Clara HD - Battery Indicator Inaccurate

[Cactus Chef]

Usually when my Kobo is low on power, it will warn me that it's running low and to charge it. But on at least three separate occasions, I've had the thing completely die on me (e.g. the screen froze until I plugged it in), even though the battery had been at 50% or so when I last put it to sleep. When it happened two weeks ago I inadvertently factory reset the damn thing because I held the power button too long, which sucked, but I figured maybe that would at least resolve the freaking screen freezing problem.

No such luck. It happened again today, and I now have proof that something is very wrong here, because the frozen screen clearly indicates that it had 50% power when it inexplicably died.

Attachment 1: Kobo device completely frozen when I picked it up off my bedside table and lifted the official sleep case lid. I last used it maybe twelve hours ago this morning. You can see from the battery indicator icon that it was at least at 50%.

Attachment 2: Kobo device after it died and I plugged it back in. The device rebooted, the screen refreshed, and as soon I was able to interact with it again, I checked the charging status, and it was down to 15%.

I'm not sure what else I can do to troubleshoot here. I let the device fully discharge a couple of times in the past in the hopes that it would help calibrate the battery, but others advised that this was bad for the battery in the longterm, so I stopped. But this keeps happening, and it's getting incredibly frustrating, as I'll be sitting down to read a bit before going to bed, and then find my device dead.

Does anyone have any suggestions or next steps for this? My device is more than a year old at this point, so it's likely out of warranty. Will Kobo do anything for me if they deem the battery defective? I would've previously been concerned about losing my reading stats and side-loaded books and such, but since the inadvertent factory reset already happened, I don't have much to worry about in that department anymore. I just want the damn thing to work properly.

[ReaLx3m]

Batteries increase ressistance when going bad/get old and get higher voltage drops during current draw. So while it might have normal voltage with normal draw(like turning pages), the worst case draw can be just enough to drop the voltage below the limit that the reader would consider it empty and turn off so it doesnt overdischarge the battery.I have measured an aura one, and worst case current draw is almost double current than page turn(250ma vs 450ma).

Maybe a sync happened during sleep and draw just enough current that the battery cant handle anymore, which made it turn off. Do you have wifi on when this is happening? If so , maybe try turning it off when not needed, might eleviate the problem a bit.
If its out of warranty i doubt kobo would even look in its general direction.
Without any more info or ideally testing, it looks like you need a battery change.

[davidfor]

@Cactus Chef: That is not likely to be a battery problem. That looks like the device hung for some reason or other. It could have been during a sync as @ReaLx3m suggests. Or something else. Depending on what happened, there could be a trace log in the .kobo directory which could give Kobo a hint of what went wrong.

[ReaLx3m]

Originally Posted by davidfor

@Cactus Chef: That is not likely to be a battery problem. That looks like the device hung for some reason or other. It could have been during a sync as @ReaLx3m suggests. Or something else. Depending on what happened, there could be a trace log in the .kobo directory which could give Kobo a hint of what went wrong.

Battery being at 15% when he plugs it , contributes to my theory and makes me think it is a battery problem. But hopefully those logs will prove me wrong, and the issue can be resolved with much less hassle.

Edit:Im assuming because he already factory reseted its not a software problem. But if we remove that assumption, yes , it can be a stuck sync that actually drains the battery in couple of hours.

[Cactus Chef]

I plugged the Kobo into my PC and looked in the .kobo directory, but I'm not seeing a trace log.

Is there something special I need to do to enable it?

[davidfor]

I said "could be". The trace log is created with some crashes and hangs. It will depend on what actually happened. At this point, it will probably not be possible to work out what happened. The only thing you can do is watch for it happening and see if you can work out what was going on at the time.

[ReaLx3m]

To make sure it isnt a software issue, maybe best to do a factory reset again, and put just one book on it, to minimize posibility of a certain book making it stuck. And see if the behavior continues.

[Elektron]

Happened to me with my H2O2. Fixed now, I had to do a hard factory reset, recharge and drain a couple times.

[Uschiekid]

you mention you're using the official sleep cover. could it be a sleep cover issue? i know people have had issues where a sleep cover causes a battery drain (though i'm not sure if this is still possible with the 50% battery remaining showing). I know I've had the battery drain quickly if the cover's magnet isn't lined up properly. When new, it never happened, but as the cover aged, it happened more. it's my backup reader, so I just tend to turn the power off, since I don't really use it often enough to need the convenience of the sleep cover these days.

[Busy Beaver]

My recent problem is that my Clara keeps reporting 0% charge, even when fully charged. I did a factory reset, and it reported 100% charge correctly, but a few days later, it went from reporting nearly full charge to 0% again. Once, topping up the charge made it read correctly, but then it was back to reporting 0% ... but still continuing to work, so the battery is charged.

Since the battery does charge and hold a charge, it's not a battery problem. Since it was temporarily fixed by a factory reset, maybe it's a RAM bit failure. This is more of an annoyance than a serious problem, since i can only guess when it's actually low on charge. Charging it when it doesn't need it might reduce battery lifespan, so I'd prefer to have the indicator working properly.

I did email help@kobo.com, but never got a response.

[Canuck_in_Japan]

I made my own thread but then discovered this one. I'm having the same one. Battery appears to die even though the battery indicator says there's still battery left (in my last case, 37%). Maybe I just need to treat 40% as the new 0% and then I won't be caught off guard.

[rico1981]

Hi everybody, this interesting thread actually made me join the forum

Same issue for my (almost) 2 year-old Kobo Clara HD, it happened several times to found it with 0% battery and "Please recharge" warning message, despite the charge value seemed to be more than 50%. This happened with all the latest 3 or 4 firmware releases, so I think it is not associated to that. I don't use a cover too and it is set to sleep after 5 minutes.

So I investigated a bit and realized that it's discharging in a linear way until around 37%-40% and then drops to 0% and shuts down. I performed a manual factory reset after charging it to 100% (with the idea of calibrating the battery) and now testing if the issue has gone.

BTW I tried to contact Kobo support and they offered me a free replacement, still not mentioning if it would be a new or refurbished item. At the moment I haven't accepted the offer, even because I read kinda bad stories where it took weeks to get a new reader.

Any suggestions?

[Phil_C]

This is not new behavior:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...48&postcount=3

Also note that (before the 2E was released) I purchased two HDs hoping the batteries would be new. One was direct from Kobo. BOTH units, although new, were probably old inventory -- and the batteries acted just like my old ones. Both units were returned.

So don't count on getting an HD that will improve your situation unless the seller can prove they have installed a new battery in it.

I suggest you consider a new 2e.

[gbm]

My clara does the same when it get/stays in temperatures below 35℉, letting it warmup and charging for a few minutes plus a power off/on clears up the problem.

bernie