ipod battery

Posted:
in iPod + iTunes + AppleTV edited January 2014
Will charging the ipod battery even if there is three bars or two bars left in the battery meter shorten the life of the battery?

or shall i wait till there is only one bar left? please advice? dun wanna my new ipod to spoil so fast....
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 23
    No it won't do any damage i was told. Because of the 'special' battery Apple used (i'm no expert), you don't have to drain the battery before recharging it. Anyone can confirm this and explain a bit better



    DB
  • Reply 2 of 23
    overhopeoverhope Posts: 1,123member
    The lithium polymer battery in an iPod doesn't suffer the memory effects that would destroy part-charged nickel-cadmium batteries, so charge it as and when you please: they don't mind.



    Shouldn't this be in Digital Hub?



    /me waves weakly for a Moderator
  • Reply 3 of 23
    Interesting.

    Resently I noticed that when I take my iPod after being fully charged (says "Charged" on the screen) the first bar is not lit. So it says its charged but there are only 3 bars. Also, Since the begining i noticed that the ipod battery will run out when its around the second bar. I dont think I'v ever seen my iPod show only 1 bar. Thoughts?
  • Reply 4 of 23
    i have seen my iPod show one bar, it depends on how you use it. if you're doing random song play, your batterly life will jump around. it takes a hit when it spins up and writes the songs to memory, then jumps back up when it's reading from solid state memory again.



    on the other hand, when you just play them in order, it's already read the next song, so doesn't spin up as much.



    and yes, this should be in the digital hub (although it seems well answered) so i'll move it there now.



    -alcimedes
  • Reply 5 of 23
    torifiletorifile Posts: 4,024member
    My battery life has been pretty shitty lately. Last friday, I finally got my new Grado headphones and I was listening to all my newly LAME encoded mp3's. Just straight through, no shuffle, volume about 1/2. The battery (fully charged, just unplugged after charging over night) lasted about 4.5 hours. I'm thinking about taking it in to the Apple store, but I haven't got the time til this weekend. :/
  • Reply 6 of 23
    actually i've noticed a recurring problem with my iPod battery lately. seems that it will be fine, and almost fully charged. then i might not listen to it for a day or so, and when i come back, the thing is COMPLETELY dead. not just low, but so dead it won't even turn on.



    anyone else have this happening? i used to think that buttons must be getting pressed somehow, but this last time it was in a hard case, and i checked to make sure it was on hold. there's no way a button was pressed.



    anyone else running into this or am i just lucky?
  • Reply 7 of 23
    [quote]Originally posted by alcimedes:

    <strong>actually i've noticed a recurring problem with my iPod battery lately. seems that it will be fine, and almost fully charged. then i might not listen to it for a day or so, and when i come back, the thing is COMPLETELY dead. not just low, but so dead it won't even turn on.



    anyone else have this happening? i used to think that buttons must be getting pressed somehow, but this last time it was in a hard case, and i checked to make sure it was on hold. there's no way a button was pressed.



    anyone else running into this or am i just lucky? </strong><hr></blockquote>





    that's happened here to but I've never had the chance to really be sure that it was fully charged to begin with and everything.
  • Reply 8 of 23
    I know for a fact that this happens with my battery. It drives me crazy. Nothing as frustrating as getting excited about a run/workout (after several days of procrastinating) and finding my iPod dead.
  • Reply 9 of 23
    Yes, I get that with my iPod. But I always thought that I hadn't flicked the Hold switch or something.



    Now that the iPod has a clock, will it drain the battery even when it's switched off?
  • Reply 10 of 23
    ok, now here's the million dollar question.



    i know that other people here have mentioned that their iPods will turn on in the middle of the night. (at midnight) i assume they must be doing some kind of diagnostic at that time. is this what's draining our batteries? if so, is there any way to turn it off?



    i might have to give a call over to Apple and see what they say about this, i can't believe this is normal. this drive is supposed to have a 10 hour battery, and i've had a few instances where it ends up completely dead after i've only listened to it for 2 hours tops. that means at least 6-8 hours of battery life are getting sucked away to somewhere, and i don't want that. i wouldn't accept that kind of thing from my palm pilot. this is a device where battery life is everything. i want something at least semi close to my ten hours when i'm using it then.



    also, just as one last question. for those who have run into thise before, what model do you have?



    5GB, old 10 GB, new 10GB or 20GB?



    i'd like to find out if this is happening across model types as well.



    i've got the 20GB model.
  • Reply 11 of 23
    torifiletorifile Posts: 4,024member
    I've got the first 5giger. So, it seems to span all lines :/



    edit: as best as I can remember, I've had this problem from the very beginning. Running firmware 1.2 if that matters.



    [ 09-16-2002: Message edited by: torifile ]</p>
  • Reply 12 of 23
    Ah...the Midnight-nightlight thingie...that could explain things. I normally donT check up on the little bugger at that time, but like the others have posted before, I often turn it on in the morning to find it dead as well.

    I thought it was because of the remote, but this kinda thing happened waaay before I received it.

    (also, I can never recall the battery indicator showing anything less than 2-bars before it dies)



    One thing I did notice. When I charge the iPod using the adapter, it seems to hold more juice (compared to just firewire through my G4)...can anyone varify this?
  • Reply 13 of 23
    yep, this has happened to me...charge the thing up, don't use it for 2 days and find out the battery is dead. btw, i have a 20giger w/ v1.2 running.



    i got fed up and called apple support. they sent an empty box to return it. i haven't yet heard back from them.



    hopefully they resolve this asap.



    hang in there folks!



    -David
  • Reply 14 of 23
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    I recently had a little panic with my iPod. After it was done charging and the screen said "charged," it still only had three bars left when I unplugged it. I plugged it in again to have it continue charging but it didn't help. That night, I had it fully charged and I unplugged it and started it playing from my full list of songs at midnight. When I got up the next morning, there was one bar left. The battery died at 8:17. I plugged it in and went to class. When I got back, there were four bars again. I haven't tested the battery life yet.



    BTW, about losing charge while not in use, I read a knowledge base article about it and it said to charge your iPod every week or so, even if it's not in use, because it's actually always on. That's why it turns on so fast when you press a button. It's been like that since firmware version 1.0. Once I left it off for a week or two, but when I turned it back on it still had two or three bars left. I've never had that problem of it being dead after a few days.
  • Reply 15 of 23
    well, i'm on hold with them right now, i'll see what they say....



    restore your iPod. if the problem continues, then get work done on it.



    i'll do a restore and let you guys know how it works for me.



    -alcimedes
  • Reply 16 of 23
    [quote]Originally posted by alcimedes:

    <strong>well, i'm on hold with them right now, i'll see what they say....



    restore your iPod. if the problem continues, then get work done on it.



    i'll do a restore and let you guys know how it works for me.



    -alcimedes</strong><hr></blockquote>



    any progress?
  • Reply 17 of 23
    been two days hasn't died yet. my biggest problem will be making 100% sure i've got everything backed up before i reset it. i'm still running it down from the last time it got charged. this time i'm being extremely careful to make sure that there's no way this is happening by accident. when it dies i'll let you all know, i unplugged it just yesterday so we'll see. i expect it to either be dead tomorrow morning or sat. at the latest.
  • Reply 18 of 23
    alcimedesalcimedes Posts: 5,486member
    for those who were wondering, it's now been about two weeks, and i just had to charge up my iPod yesterday for the first time.



    seems i must not have been pausing it, and i didn't have it set to shut itself off automatically. i've even been leaving it on, but paused to see if that would slow it down, but it didn't one bit. guess my iPod wasn't the real problem in this equation.



    oh yeah, and i hadn't flashed the iPod and reinstalled anything yet either, so it's been fine this entire time.
  • Reply 19 of 23
    Comment : My iPod is about a month old. For what it's worth, I've had a similar battery problem with my iPod-- charge it up, then turn it off, then next day, the charge is already down (without ever using it). I also think that the power adapter does a better charging than the firewire connection to a computer. When I described the problem to apple, they gave me some link to a site where you can request to ship your ipod to them.



    Question <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" /> : I recently connected my FULLY charged iPod to a cassette adapter in my car. I was able to run about 3 or 4 hours of tunes before the battery died. Would there be any reason that using the iPod in the car would drain the battery quicker than using headphones???
  • Reply 20 of 23
    I just wanted to update everyone in this thread with the fact that Apple has released an iPod software update, version 1.2.1



    <a href="http://www.apple.com/ipod/download/"; target="_blank">Click here </a>to get the update.



    The big description of this software speaks mostly about the differences between 1.1 and 1.2, but there is a little blurb of text on the side that says, "iPod Software 1.2.1 fixes a problem with the battery icon. It now correctly indicates a full charge."



    So that should fix things for a lot of you.
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