Ipod 5.5 gen 80GB: Significantly reduced battery life

[jaworski]

The battery life on my ipod has decreased from a decent number of hours to just a few minutes.  Just now I ran it down from, what it claimed to be, 100% to 0% purely by scrolling through menus.

This has been an incredibly rapid decline in battery life.  I'd say that earlier this week it was working normally.  Yesterday it cut out after about twenty minutes play.  Earlier today it cut out after about 10 minutes.  Now it's not lasting any time at all unless it's plugged in the mains.

Plugging it into the USB port of a PC makes no difference.  In general it hasn't been able to find the power to get itself into a state ready for connecting to the computer it seems.

Rockbox 3.4 installed using the install utility.  It's an 80GB video 5.5 gen ipod. 

Any help/suggestions/explanations will be much appreaciated.

[AlexP]

How does it behave under the Apple firmware?

[jaworski]

Pretty much the same I think.  Battery life seemed to last a little longer but then did cut after a couple of minutes of messing about with one of the games.

[torne]

If it behaves the same in the Apple firmware then your battery is probably dead

[jaworski]

Yep ok, signs do seem to pointing that way don't they!

I've been reading up on getting and fitting replacement batteries - it doesn't seem like too much trouble from what I gathered.  Any experience of this or advice for someone about to embark upon it?

Many thanks for the replies.

[GodEater]

There's not much advice to give. Sites that sell replacement ipod batteries generally have very good guides on how to do it - and it's really not that hard - I've done it a couple of times.

The toughest bit is opening the case, mind your fingers