Sage Sage battery life

[agugu]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

No, it wouldn't. I used the Sage for several weeks without the cover, and I have used it without the cover recently as well. It never drains while sleeping.

Seems they may have no power cover??
So they may not know...Same situation as you.Without power cover,the value of battery barely changes overnight or just 1-2%.
while using that cover,device keeps its battery but cover drains a lot,even 50%

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

No, it isn't the same at all. An example: I take the Sage out to read. Both it and the cover are at 100%. I read a couple of hours, then put the Sage back in the cover. The Sage is at 90%. The next day, when I take the Sage out, it's 100% as expected, but the cover is 0%. Why? Logically I'd expect the cover to be at 90%, as it only had to charge the 10% the Sage had lost. Why did it drain itself?

Your kidding, you really think that is the designed behaviour? There's a bug somewhere. For some reason the battery in the cover is being run down. It could be an error in display. Have you taken the device out of the cover and put it back in to check? And are those actual numbers? The exact battery usage of the PowerCover to charge 10% on the Sage is unlikely to be 10% of the PowerCover. Exactly how much will depend on relative battery sizes and the efficiency of doing this.

And the be clear, you agree with me about how this should work. That it isn't working properly is a separate issue.

And, of course, have you told Kobo it isn't working properly?

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Your kidding, you really think that is the designed behaviour? There's a bug somewhere. For some reason the battery in the cover is being run down. It could be an error in display. Have you taken the device out of the cover and put it back in to check?

And the be clear, you agree with me about how this should work. That it isn't working properly is a separate issue.

And, of course, have you told Kobo it isn't working properly?

It has happened several times. Of course I have taken the Sage out, put it back in, restarted, left the cover alone for a couple of days etc. etc. Still it drains itself.

Yes, I contacted the customer service. They offered to replace the cover. I'm not sure that would help if they all behave this way, and I didn't buy the cover directly from Kobo anyway. Kobo doesn't even ship to my country. Still, it seems I'll have to chat with the CS again.

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by davidfor

There's a bug somewhere. For some reason the battery in the cover is being run down. It could be an error in display.

Which still renders the cover effectively useless if it’s only giving approximately 10% of the full charge of the Sage. I haven’t seen much in the way of reviews for this cover but those I have had all been consistent in saying that it behaves as Sirtel described, which is good and bad. Bad because clearly it wasn’t ready for prime time, but good because it’s possible that it’s something that can be fixed. Though it might be a Forma lightbar issue where there’s something fundamentally wrong with the design causing the issue*.

I’ll agree with you it shouldn’t be 10% to 10% unless the battery in the cover is bigger since there’s going to be some loss in the charging process. But as it is I wouldn’t want to buy the case now and hope Kobo resolves the issue since it’s not a minor bug, rather it’s one that effectively makes the case pointless.

[Sirtel]

Perhaps Kobo is already aware of this bug and is working on it, and that's the reason why the power cover seems to be mostly unavailable?

I would be ecstatic if it could be fixed via a software update. But I'm not holding my breath.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

Which still renders the cover effectively useless if it’s only giving approximately 10% of the full charge of the Sage. I haven’t seen much in the way of reviews for this cover but those I have had all been consistent in saying that it behaves as Sirtel described, which is good and bad. Bad because clearly it wasn’t ready for prime time, but good because it’s possible that it’s something that can be fixed. Though it might be a Forma lightbar issue where there’s something fundamentally wrong with the design causing the issue*.

I’ll agree with you it shouldn’t be 10% to 10% unless the battery in the cover is bigger since there’s going to be some loss in the charging process. But as it is I wouldn’t want to buy the case now and hope Kobo resolves the issue since it’s not a minor bug, rather it’s one that effectively makes the case pointless.

Your right, it is pretty useless as it is. But, there is absolutely no way that it is the intended behaviour. Something is wrong and hopefully it will be fixable with a firmware update to the device. As there were some battery life fixes for the Sage in 4.31, maybe someone with a PowerCover can try an older firmware version to check it wasn't introduced by these changes.

And for the record, @John Hopper appears to have said it is working correctly and as I would expect. But, @JSWolf responded to that post say, "That's not how it's supposed to work." I asked him how he know and he hasn't bother to tell us. When @Sirtel responded to that, I explained how I expected it to work. I missed that @Sirtel was trying to say that the PowerCover battery drained completely if it started charging the device battery. It was only @Sirtel's next post were it was clear, to me at least, what was actually happening. And that is behaviour I would be completely stunned to think was the intended behaviour.

The other person weighing in on this is @agugu. They have made a statement on how it is supposed to work: "it's supposed to charge the sage below 30%or 50%". I'll ask the same question that I asked @JSWolf, where do you get this information from? It is not mentioned anywhere I can see (the store page at https://au.kobobooks.com/collections...wercover-black and the help page at https://help.kobo.com/hc/en-us/artic...ge-PowerCover-)

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Your right, it is pretty useless as it is. But, there is absolutely no way that it is the intended behaviour. Something is wrong and hopefully it will be fixable with a firmware update to the device. As there were some battery life fixes for the Sage in 4.31, maybe someone with a PowerCover can try an older firmware version to check it wasn't introduced by these changes.

My Sage is on 4.30, I haven't updated it. Actually I should, because of those fixes, but 4.31 introduced other bugs (not battery-related), so I've not done it yet.

[NiLuJe]

Keep in mind that, *in the very specific case of the 0% report*, there's a bug/race in which reading the cover's battery gauge will fail (as in, the actual `read` call fails) for a short while after plugging in the cover (and possibly on resume after suspend). This is fairly badly handled in Nickel as reporting 0%, instead of displaying the last-known-good value.

If it doesn't actually display something meaningful after a few minutes, though, then never mind me, it actually did drain the battery somehow ;o).

Everything isn't entirely kosher with the cover, though, it also has a tendency to trigger spurious USB events (both plug & host), and will trigger an USB reset when it crosses a charging threshold, which may be highly problematic if that happens during an USBMS transfer .

[ddavtian]

Just another data point: if my Sage is at 80% and cover is 100%, I put Sage inside, next morning Sage is 100% and cover is around 75-80%, not lower. I have tried it few times and have never had cover going to 0. May be I'm lucky.

[LouisPiper]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

Everything isn't entirely kosher with the cover, though, it also has a tendency to trigger spurious USB events (both plug & host), and will trigger an USB reset when it crosses a charging threshold, which may be highly problematic if that happens during an USBMS transfer .

How cow, is that what's happening? My PowerCover seems to bleed charge like in the rest of this thread. Sage at 90%, pop into cover, Sage at 100%, PowerCover at 75%. The biggest issue though is when I drop it on USB to move some books and charge the cover and Calibre tells me my device is disconnected although the Sage says otherwise. Super aggravating when this happens and already had a corrupted database once because of it.

I wonder if PowerCover stability is something that could be worked on from the dev community? I'm sure Kobo will catch up eventually. The problem is eventually is quite the long time.

[martinot]

Originally Posted by ddavtian

Just another data point: if my Sage is at 80% and cover is 100%, I put Sage inside, next morning Sage is 100% and cover is around 75-80%, not lower. I have tried it few times and have never had cover going to 0. May be I'm lucky.

Looks like it is more of a QA issue with the Power Cover (and/or the Libra 2). You are probably lucky!

[OuyangZhu]

I use kobo sage, 20% brightness and WiFi/Bluetooth off, I'm getting about 10% battery drain per hour. Especially I set global refresh once in 10 pages, I found the frequency of global refresh is key point battery draining.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by OuyangZhu

I use kobo sage, 20% brightness and WiFi/Bluetooth off, I'm getting about 10% battery drain per hour. Especially I set global refresh once in 10 pages, I found the frequency of global refresh is key point battery draining.

Also turn down the brightness.

[koboy]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Also turn down the brightness.

yes boss


best wishes koboy

[martinot]

Originally Posted by koboy

yes boss


best wishes koboy

Turn it off. Solves all the problems with poor battery life.