Battery Life Troubles

[uka100]

Hey I've got a NWA3000 and to me the battery life drains out very much faster than the advertised 35 hours...I know that figure is probably slighty exagerated but mine runs out in probably a third of that (About 10 hours). I have 3023 songs on it mostly in MP3 format at varying bitrates with the odd wma and wav I've used about 16-18 Gb of it's 20GB...and my battery seems to die incredily quickly, I have put the brightness down as far as possible the time the screen remains on to 15 seconds, no screensaver and no beep and it seems to make very little or no difference. I have Firmware version 3.00 and use sonicstage CP 4.0 to transfer songs. I have put the volume down to about 12 and not pressed any buttons to skip songs and it still dies really quickly...does anyone have any idea why this might be happening? Or is this just what i should expect from the unit? =(

Is it worth returning? I got it from Amazon.co.uk about 4 months ago..will they even take it back?

Im sure the battery life wasnt this bad when I was on the 2.1 firmware and using Connect player..could this have played a part?

Thanks for any help =)

[mfremon]

I think they advertise that much battery time if the music is encoded at Atrac3Plus at 48GBps...I have a507 1GB and am able to stuff about 600 songs on it including a bunch of Pink Flyd stuff and long songs like that...I use mine mainly for running and with a little set of speakers at work...Works great for me and I could probably get 3 days off of one full charge if i turn the lights/screensaver/etc off.....

[Count Zero]

Mine is exactly the same (i've had it for about a month). I get around 10 hours battery life from a single charge. I thought it might have been a duff unit, but looking around on various sites (including this one) it seems about right.

I'm at around 4500 songs all in ATRAC3 format (132kbps) filling up around 16G. The manual suggests turning off the EQ settings, to improve battery life - have you tried that?

The quoted battery life from Sony is based on much lower bitrates, but one of the reasons for buying Sony is the sound quality, right?

I'm having a love/hate relationship with my A3000 right now. Battery life is a third of what I expected, I'm had to update firmware on the unit, update software on my pc, defrag the thing to speed it up. It's still gorgeous though. Just a bit high maintenance.

[uka100]

Oh right =(..But I have seen posts with other people claiming to have much longer...I never have any EQ on..so it's not that...

"I'm having a love/hate relationship with my A3000 right now. Battery life is a third of what I expected, I'm had to update firmware on the unit, update software on my pc, defrag the thing to speed it up. It's still gorgeous though. Just a bit high maintenance. "

Haha I've had to do the exact same...I love everything about it now...except the battery life.

[b0ng0]

Tbh, I have found I can listen to it 3 days in a row at work so that amounts to about 18 hours in total, and it has never reached the flashing battery stage.

My settings are no EQ (the biggest difference I found), brightness at 50% and about 3600 songs all at variable mp3 bitrate from 128kbps -> 328kbps.

I also have the screensaver turned off and the 15s delay on.

[uka100]

Well I've downgraded the firmware to 2.01 and I am now charging it, I will see if this makes any difference...

b0ng0, I knew these things could last longer than mine does, thanks for your input =)..what firmware are you using? and what program to transfers songs to it?

[Beethovenian]

I think the big drop in battery life has less to do with bitrates or EQ and more with lack of caching memory. I've noticed if you browse more your library battery will go down very fast, because the player needs to access the hard-drive to get the database information almost every time. I'm sure Sony could make real battery life get closer to their announced ones if they added more RAM and cached the database in it, instead of having it on the HD. That would also make the player less annoying when it gets stuck for some seconds just to load the list of tracks or albums.

[Guest Stuge]

I've noticed if you browse more your library battery will go down very fast, because the player needs to access the hard-drive to get the database information almost every time.

Yeah ,This is also one of the main cause of less battery life .

[Xufar]

It's very important that when you get the unit, you fully charge and drain it a few times. This increases the battery life dramaticly. You probably didn't do this. My NW-A3000 runs well over 30 hours.

[Guest Stuge]

It's very important that when you get the unit, you fully charge and drain it a few times. This increases the battery life dramaticly. You probably didn't do this. My NW-A3000 runs well over 30 hours.

At what bitrate are you listening your music ?

[chriswyatt]

It's very important that when you get the unit, you fully charge and drain it a few times. This increases the battery life dramaticly. You probably didn't do this. My NW-A3000 runs well over 30 hours.

Apparently this is less of a problem with modern rechargeables, but I still try and drain the battery when I can anyway.

[b0ng0]

Well from what i've read draining the battery too much actually damages the life expectancy of your player.

Since the battery is an Li-Ion battery, the peak time to discharge it is when it is at 40% capacity. Doing this will prolong the life of the battery before it starts deteriorating. It used to be with batteries that you needed to drain them fully to avoid the 'memory' affect, but this is not a problem with Li-Ion batteries - they prefer frequent charges over full discharge-recharge cycle.

This is just what i've read, so please pick me up on any points that are wrong but this seems to be the general concensus on the web.

[cauldron]

What I do personally:

Fully charging/discharging a few times is NOT for the battery, but to calibrate the microchip that controls the battery (every Li-ion battery has one). If the microchip isn't calibrated, it'll mistakenly tell you there's less power.

Maybe uka100 can try doing this 2-3 times, then if there's no improvement, he can ask for a replacement unit. This is also what Apple tells people to do before sending in their ipods.

Other tips: Outside of the calibration, Don't charge to 100% full. Panasonic laptops have the ability to stop charging at 80% full, that extends battery longevity by a year. With a long battery life like the A3000's you can afford to do that.

Don't "top up" when the battery's already 80, 90% full. Only start charging around the halfway point.

[Xufar]

At what bitrate are you listening your music ?

About half of my music is Mp3 at a bitrate of 192 KB/s, the other half is Mp3 at a bitrate of 320 KB/s. (Sony) Li-on batteries aren't affected by "the memoryt-affect". Furtheron, cauldron is right.

[Damage]

It's very important that when you get the unit, you fully charge and drain it a few times. This increases the battery life dramaticly. You probably didn't do this. My NW-A3000 runs well over 30 hours.

Not with HD units you do. You will want to charge it up to full nonetheless, but on units that uses LiIon batteries (most DAPs these days), discharging the battery fully will kill it faster than partial charges (at least in the terms of how long the battery will be able to hold a full charge).

Battery University does recommend a full discharge once every thirty full charges (or 60 half charges, etc.) for fuel gauged devices. Depending on your use, that's probably once every 3 mo. or so.

[Xufar]

I said, you have to do it when you get the unit, (btw, it's every 30 charges, also "half charges" are included), it indeed increases the battery life, and yes, also with li-on batteries. Please read cauldrons post on this.

[uka100]

What I do personally:

Fully charging/discharging a few times is NOT for the battery, but to calibrate the microchip that controls the battery (every Li-ion battery has one). If the microchip isn't calibrated, it'll mistakenly tell you there's less power.

Maybe uka100 can try doing this 2-3 times, then if there's no improvement, he can ask for a replacement unit. This is also what Apple tells people to do before sending in their ipods.

Thanks very much for the info, I'll give this a try.

[kerfuffle]

O.O I always drain my NW-HD1 before charging it up. Is that a bad thing?

The battery life seemed to decrease when I charged it when it was half-drained, so I decided to only charge it when it was fully drained.

[Guest Stuge]

O.O I always drain my NW-HD1 before charging it up. Is that a bad thing?

Remember HD1 uses Lit-ion battery ,So it is less susceptible to memory effect .I don't think it will matter much whether you charge your HD1, when it's battery is fully drained or half drained .

[cauldron]

In theory, every time you drain an Lithium-ion/lithium-polymer battery, you use up 1 of those 500 cycles. So that's probably one step closer to using up its longevity.

The apparent decrease in battery life can be chalked down to the calibration issue.

"No memory effect" means when you don't complete charge/discharge, that has no effect on the battery's capacity (it will affect Ni-Cd batteries, for instance).

[uka100]

Hmmm this is getting stupid now, I charge it up trying to calibrate it, and the red light goes out (mains charging) to indicate the battery is full. So i pull out the charger, but then i put it back in and it starts charging again, not just for 2 minutes...but it's been going 30 minutes now.

I think im just gonna try and get a replacement, does anyone know how to go about this? Anyone been successful in getting a replacement?

[b0ng0]

Well if you are near a Sony Centre I would take it there and ask them about this (although tbh I don't think the guys who work there will have a scoob about battery tech).

The fact your battery continues to charge up after a full charge may be because the battery might employ a "trickle" charge - this means it will charge at a high current or voltage till it gets back up to 80% capacity, then it will slowly (much slower) continue charging up to 100%. I can't quite remember the reason why it does this but it's better for the battery or something.

But this is just speculation, i'm not sure about the way these batteries work.

[kerfuffle]

Hmmm this is getting stupid now, I charge it up trying to calibrate it, and the red light goes out (mains charging) to indicate the battery is full. So i pull out the charger, but then i put it back in and it starts charging again, not just for 2 minutes...but it's been going 30 minutes now.

I think im just gonna try and get a replacement, does anyone know how to go about this? Anyone been successful in getting a replacement?

That happens to my NW-HD1 (the charging despite the fact that it's full aspect). But it doesn't keep on charging for another 30 minutes . . . about 10 or so minutes. I think it depends on what kind of room conditions you charge it in . . .

[Guest Stuge]

Hmmm this is getting stupid now, I charge it up trying to calibrate it, and the red light goes out (mains charging) to indicate the battery is full. So i pull out the charger, but then i put it back in and it starts charging again, not just for 2 minutes...but it's been going 30 minutes now.

I think im just gonna try and get a replacement, does anyone know how to go about this? Anyone been successful in getting a replacement?

It is not advisable to put the player on charging ,Just after it has already been charged to full .It will be really hard to get replacement b'coz it don't think it's a fault or something .