The iPod battery that wouldn't die?

[mrgreen4242]

I bought a 1G iPod (10gb) for my wife a few days ago from a forum member, and it's in great shape; she loves it! (So do I, which sucks because now I am going to have to get one for me, too! ).

Anyways, I decided that I wanted to do a full test of the battery life to see if I needed to replace it or not. (It's going on 4 years old at this point, so I didn't expect stellar battery life). I started by charging it fully overnight. Then I put it on shuffle all songs and let it go for a couple of hours. I then hand picked songs for a couple of hours, and listened to a couple of full CDs. Then I put it back to all songs shuffling.

This was almost 7 hours ago. There was one 15 or 20 minute point in time that I let the album is was playing end and so it auto powered off, but other than that it's been going non-stop. I'm just getting down to the half way point on the battery indicator. My questions are:

1) how long did a brand new 1st gen battery last?
2) I've been turning the volume down on it for long periods (probably 5 of the 7 hours it's been plugged into speakers but turned all the way down on the iPod), will that cause it to use significantly less power?
3) Is the battery indicator accurate at all on the 1G iPods? I can't believe that this will go on for 6 more hours...

As a side note, yesterday the iPod was fully charged and then used for maybe 2-3 hours. It got left in the (very very cold) car for several hours and then when we took it out the battery died almost right away... I know that batteries are drained by cold temperatures, but that was the most dramatic example of it I've ever seen. Definately served as a good reminder to keep the iPod (or any battery operated device) in a warm enviroment when at all possible.

Rob

 

[dotdotdot]

Which makes me feel worse, as MY iPod won't last 4 hours!

 

[mkrishnan]

2) I've been turning the volume down on it for long periods (probably 5 of the 7 hours it's been plugged into speakers but turned all the way down on the iPod), will that cause it to use significantly less power?

What do you mean by "all the way down?" Are you using some kind of line out adaptor? If the iPod is literally all the way down, shouldn't it be outputting essentially nothing? FWIW, the power driving the headphones is not totally negligible. I think the max output power of the iPods is 60 mW, so if you play for 7 hours at full blast, that's 420 mAh, or about a third of the total iPod battery capacity, whereas if you play for the same amount of time at half power, then you save 200 mAh, which is on the order of 15% of the battery's capacity, just from the headphones. And if you factor in some loss in the amplification process, these numbers are even worse. I'm not super up on this, but if the amplification is 80% efficient, then the figure at full volume would be >500 mAh, or around 40%+ of the battery capacity.

Nevertheless, that's impressive for such an old whipper-snapper! That's great!

 

[mrgreen4242]

What do you mean by "all the way down?" Are you using some kind of line out adaptor? If the iPod is literally all the way down, shouldn't it be outputting essentially nothing? FWIW, the power driving the headphones is not totally negligible. I think the max output power of the iPods is 60 mW, so if you play for 7 hours at full blast, that's 420 mAh, or about a third of the total iPod battery capacity, whereas if you play for the same amount of time at half power, then you save 200 mAh, which is on the order of 15% of the battery's capacity, just from the headphones. And if you factor in some loss in the amplification process, these numbers are even worse. I'm not super up on this, but if the amplification is 80% efficient, then the figure at full volume would be >500 mAh, or around 40%+ of the battery capacity.

Nevertheless, that's impressive for such an old whipper-snapper! That's great!

I just had it turned all the way down... what would have been smarter of me would be to have it at about half way and then just turned the speakers down when I didn't want to have it on...

Your math makes sense. I spose I could get a semi-accurate estimate by just hacking 25% off the final time I end up with. I'll have to repeat this with the volume at about half or two thirds of max.

I'm 8 hours right now, and the battery indicator is at half power. Just guessing that it will hit 10 or 12 at this point, minus 25% for the lack of volume still puts it at 7 to 9 hours. Hack off 33% for a worst case scenario and it's still an impressive 6 to 8 hours from a 1G iPod...

Is this typical?

Rob

 

[akboarder24]

...

I have a 2nd Gen 20gb which I can get 11.5 hours out of at once, yes, it is getting old! Original battery and everything. I also have 2nd Gen 10gb which pulls about 9-10 hours everytime, still going strong. I don't understand it, but it's great to hear that others are getting awesome battery life out of the older ipods! woo hoo!

 

[mrgreen4242]

I have a 2nd Gen 20gb which I can get 11.5 hours out of at once, yes, it is getting old! Original battery and everything. I also have 2nd Gen 10gb which pulls about 9-10 hours everytime, still going strong. I don't understand it, but it's great to hear that others are getting awesome battery life out of the older ipods! woo hoo!

Ever think about selling the 10gb 2G? I'm kinda wanting one of these for myself now... hehe. My sister got a mini for chrsitmas and while I love the form factor, but the 5hr battery life is just competely impractical for me. If they made a 5gb mini that went for 8 hours at $199 (and then had an 8gb model for $249) I'd jump on it... but for now I have to say that I am amazed with this 1G.

Rob