Battery life? Early adopters?

[pthwaite]

As Zerospinboson has mentioned, irex are obviously aware of the issues and have made an initial response to some concerns on their website. I suspect a battery fix won't be immediate, but won't be long. Looks like the dictionary issue may be sorted soon though.

I get around 5.5 - 6 hrs with light use and about 3 hrs to fully charge at present.
Howard

[pthwaite]

As Zerospinboson has mentioned, irex are obviously aware of the issues and have made an initial response to some concerns on their website. I suspect a battery fix won't be immediate, but won't be long. Looks like the dictionary issue may be sorted soon though.

I get around 5.5 - 6 hrs with light use and about 3 hrs to fully charge at present.
Howard

[Mr. Goodbar]

Additional comments from the iRex forum:

Unfortunately the documentation was made before the final release was ready (because it needed to be translated). This means that there is mention of some functionality that didn't make it into the 1.0 release in favor of system stability.

Software releases of both Companion Software and Embedded Software will address this in the future, but I cannot promise features and dates for coming releases yet.

As for battery life: I expect Karel to come with an official response on that. I can say that an immediate improvement can be made in a bug-fix release. Also, we have some power management features working in a lab environment already, but we still need to iron out the wrinkles...

[HarryT]

I really hope this isn't a re-run of the iLiad battery-life fiasco, where 20h+ lifetime was promised (printed on the box, no less), but even after numerous firmware updates, barely half that was ever achieved.

[Mr. Goodbar]

Me too. I had high hopes that they actually learned something from the iLiad, but it's beginning to look like a repeat.

I can understand them wanting to get a jump on announcing the product prior to Sony's event, but maybe they should have delayed shipping a few more weeks to get some additional features (like power management) in the release. This comment on the iRex forum from an employee:

"Also, we have some power management features working in a lab environment already, but we still need to iron out the wrinkles..." gives me some concern. Mentioning "some power management features" doesn't give me a lot of confidence. I'm beginning to wonder if they really have much done in the way of power management and that there battery life claims are once again not based on anything real, but pure speculation on what they might achieve.

It is certainly beginning to feel like a repeat of the iLiad fiasco.

[tribble]

I am sorry to say this, but i can confirm the battery lifetime here. I get about 5 hours of a charge. This sucks bigtime.

The firmware i had on my edemo device alstet about 8 hours, but i thought it was an older firmware than the current one.

I am trying to find out, whats going on tomorrow, when i am at the bookfair and will talk to iRex directly.

[cjp]

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

This just appeared on iRex forum

This is excellent news indeed. When I arrived home last night, the DR1000S was fully charged with 4 bars showing (been charging since about noon). I turned if OFF about 11:30pm and unplugged it, mainly to see if it would hold a charge overnight (in case the battery issue was something with my devise). At 5 am I turned it on - and there were 4 bars showing. Good! At 6 am, I was down to 3 bars - just sitting there. Ok- still not so great.

I'm not sure how long it will run before shutting itself off, but I am (happily) beginning to think that nothing is terribly wrong with my Reader, just lousy battery life (...and the few other bugs we've disussed.)

Thanks for passing along this news!

[flyingtablet]

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

Originally Posted by Matthijs
A fix for the problem of Mobipocket dictionaries is on its way, expected this or early next week.
Somehow this regression slipped our final firmware tests.
Updated software will be 1.01 with only the Mobipocket dictionary support addressed. We want to give you this update ASAP, but we need another internal test cycle to make sure nothing else has regressed.
We're sorry for this inconvenience.
When Karel is back, I expect more communication with you about the issues raised by all of you (mainly about battery life).

This just appeared on iRex forum

What? Their technical people do not know about the battery life?
And they ask marketing people to answer?
interesting, isn't it?

[cjp]

This was posted on iRex's forum this morning from Matthijs, an iRex employee:

"This is definitely not all the DR1000S is capable of. Battery life is now limited by unfinished power management in software. That's all I can say for now, I guess we have to wait for Karel or someone else from marketing to give a more official response..."

Hmmmm. "unfinished power management in software." This seems to point to that nothing is probably inherently wrong with my DR1000S, (that's the good part) , but the bad is that we ALL probably have horrible battery life - which is essential to work with documents. Anything less than 8-10 hours without a recharge is difficult at best for most of us who read and work with PDFs.

And let's not forget, iRex touted this Reader to operate much longer than a mere 8 or 10 hours - much less the reality of 3-6 hours.

[Riocaz]

Why does this surprise anyone?

It's the iLiad all over again.

[flyingtablet]

Originally Posted by Riocaz

Why does this surprise anyone?

It's the iLiad all over again.

Some people are surprised that Irex did it again by surprising us.

[bob_ninja]

I have a Cybook and never had an iRex device of any sort, so not familiar with the history.

I will start by pointing out the battery capacity which is around 1100 mAh (give or take 200 mAh). At 3.7V it contains only 4 Wh. Compared to a NiMH AA of about 2500 mAh, or 3 Wh, this one has slightly more energy content than a single NiMH AA!!!!

Consider that an average power tool or heater pulling 9A at 120V (North America) uses about 1 kW. It would run *ONLY* 14.4 seconds on this tiny battery!!! You should understand that all of the current readers using this small 1100 mAh battery actually have a *VERY* small power source!!! Tiny really. Its main advantage is the flat shape that fits nicely into most reader shapes. Still, the actual power content is very tiny.

We should note that eReaders unlike music players and other smaller gadgets run an entire OS plus a number of apps. Other similar gadgets like fancy phones face the same issue of short runtime. So they need more power and such a small battery is really not big enough.

Trying to compare it to older readers:
- bigger screen (takes 2x or 3x more power to change contents)
- more interactive features (pen, my Cybook has no such thing)
(and later wireless still more power)
- CPU (more powerful CPU than my Cybook)
- apps (more apps, more demanding processing when you consider PDF compared to Cybook doing only basic rendering and limited zooms)

So overall this one uses more power. Which is only natural to use more power as you get more features and more speed. Even Cybook runtime has declined a lot just within a single hardware version.

Which brings me to the core issues causing this poor runtime today.

As others explained this version appears to be running at 100% throttle all the time and the future software will add other modes. However, I would point out that those "other" modes are not so trivial to implement!!!

Of course, the actual suspend/hibernate modes are easy enough to implement given a hardware spec. However, they also have some costs:
a) how much power is used to enter and exit a mode
b) how much time is needed to enter and exit a mode

[A] will impact your decision making on *WHEN* to enter a mode as you could end up using more power entering and existing say suspend mode than actually saving while in suspend mode. As an example if you used a simple rule, "enter suspend after 3 seconds idle", while in practice users will often take 4-6 seconds choosing a next option on a menu then you'll end up just wasting a bunch of power entering/existing suspend more too often. So in fact setting up the rules/logic for deciding when to enter a particular mode is far from trivial.

Same goes for [B]. As entering/exiting a mode takes time if you did it too often the device would become less responsive as you would spend a lot of time waiting for mode changes. I could easily see how this sort of error would become even more annoying to most users. So once again this is a fine balancing act between keeping a device responsive while trying to save power.

This is the same problem facing all eReader makers. The main difference is that a smaller device like Cybook is less sensitive to power usage changes as it has a great runtime. This device uses more power so it is much more noticeable.

My guess is this:
Initially to keep the device functioning properly and ensure that it is responsive they decided to simply not include the other modes. Also, it is far safer to not include those modes than to configure them in a poor manner that could actually cause mode damage than good. Thus they picked the safer route of simple omitting them for now.

Now they are working on them and in particular making sure that the decision making for switching modes is correct and makes sense. Once all the testing verifies that modes are working properly they'll release the new software and runtime will increase a lot.

All that being said we should understand that this device will never have the runtime of simpler readers like Cybook and PRS!!! On the other hand we have some general expectations like minimum 24 hours that allows one to not worry about charging all the time. So this reader needs to meet this thershold of about 24 hours, give or take a few. Otherwise they'll need to reconsider the battery choice. As I pointed out it is about time we upgrade to a bigger one.

[nekokami]

bob_ninja, thanks for the analysis of power requirements of this type of device. Even though you don't own an iRex product, I think you're aware of the history of iRex with the iLiad, and their failed commitment to better power management. While it is reasonable to point out that there are going to be limits to how long the larger, more complex device can run on the same battery as a smaller, simpler device, the fact remains that iRex has made and is continuing to make claims about battery life that are probably unrealistic, given the power requirements, power source (battery) and lack of tested power management functionality. iRex gets no slack from me on this one; putting off answering questions until "Karel comes back" doesn't help my opinion of them at all. It doesn't matter to me what iRex theoretically could do to improve the battery life on the DR1000, because I have virtually no confidence that they will ever do any of it.

[bob_ninja]

Ahhh, yes forgot to mention, I am 100% in agreement on that one.
Certainly making claims like that they cannot backup with actual data of any sort is not right. Also being vague on this issue,..., just like politicians here (we have elections in both US and Canada
Yep, they are not handling it very well. They should have stated simply initial devices have limited runtime but hope to improve it later.

Fort that reason I am waiting until the 2 modes are implemented *AND* subsequent tests show what will be the "real" runtime. Then I will re-evaluate it. For now I am not buying.

[ghostwheel]

My motorola A1200 (ming) ran linux, had a touchscreen, GSM, and ran for several days on one charge, on a single battery.
The sony (and the cybook) manage to run linux, e-ink, and one battery load will last for several weeks.
I see no reason that the iREX iliad/1000S should not be able to do he same! Does the wacom pen use so much more battery than GSM for a cellphone?

Originally Posted by bob_ninja

I have a Cybook and never had an iRex device of any sort, so not familiar with the history.

I will start by pointing out the battery capacity which is around 1100 mAh (give or take 200 mAh). At 3.7V it contains only 4 Wh. Compared to a NiMH AA of about 2500 mAh, or 3 Wh, this one has slightly more energy content than a single NiMH AA!!!!

Consider that an average power tool or heater pulling 9A at 120V (North America) uses about 1 kW. It would run *ONLY* 14.4 seconds on this tiny battery!!! You should understand that all of the current readers using this small 1100 mAh battery actually have a *VERY* small power source!!! Tiny really. Its main advantage is the flat shape that fits nicely into most reader shapes. Still, the actual power content is very tiny.

We should note that eReaders unlike music players and other smaller gadgets run an entire OS plus a number of apps. Other similar gadgets like fancy phones face the same issue of short runtime. So they need more power and such a small battery is really not big enough.

Trying to compare it to older readers:
- bigger screen (takes 2x or 3x more power to change contents)
- more interactive features (pen, my Cybook has no such thing)
(and later wireless still more power)
- CPU (more powerful CPU than my Cybook)
- apps (more apps, more demanding processing when you consider PDF compared to Cybook doing only basic rendering and limited zooms)

So overall this one uses more power. Which is only natural to use more power as you get more features and more speed. Even Cybook runtime has declined a lot just within a single hardware version.

Which brings me to the core issues causing this poor runtime today.

As others explained this version appears to be running at 100% throttle all the time and the future software will add other modes. However, I would point out that those "other" modes are not so trivial to implement!!!

Of course, the actual suspend/hibernate modes are easy enough to implement given a hardware spec. However, they also have some costs:
a) how much power is used to enter and exit a mode
b) how much time is needed to enter and exit a mode

[A] will impact your decision making on *WHEN* to enter a mode as you could end up using more power entering and existing say suspend mode than actually saving while in suspend mode. As an example if you used a simple rule, "enter suspend after 3 seconds idle", while in practice users will often take 4-6 seconds choosing a next option on a menu then you'll end up just wasting a bunch of power entering/existing suspend more too often. So in fact setting up the rules/logic for deciding when to enter a particular mode is far from trivial.

Same goes for [B]. As entering/exiting a mode takes time if you did it too often the device would become less responsive as you would spend a lot of time waiting for mode changes. I could easily see how this sort of error would become even more annoying to most users. So once again this is a fine balancing act between keeping a device responsive while trying to save power.

This is the same problem facing all eReader makers. The main difference is that a smaller device like Cybook is less sensitive to power usage changes as it has a great runtime. This device uses more power so it is much more noticeable.

My guess is this:
Initially to keep the device functioning properly and ensure that it is responsive they decided to simply not include the other modes. Also, it is far safer to not include those modes than to configure them in a poor manner that could actually cause mode damage than good. Thus they picked the safer route of simple omitting them for now.

Now they are working on them and in particular making sure that the decision making for switching modes is correct and makes sense. Once all the testing verifies that modes are working properly they'll release the new software and runtime will increase a lot.

All that being said we should understand that this device will never have the runtime of simpler readers like Cybook and PRS!!! On the other hand we have some general expectations like minimum 24 hours that allows one to not worry about charging all the time. So this reader needs to meet this thershold of about 24 hours, give or take a few. Otherwise they'll need to reconsider the battery choice. As I pointed out it is about time we upgrade to a bigger one.