Battery life? Early adopters?

[bob_ninja]

Originally Posted by 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?

I don't understand how any eReader could "run for weeks" on a single charge??? The last I remember for Cybook sitting idle used to be 5 days and now is less with the latest firmware. Don't know about Sony.

Certainly some devices that spend most of the time in suspend/hibernate mode can go for a long time, but then they are not actually doing anything. Once they bring hibernate mode to DR I am sure it will keep working for weeks or months in hibernate mode.

In the past some PDAs could work on a couple of AAs or AAAs for a long time. They built custom chips and custom software that optimized power use. These days most component are standard GPUs and open source software which is not optimized for minimal power use. It is a compromise to bring down overall device cost while perhaps using more power than necessary.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by bob_ninja

I don't understand how any eReader could "run for weeks" on a single charge??? The last I remember for Cybook sitting idle used to be 5 days and now is less with the latest firmware. Don't know about Sony.

My Sony 500 I would need to charge about every 2 weeks. My Kindle I charge about that often too.

BOb

[ghostwheel]

Sorry, I know nothing about the cybook, I just assumed it is like the sony. The sony reader survives easily 2-3 weeks on reading a couple of hours each night, and flipping it off to standby between reads. I once tried to run it with a slideshow that changed a picture every 30 seconds. In this case it ran for maybe 6-8 hours, and then the battery was almost dead.


EDIT: Hmmm... I don't seem to be consistent. Both are not scientific measures. I know I need to charge the sony only every 2-3 week, but I'm not sure how many hours of reading this includes....

Originally Posted by bob_ninja

I don't understand how any eReader could "run for weeks" on a single charge??? The last I remember for Cybook sitting idle used to be 5 days and now is less with the latest firmware. Don't know about Sony.

[bob_ninja]

Using that pattern, 6 / 2 = 3 days for DR
Sure, my Cybook lasts entire month because I am a light reader. DR would last several days if used only 1-2 hours each day.

However, note who are early adopters! These are heavy duty super-readers spending several hours per day reading. So using their pattern of say 6 hrs/day, even Sony wouldn't last very long (less than a week I imagine, same as Cybook).

Another way to put it, imagine DR supported 24 hours of active use (reading, flipping pages, etc.) An active busy reader using 6 hrs/day would get a decent 4 days of use. However, a light reader like myself doing only 1 hr/day on average would get almost a full month.

The bottom line is that we expect several days of use on a single charge *EVEN* for the most active users. This is what I am looking for when the 2 modes are implemented.

[wallcraft]

The iLiad v2 has two ~1300 mAh batteries. Am I correct in thinking that the DR1000S has a single 1300 mAh battery, i.e. about half the capacity of the iLiad?

[bob_ninja]

https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/IRex_Digital_Reader

"rechargebable 1300mAh Lithium-Ion battery"

According to this a single 1300

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

The iLiad v2 has two ~1300 mAh batteries. Am I correct in thinking that the DR1000S has a single 1300 mAh battery, i.e. about half the capacity of the iLiad?

There is a thread someplace here where someone fitted in 2 high capacity batteries into a V2 iLiad. and got I think 20 hours of life.

Found it... it was two 1800 mAh batteries and the life was about 21 hours.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26505

[ppxnouse]

Very funny comment (at least for me) on the battery life from an iRex employee in the iRex Forum:

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...

Seriously.The last person I would like to hear a statement regarding such an issue from is a marketing guy. I want an engineer putting his cards on the table with an estimate on how much the battery live can be improved in the future realistically w/o changing the hardware !!!

[allovertheglobe]

Originally Posted by ppxnouse

Dam. Last person I would like to hear a statement from is a marketing guy. I want an engineer putting his cards on the table with an estimate on how much the battery live can be improved in the future realistically w/o changing the hardware !!!

No major company does that. And especially under the current circumstances where the battery life issue has devolved into some increasingly irrational rant, the engineers are certainly much better of letting the marketing people deal with it... So they can focus on trying to fix the actual issue. And then the update should speak for itself. And I'll just wait for that at this point.

[sarikan]

Almost in every company, tech guys do not like making statements about problems, issues since

- They are not good at lying, a problem is a technical issue to them, not a sales killing annoyance.
- They get heavy fire from management/sales for not being political enough.

Until they can determine a carefully crafted answer, an engineer is trying to cool things down a little bit, that is what I see here. I've done both the technical bit and the sales part in the past, so I can not really blame them; however I want my toy, and I want it to live up to my expectations, I'm not going to give up on that, especially when paying more than 400£

Kind regards
Seref

[Mambo]

It's not very good marketing if the official response arrives later than the informal one

By the way, I have no problem with the battery life - be it 3 or 8 hours (definitely not going to be 21!) - it's just sad that currently the iRex is not value for money, and whereas I would gladly pay 200 pounds for it (to use it as a toy), I will never going to cash out 400-500 pounds under these circumstances, when you can be sure that you run out of battery exactly when you would need it, e.g. on a business trip or at a presentation, and honestly I wouldn't switch it on/off every minute just to save power, by the time the system has started my customer would have left the room.

I'm so sorry, because I wanted to support them with my money, but if my sony can run for 2-3 weeks with a charge then I would have expected at least 70 hours from a professional business tool (again don't compare with a laptop - the screen uses 0 power to show a constant image, I don't care what mobile phones or PDAs are doing, this supposed to replace paper).

[ppxnouse]

No major company does that.

Other major companies in a such "new tech" areas acknowledge, that a lot of their customers are tech guys too and try to give them some hard facts instead of nebulous statements. Such companies have product managers, that have an engineering background to communicate with these customers. If I look at the history K. has, I can not rely much on his words.

I think iRex should develop a good plan - fast.

Personally I think that if there is nothing completely wrong in the 1.0 firmware (and if it was I think iRex would/should have given us some facts), that the DRs batterylife can never be boosted above 5 - 6 h w/o hardware upgrades (I would love to be proven wrong, but I do not have much hope). .

[sarikan]

Hi Frank,
I guess the problem is that DR is actually produced to satisfy a slightly different set of requirements for a more narrow customer profile then perceived. We are all now trying to accept this, or denying all together
A business user at the office reading mostly supposed to be A4 size documents is not the same thing as the dedicated book worm who wants his/her library with him/her all the time. That is the impression I get from the situation.

Kind regards
Seref

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by bob_ninja

https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/IRex_Digital_Reader

"rechargebable 1300mAh Lithium-Ion battery"

According to this a single 1300

Yes, but I think this came from Announced: the iRex Reader DR1000 #48. I'm sure Robbeli got the 1300 mAh right, but this isn't definitive on one vs two cells. We need some brave sole to open up their brand new DR and take a look. Or is there another way to confirm this, e.g. what are the limits to USB charging of batteries (could USB fully charge two 1300 mAh cells in about 5 hours)?

On one level all that matters is device run time, but if iRex put only one cell into a larger device (and delivered it with a short run time) then it really calls into question their judgement after all the battery issues with the iLiad.

As JSWolf points out, higher capacity batteries are available too. Throwing hardware (more battery capacity) at the run time issue increases the device's weight and cost, but assuming that future software advances will make everything all right seems very risky. All that iRex seems to have learnt from the iLiad is to avoid quoting minimum run times. This means that early adopters are shouldering all the risk that iRex has once again made a major miscalculation in the needed battery capacity.

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

There is a thread someplace here where someone fitted in 2 high capacity batteries into a V2 iLiad. and got I think 20 hours of life.

Found it... it was two 1800 mAh batteries and the life was about 21 hours.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26505

That bit of soldering iron surgery was performed on a V1 iLiad, not V2. (Relevant to me because I have V1, and I'm considering trying this-- I'm just waiting to see if battery expansion becomes a problem later, as iRex warned. And I might have my brother do the actual soldering, as he has more practice than I do.)