I bought a Sansa Fuze 4 Gb Black 2 weeks ago and I found something weird about the battery. In my Sansa Fuze manual says that the battery is up to 24 hour of music playback and 5 hours of video playback when is fully charged. I charged my device for about 3 hours and I disconnected it from my PC when it was fully charged (100% charged), then I decided to test the battery duration without playing any video at all. The weird thing is that I only was able to play music for 10 hours (not straight 10 hours but in total). **After 10 hours (not even half of 24 hours) of music playback my device turned off because of the battery (need to be charge).
Using firmware version: 01.01.11A**
How can you guys explain this? Can somebody else reproduce this? If this is a defective problem, what should I do in this case?
Also… it is true that this device came with defects with the manufacture and that’s why is not yet all available?
Battery drain can be dependent on some other factors:
music files - higher bitrated files tend to drain batter faster than lower bitrate
lcd screen (brightness) - the brighter the screen, the more it drains
lcd screen (auto off) - the longer it stays on, the more it drains
custom EQ (and other EQs) - higher dB levels of frequency can increase drain on battery
volume - I think higher volume will also drain battery
there are probably more factors that add to battery drain. I know I can drain a batter pretty quick if I have maxed out the above settings.
to find out of its truely defective, use the “reset all settings” in the system settings and than upload some songs (set on repeat all). than run your battery test again. if it doesn’t get past 10 hours, than maybe the battery is bad.
also make sure your device is fully charged. when its plugged in, if the battery icon is not animating, it should be charged.
Hi! and thanks for your reply… Well most of my files/songs are 128 Kbs bitrated and I have the brightness to normal (medium) since I don’t like my screen to be that bright.
Also, I don’t use “custom EQ” and my volume was set to normal when I did the test.
One thing I didn’t do was the screen light, I mean I was always changing the volume and looking for songs etc. Now I will run the battery test again and see what happen. This time I will make sure that all settings are set to default and I won’t touch the screen button and not even turn the lights on to see if my device is defective.
I tested my sansa fuze battery again and this time the battery lasts for more than 24 hours. I did this test with 5 song (repeat all) each song was 128 kbs bitrate. Also I didn’t play videos at all and I didn’t use the device light that often as before.
I believe in my first test my battery lasts for 10 hours because I probably kept the device light on most of the time (changing the volume and songs etc, and probably I played some 192 kbs vitrate songs too).
that’s good to hear that the battery isn’t defective and I’m sure sansa (as well as other mp3 products) will boast the time of their players at their “assumed user activity” where they will play music and than leave it playing through. its too bad that it only lasts 10 hours of thorough activity, but hopefully you can live with “setting it and forgetting it” =P
