Reading from SD Card use more battery ?

SanDisk MP3 players Sansa® Fuze™
1

Hi,

I have bought a brand new Fuze (2 gb) 1 week ago, and i have a question.

When the fuze plays music from is own memory, the battery life is 20~25 hours, but when the Fuze plays music only from the SD card (Sandisk 8gb)the battery is down in 10~12 hours.

So I want to know if it’s normal that when reading music from SD card only, power drain is heavier, or if my Fuze battery is defective ?

Thanks in advance

Message Edited by Vreid on 12-06-2008 03:59 PM

2

I haven’t heard that to be the case, but maybe some one more knowledgable on the subject will chime in. Are the files on the card the same type/format as on the player’s internal memory? Or do you have say, .mp3’s on the player and FLAC or OGG on the card?

Sounds like a big difference though.

3

I have heard that reading from the card is a little more drain on the battery, but it shouldn’t cut it in half like that. Tapeworm may be onto something with file types though…FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, and WMA all use more decoding “horsepower” than MP3.

4

I’m using only .mp3 files, no FLAC, Ogg or WMA. Bitrate between 128 and 256

Apparently my battery is defective, The battery was at 56% 6 hours ago and now is only at 5%

Message Edited by Vreid on 12-07-2008 02:20 AM

5

It’s possible that the battery charge information is not very accurate, happens on a lot of portable devices. So while your battery meter may say 56 percent it may in fact have been a lot lower.

Apart from that it takes a few charge cycles for a battery to reach its full capacity.

6

I have already full charged the battery 4 times.

I think i’m gonna return the Fuze to my store for a replacement.

7

This is interesting. 

I play movies on my cards (that’s the only place I have my movies) and they don’t seem to take more battery power then what they should.

8

I might guess this is normal. What type of SD card do you use? I get the Ultra or Extreme series cards from SanDisk. They have faster read/write speeds and lower power use than standard cards. I can’t say I know what battery life to expect, but it could be normal operation.

9

@sgthawker wrote:
I might guess this is normal. What type of SD card do you use? I get the Ultra or Extreme series cards from SanDisk. They have faster read/write speeds and lower power use than standard cards. I can’t say I know what battery life to expect, but it could be normal operation.

These are designations and classifications of cards in SanDisk’s SD (standard size) cards. The Micro-SD or SDHC (size) cards are not available in the same Super-Duper-Ultra-Extreme-Light Speed Fast designations. I think they probably have a hard enough time trying to fit all those GB in such a miniscule package. :wink:

10

Back with an all new Sansa Fuze 4gb and always the same problem, battery was at 100%, 3 hours after, was only at 73%.

Sansa only read MP3 from the micro SD (sandisk 8gb)

It is possible that the SD card is defective or my new fuze is defective again ?

11

@vreid wrote:

I’m using only .mp3 files, no FLAC, Ogg or WMA. Bitrate between 128 and 256

Apparently my battery is defective, The battery was at 56% 6 hours ago and now is only at 5%

Message Edited by Vreid on 12-07-2008 02:20 AM

Where did you get that accuracy of battery charge - all I see is a picture of a battery on my Fuze.

I have a new player that I’m trying to figure out the life of.  Maybe I’ll test it out over the weekend in terms of hours of actual use. 

12

@fireball wrote:

@vreid wrote:

I’m using only .mp3 files, no FLAC, Ogg or WMA. Bitrate between 128 and 256

Apparently my battery is defective, The battery was at 56% 6 hours ago and now is only at 5%

Message Edited by Vreid on 12-07-2008 02:20 AM

 

Where did you get that accuracy of battery charge - all I see is a picture of a battery on my Fuze.

 

I have a new player that I’m trying to figure out the life of.  Maybe I’ll test it out over the weekend in terms of hours of actual use. 

Settings->System Settings->Info

13

This has already been discussed several times. Take this For a Definitate answer to theSD Card Battery Issue. If Sansa Fix Says it I believe it.

14

Hello,

I was the one who started the other thread. 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. 

Message Edited by sahm on 01-22-2009 05:31 PM

15

@sahm wrote:

Hello,

I was the one who started the other thread. 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. 

 

Message Edited by sahm on 01-22-2009 05:31 PM

The wma files do require a little more battery power to decode than MP3, so that combined with a slight draw from the card could explain the time you acheived. Assuming a totally full chage, that’s still pretty good given the wma files. Podcasts would probably be easier on the battery because they’re typically at even lower bitrates than 128, and usually in MP3. 

16

Thank you for the reply.

I finally got an answer that makes me comfortable. This is my first player for myself. I purchased a c250 for my son last christmas and that was his first player. We have been learning as we go and these boards have been a blessing.

So my understanding is, if I listen to music/books/podcasts etc. straight through with little interaction I will get a the 15 or so hours. If I listen and move around from album/book/ podcast/ etc between each listen. I will get my 10-12 hours that I got in the first post.  

And, If I change my files to mp3 I will get better results.

I can live with that.

Thanks again

Message Edited by sahm on 01-23-2009 07:49 AM

17

Sanfix answered my question in the other tread.

http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=sansafuse&thread.id=13997

Thanks.