Battery life in NWA and NWZ series

[Anthony]

The batteries in both my NWA-808 and NWZ-818 have packed up within the warranty period and I'm now wondering why this should happen. I am begiinning to wonder about potential damage to the battery when these devices are cradled a lot of the time. I use my walkmans in speaker systems and I transfer music and videos quite a bit also. This means there is almost always a charge being delivered to the battery . Not only that but I had the A-808 repaired and the battery packed up again within a few months. I'm not too pleased about this, if I spend almost €400 on the new X series I don't want the battery to start becoming unreliable because of my usage patterns. Of course I am also wondering if there is a fault with one of the power supplies resulting in an excessive votage being delivered to the devices. Remember this has happened to both of my units.

Any thougts anyone.

[dura]

I can imagine you being disappointed.

I think you got a point about the cradle;

My 2 year old A808 is still doing fine (though battery-capacity has lessened somewhat, but nothing too bad considering I use the thing 2 hours a day).

I used to have a phone that had the same problem; the cradle seemed to charge and discharge at the same time, ageing the battery very fast. Happely, my new phone, also a HTC, does not have this flaw, so it seems to me it's a design-thing.

But about the new players, who knows, one can only hope, but I'm not too keen on using such a cradle now, especially since the defect only occurs after some months.

[Anthony]

Yes, there must be something in this dura.

I'm going to get the *818 repaired as it's under warranty. But if I keep it off the speaker systems I am denying myself a lot of the benefits of a multi-function device. On the other hand if I use the speaker systems I am destroying the battery. I am fairly sure that constant charging can result in overload of some sort despite the sensitivity of modern electronics.

[sonyfreak]

Surely the device must shut off the charge cycle once the battery is full. After all the display tells you once the charge is done. I have never used a cradle with any of my units and have never had an issue with batteries. Sounds like the cradle is causing the problem.

[Anthony]

Surely the device must shut off the charge cycle once the battery is full. After all the display tells you once the charge is done. I have never used a cradle with any of my units and have never had an issue with batteries. Sounds like the cradle is causing the problem.

I tend to agree, I think I will disconnect the charger from the cradle and just use the usb to charge the device ( once it's repaired).

[juli]

I use my A808 and A829 regularly in both my cradles, and haven't noticed any signficant loss of battery life (yet!)

It should stop charging once it's 'full'.

[Anthony]

I use my A808 and A829 regularly in both my cradles, and haven't noticed any signficant loss of battery life (yet!)

It should stop charging once it's 'full'.

It does Juli, but it's the rate of discharge is the problem, like 2 hours MP3 playback. It also discharges when not in use. Sure signs of a wacked battery. I'm trying to figure out why this has happened to both my devices, surely I can't be in that much hard luck!!!!!!

[juli]

Anthony, it sure seems like bad luck to have had 2 units go the same way. I used my A808 last week, and so far it still has one bar left after about 16 hours of use. I'm going to let the battery run flat to see how much time is left, but it's worrying to think there might be problems like this with the new model. If you're only getting 2 hours playback, that sucks!!!

[Anthony]

Anthony, it sure seems like bad luck to have had 2 units go the same way. I used my A808 last week, and so far it still has one bar left after about 16 hours of use. I'm going to let the battery run flat to see how much time is left, but it's worrying to think there might be problems like this with the new model. If you're only getting 2 hours playback, that sucks!!!

Just spoke to the guy in my local Sony centre where I bought it. They are taking it in during the week under warranty. He did say that this is the first he got back with this problem. This is an issue for me because I have had two go bad. It MUST be the charger on one of the cradles or speaker systems, but which one? I have two speaker systems and two cradles, all Sony devices designed for the NWA-NWZ series ( WM port).

B***cks anyway?!?!?!?!?!?!?!