iriver Story HD battery life, etc

[flanker27]

Hi everyone - this is my first post.
I am in Australia, and recently sent my original iriver Story back to the agent in Melbourne (CR Kennedy & Co) as I was unhappy with the battery life I was getting: compared to the claimed 7,000ish pages I was lucky to get 300. They simply sent me a new Story HD reader (not WiFi, so I guess it is termed "basic"?) saying the older Story was no longer in stock.
The battery life on the Story HD reader I now have does not seem to be any better than the original Story unit, which makes me think I must be managing battery power badly, as surely two units out of two would not have the same problem?

The procedure I follow (wrong or right!) is to set time delay to hard-turn-off to maximum available, but set time delay to sleep fairly short. At the rate I read, it should mean the unit hardly ever hard-turns-off, but regularly goes to sleep.

Please, can anyone advise if I am clearly misunderstanding battery management here? The Story HD reader came with firmware 1.13 installed - should I immediately update this? I have Ethernet cable Net access only (my computers are both old P4s), if that matters, and use Windows XP.

Thank you - Charles

[frostschutz]

Well, the reader still uses (standby) power even in sleep. If you want to save battery you have to hard turn off whenever you don't use it (e.g. when you go to sleep). Unfortunately there is no key to turn it off - so the only way to achieve it is set the hard turn off delay to minimum.

With the 1.13 firmware one of the reasons to disable hard turn off is that the reader forgets its book location and selected font size when that happens. In the newer firmware 1.28 I think the reader is able to remember those settings better. I still prefer 1.13 though since 1.28 also added other changes such as a progress bar while you read.

You can upgrade to 1.28, and downgrade to 1.13, with no problem though, so you can just update and see if you like it or not. Just make sure to always use the full firmware files, ignore whatever may be in the patches/ folder if present.

As for battery life in general, I think you are expecting too much. First of all the 7000 does not refer to pages (the way the ADE counts pages) but screen refreshes (every time you press any button); then that's just the optimal case, as in, you continuously press the button until the power runs out.

In reality you are not scrolling through the book but reading, and the reader uses power while you read (it needs to keep the ram populated, and wait for keyboard input, etc.). So while you could probably get 7000 page turns if you just kept pressing the button for 15 minutes, in reality you'll probably do 100 page turns in an hour and the reader just uses a little power in the background all the time.

You should be fine for reading for 2-3 days (unless you read non-stop during a holiday maybe). Just hook up the reader to USB charger whenever you sleep and you should be fine.

Before the Story HD I had a PocketBook 360 and its battery life was about the same. The way I see it it's prefectly normal behaviour, the battery life is still very good compared to smartphones/tablets.

[CJJ]

I just got 3 books (some were short so~700 pages total) out of a charge, 5 days. I downloaded 14 books using wifi during that time frame. Not stellar but I'm content.

One thing to note. I don't charge unless the device tells me to. I get at least 150 pages after all the battery bars are gone. Also, make you charge until battery display is solid black. It will revert to bars when you unplug it.

[frostschutz]

The battery meter does not turn solid black on the Basic / 1.13 firmware (at least not for me). You should keep the device charged at all times. The batteries don't like being discharged completely. So don't wait until the device tells you to charge.

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/a...ased_batteries

Similar to a mechanical device that wears out faster with heavy use, so also does the depth of discharge (DoD) determine the cycle count. The smaller the depth of discharge, the longer the battery will last. If at all possible, avoid frequent full discharges and charge more often between uses. If full discharges cannot be avoided, try utilizing a larger battery. Partial discharge on Li-ion is fine; there is no memory and the battery does not need periodic full discharge cycles other than to calibrate the fuel gauge on a smart battery.

[CJJ]

Good to know. Thanks frostschutz.

[flanker27]

Hi Frostschutz:

Thank you for your reply!

So, am I wrong in assuming hard turn on gobbles battery power?

I have downloaded "2011102718041679637.zip" (~114MB size: 7 .hex files) for v1.28, but have not yet tried to actually update the firmware yet on the Story HD. Is it simply a matter of dragging and dropping the uncompressed .hex files into (somewhere?) a folder on the (USB-connected) Story HD? Does this seem like it is the "complete firmware update?

Thank you for all this info! How about sleep mode: should I set it for a longer delay than hard-turn-off: ie effectively "disable" it? Or am I misinterpreting you here?

Thanks so much, again.

Charles

[flanker27]

Hi CJJ

Originally Posted by CJJ

I just got 3 books (some were short so~700 pages total) out of a charge, 5 days. I downloaded 14 books using wifi during that time frame. Not stellar but I'm content.

One thing to note. I don't charge unless the device tells me to. I get at least 150 pages after all the battery bars are gone. Also, make you charge until battery display is solid black. It will revert to bars when you unplug it.

Thank you for this info: I do charge until solid black: in firmware v1.13 it indeed does this on my Story HD, then reverts to 5 bars after unplugging USB connection. I've only ever recharged it once, as I only very recently got the unit.

Charles

[flanker27]

Hi Frostschutz:

(sorry if my verbatim quoting is rather clunky)

Originally Posted by frostschutz

The battery meter does not turn solid black on the Basic / 1.13 firmware (at least not for me). You should keep the device charged at all times. The batteries don't like being discharged completely. So don't wait until the device tells you to charge.

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/a...ased_batteries

Will read this later - thank you! (bogged down in "holidays" house-painting chores). In essence, are you saying to treat the Story HD battery exactly as you would NOT treat old Ni-Cd batteries which had the "shallow charge memory" issues? I assume charging from mains via same USB cable is perfectly OK too - ie, don't HAVE to charge via computer?

Thanks again, folks!

Charles

[frostschutz]

Originally Posted by flanker27

So, am I wrong in assuming hard turn on gobbles battery power?

No. The bootup does require a lot of power. However it all depends. Booting up once in 15 seconds would consume less power than staying in standby for hours.

Is it simply a matter of dragging and dropping the uncompressed .hex files into (somewhere?) a folder on the (USB-connected) Story HD? Does this seem like it is the "complete firmware update?

Copy the main Hex file (the large one) into the main directory of the readers internal storage. The reader will update itself automatically then. Ignore the other hex files (they are small around 10MB, whereas the large one is around 80MB). The small hex files, if you attempt to use them, could brick your device irrecoverably. Happened to several people.

In theory the small files are supposed to be used after the large one (according to upgrade instructions on the russian iriver site, instructions which are missing on the english/international one). In practice no one's tried that yet and there is no reason to anyway. With the full firmware hex you might end up with the European flavor of the firmware which shouldn't be a problem as it's still English...

How about sleep mode: should I set it for a longer delay than hard-turn-off: ie effectively "disable" it? Or am I misinterpreting you here?

It depends on your needs and personal preference. I set my own device to 24h standby too - simply because I prefer that over booting and losing my font size setting every time (I'm still using 1.13 myself which doesn't store those things). I don't worry at all about battery life - I just charge it whenever I'm not actively using it so I never run out of power.