Is it normal for rockbox to EAT the battery?

[loser_guy]

So I've been using rockbox for a week or so and it seems like the battery is completely killed within 2 hours of just listening to music, no games or anything..


Is this normal? If so I might switch back to the apple os.. sometimes it would last like 3 or 4 hours even after the battery turned red...

[zajacattack]

Well, it really depends. If you never use the backlight, it will last much longer. The battery's age affects it too. There are a lot more factors than rockbox to consider here.

[LambdaCalculus]

Since you mentioned Apple OS, that means you're using an iPod. Which model, though?

Also, please remember that Rockbox isn't 100% optimized for many of the PortalPlayer targets (iPods included), so battery life is not at its best. I have an iPod video that can give me nearly 9 hours of battery life, and an iPod color that only gives me 5 hours (the battery's dying on it anyway).

[AlexP]

On the later generation iPods rockbox uses more battery than the Apple firmware.  On other players (early iPods, iriver H100, H300, iaudio ...) rockbox uses less battery that the original firmware.  The reason is incomplete hardware knowledge.  Check out the iPod runtime page on the wiki for more details.

[baobab68]

I don't know much about the iPod releases of Rockbox, but on iRiver there is an option called Directory Cache, which might also help a little.

[LambdaCalculus]

Directory Cache is on the iPod models as well. Try enabling it.