battery life and sd card??

Hello

I looked at the forums but didn’t find the actual answer to this question. 

I have a 2 gig fuze that I purchased in the June, 08 and have been getting a good battery life. I have been charging to 100 % about once a week. At the time of charging the battery life is about 50 % or 70 %. I have the backlight to low, screen shut off at 10 sec. and haven’t used videos. no eq, stock earbuds, normal volume setting, and low to med. low volume while listening.  I mostly listened to music with an occasional book.

This past week I purchased a 8 gig sd card and put on music and a video podcast. I noticed that within 2 days the battery was down to 25%. I figured it was because of the video podcast. (I was just trying it a just for fun, don’t plan on having video podcasts as a normal practice).

Today I added some books, on the sd card and charged up the fuze to 100%. I decided to watch and see how long the battery would last. At 6:30 pm I started to listen to some books that I just put on the card, they were short books, so After each book I scrolled to another book. I listened to 5 -(10 to 12min) books. I then switched to music. I scrolled to one album and listened all the way through without touching the fuze. Once the album was complete, I scrolled to another album and did the same. I did this for a total of 4 albums. Note: 3 of the 4 albums were on the sd card.

Now it was 9:00 pm. (2.5 hours later) and  I check the settings on the fuze and noticed that it was at 68%. That is a 32% or 1/3 battery use.

If I follow the math, I will only get appox. 7 to 8 hours.  

So my question is… Does the SD card effect the battery life that much? Does anyone have any other help or insight?

Thank you.

I have not heard an “Official Response” to this either but I do notice the same thing. Not near the same degree as you, but there is some loss with the card at least in my case.

I hope I am wrong, and I was just messing with it too much and all the scrolling (although I didn’t think it was that much) took up all the battery.

I am charging it up again and will see what happens this week.

My son has a c250 and plays it every night for 2 hour sleep and even has it powering a mid size speaker and he gets 15 or so hours. I just put in a 4 gig card today for him. I asked him to watch and see if he gets a significant drop in battery life.

I loved this fuze. I hope that it was just a fluke.

Do you think the class of the card would have an effect on the battery life? I have an 8 gig sandisk card  class 2 (says class 2…Yeah I know the whole class 2 is really class 4 stuff… that is another thread)

My son’s card is a transcend 4 gig class 6.

Just thinking as I was sitting here.

@sahm wrote:

Do you think the class of the card would have an effect on the battery life? I have an 8 gig sandisk card  class 2 (says class 2…Yeah I know the whole class 2 is really class 4 stuff… that is another thread)

 

My son’s card is a transcend 4 gig class 6.

 

Just thinking as I was sitting here.

I dunno. I dont even know what class my card is (Its over a year old). I hope that it is the card (in my case) and not the battery. I have also never really used my player with out the card (only at first) but I notice when I play exclusivly off of the card the power drops about 5% compared to a mix.

There’s really no way to accurately tell unless you go all the way to 0%. I tried the battery life expectancy with my Clip, and the gauge doesn’t seem to go down in an entirely linear manner. It seemed to get down to 68% fairly quickly, but stayed there for a while. Then it went down to something like 42%, and stayed yhere for quite a while. And it was still playing loud and strong when it hit 0%. Does the card use some extra battery? Yes. How much more? I really can’t answer that. You would have to duplicate everything with and without the card installed to really find out the exact answer, I think…but I’m no engineer either .

According to my system engineer (for similar products) once the microSD card is inserted there is some power draw, period. Smarts could be deviced to not power up the microSD circuitry at all if you’re not playing from the microSD card (that’s power management for you) but there may be hardware or software issues too. Bottom line, in general (not specifically for the Fuze) the moment a card is inserted, it will draw power. Hence the reduced battery life.

A microSD card is always installed in both of my 8 gb fuzes; I play nothing but high bitrate ogg and FLAC files and I have been consistently getting 16 or so hours of battery life out of both of them.  My experience is exactly the same as Marvin’s.  The battery gauge is non-linear.  Unless you go to 0, you won’t know what the full battery life is.

I’ve had an 8GB card in my 8GB Fuze for a couple weeks now and haven’t noticed any major difference.  If there is a difference, it’s nothing dramatic like you are reporting.  I have a feeling the lack of accuracy of the battery meter mentioned in the other posts might be the culprit.  Let it run completly down and see how long you get.  Also, make sure you have the latest FW as I think I recall they improved the meter in one of the last releases.

There is a very small difference in battery life using the uSD card.

MicroSD cards should only make the battery last 5-10 minutes less

Hello,

Well… I finally got around to being able to test my fuze. I played the player straight through with little interaction. I let it run until it shut off. I calculated that I got approx. 15 hours of play. This was with the shuffle on and an 8gig sandisk 2class card.

This is not close to 20 to 24 hours sandisk claims, but I guess it isn’t that bad. I know what has been said about the card not using much battery life, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with my player. I haven’t had the time to test is without the card.

I did have my son test his player (C250) with a 4 gig transcend 6 class card. He got 17.50 hours of play. He used to get closer to 20 hours of play when he didn’t have the card.

Of course these are not official tests, but they are our experiences so far.

I guess I can live with 15 hours of play.

OH. I forgot to say I was only testing music, I didn’t test it with any podcast or books.

All the music were ripped from cd’s with widows media pre-set settings (128 wma? I believe) and then transfered to fuze. 

wma uses significantly more power to decode than MP3.

@sansafix wrote:
wma uses significantly more power to decode than MP3.

Does ogg vorbis also require more power than mp3 to decode?

I listen almost exclusively to ogg vorbis files on my Fuze, and I find that I get nowhere near the advertised 24 hours of battery life.

@fuzilli wrote:


@sansafix wrote:
wma uses significantly more power to decode than MP3.


Does ogg vorbis also require more power than mp3 to decode?

Yes, it does.

@fuzilli wrote:


@sansafix wrote:
wma uses significantly more power to decode than MP3.


Does ogg vorbis also require more power than mp3 to decode?

I listen almost exclusively to ogg vorbis files on my Fuze, and I find that I get nowhere near the advertised 24 hours of battery life.

If battery life is that important to you, do what I did.  Buy yourself a second fuze or an add-on  battery source.  I get 16 to 17 hours out of my battery and I figure if I need more than 34 hours of continuous music, I have a major problem.   :smileyvery-happy:

Actually, I’m waiting for someone to introduce an arm- or head-mounted solar panel-based battery charger. Then I could recharge my Fuze while on the move. Sorted.

@fuze_owner_gb wrote:

If battery life is that important to you, do what I did.  Buy yourself a second fuze or an add-on  battery source.  I get 16 to 17 hours out of my battery and I figure if I need more than 34 hours of continuous music, I have a major problem.   :smileyvery-happy:

I am kinda in the same boat…I have an event tonight that will put a strain on the Fuze battery, I need 24 hours of continuous music with out repeating so I am loading up my Fuze, Clip, and view as well as my parents clips, I also went and got extera SDcards and am loading them up, to play in my slotmusic. Its gona be a mess

@conversionbox wrote:


@fuze_owner_gb wrote:

If battery life is that important to you, do what I did.  Buy yourself a second fuze or an add-on  battery source.  I get 16 to 17 hours out of my battery and I figure if I need more than 34 hours of continuous music, I have a major problem.   :smileyvery-happy:


I am kinda in the same boat…I have an event tonight that will put a strain on the Fuze battery, I need 24 hours of continuous music with out repeating so I am loading up my Fuze, Clip, and view as well as my parents clips, I also went and got extera SDcards and am loading them up, to play in my slotmusic. Its gona be a mess

If you had a bigger SD card I’d say just bring a wall charger for your Fuze. I have enough on mine to play for many days if my charge doesn’t run out

@marvin_martian wrote:


@conversionbox wrote:


@fuze_owner_gb wrote:

If battery life is that important to you, do what I did.  Buy yourself a second fuze or an add-on  battery source.  I get 16 to 17 hours out of my battery and I figure if I need more than 34 hours of continuous music, I have a major problem.   :smileyvery-happy:


I am kinda in the same boat…I have an event tonight that will put a strain on the Fuze battery, I need 24 hours of continuous music with out repeating so I am loading up my Fuze, Clip, and view as well as my parents clips, I also went and got extera SDcards and am loading them up, to play in my slotmusic. Its gona be a mess


If you had a bigger SD card I’d say just bring a wall charger for your Fuze. I have enough on mine to play for many days if my charge doesn’t run out

I am actually doing cards based on Genre, or band/album (Barenaked Ladies/Barenaked Ladies Are Me). I did a couple earlier that were time Spesific, ie 12 am-4 am, It is gonna be easier than just throwing a bigger card in. I also dont have a place to plug it in with a wall charger that was the first thing I thought of.