Battery Life

[bob6730]

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?

[MadarbWoT]

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...

[@4967457401015621]

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..

[DiabloVaio]

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

[MadarbWoT]

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...

[@4967457401015621]

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

[DiabloVaio]

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.

[saltire2005]

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...

[DiabloVaio]

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

[MadarbWoT]

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.

[XGEOX]

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.