Battery life

[Elias_Maluco]

Hi all. First of all, Rockbox kicks ass and I just love it. I bought this iPod (I dint want one, but it was a very good deal and my Archos is dead, so I decided to pick it) last week and have been using Rockbox, and its just almost perfect for my needs (specially: no need for iTunes).

That said, Im kind scared about the battery consumption. This is the first day I really used the iPod a lot: got to work at 10 AM, now is 18, been listening to music almost all day long, and the battery, according to the indicator, is close to over.

Is that normal? Is there anything I can do to make it last more? Any guide, any tips? Also, I found this 'Battery Capacity' on the setting menu (inside 'System'), and its set to '400mAh'. Is that correct? Changing this does what, exactlly?

Anyway, thank you a lot (the devs) for this wonderfull piece of software and thank you a lot (forum users) for any help/advice you can give me.

EDIT: Err, sorry about posting in the wrong forum. Also, I forgot specify my iPod version: is an iPod Video, 30 gb, (5.5G).

[LambdaCalculus]

With many of the recent changes to Rockbox, battery life on the iPod video averages about 10-12 hours, depending on your settings and age of battery, among other factors. My iPod video gets about 11 hours of battery life with Rockbox, and the battery is over a year old (16 months, to be exact).

It sounds like your battery may be running down; did you happen to buy your iPod used?

[Elias_Maluco]

No, its a new one (unless is a refurb and I dont know about it).

[Zoness]

My Nano 4GB seems like it gets about that much battery life and it's two years old, I'm sure this goes without saying I suppose you could turn down the backlight's operation time so that's not running so often.

In case you don't know:
Settings -> Display -> LCD Settings ... In there are a ton of options to set relating to the backlight which is a battery killer for sure. You may also want to turn down the brightness of it as well. Since I have a Nano I don't have an HDD so I don't know of settings related to that. Hope I helped.

[Buschel]

The battery life depends on several factors. E.g. you should avoid additional audioprocessing like EQ, crossfeed or crossfading. The power consumption and battery life also is connected to the audio format you are listening to: MP3/AAC gives less battery life than MPC/FLAC. Another "trick" -- especially for the 5G -- is to leave the WPS menu and keep the player in the Main menu while playback.

[Elias_Maluco]

Hmm, makes sense. Thank you for the tips. Also, I was listening in full volume yesterday, that also might shorten the battery life, no?

[Elias_Maluco]

Self repply: I turned off some effects, like the play/pause fade, the backlight fade, the eq, set the database to load from ram, and now the battery seens to be lasting a lot longer.

Also, I looked that 'battery capacity' setting in the manual and there it says that value is used to calculate the remaining power at the battery. But how do I know that my battery is actually 400 mAh? I dint found any mention to it on the iPod manual or even on the technical specifications on Apple site. What if the battery is actually bigger or smaller than that? Then the rockbox battery meter would be wrong, correct? How do I find the exact capacity of my battery?

[soap]

Also, I looked that 'battery capacity' setting in the manual and there it says that value is used to calculate the remaining power at the battery. But how do I know that my battery is actually 400 mAh? I dint found any mention to it on the iPod manual or even on the technical specifications on Apple site. What if the battery is actually bigger or smaller than that? Then the rockbox battery meter would be wrong, correct?

The battery percentage shall always be right.  It is the estimated runtime which is scaled based on the "battery capacity" setting.

[Llorean]

Note: "Shall always be right" does not necessarily mean "100% correct" as much as "it is unaffected by the value you set for capacity, and is entirely affected by some hard-coded presets that won't change with what battery you use so there's no case where a user need edit them unless we've simply not calibrated things properly yet"

[Elias_Maluco]

Ok I got it. By the way, battery life does not seens to be so bad here anymore. The thing is on for almost 10 hours now and according to the meter there are still around 30% left.

[vocrobot]

Used Rockbox for a while last year then uninstalled it because of the battery life but after reinstalling and running an album on constant repeat it has been running for almost 10 hours and I have 34% battery left.

Mine is a 30gb iPod video and last time I drained the battery completely using the original firmware it died after 15 hours and 40 mins so Rockbox is getting really close to original firmware run times. I will be using it all the time now. Thanks to everyone who contributes to the builds and creating the great themes. I really do appreciate what you do being totally unable to program code and make my own builds.


PAUL


PS. My player died after just over 12 hours which I am very pleased with, however it died when the battery remaining time was only at 15%. Is this to prevent the battery level going too low which I know can kill Li-Ion batteries.

[thewall388]

I just got this ipod on ebay and in hindsight should have just bought a new one. They said that they barely used it so i figured it should be in great condition. It is, but after having it plugged in all day for practically 2 days, the battery doesnt last so long. Im a little scared honestly.
But before I get really scared, is there anything that I can do that might explain why it isnt lasting long? Should I try running down the battery power all the way until it dies and then charge it fully?  Is there any right way to do this?

[Chronon]

You don't say how long it lasts so it's hard to say anything specific but it sounds like you need a new battery.  In that case get a new one and install it.  Running the battery down fully before recharging it doesn't help for Li⁺ batteries.  Batteries naturally degrade with time, so even if they didn't use it that much the battery could need replacing.

[astro2]

is it me or does rockbox eat more power?

i could be wrong but when left in rockbox mode after a full recharge it runs out in less then a few days

if i leave it in apple firmware (i.e original firmware) it stays in hibernation for a long time

i haven't touched my ipod video for awhile and it still has full battery life

[Chronon]

Yes, I believe that for iPods the runtime in Rockbox is currently a bit less than in the Apple firmware.   

You could always benchmark it and add your results here: http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IpodRuntime