iRiver iHP-1x0 battery issues

[Muse]

My iHP-120 (presumably lightly used) should arrive tomorrow.  

I have some experience with various rechargable battery types including li-ion. People with technical expertise with this technology say that these batteries' useful life expectancy can vary widely. If treated very well they might last 10 years with most capacity intact. If treated badly, they might be pretty useless in 2 years or less. In particular, they say that they deteriorate most quickly when fully charged, and I think that temperature is an issue -- a warmer battery will deteriorate faster.

So, I generally try to not top-up my li-ion rechargables. If I'm not going to use them for a while, I have them at 1/2 charge or ideally 40%, if practical.

I don't see much information in the FAQ's about these batteries, and the li-ion batteries I do see discussed are for the Archos player and maybe another (not the iRiver players).

Questions:

1. Is there any way in Rockbox to control charging?

2. I see in a graphic that it will display % charge and voltage. I wonder how accurate that is.

3. What info is there and where can I get it pertaining to replacing my battery? I've seen a few websites with batteries presumably installable in the iRiver players, but they seem to be mainly iPod batteries, and there's no information given about their suitability for the iRiver players.

[safetydan]

I can answer the first question at least. Rockbox has no control over the charging on the H120. It's handled by hardware, so there's nothing to configure.

As for installing new batteries, I believe there's instructions somewhere on the misticriver website.

[Muse]

Thanks. First I'd heard of Misticriver. I just registered. I'm Muse______

[Mikerman]

Try the Misticriver Wiki for your player--there are links there for battery replacement information, including how-tos, as well as other incredibly helpful information.  

http://www.misticriver.net/wiki/index.php/H100_Series

There also is an informative, on-going thread of people's reports on their recent replacement experiences, including where they purchased batteries from.

http://misticriver.net/showthread.php?t=35815&highlight=battery

As for preserving your battery, a great source for information is batteryuniversity.com.  As a general matter, is seemed that it is fine to keep the battery fully charged, but not to let it get fully exhaused, perhaps recharging at 30-40% as a general matter.  Also, to reset the battery meter, allowing a full charge every now and again.

[Muse]

Thanks for this information! I believe I've spent a fair bit of time at batteryuniversity.com, mainly in the nickle battery areas, though. I'm now reading some on the li-ion material. Best site I've found about batteries that's not interactive. I visit the newsgroup sci.chem.electrochem.battery sometimes, which is, of course, interactive.

I'm not too sure about your ideas about li-ion rechargeables. As stated at batteryuniversity.com (http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm), fully charged batteries deteriorate at a faster rate as well as warmer batteries, as I said above in the thread. As a matter of fact, 40% charge is the best storage charge, and cool, of course as well. The area I'm reading is focused pretty much on laptop batteries, and for them, removal of the battery is an option and sometimes a good idea in order to promote battery life... that is, when the laptop is being run on mains power. Typically, the battery in such conditions will be at 45 C, with a faster degeneration rate than room temperature.

[Mikerman]

Thanks for the info., although it tends to focus a bit on storage conditions as vs. day-to-day use--I don't know if that makes any difference.  If it doesn't, I guess this counsels allowing one's battery to be used a bit over time and not to top it off daily.

[Muse]

Thanks for the info., although it tends to focus a bit on storage conditions as vs. day-to-day use--I don't know if that makes any difference.  If it doesn't, I guess this counsels allowing one's battery to be used a bit over time and not to top it off daily.

Yes, not topping it off would be a good idea. 90% is what I'd shoot for, tops, personally. Of course, there's no automatically stopping the charge so if you do top it up (well, if I do) it would be good to let it run for a while, not just shut it off. I certainly do this sort of thing with my laptop and cellphone and video camera batteries.

I think that following this practice (more or less, it's not a precise thing) you're apt to get double the life that you'd otherwise get, maybe a lot more! Meantime, you have more capacity.