Terrible battery life on the iPod 5G.

[soap]

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.

My "office" is outdoors.  I work 10 hour days.  I use my iPod 90% of the time I am working.  My 60GB 5th gen has rarely died on me.  Normally it only dies when I get crazy about creating/changing playlists.

[Yotto]

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

I frequently get below 25% on my battery.  Maybe twice a week or so.  When I'm at work, my ipod is on almost the entire time, listening to music.  When I'm asleep, it's playing until I wake up for the nightly pee.  When I'm not at work or sleeping, it's almost always strapped to my arm, and more likely than not playing.  The only exception is when I'm using my ears for something like television, talking to people, or doing my show.

While at work on in bed, I have easy access to a computer to plug the ipod in.  When I'm not, it's on battery the whole time.  Generally, there's always less than 6 hours between times when I can plug in, but on off days I find myself budgeting fairly frequently.  If I could get 10 hours, I'd likely not ever have this problem.

Not that I'm complaining.  Were it not for Rockbox, I'd not use the iPod at all because I can't stand iTunes.

[PHK Brasil]

♪
Mine is an iPod 5G 60gb 64MB buffer, Hardware EQ + Crossfeed ON

Rockbox spends several time filling buffer while music is playing = About 50 seconds

If I pause music, then buffer is filled fast = About 15 seconds

I allways play full albums. So, I think is a good idea when start to play a playlist, imediatelly to press PAUSE when the WPS screen appears. Wait till the HD stops, and then press PLAY.

I use Repeat OFF.  Then I only start another playlist, after the current album ends.

Of course, when HD spins in the middle of an album, then the buffer is filled while music is playing.

I really don't know if this PAUSE process saves significant battery power, but... It's "overwhelming" to feel the HD vibrating and fighting against CPU while filling buffer in PLAY.

Could anybody say?

Thanks.

Sorry about my english.
♪

[Toxikator]

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.

My logic is more "if your battery is dying then you should get a bigger battery."

either that or get to work on the source code.

Be real, will this thread make the battery life better? It's not like someone's gonna go "You're getting bad battery life?! ...shit, here it is, 'HoursOfBatteryLifetoDrainForNoReason=3'. Let's just change that..."
 

[tembich]

i can't stand how it could be??
why some of RockBoxers have long battery life and some (like me and author of topic) find their iPods dead in the middle of the day?
i listen my 5G in middle volume, 320kbps, EQ on and Technics 1211dj.
it never played longer than 4 hours..

may be there are some hiden featers which are supposed to be on/off?


2Llorean:
i could not find  PortalPlayer documentation.
i guess that if one cant find it in Russia - its really TOP secret )

... waitng for better times for buttery )

[saratoga]

lithium batteries die pretty quick.  If you've had the thing for a year or so, you'll get a lot less charge.  Fortunately, replacements are really cheap on ebay, so I swap mine every so often.

[Toxikator]

I didn't realize the 5G even came apart?

[saratoga]

I didn't realize the 5G even came apart?

Replacement batteries come with little plastic tools you slide into the joint to pop it open.  Then you unplug the existing battery, and plug in the new one.  It took me 15 minutes the first time since I was afraid of breaking it, but once you see how its put together you can do it very easily.  

Check youtube or google if you want to see videos of it.

[Cabbalistic]

I have had a 5G 30GB Ipod video for nearly a year now and my main quibble with the Apple firmware has to do with the pathetic equalizer options.  I discovered Rockbox yesterday night and installed it after reading positive reviews. I loved all the extras it had to offer and was fiddling with the settings when I realized the battery was nearly out. Granted that it was only half charged to begin with but  it would have given at least another 4-6 hours of playback on the original firmware; I only got about three quarters of an hour with Rockbox.  What's more, after I restarted my Ipod with the original software, without recharging the battery, the indicator jumped to a quarter charged green bar from the nearly empty signal of the red bar....

I suppose I'll let the Rockbox stay put and use it only occasionally..

[Toxikator]

Some new "experimental" iPod builds for the 5G attempt to utilize both cores of its processor, presumably lowering power consumption considerably...

EDIT: That's actually a diff. patch, the ARM memory optimization patches; but that, too, is not yet in the SVN...(?)

[soap]

There is no open ARM memory optimization patch, the work in January got committed quite quickly.
The kernel+audio thread on COP patch does not appear to considerably extend runtimes, but no proper, full-drain, test has been performed yet to the best of my knowledge.

[Llorean]

Except the full-drain test by me the day we decided KoC6 was working, which showed that enabling the coprocessor decreased runtime by about 2%, but that by moving the audio thread to it increased runtime by about 5%. Not a significant change, but enough to be measurable.

[reid]

someone said that the battery option in the settings is for estimating battery life? But the  lowest I have is 1300. I thought the battery was like 450. Oh and now when I plug my ipod 60g 5gen into a wall charger it gives me the apple sign , then boots up, shows me usb, then shuts down and this cycle repeats. Is that normal? I assume not right?  

[Llorean]

Please try using the most recent build.

[reid]

I just installed it 3 days ago has it been updated since then?