I just purchased my sansa connect two days ago and I am enjoying it so far. I can’t find anywhere how long the battery is suppose to last on a full charge. Does anybody know?
indoha wrote:
I just purchased my sansa connect two days ago and I am enjoying it so far. I can’t find anywhere how long the battery is suppose to last on a full charge. Does anybody know?
i think it is about 12 to 15 hrs without wifi 4 to 6 hrs with wifi
Boy, I don’t get anywhere near that even with the wireless turned off. Maybe about 2-3 hours with the wireless, 5 or 6 without. I’m curious what others are getting.
Make sure that you fully charge the battery through the wall charger, at least 3-4 hours.
I’ve come to the conclusion that there is some sort of bug in the firmware. About 2 to 3 times per week I’ll turn the unit off (either by letting it turn its self off or by briefly pressing the power button), and the battery will drain in about 3 hours. When this occurs the unit gets warm which indicates that it really isn’t asleep and is using the CPU. This occurs regardless whether the wifi is on or off.
Most of the time when I turn the unit off it won’t the battery life is great.
I suspect that there is some thread of execution in the firmware that isn’t sleeping when the unit is in sleep mode. This just happened to me this morning. One additional clue is that the GUI was very sluggish before putting the unit to sleep. Apparently there was something going on in the background. I suspect that it was continuing to go on after it was sleeping.
At this point I have to carry a charger with me whereever I go since there is about a 1 in 3 chance that the battery will be depleted by the time I turn my unit back on.
I hope that Sansa attends to this since it makes the unit not very useful as a portable player. I would appear that I’m not the only one with this problem.
Absolutely. I’ve had the random battery drain issue as well.
The sudden $100 price drop says to me that we’ll never see new firmware.
SanDisk offers zero official info, but between Yahoo Music’s recent news and this new price, there’s a lot of writing on the wall.
I just used my Connect on a road trip and got 10 hours with wifi turned off. Note that the screen was also off for almost the entire time. I am sure that had the screen been on the battery life would have been lower.
I agree with there possibly being a bug in the firmware that’s causing the thing to expend battery power during suspend mode. It’s died on me 3x after placing it in suspend mode within 3-4 days after turning it off. Each time I started with a 100% full charge. As a test, I did a full shutdown (hold the power button for 5-8 seconds) and it DID maintain it’s battery charge beyond 3-4 days. I’ve put in second service ticket on this and no response yet. The first Tech told me to try again and MAKE SURE the battery was fully charged. Like I’m stupid or something…
I hope this problem does not follow the course of their Cruzer U3 Launchpad Installer that’s STILL not compatible with Vista after how many months… about 9?
Come on SanDisk…
Message Edited by pgraff99 on 09-25-2007 03:01 PM
I’ve had a Sansa Connect for 1 week and have had to charge it 3 times so far (I’ve played music for approx 6 hours total). The battery is definitely draining when I leave it in either sleep mode or off mode (that requires the device to go through a full startup). Every time I turn the unit on, the power meter is lower than it was when I turned the unit off (usually for 8 or 9 hours or overnight). I tried running it for a couple of days with WiFi disabled, but that didn’t seem to make a big difference. I’ve now tried reducing the screen brightness to 15% and the backlight time off to 5 secs, to see if that makes any difference. I doubt it will though, since power is draining so fast when the unit is turned off.
If anybody has any suggestions on how to increase battery life, please let me know.
The safest bet is to do a full shut-off every time you power down.
But it’s still a bet, and the next time you go to use it there’s just no guarantee that the thing will have held its charge.
Firmware, anyone?
Here’s the latest comments I got from Tech Support on the standby battery-life issue:
Thank you for contacting Sandisk.
The reasoning for your battery life span being so short is something simple. Please try the following, In the settings they have Airplane mode , this mode turns off the Wifi , when in standby mode the wifi connection is still active so the unit is still powered and draining your battery. Also to increase battery life turn your player totally off by holding the power button until all lighted areas are off.
The reasoning behind keeping the wifi active when in standby is so you do not need to reconnect to the wifi. This way you jump from standby mode and go directly where you wish to be on the wifi of your choice and signed in with yahoo.
I will however forward this to our engineering depart that works on the firmware for our players.
My comment: WOW! Are they going to fix this? So, to get the advertised 2 week standby battery life, the formula is STANDBY+AIRPLANE MODE. Remember that.
What, and wait 60+ seconds for the thing to do it’s painfully slow cold boot every time you have a couple of minutes to listen to music? I don’t think so.
Tried that and it still will burn through its battery in 3 hours. It doesn’t happen everytime, but it does occur at least twice a week. I listen to my connect in my car. I put it in airplane mode while I’m in the car. If I simply put it into standby (briefly hitting the power button), as often or not the battery will be drained the next time I use it. This is from a full charge.
It isn’t the WiFi it is something else. Again oftentimes the player will be warm after the battery drain.
OK, I’m going to test the theory (Airplane Mode+Standby=battery life) myself and see if what their Tech Support said will work – even though it’s not a solution. We should not have to enter Airplane Mode just to get the thing to keep the battery alive for more than 3 days in Standby.
Since you already tested this and the battery still died in Standby, I already have my doubts. I guess what bugs me is they don’t seem to know their product and/or are unwilling to admit a problem.
Turning off the Wi-Fi and pausing song playing before entering Standby DOES NOT stop the unit from draining its battery after 3-4 days. So far, Sandisk is silent on this problem. It’s time for them to speak up because Connect owners seem at a loss to find a resolution.
i get 8-9 hours of playtime w/out the wifi connection w/ the lock on at work…i get that stupid bug of turning off the mp3 and it still running and getting warm…
Looks to me like SanDisk is closing the issue – unless they hear from more people than me. Here’s the last response I got from them:
"The test results are in! The player (Sansa Connect) was fully charged on 10/10 and placed on standby at 5pm CST. Today 10/17 11am CST, the Connect still has power, there is no color in the battery icon but it still turns on. This player has been used almost everyday from the month of March. "
The Connect holds a charge for pretty long time, except for those random times when it doesn’t.
Tell them the results aren’t in until they’ve done it a few times.
