Terrible battery life on the iPod 5G.

[JALuke]

Hi, sorry if I'm posting in the wrong area, but I believe this is the correct one. I ran a quick search, and couldn't find the answer to my question. I've also read the manual twice. Anyway, I installed Rockbox on my 30 GB 5G iPod last night, and I tried using it today. The battery lasted an hour, max. I'm not really sure how long exactly, as I tried using it a couple times, but I think it was about forty minutes. I have no idea what would cause this terrible battery life. On the Apple firmware I usually get over twelve hours of playback. Note that I barely played with the settings and menus while listening to music. Anyway, I hope I can solve this in the next hour, tops.

Thanks for looking.

[Jakeworld]

Unfortunately for Rockbox on iPods, vastly decreased battery life is an issue plaguing all generations of the iPod, although a single hour seems to be a rather low number. I tend to get around 4-5 hours with Rockbox on my iPod Color with frequency scaling, while with Mikeage's 'No Frequency' build roughly half that number. This is an issue that will hopefully be fixed in the near future, but for now it remains a sacrifice.

[JALuke]

Ah, I see. I thought I messed up somewhere or something like that. Well I guess I'll just have to uninstall it and wait a while then. It didn't even last my bus rides from and to home today, with about twenty minutes of listening in between. Thanks for the response.

[GodEater]

You could always just boot into the AppleOS whilst on the bus ?

[Febs]

This page will give you an idea of the battery runtime you can expect:

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IpodRuntime

While it is true that battery life at the moment in Rockbox is significantly less than that of the original firmware, forty minutes is not typical.

[Llorean]

Did you wait until the iPod actually shut down from low battery, or did you turn it off after it reached a certain percentage?

[Toxikator]

I get great life, I don't know what you guys are doing

I take it with me at 8:00 AM and get back at 9:00 PM... it's not on for all of that time but I've never seen the bar below 50%.

You might try turning off the fade-out on pause (do this anyway, it makes it more responsive), load the DB to RAM if you use it, and make sure to LEAVE IT ALONE.

that backlight will kill you. If you just pick your song, play it, and then leave it until you know what you want to listen to next it works great.

EDIT: Also, I don't know how the iPod screen works, but if it's like most, then it uses less energy the darker the screen is. My theme is a modified Blackglass with a black background (except for a black-and-red solar eclipse image). I got rid of essentially all whites to eliminate font reading problems; and I got rid of that highlight bar in favor of the little arrow.

So I have a really REALLY dark, simple skin, which is probably going to use less light and energy when backlit than a lighter-colored theme.

[xlarge]

EDIT: Also, I don't know how the iPod screen works, but if it's like most, then it uses less energy the darker the screen is. My theme is a modified Blackglass with a black background (except for a black-and-red solar eclipse image). I got rid of essentially all whites to eliminate font reading problems; and I got rid of that highlight bar in favor of the little arrow.

So I have a really REALLY dark, simple skin, which is probably going to use less light and energy when backlit than a lighter-colored theme.

Sure?
I'm thinking "backlight".
Not oled... So if backlight is on you are using "this" much energy per second. It doesn't matter if your lcd is blocking light or not.
I'd argue that, even though it's probably not measurable; running dark images or dark background color rather than none, ie white, would cost you more energy since you have to have your pixels set.

[Toxikator]

Sure?
I'm thinking "backlight".
Not oled... So if backlight is on you are using "this" much energy per second. It doesn't matter if your lcd is blocking light or not.
I'd argue that, even though it's probably not measurable; running dark images or dark background color rather than none, ie white, would cost you more energy since you have to have your pixels set.

Well, that's just it. It seems to me that the iPod 5G (the video) uses a pixel-panel screen like a laptop... so pixels (and subpixels) are either on or off, not like a backlit LCD. But again, I don't exactly know how the 5G screen works. I use the term "backlight" becuase that's what Rockbox uses in the settings panel, but I think on the screen it's just a "light intensity" or "brightness" fade.

[xlarge]

If it's an oled, ok. If not it is backlit.

[Toxikator]

AFAICT it's identical in form and function to a flat-panel LCD. I always assumed that LCDs worked by enabling/disabling subpixels (in a similar manner as CRTs) so, theoretically, having black pixels meant having no light generated.

Evidently this is incorrect... so there goes that theory!

[saratoga]

EDIT: Also, I don't know how the iPod screen works, but if it's like most, then it uses less energy the darker the screen is.

Theres virtually no displays that work like that.  Future OLED and SED screens will, but they're not in wide spread production yet.

AFAICT it's identical in form and function to a flat-panel LCD. I always assumed that LCDs worked by enabling/disabling subpixels

They do work the same as a laptop, but like a laptop, a light and a dark pixel use the same energy since the color is determined by attenuating a constant light source, not modulating the brightness of it.

Incidentally, CRTs work very differently then LCDs, but they also use essentially constant power too.

[soap]

I get great life, I don't know what you guys are doing

I take it with me at 8:00 AM and get back at 9:00 PM... it's not on for all of that time but I've never seen the bar below 50%.

If you can beat my (David Hall) times on the IpodRuntime wikipage in a controlled test, I'd like to hear about it.  For even if you are only claiming a 50% duty cycle during the day - achieving (13/2) 6.5 hours on 50% battery is quite a feat, and I'd like to learn how to extend my runtime similarly.

[Toxikator]

6.5 actual playing hours encompasses more than the average use in a 12 hour day for me.

Is there anyone who actually uses their iPod for that long? I mean, the only way I can figure is you're on the bus for 3 and a half hours a day or something; at home or at the office (or in your car) I would assume you're using an adapter of some kind.

I charge mine daily, pop it out of its dock (which connects to my home stereo) when I head out to campus, I probably have it on for a solid 3 hours on a long day (going to and from and around campus). I only use it when going to and from class (listening to music, so backlight off) or waiting for a class to start (playing games, so backlight on). On a good day I'll come home for lunch and charge it there, but even if I don't, I make it to the end of my day easily.

Certainly nothing that ever concerned me... If it's that bad, you should get a travel battery, they're not too bad.

[Llorean]

Your logic is "You should pay money if a device isn't living up to what it should be able to do."

There's no denying that battery life on iPods sucks in Rockbox, but it will get better eventually. It may just be a long way off.