IRiver H300: New Rockbox Battery Issue?

[RoliPoli2411]

A couple of people (including me) are reporting a strange behaviour of the H300 battery in the MisticRiver forum (http://www.misticriver.net/showthread.php?t=49405) that might or might not be related to Rockbox:

- Battery that worked well in the past suddenly is empty after a couple of songs
- If IRiver is connected with computer battery dies after a few minutes (in my experience no matter if you switch on usb charging or not)
- If IRiver is not used for a while (and not charged in the meantime) battery goes back to a decent voltage level and player can be used again for a while!!!! Sounds crazy I know!
- Switching back to Original firmware does not solve the problem -> battery still lasts only a short while
- One user reported that by completely getting rid of Rockbox and re-installing clean IRiver firmware the issue was solved (but then there is no Rockbox any more, so this is not really a solution...)
- A couple of users (including me) report that this problem first happened in October
- One user reported this behaviour with a couple of different Rockbox builds

I thought it might be interesting to post this in the Rockbox forum, as the experts are reading here. Any idea what could cause this strange behaviour?

[midgey]

This is happening to a number of H300s. The problem is related to the battery and not Rockbox or any bug. In fact, my player has the same problem. If you pay close attention, the player will shut off at a spike in power usage. This frequently happens when the hard drive spins up to fill the audio buffer and will occur during recordings. It has become so bad on my player that it will even crash in the bootloader or when loading the iriver firmware. Since this it was never crashing before and my bootloader has not changed, this is a surefire sign that my battery has gone bad.

The only solution to this problem is to buy a new battery and replace your existing (following the guides on Misticriver or elsewhere). Users who reported this problem and then replaced their battery confirmed that the new battery had completely fixed the problem and they had not experienced a crash.

[RoliPoli2411]

Thanks a lot for the quick answer! Actually, this does not surprise me too much. I already planned on buying a new battery. The only thing that surprises me is that this happened so suddenly, from a fully functioning 1 year old battery to a 30 minutes wreck just after I updated a Rockbox build (the first time in three months). Although this is probably coincidence.
But anyhow a theoretical question: is there anything in Rockbox (or in a newer build) that could accelerate the dying of the battery (like a higher amount of spikes due to more frequent audio buffer fillings that could wear out the battery faster)?

[bascule]

Shouldn't be; in general Rockbox development concentrates on extending battery life by optimising the code.

[Llorean]

Rockbox actually refills the buffer more efficienty than the original firmware, as far as we can tell. At the very least, the fact that Rockbox gets better battery life than the retail firmware suggests that Rockbox puts less strain on the battery, rather than more.

The sort of battery your player has gets worse with age and heat more than use, which means it's not "A year old battery" it's "A year old battery, plus the time it was stored and the conditions it was stored in before that, not just including the time it was in the player."

[Febs]

- A couple of users (including me) report that this problem first happened in October

Look further at Mistic River and you will find that similar H300 battery problems have been reported for far longer than that, and that many of the battery issues predate when Rockbox was available for the H300.

[RoliPoli2411]

Thanks folks!
So a new battery it will be! I will tell the other people in the MisticRiver thread just in case they did not read this one...

[theone]

I recently solved the battery problem:

http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php?topic=7215.0

Solution: a new battery :-p