Arc Kobo Arc Battery Indicator

[mesamuel]

Hello all. I have had my Arc for a week and a half and I love it. I have no issue with the battery life, however, the battery indicator doesn't seem to be working properly. I charged my Arc overnight and did not unplug it until the following afternoon. When I started using it, the battery showed 100% and did not move for the next 4 hours even though the wifi was on and I was playing games the whole time. When I clicked on the battery icon and opened the Settings, the battery was still showing 100%. I decided to power it off, then turn it on and sure enough, the battery was at 2% and I had to recharge the Kobo. Today I was using it and the battery was slowly discharging as it used to but then it got down to about 30% and shut down on me.
Any suggestions on how to fix this? What could the problem be? Everything was fine until I left it on the charger for a long period - but does that even matter? Should I exchange it?
Thanks for your help!

[RareBird]

Very strange. I tend to plug mine in at night and leave it until the next morning when I charge it and I've never seen this behaviour with mine. Could be a software issue and or a battery issue. I'd do a reset of the device and see if that helps. If not exchange it.

[mesamuel]

I did a factory reset yesterday to see if that would jump start the battery indicator into behaving itself. I thought it was working even though I was a little suspicious that the battery was draining too slow. I checked the battery stats - 50% discharging with 12h 34m remaining (!) - and 10 minutes later, the Arc shut down due to low battery.
I am going to give it another day and see if anything changes. If not, I'm going to head over to Future Shop to exchange it.
Does anyone know if you can "overcharge" a device nowadays?

[RareBird]

As far as I know overcharging is not an issue. The battery draws the power it needs to reach full and then the device (or charger I'm never sure which) cuts off the flow to the battery.

[mesamuel]

Thank you for your help, RareBird. I gave it another day but the battery indicator is not giving an accurate picture of the time remaining. It shut down on me at 32%. It's odd, though, if I charge the battery so it falls short of 100% then the indicator works just fine. It shuts down as expected when I reach about 4%.
Anyway, I'm off to exchange it after I do an factory reset.

[RareBird]

I hope you have better luck with your replacement. It definitely sounds like a faulty battery at this point.

[mesamuel]

I realized I never came back to update my post. Anyway, I exchanged my Kobo for a new one and everything has been A-OK since!

[colinstrangeways]

On Saturday evening my Kobo Vox E Reader indicated that it was low on power despite being attached to the mains. Instinctively I knew the batteries were about to fail but undaunted I sought assistance hence why am now a member of this site. Thanks to everyone for all the useful advice and I tried everything believe me! Somewhere in the recess of my memory I recalled a BBC Watchdog report about limited battery life of approximately one year regarding the Kindle and I remember this being one of the considerations that led me to purchase Kobo in the first place. I searched through my bank statements to ascertain when I originally bought the tablet and guess what - yes you're right - May 2012. Spooky or what? I assume I may not be the only person to whom this has happened, unless I am being singularly paranoid, and I would appreciate if anyone could point me in the right direction of what they did to rectify the situation. Clearly WHS do not consider this a problem because there is no mention of any such problem, nor what you can about it, anywhere on their site. I kept all the original packaging until just about 3 weeks ago when I decided a clear out was in order - see irony - its overrated.