Hi,
I have encountered this self-discharge problem too with a brand new Clip. A full charge of the Clip was completely gone in about 3 days without using it at all.
I exchanged the Clip at my store (Future Shop) for a new one which is working fine so far. The clerk which did the exchange also told me that they have seen similar problems with MP3 players of other brands too. I am not sure about the reliability of this information though, i.e. was it some vendor bull**bleep** or not ???
Do be sure the player is fully off when not in use (using the off switch on the side), and not simply in pause mode (via the up button on he player’s face). It’s easy not to be aware of this, there being no indication of the on state most of the time (after the screen has gone off).
dusky wrote:
I have a question if someone can help…has anybody left their Clip uncharged for 3 days or more (unplayed or played)? If so, what was the battery status after 3 days?
Yes; as I said in an earlier message, I left a fully-charged Clip turned off for about a week. It showed a full charge when turned back on.
I’ve just come home from a week-long trip without using my Clip, so I’ll be able to give it another test, as soon as I can find my Clip.
I’ll let you know what I find out.
jplepine wrote:
Hi,
I have encountered this self-discharge problem too with a brand new Clip. A full charge of the Clip was completely gone in about 3 days without using it at all.
I exchanged the Clip at my store (Future Shop) for a new one which is working fine so far. The clerk which did the exchange also told me that they have seen similar problems with MP3 players of other brands too. I am not sure about the reliability of this information though, i.e. was it some vendor bull**bleep** or not ???
I’m sure there are plenty of people who go to Future Shop complaining that their player’s battery drains too quickly. They may not understand how to fully shut their player down. Or their brand may have problems with power usage. It’s not really relevant to what’s going on with the Clip, though, so the clerk was giving you useless information.
PromisedPlanet wrote:
dusky wrote:
I have a question if someone can help…has anybody left their Clip uncharged for 3 days or more (unplayed or played)? If so, what was the battery status after 3 days?
Yes; as I said in an earlier message, I left a fully-charged Clip turned off for about a week. It showed a full charge when turned back on.
I’ve just come home from a week-long trip without using my Clip, so I’ll be able to give it another test, as soon as I can find my Clip.
OK, so, FWIW … I had my fully-charged Clip powered down for almost two weeks … turned it back on today, full charge.
Now I think my test will be to leave it playing, and see how long the charge will last.
**UPDATE**
After purchasing two Clips (at different times) that had the self-discharge problem (see previous posts), I decided that I would give it one more try since I really liked everything else about the player.
Before leaving BB with the third Clip, I took it out of the package and turned it on. It showed ~1/3 charge which I took as a good sign since it was likely manufactured/charged at least several weeks prior to my purchase.
I fully charged the player and can report that after several days without charging (and a little use) it is still showing a full charge.
1 out of 3 is not good odds but (since overall its a great player) I’m glad to finally have a working Clip.
Message Edited by dusky on 01-03-2008 03:20 PM
AFAIK, SanDisk hasn’t officially acknowledged this problem. Most people are just taking them back to the store and getting a replacement. If you bought your clip at Best Buy in December, they have an extended holiday return policy good till the end of January. It will be interesting to see what happens when people have to call SanDisk and request a RMA.
When I tried to return my Clip at BB a few days ago, the salesman told me that it was normal for most MP3 player batteries to need recharging every few days, even when not being used. When I told him that was bull**bleep** and insisted on a replacement he quickly offered to take it back as a trade-in on another make or model, as they were completely out of Clips. I told him I’d rather keep the one I had until they got more in stock. I was in the store yesterday and noticed that they had one on display, but I could see it was covered with fingerprints and obviously had been returned. I hope that these defective units are getting sent back to the factory and not just being put back on the shelf for someone else to deal with.
Hey Promised Planet… I did the playback time test. I fully charged my clip overnight… turned it on… and let it run until it shut down from low battery. I got about 11 hours continuous playback without touching the unit at all. I am waiting to hear from others owners to see if this is typical. If users keep turning on the display and fiddling with the unit which is tempting with any new gadget, I am sure the battery would last much less time.
While 11 hours is decent it is not 15 hours. I will probably just keep it however, since it’s not worth the hassle to return. It works well enough otherwise. You can get a USB A/C wall charger in Ebay for around $5 delivered. I found a USB car charger / wall charger combo for around $7. That way you don’t have to run a PC all the time to charge it. That can be a hassle if you don’t always have access to a computer or are on a trip.
Just as a point of information my clip is still fully charged after sitting idle for 3 days.
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to check my Clip until about 12 hours after I started my test, but it was discharged by that time. I’m going to try the test again now. I have my volume set to about 1/3rd, EQ set to Rock (I figure that may affect the power usage due to the output frequencies).
hy_tek wrote:
I found a USB car charger / wall charger combo for around $7. That way you don’t have to run a PC all the time to charge it. That can be a hassle if you don’t always have access to a computer or are on a trip.
Also, with a wall charger the display won’t be on during charging. I think I heard the display has a lifetime of about 2000 hours, so every little bit of non-display time helps, I guess.
Sounds as if you are getting similar results as I do for playback on a full charge. Great information about the display life. That rather ■■■■■ since your charge time is about 3-4 hours per discharge. That means 1/4 or so of the life of the display is uselessly wasted on charging. Bad design I would say. Thanks for the heads up.
PromisedPlanet wrote:
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to check my Clip until about 12 hours after I started my test, but it was discharged by that time. I’m going to try the test again now. I have my volume set to about 1/3rd, EQ set to Rock (I figure that may affect the power usage due to the output frequencies).
I got 14 hours … not bad!
14 hours is great. Looks like I got one of the marginal batteries in mine. …Oh Well can’t win 'em all… Do you use the stock earbuds? If your headphone efficiency is greater than the stock earbuds I suppose that would effect the discharge time as well. Either way my unit is not bad enough to return…I can live with it. I was unable to find any spec on the rated efficiency of the stock earbuds.
I was originally getting 9 hours but after discharging completely and charging a few times the time went up to 11 hours playback.
I used Brookstone’s “Buds Sound-Isolating Earbud Headphones” during my test. They’re not bad, a little pricey for the quality, esp. compared to the V-Moda Bass Freq earphones I usually use. I only got them because I was in an airport and realized I forgot my V-Modas.
Message Edited by PromisedPlanet on 01-08-2008 11:29 AM
Me too!
I am having a problem with self-discharge on my 1GB model that I purchased just before Christmas.
After a full long-day’s charge it discharges to 66% in the first ~ 10 hours (night til the next morning) and after roughly 30 hours is at 51% (According to XP properties and also the battery on the display is 1/2 illuminated).
I am allowing it to discharge on its own and checking it each day before and after work.
I am doing this because I have only used the player sporadically and noticed each time I took it out the batterey was completely discharged.
I like the player enough that I may exhange it at Radio Shack and try another sample.
I bought a player for my neice (2GB Best Buy model) and she has not reported this kind of trouble… but I need to double-check with her.
Hmm…just for the heck of it I disconnected my earbuds and left my Clip run all day with a full charge. I am trying various methods to replicate the problem everyone is having with battery discharge. The battery has a 60% charge after about 7 hours. Apparently the earbuds are a non factor in the power usage since the unit discharges considerably whether they are plugged in or not while it is in the playback mode.
This leads me to believe that one of several things is going on:
1. The Clip has either a monumental design flaw or a lot of bad batteries out there.
2. People are not actually shutting the unit off, only thinking it is off because the display is dark.
Just because the display is off doesn’t mean it’s OFF. the display turns off after 10-15 secs.
3. When carrying the Clip in your pocket or anywhere it could be activated by chance, make sure the HOLD switch is activated.
I can see a situation where the display is activated repeatedly when in a jeans pocket by accident.
4. Do not leave the Clip plugged into your computer with the computer off. This may discharge the battery somehow
through the USB cable. Possibly a bleeder resistor.
These are just speculations on my part. I really don’t know what is going on here. It appears either a lot of people don’t know how this baby works or the quality control at Sandisk is horrible. I simply don’t know how to explain it otherwise. Buying and MP3 player should not be a crapshoot.
I bought a pink one and a blue one for each of my kids before Christmas. A couple weeks before Christmas, I charged them up and loaded their music on them but I didn’t get around to wrapping them. About 4 or 5 days later I go to wrap them but I checked them one last time. The pink one had a full charge but the blue one only had a fraction of a battery charge left. I recharged it but didn’t have time to check it before Christmas so I just wrapped it up. After about six or seven full charges the blue player still won’t hold a charge for more than 4 or 5 days with no play. I bought these from shopsansa.com. Call 1-866-726-3475 and got an RMA and a printed UPS return label. I hope the next one doesn’t have the same problem.
P.S. I turn the player off each time and installed the latest firmware so that is not the problem.
hy_tek wrote:
I am trying various methods to replicate the problem everyone is having with battery discharge.
The only way you’re going to “replicate” this problem is to go to the store and buy more Clips till you find one that won’t hold a charge. Perhaps we could arrange a trade. :smileyvery-happy: Clearly this is not simply an “operator error” problem. It was appropriate to look first at that possibility, but it should be obvious to everyone by now that a substantial number of Clips have a manufacturing defect that prevents them from maintaining a charged battery for extended periods of time. It will take an engineering analysis to determine the cause. It could simply be that some of the Lithium Polymer batteries are defective. It could be that all the batteries are OK, but some as yet unknown defect in the circuitry of some Clips causes an unintentional current flow while in the OFF state which depletes the battery over a relatively short period of time. When enough faulty products get returned to the factory, that technical analysis will undoubtedly be done, the problem will be found, and steps will be taken to remedy the problem.
Kilgore_Trout wrote:
…it should be obvious to everyone by now that a substantial number of Clips have a manufacturing defect that prevents them from maintaining a charged battery for extended periods of time
I agree. To test whether it was a faulty battery or some part of the circuitry daining the battery, I fully charged mine, put it on “play all” and let it run until fully discharged. It ran continuously for ~15 hrs before shutting off…clearly a good battery.
I fully recharged it and left it unused for 3 days other than a couple seconds/day to check the charge status…dead on the third day.
I bought two defective ones before buying a third which has now gone >10 days without a charge (and used 2-3 hours) and the battery still shows full.
After reading this thread, I was afraid mine might turn out to be defective. But I left it off yesterday, & today it still shows a full charge even though I used it for a couple hours the day before. I guess I’m one of the lucky ones… Sounds like there was a “bad batch” that unfortunately made it into the hands of consumers. I think some stores accept lesser quality electronic products, so as to sell them cheaper *cough*WalMart*cough*. Therefore, you could potentially get a defective one. Anywho, I’m sorry that some of you weren’t so lucky.
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