What makes the iPod battery wear out quicker?

dferigmu · Nov 23, 2004

I'm asking because I plan on buying an iPod with an iMac and I'm wondering what I should do to make the battery last the longest.

Does not using it constantly wear the battery out? What about the battery level? Is it better to recharge right before the battery wears out, or recharge after it completely wore out?

earthtoandy · Nov 23, 2004

the battery has no memory.. you can charge it whenever you want.

the main things to long battery life are encoding your songs at 128 aac and having somesort of playlist or randomize and just let it play (if the pod knows what songs are gonna be next it can load them all into the cache and only spin up the hard drive when the cache is emptied as opposed to it having to spin up if you are randomly choosing songs yourself)

dferigmu · Nov 23, 2004

earthtoandy said:
the battery has no memory.. you can charge it whenever you want.

the main things to long battery life are encoding your songs at 128 aac and having somesort of playlist or randomize and just let it play (if the pod knows what songs are gonna be next it can load them all into the cache and only spin up the hard drive when the cache is emptied as opposed to it having to spin up if you are randomly choosing songs yourself)

Yeah, but I think I heard somewhere that it was bad to let the battery totally wear out.

WinterMute · Nov 23, 2004

All rechargeables have a finite life, you can only recharge them a certain number of times, so the issue with iPods is not memory effect, it's how often you recharge and what bit-rate you encode at.

If, like me, you only charge your iPod once a week, you'll find you battery still able to deliver 8 hours of charge after 2 years, however, if you run a charge cycle every day it will begin to fade a lot quicker, sometimes in as little as 18 months.

The bit-rate becomes important when it climbs above the 10 meg/track level, as this forces the disc to spin up for almost every track to load the files into the RAM, if you run at 160Kbps AAC or MP3, then the disc will only spin up every 4 or 5 songs and hence will use less battery power.

Uncompressed aiff or wav files are not a good idea if battery life is an issue, as the disc spins up several times per track, and will run the battery down a lot quicker.

jeremy.king · Nov 23, 2004

Turn off any equalizer settings too such as Bass Booster, as this will require more processing power, which in turn requires more battery.

dferigmu · Nov 23, 2004

WinterMute said:
The bit-rate becomes important when it climbs above the 10 meg/track level, as this forces the disc to spin up for almost every track to load the files into the RAM, if you run at 160Kbps AAC or MP3, then the disc will only spin up every 4 or 5 songs and hence will use less battery power.

Uncompressed aiff or wav files are not a good idea if battery life is an issue, as the disc spins up several times per track, and will run the battery down a lot quicker.

How do I manage bit-rate and doesn't iTunes turn everything into the AAC standard?

jeremy.king · Nov 23, 2004

dferigmu said:
How do I manage bit-rate and doesn't iTunes turn everything into the AAC standard?

All of this is set in the preferences of iTunes. You can select what bit rate to rip at and what compression you want (AAC, MP3, etc.)

dferigmu · Nov 23, 2004

kingjr3 said:
All of this is set in the preferences of iTunes. You can select what bit rate to rip at and what compression you want (AAC, MP3, etc.)

And AAC is the best in terms of quality and saving battery life?

jeremy.king · Nov 23, 2004

dferigmu said:
And AAC is the best in terms of quality and saving battery life?

From what I have been told, at an equal bitrate (for example 128kbps) AAC will sound better although I have no experience with that format.

Obviously the lower the bit rate, the more you save your battery life, but at what cost? sound quality - you will have to determine for yourself what compression and bitrate you are willing to accept. Its not like playing a 256kbps MP3 is going to kill your battery life to where you only get an hour of playback before a charge is needed.

Most of my songs were encoded at 192kbps MP3 and I didn't see much of a hit to the battery life of my pod. it still held a good 6 hour charge after two years.

EDIT: Also check out http://www.ipodlounge.com for more information about everything ipod including some testing they did around battery life.

cr2sh · Nov 23, 2004

These batteries are not designed to be charged and then fully drained. Doing so will critically shorten the life span of any battery (other than a deep cycle).

Use the battery to (at the least) 30% remains and then recharge it...

superbovine · Nov 23, 2004

http://www.apple.com/batteries/ipods.html

realityisterror · Nov 23, 2004

it's also a good idea to restore (read: wipe) your ipod every year at least, especially if you use it as an external hard drive...
over time, files can fragmented... not much, mind you, but every fragment will give a hit to battery life... think about it, whenever the hard drive has to spin up to get the files, it has to jump around instead of just moving sequentially...

if you don't use your ipod has a hard drive and your library remains pretty stable, then completely ignore this post..

reality

tech4all · Nov 23, 2004

From iPodlounge

iPodlounge said:
How long can you expect your battery to last?

For more than 500 battery charging cycles (one charging cycle consisting of draining the battery, then recharging it to a full charge) Depending on heavy or lighter use, this battery life span can range from approximately 2 or 3 to 8 or 9 years.

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What makes the iPod battery wear out quicker?

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