly to calibrate it so the battery-meter is more accurate. After that just charge it once in a while. The type of battery in the kindle (LiPo) isn't as sensitive to exact charges as older types of batteries. If you feel it's getting a bit slower, then charge it. Or let it charge when you transfer books from your computer. Just go with it and don't worry!

And as I said in my previous post, the only time I really felt my K3 slow down was when it had gotten cold (it's freezing outside where I live). When the battery was low and it gave me pop-ups to warn me about it it might have been a little slower, but nothing that bothered me.

And by the way, you know how to do a page refresh right? If you see ghosting from previous page just press alt+G and the screen will do a full refresh.

[Blossom]

Thank you Solicitous! It's good to see you here! I have turned off wireless and will only turn on as needed. It's good to know it's normal rundown but next time I will let it run down completely before charging it again.

RexGalore, Thank you! I didn't know about the full refresh shortcut. I will try that next time the ghosting happens. It might of been cold in the room I didn't think of that because I've been feverish for a week now (Severe Sinusitis) so nothing is cold to me right now.

[jocampo]

Hi All,

New to the forums ;-) ... and about 10 days using my Kindle DXG.

I bought it two Sundays ago and after 5 days of usage, I got the pop up screen asking for battery, that was a Friday. So, I recharged but this time stop using 3G and turn the auto-rotate feature off. Today is Tuesday, about 5 days after second charge and it's below half I think. Is this normal?

I should say 1st week I read a lot and of course, was playing a bit with the 3G and browsing. After 2nd charge, I stop using 3G at all.

I do have the feeling there is something wrong with the battery life but would like to hear opinions 1st.

Thanks in advance,