topic Re: Battery Life in PCs & Accessories

Battery Life

bob6730 — Mon, 07 Mar 2005 23:01:05 GMT

I am having some problems with my VP's battery life. Basically, if I fully charge it today, turn it off and then turn it back on again in 2 or 3 days time, it will only have half battery power. I have had my VP since December, followed all the instructions when first charging it up, use it on an infrequent basis and it is not exposed to extremes of temperature.
So, I am wondering if anybody out there has any ideas?

Re: Battery Life

badde — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 14:25:08 GMT

Hello bob6730,

This is normal behaviour with the VP.

I have also a problem with this hidden feature and have already called Sony for this problem (see older post of mine about this).

Basically Sony will do nothing about this problem unless they get many complaints from users. Then they will maybe do something about the problem, if it's a problem that can be solved by upgrading the firmware that is. :smileygrin:

For the rest do as I do --> when not using the VP, put it in his cradle.

Regards,

Badde

Re: Battery Life

Chris384 — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 17:09:14 GMT

It's to do with the hard disk inside still running while the vaio is off, if you turn it off and listen very closly to the player you can hear a very quiet high-pitched noise, this is the HD spinning round (i think)
it does this so that the player can start up fast when turned on.

Re: Battery Life

bob6730 — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 22:02:49 GMT

Hi Badde,
Thanks for the information. It would seem to me that Sony know about this problem, but are probably doing nothing about it until such times as they can make shit-loads more money by way of upgrades!

Re: Battery Life

bob6730 — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 22:08:45 GMT

Hi Chris384,

Thanks for your reply too. I can hear the high pitched noise but it just seems odd to me that they can market this product without mentioning this fact!?!

Re: Battery Life

saltire2005 — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 20:14:09 GMT

hi.. i also have this same problem.. less than 3 hours use in 4 days and the battery is dead as a dodo... sony have told me today that this is due to the internal clock... (yeah right) ...

its a real, pain as you have to go through the set up every time it does this...

if i knew about this i would have probably went for the archos, my son bought one at xmas time... battery seems to last for ages...

i think sony should get the finger out and admit this is a problem, and either sort it out or offer some sort of compensation...

they marketed this unit as having a superior battery life... but now it seems it is only superior if u can listen to it for 20hours at a time...!!!

Re: Battery Life

mikebeare — Sat, 26 Mar 2005 17:05:27 GMT

I have had the same problems with my VP.

However, I think it is a problem with having the headphones connected whilst the unit is not in use. When I have disconnected the headphones, the VP has not lost its battery charge. It does if it is switched off and the headphones remain connected. You can also, if you listen carefully with the headphones, with the unit switched off, a tiny hissing sound...... this indicates that there is risidual current being used somewhere in the device........... hence flattening the battery.

This to me, suggests an electronics problem with the device!

I suggest we all start complaining to SONY, that is of course, if they can be bothered to listen!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re: Battery Life

DiabloVaio — Sat, 26 Mar 2005 17:29:30 GMT

Yep, HDD suck the battery life, even when you turn off the VP. That's because it needs to be on something like standby, for internal clock and settings. If you run out of battery completely, you have to set the time and date and language again!
It's very annoying, because the least thing I want in my DAP is a clock! I have a watch myself, at home there are a few clocks, on my mobile I have date and time and I can ask anyone if I want to know them.
I think there's no flash memory on VP, so it can't store settings on a flash memory and the HDD has to run to keep the data alive. Flash memory is much much less power hungry, and it doesn't consume that much battery life as HDD does.
We can't have a flash memory thing on our devices, but I think that we should be able to disable the time and date option if we want to!
Sony can do it in a firmware update, so there's no problem for us to turn time and date off and enjoy the battery life for longer! And for those who don't have watches, they can still have this option!
C'mon Sony, at least don't be THIS STUPID and do something!!!

Re: Battery Life

MadarbWoT — Sun, 27 Mar 2005 17:53:00 GMT

diablovaio,i understand your problem as ive got the same...
you are right about the firmware update but then again,think of how many problems vp has and that we should complain to sony about!
i know that if you dont do or say anything youre just a sucker but if we complain about everything then sony wont hear us.
im not saying that the battery life prob is not important but we need to think of how this and every other problem should be presented to sony to make a difference!

Re: Battery Life

DiabloVaio — Mon, 28 Mar 2005 10:27:58 GMT

I agree MadarbWot, personally I don't mind the battery problem and I think there are more serious problems!
And to those with battery problem, I think some of them are exhagerating it! It's not like leaving it for 2 days and battery goes flat! Unless you drain the battery to 5%-25%.

Re: Battery Life

MadarbWoT — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 13:02:24 GMT

look i think the battery life is indeed facing some problems but things are not that bad.

you need to let the battery drain to "cannot open the vp" before you charge it again even if that means that you have to let it play on its own for some time so that you make sure it turns off.

personally i let it play music and turn the photo viewer to slideshow so that it has two functions at one,making it easier to drain the battery.

now if some people charge it on random times then this has an effect on the vp battery.

but you cannot blame sony for having this kind of battery because everybody does!!
i think that those who charge the vp whenever they feel like it and then complain should not at least blame sony for that.

ps.im still not sure what effect the cradle-connection powering has on the battery...

Re: Battery Life

@4967457401015621 — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 15:00:01 GMT

why do you say the battery should be fully discharged MadarbWoT? i've seen several websites saying that Li-ion batteries (I can't imagine it being anything else) should NOT be fully discharged unnecessarily, and should be topped up when they are in regular use. There are other guidelines I think, but the main problem with not discharging the unit fully is that the indicated charge remaining often becomes shorter than the actual charge remaining. There's plenty of websites about how the batteries should be treated I believe. I'm also interested in the effect of leaving the VP in the cradle - I quite often leave it in for a few days at a time and the battery symbol changes to some kind of error, a red circle with a white cross in it..

Re: Battery Life

DiabloVaio — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 15:23:33 GMT

Bentate is right! Take a Look At This :

A lithium-ion battery provides 300-500 discharge/charge cycles. The battery prefers a partial rather than a full discharge. Frequent full discharges should be avoided when possible. Instead, charge the battery more often or use a larger battery. There is no concern of memory when applying unscheduled charges.

And you can find the whole article HERE

Re: Battery Life

MadarbWoT — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 14:50:38 GMT

it also reads:
Although lithium-ion is memory-free in terms of performance deterioration, batteries with fuel gauges exhibit what engineers refer to as "digital memory". Here is the reason: Short discharges with subsequent recharges do not provide the periodic calibration needed to synchronize the fuel gauge with the battery's state-of-charge. A deliberate full discharge and recharge every 30 charges corrects this problem. Letting the battery run down to the cut-off point in the equipment will do this. If ignored, the fuel gauge will become increasingly less accurate.

If ignored, the fuel gauge will become increasingly less accurate.

also i dont know exactly why but i always thought that letting the battery drain is better.ive heard that from other people too and it seems to make sense.now thats just a personal opinion i could be wrong...

Re: Battery Life

@4967457401015621 — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 16:46:01 GMT

yeah, i guess it depends how much the battery gauge means to you really. i charge mine when i can and play it when i want to listen to it, the meter doesn't really mean a lot to me. I also used the compaq battery tools on my old laptop battery (a few months ago) and the battery life went from about 3/4 of an hour to a few minutes (10 or 15) at best after it had done the full recharge/discharge cycle, so i don't like fully discharging batteries anymore. having said that, it's necessary to do that with Nicd batteries, but lead acid (car) batteries can be destroyed by being discharged too far. it's be nice if sony gave some guidance on what to do with the batteries, cos they don't specify what kind they do use as far as i'm aware

Re: Battery Life

DiabloVaio — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 17:59:45 GMT

So as the article suggested, having a full discharge and recharge every 30 recharges will fix the problem! So, let's trust them and do so!
I thaught as well that fully discharging and recharging is better for batteries, but as I had almost no technical information and now I have, I have to admit I was wrong.
From now on, I will do the fully discharge once in 30 times.

Re: Battery Life

saltire2005 — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 22:27:31 GMT

Sony advised me to have my player on charge whenever i wasnt using it... no mention of battery memory or anything like that... this is not a battery fault...

this is the player that is running the battery down when not in use... the internal clock they say...

So if my battery dies before my 12 month warranty is up i will be looking for a new one from sony...

Re: Battery Life

DiabloVaio — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 10:14:04 GMT

If we could disable the internal clock, then we would have more battery life. It's good that Sony consider this in future firmware upgrades.
And dear Saltire, gadgets with warranty do like to die and crash just after their warranty finishes! Bad habbit I know

Re: Battery Life

MadarbWoT — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 13:04:30 GMT

i guess i will start doing the same but i have to admit that up to this point my battery isnt that crap and i fully discharge it all the time!dont know what affect this will have not sure about it but im just saying it has worked fine this far!

but i will start doing that too diablovaio.

Re: Battery Life

XGEOX — Tue, 05 Apr 2005 10:23:31 GMT

I recently experieneced this problem for the first time on a long trip.

I ensured the VAIO was charged a few days previous to my flight, but after turning on the unit on the morning of the flight, I found it only had one "bar" of battery remaining.

Interestingly, the player continued to function on this supposedly empty battery for a further 8 hours! - I wasn't even using the remote unit to save power.

I believe MadarbWoT hit the nail on the head with the statement about the 'Fuel gauge' inaccuracies.

- I will drop my unit into the cradle whenever I get a chance, not following any kind of regular charge/discharge cycle. This very unregulated way of charging our Vaio Pockets is bound to cause whatever guaging system Sony has used some difficulty in determining the true power left in our batteries.

Like bentate, I won't be paying the battery meter much attention from now on. It isn't reliable enough to be very useful.