Glo Glo Battery Problems

[TechniSol]

I'm at 168 hours total since charging, with 13.5 hours of that reading with lighting on low, and now at 75% according to the battery meter.

VE,

I can't say I'll be displeased if it continues like this. At least it demonstrates what you can expect from a properly working unit. Well, as long as things continue like they are...

[Mrs_Often]

Originally Posted by VelvetElvis

<sigh> I'd kill for battery life like that. Quite a contrast from 100% to dead in 72 hours.

Yes me too. However, I'm less angry at my Glo now that I know Kobo has acknowledged it's unlikely to actually be the battery.

Thank you TechniSol and moffattm for keeping us posted and making the effort to keep track!! Much appreciated. (Moffattm, the hours of sleep we count are between wake ups to check battery, that's why davidfor asked how often you're waking it up.)

I read one of the "perfect" books davidfor gave VelvetElvis and me with which davidfor has no battery draining issues. I can confirm my battery nonsense continued during sleep with that book – so, it's definitely not a book related drainage (it was a fun book though). I hope Kobo has a suspicion (or a few) of what it could be.

[samhy]

Hello Glo owners,

So the issue wouldn't battery nor book related. Well, it's narrowing down and hopefully you'll know soon what is at fault. Fingers crossed.

In the mean time, have a nice weekend with lot of time to enjoy your books

[robko]

Originally Posted by Mrs_Often

I read one of the "perfect" books davidfor gave VelvetElvis and me with which davidfor has no battery draining issues. I can confirm my battery nonsense continued during sleep with that book – so, it's definitely not a book related drainage (it was a fun book though). I hope Kobo has a suspicion (or a few) of what it could be.

I can't remember, but have any of you tried a factory reset and only put one book on it (don't allow it to add any books from your Kobo library) and see what that does? Ideally a sideloaded, non-DRM drag and dropped book. That would pretty conclusively rule out a book issue. I have to think it is book related in part since it's happening to a select group of people across multiple devices with them. The other thing would be if there was something wacked happening with an Adobe DRM account that keeps running in the background. It's baffling.

[VelvetElvis]

Originally Posted by TechniSol

I'm at 168 hours total since charging, with 13.5 hours of that reading with lighting on low, and now at 75% according to the battery meter.

VE,

I can't say I'll be displeased if it continues like this. At least it demonstrates what you can expect from a properly working unit. Well, as long as things continue like they are...

That pretty well matches my Sony PRS-T1 stats. I seldom have to look at the charge indicator.

[Mrs_Often]

Originally Posted by robko

I can't remember, but have any of you tried a factory reset and only put one book on it (don't allow it to add any books from your Kobo library) and see what that does? Ideally a sideloaded, non-DRM drag and dropped book. That would pretty conclusively rule out a book issue. I have to think it is book related in part since it's happening to a select group of people across multiple devices with them. The other thing would be if there was something wacked happening with an Adobe DRM account that keeps running in the background. It's baffling.

I've sort of done that, but with a few kepub previews, so not completely. However, I had my Olde Touch set up exactly the same with the same sideloaded books as as my Glo with no problems at all. Plus, davidfor tried the books that VelvetElvis was using whilst having battery rouble and davidfor didn't notice any negative influence on the battery at all.

I really don't know what it could be that is non book and non battery related whilst only affecting some users, but I do think it's not the books... and Kobo seems to know or suspect (?) something other than the battery at least...

[moffattm]

Originally Posted by Mrs_Often

I really don't know what it could be that is non book and non battery related whilst only affecting some users, but I do think it's not the books... and Kobo seems to know or suspect (?) something other than the battery at least...

How about usage patterns (the way you do things, i.e. how the books are loaded onto the device, whether you sleep or turn off, how long you read for, do you turn the device off before you insert an SD card or leave it on, etc)? All those sort of things are unique to each user.

There are other possibilities, such as environmental factors (temperature, etc) but I can't imagine that having much affect unless those with battery problems are living in cold climates (I'm in the southern hemisphere so it's summer and quite warm). Temperature can definitely affect battery life.

Even location could possibly make a difference, i.e. maybe something with localisation is wrong (unlikely but not out of the bounds of possibility).

In a former life I was a software engineer and these were all things we had to look at when trying to track down bugs that happened for some people and not others. I remember many years ago I was working on a team for a large book store chain here in NZ and every night sales reports were automatically printed out. Sometimes they'd print perfectly but other times there would be garbage characters in the middle of the printouts. We poured over the programs for hours without finding anything that might cause the problem. In the end we traced the problem to the printers themselves, which were housed in a sound-proof room. We concluded that they would occasionally freak out due to static electricity that had built up in the carpet of the room as people walked in and out all day. Putting them on anti-static mats solved the problem. A great example of an environmental problem!

[Mrs_Often]

Originally Posted by moffattm

How about usage patterns (the way you do things, i.e. how the books are loaded onto the device, whether you sleep or turn off, how long you read for, do you turn the device off before you insert an SD card or leave it on, etc)? All those sort of things are unique to each user.

Yes. But then: what and why. I use my Touch the same way with no problems... so then it is still firmware (new firmware; my Touch has the "old" firmware)...

Originally Posted by moffattm

[...]We concluded that they would occasionally freak out due to static electricity that had built up in the carpet of the room as people walked in and out all day. Putting them on anti-static mats solved the problem. A great example of an environmental problem!

Hah wow, that must've taken a while to find out! And a huge fat satisfaction to find such a fun solution

[TechniSol]

Well, if it's not the ebooks or the batteries, and assuming identical hardware, then it sure sounds like firmware or OS.

Not knowing if the firmware is a complete software upgrade, I wonder if the update may not have included a kernel or other software component that didn't get updated for everyone? Or if not everyone had all the same components depending on which firmware they updated from, etc. If so, some could have some leftover software components that worked OK with a former firmware, but not with the current. Who knows?

[TechniSol]

It may be apocryphal, but once upon a time the story went around that a major chip fabricator employed quite a number of women and was experiencing a far higher incidence of failures than they should have. They found that the problem was static electricity and their solution was to force the female employees to stop wearing any clothing or underclothing made from nylon when working!

[moffattm]

Originally Posted by Mrs_Often

Yes. But then: what and why. I use my Touch the same way with no problems... so then it is still firmware (new firmware; my Touch has the "old" firmware)...

Oh yes, I too think the likelihood is a bug in the firmware, I was just saying that the bug might not be triggering for everyone because people might be using their Kobo's in different ways (that's what I meant by different usage patterns).

[TechniSol]

I'm at 8 full days since charging, with 13.5 hours of that reading with lighting on low, and still at 75% according to the battery meter.

No change since last report, but I only read for a few minutes since last night. Perhaps, I'm at a plateau again like at 100%. I'll do some reading in the next 24 hours and see what happens. I would have expected it to drop a bit even just in sleep, but with small expected drops and no reading the change may not be obvious. Perhaps, it's due to limited precision, no decimal precision, so any small change is masked.

[Woodstonian]

^^^^
TechniSol ... do you ever go to Reading Life and look at Reading Stats? While reading, I'll check the battery % regularly (without leaving the page I'm reading) and it drops slowly, but as soon as I do the Reading Life check, it drops again by as much as 2%. Have you seen this behaviour?
BTW, my Glo is at 2.3.1 (r45611 12/7/12) and all my reading is sideloaded epubs.

[Mrs_Often]

Originally Posted by TechniSol

Well, if it's not the ebooks or the batteries, and assuming identical hardware, then it sure sounds like firmware or OS.

Not knowing if the firmware is a complete software upgrade, I wonder if the update may not have included a kernel or other software component that didn't get updated for everyone? Or if not everyone had all the same components depending on which firmware they updated from, etc. If so, some could have some leftover software components that worked OK with a former firmware, but not with the current. Who knows?

Interesting. I think I might do a factory reset (again), and let it setup and update via the Desktop. That's something I never do. Lets do something I never do

Originally Posted by TechniSol

It may be apocryphal, but once upon a time the story went around that a major chip fabricator employed quite a number of women and was experiencing a far higher incidence of failures than they should have. They found that the problem was static electricity and their solution was to force the female employees to stop wearing any clothing or underclothing made from nylon when working!

Hahahaha, reading that I was expecting some huge sexist comment to come, but it's actually logical and even funny. I think I'll make sure to take my bra off before doing the update via Desktop

Originally Posted by moffattm

Oh yes, I too think the likelihood is a bug in the firmware, I was just saying that the bug might not be triggering for everyone because people might be using their Kobo's in different ways (that's what I meant by different usage patterns).

Ah right okay. We're fully agreed then

Originally Posted by TechniSol

I'm at 8 full days since charging, with 13.5 hours of that reading with lighting on low, and still at 75% according to the battery meter.

Nice! My Glo's second cycle ended this morning. It was at 49% last night around 20:30 (8.30 pm ), I put it back to sleep without any use and it was dead when I looked at it this morning. That means only less than 89 hours this time, or 3.7 days. How fun.

[Mrs_Often]

Originally Posted by Mrs_Often

Interesting. I think I might do a factory reset (again), and let it setup and update via the Desktop. That's something I never do. Lets do something I never do

Right, so I'm doing that. And how fun, Desktop has decided to put ALL my kepubs on the Glo, while I'd just gone through them all one by one to decide which I wanted to not sync (most of them) with the new 2.4.0 firmware option grrr.


Edit: I suppose 2.4.0 isn't on there yet though as I only just reset and downloaded firmware. I was wondering where the annoyance would be to keep them all in my library as apposed to how I had them all deleted before. Now I know. Factory reset will be more work.

Edit2: ...and I should've saved my Kobo eReader.conf file