Battery life!

[mwlcarter]

Does anyone have a Kindle or Sony Reader, to be able to comment on whether the advertised battery life of other devices live up to manufacturers' claims?

[pholy]

I haven't actually counted page turns on my Sony, but I hardly think about it. It needs charging maybe every two or three weeks. My BeBook is also fine.

On the other hand, when I got one of the first Astak Pocket EZ reader, it's battery life sucked - worse than other people's Kobos (but mine seems to be OK). Then there came a firmware update and now the PEZ is as good as the BeBook...

So there is hope

[Thrasher]

I am running my Kobo always turned on now and so far I'm getting much better battery life...

[corona]

Originally Posted by pholy

[W]hen I got one of the first Astak Pocket EZ reader, it's battery life sucked - worse than other people's Kobos (but mine seems to be OK). Then there came a firmware update and now the PEZ is as good as the BeBook...

Interesting!

[artificial]

Originally Posted by pholy

On the other hand, when I got one of the first Astak Pocket EZ reader, it's battery life sucked - worse than other people's Kobos (but mine seems to be OK). Then there came a firmware update and now the PEZ is as good as the BeBook...

I hope the same is true of the mythical Kobo firmware upgrade!

Perhaps the firmware upgrade is taking longer than anticipated because they're trying to fix some serious power consumption bugs? It's obvious from this thread (and other like it) that there is something very wrong with the battery life of many people's Kobo Reader's, and if that's true I imagine Kobo would be very keen to fix the bug before the Reader's US release in a little over two weeks.

[Psi-Theory]

Weird, I've read a few books on my Kobo after its initial charge when I got it last Friday, and it's only 1 notch under full.

[Stinger]

Originally Posted by Psi-Theory

Weird, I've read a few books on my Kobo after its initial charge when I got it last Friday, and it's only 1 notch under full.

My guess is your haven't powered down the device at all? With the current firmware, the battery gauge seems to only update on power-up.

[Psi-Theory]

Originally Posted by Stinger

My guess is your haven't powered down the device at all? With the current firmware, the battery gauge seems to only update on power-up.

Interesting... yeah, I typically don't turn it off since it shouldn't use more power on than off anyway.

[Stinger]

Interesting... yeah, I typically don't turn it off since it shouldn't use more power on than off anyway.

Actually, no. The system is still powered-up, albeit in an idle state. It still needs to be able to respond to key-clicks, and does couple other minor things 'under the hood'. Think of it like your computer being powered up, but using 0% processing power.

How much power? well, that's certainly a key question we don't have an answer for yet (AKA "If I'm not going to be reading for at least X hours, I should power down the Kobo).
I'd assume it would be a minimum of a few hours, but don't quote me on that.

EDIT: I believe a few of the earlier posts in this thread discuss this in more detail. Also keep in mind that the power-down and power-up process uses a certain amount of juice and needs to be factored into the equation to determine X.

[artificial]

Originally Posted by Stinger

How much power? well, that's certainly a key question we don't have an answer for yet (AKA "If I'm not going to be reading for at least X hours, I should power down the Kobo).

Interesting. It would be great to know at what point someone would save more power by turning the device off/on. From what you're saying, while I'm at work during the day (8 hours without using the Reader) and while I'm asleep (again 8 hours) would be good times to power the device down to conserve battery life?

EDIT: It would be interesting to know how many poor battery life issues are due to the user leaving their device in an ON state all the time? In the ON state does the Kobo Reader draw enough power to noticeably drain the battery? I leave mine on all the time, and was under the impression that the Reader wasn't drawing any battery power while I left it unattended.

@Stinger - I realise these are probably questions you don't have answers to, I'm throwing them out there to anyone reading this thread

[Stinger]

EDIT: It would be interesting to know how many poor battery life issues are due to the user leaving their device in an ON state all the time? In the ON state does the Kobo Reader draw enough power to noticeably drain the battery? I leave mine on all the time, and was under the impression that the Reader wasn't drawing any battery power while I left it unattended.

Because of the pretty poor (reported) accuracy of the onboard battery gauge, coupled with the fact that it only seems to update on system boot, its pretty tough for me to guess at this from just general usage. Short of me opening my Kobo and playing around with an oscilloscope, I have no way to make an accurate guess :/

From an electronics engineering perspective, I know there has been a lot of effort to reduce "standby power", and modern microprocessors and integrated systems can be very efficient in idle states through various methods. How 'smart' is the Kobo in this regard? I haven't a clue.

It could very well be the case that your usage is the way to go, giving you longer use on a charge then the people that turn it on/off too often. My reading pattern lately have been pretty sporadic, and I've been playing around with Calibre and such, so I've been plugging my Kobo in pretty often for short periods, so I can't make judgments from my experiences just yet :/

[terifili]

Originally Posted by artificial

Interesting. It would be great to know at what point someone would save more power by turning the device off/on. From what you're saying, while I'm at work during the day (8 hours without using the Reader) and while I'm asleep (again 8 hours) would be good times to power the device down to conserve battery life?

EDIT: It would be interesting to know how many poor battery life issues are due to the user leaving their device in an ON state all the time? In the ON state does the Kobo Reader draw enough power to noticeably drain the battery? I leave mine on all the time, and was under the impression that the Reader wasn't drawing any battery power while I left it unattended.

@Stinger - I realise these are probably questions you don't have answers to, I'm throwing them out there to anyone reading this thread

My battery lasts around 1000 pages clicks and I power down when not in use...

[StealthyScribe]

Originally Posted by Stinger

My guess is your haven't powered down the device at all? With the current firmware, the battery gauge seems to only update on power-up.

I didn't know this. I haven't been turning mine off at all since I get really bad battery life out of it...so I guess even though I've been showing a full charge for the last 4 days, I can probably expect it to just die on me like it has in the past. The last time it showed a full charge and I powered it down, when I turned it on the battery showed just one tick and then died the next day. I only got 3 days use out of it when it did that, so since then I've tried not to turn the device off at all.

[sunami88]

Well for me, I get the best battery life when I leave the device on all the time. My first charge I powered on/off a couple of times (in and out of my bag, we need a hardshell case!), and that seemed to drain a ton of power.

Now that I've just left it on, my battery life has been fantastic. I've gotta be near 1,000 pages, whereas my first charge went by after like 400 (abysmal).

Could also be that, like I've read, it takes a few charge/discharge cycles to calibrate.

[artificial]

Originally Posted by sunami88

Well for me, I get the best battery life when I leave the device on all the time.

[...]

Now that I've just left it on, my battery life has been fantastic. I've gotta be near 1,000 pages, whereas my first charge went by after like 400 (abysmal).

I don't know if I'd call 1000 page turns fantastic but it's certainly better than 400!

It's interesting to hear that your achieved worse results by powering down between reads. It has been my suspicion that powering up the device, loading books and so forth draws a lot of power. On my current charge I am doing nothing but page turns in an attempt to get an accurate indication of my battery's reading lifespan.

I'd love to know what is the most page turns anyone has ever achieved from a single charge... Those of us who consider we are having battery problems post our numbers in this thread, but for all we know everyone else might be averaging 1000 page turns too, but consider that a perfectly good amount?!