Slacker Battery Life-- Updated Info

[sportboy]

On Wed. I charged up the G2. At 8pm I looked at the screen and it showed it was fully charged. I powered off the unit, got the shutting down message and it powered off. On Thur. I did not use the G2, it was off all day. On Friday(today) I went to the gym, turned on the device and was listening to music. About 50 minutes into my workout I looked down at the display and it was showing low battery. 3 minutes later, it powered off. I got a total of 53 minutes of battery life. During this entire 53 minutes, I hit the skip button one time. Rest of the time, the music just played straight thru. This has happened three straight times, this is not a one time thing.

Its almost like the battery might be wearing down while the device was off for one day since being fully charged.

Anybody else run into this?

 

[DAB]

There has been some reports of this happening. They are asking when this happens for folks to contact them so they can download the logs from your player and try to figure out what is going on. So, I'd suggest you contact support on this issue.

What is suppose to happen is that when you do the power down it should go into a standby state and then after 2 hours do a total shut down. But since the last update I've noticed some inconsistency in this. There are times it will do a hard shut down when I don't want it to and other times when I want it to it doesn't. So, clearly there is an issue here that they need to sort out.

When I first got my Slacker when I did the hold the pause/play button down it did a hard shut down and when you hit the play button to power it up it took a while. They tried to shorten the start up time and now when I hit and hold the pause/play button it says shutting down, but if I hit the play button it will come back like it is just in standby mode, not a hard shut down.

 

[maxoct97]

Yes, the same problem happens to me. I'm shipping it back because it got stuck on the 'starting up' screen.

hopefully the replacement will solve both issues!

 

[DAB]

Yes, the same problem happens to me. I'm shipping it back because it got stuck on the 'starting up' screen.

hopefully the replacement will solve both issues!

If it a firmware issue sending it back isn't going to resolve the problem when the new one comes in. There are known fixes for the stuck on start up screen? Did you try to get it resolves with support?

 

[sportboy]

I contacted them. I'll let everyone know what they have to say when I get a response.

 

[JMII]

I thought my G2 was bad, but 53 minutes is horrible. I get about 4 hours of play time out of my G2... compared to my various iPods this not very impressive Thus just another reason why I want a car dock so badly, nothing worst then having your music die halfway home while stuck in traffic.

 

[DAB]

Well I have tested mine out since this topic came out. What I am getting is about 8 hours on average and this is occasionally looking at the display when I ban or favor a song.

Clearly the OP didn't really just get 53 minutes because it was likely still running as it was stuck on as has been reported by some on the Slacker forum.

 

[sportboy]

I ran another test on mine. I fully charged it. Unplugged it and hit play and left it play without hitting any buttons whatsoever.

I got 3 hours and 50 minutes. Thats with playing it directly off the charger. My problem is what I posted in my original post.

Still waiting to hear back from Slacker support

 

[DAB]

I found as I used mine by playing and charging the battery life got a bit longer. But it does sound like you may have an issue there.

My experience with these type devices including cell phones. I always found after discharging and charging like 3 full times, it is then that I get peak battery times.

 

[sportboy]

I received a reply from Slacker support

How does everyone feel about this reply? Not to mention the G2 is only a few weeks old.

Thank you for contacting Slacker Customer Support.



At this time, the Portable can remain on while shut down. Even when working fully correctly, the Portable does use power when turned off so eventually the battery will drain. For the best results from the Portable, please leave the Portable plugged into AC power when not is use to keep the battery at full charge and to make sure the Portable is ready to go when you are.





Best regards,



Frank S.

Slacker Support

 

[DAB]

I think that the last update they made screwed with the way the shut down is working. Like I've said previously when I first got my Slacker G2 when I hit the play/pause it would do a hard shut down. Now that doesn't appear to be the case. They say it will do a hard shut down after 2 hours, this doesn't always work either. They have some work to do to get this fixed.

Right now I think what they are suggesting is really the only work around. I know I leave my G2 on the dock when not in use and when I grab it to go it is ready and fully charged. But again I think they need to fix this.

DAB

How does everyone feel about this reply? Not to mention the G2 is only a few weeks old.

Thank you for contacting Slacker Customer Support.

At this time, the Portable can remain on while shut down. Even when working fully correctly, the Portable does use power when turned off so eventually the battery will drain. For the best results from the Portable, please leave the Portable plugged into AC power when not is use to keep the battery at full charge and to make sure the Portable is ready to go when you are.

Best regards,

Frank S.

Slacker Support

 

[sportboy]

How else can you shut down the device without holding the play button down until you get the shutting down message?

Asking me to keep it plugged into AC until I'm ready to use it doesn't work very well. If I leave my house at 6am and don't plan on using it until 7pm, the battery is wearing down while its off.

This is not a "workable" solution. They know there is a problem and the best I get is....at this time just keep it plugged in to AC. Its a lithium battery, they only have so many charges in its lifetime. Leaving it plugged in all the time does not do the battery any favors. I have quite of bit of experience with lithium batteries.

 

[DAB]

Here is some additional interesting info on the Slacker Battery Life. These measurements on battery life was taken by Slacker's Principal Firmware Engineer.

I took some measurements and I'll provide relative current here:

Backlight on runs at 100%
No Backlight runs at: 30.7%
Sleep runs at: 6.25%
Off runs at: 0% (we know it's not 0 but it is below the ability of my tool to measure)

The target is that without the backlight on (playing audio for example) you should get 12 hours of battery. Using these numbers you can see that with the backlight on this will drop to 3.684 hours and sleeping with a full battery should last about 2.5 days.

There are many other conditions that will affect battery performance and so these numbers should be taken as guidelines only. Just to name some variables... wifi, backlight brightness, volume, temperature, battery variability, etc.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Amidei - Principal Firmware Engineer - Slacker Inc.

 

[mjones73]

Upon power off, they are supposed to stay in a stand by mode for two hours to allow a quick restart, after two hours of inactivity it should shut down completely. Sounds like there's a bug where it's not fully shutting down and slowly draining the battery.

As for 3 1/2 hours of play time off one charge, there is something wrong there I think.