This is a question I expect gdgt to be really useful for answering, rather than relying on the PR blurb for the product, crowd-source a real-world estimate of battery life.
The question is, how long will the reader's battery hold out while listening to music (from SD card) and reading at the same time?
I'm asking because I'm hoping to travel a little lighter next time I'm stuck on the train home for a couple of hours. If this is gonna replace the book in my luggage, why not my iPod too?
Discussion about
Battery life
I never really used it for music playback, but I'd say it's going to be a significant hit to battery life. Even though Sony claims 7,500 page turns, this thing really doesn't get that. I usually had to charge it each book (300-400 page turns). Of course, your mileage may vary, but I'm thinking that an iPod is still going to get better battery life, purely for music-listening.
I get a good 5+ hours of non stop reading and audio playback on a battery charge.
I agree that the 7,500 page turns thing is a joke, natural battery discharge overtime robs you of most of this capacity.
I agree that the 7,500 page turns thing is a joke, natural battery discharge overtime robs you of most of this capacity.
Well I put mine to the test this weekend. A blackberry pearl full of music and a 505 with a couple of albums thrown on too. No charger, just the promise of a micro-USB cable at my destination. And, to be fair, everything worked out fine. I only charged the BB over the course of the weekend, and they both got heavy use over the course of 6+ hours on the train. I think it might just be that mine is still new, but the 505 still has 75% charge after 11 days without a charge.
When I first got mine I kept an SD card in it all the time, never shut it down, just put it in Standby and even with light reading it needed re-charging once a week. I don't know what fixed it, but I installed the Sony software, updated to the latest firmware, transferred my books from the SD card to internal memory and removed the SD card and now it'll sit for a month in standby without draining completely.
This relates to overall battery life as opposed to just music listening. Different formats have different battery usage rates. I'd say pdf is the worst and books purchased directly from Sony seem to be the best.
One hint over all is to fully power it off every once in a while so it gets a proper reading on battery life rather than the guessing it does when you're putting it in standby.
One hint over all is to fully power it off every once in a while so it gets a proper reading on battery life rather than the guessing it does when you're putting it in standby.
