Battery drain when off (FW rev 1.01.17 the cause?)

Question for the forum: if you’ve updated to the latest firmware (1.01.17), have you seen a larger power draw from the battery when your Clip Zip is off?  One thing I did check when I first bought my CZ is battery drain after a few weeks of non-usage.  It seemed to be negligible if non-existent.

With this latest FW rev that doesn’t seem to be the case.  I haven’t used my CZ for a few weeks and left it at a nearly 100%  charged state.  When I went to use it today it was at 11%. Anyone noticed rather large power draw when not in use?  I didn’t have that issue with my old Clip and this CZ didn’t seem to have that issue either with the previous firmware revs.

Ulp–now THAT’S not good. One thing you might want to try is, reapply the latest firmware–perhaps a glitch got into the code when it was installed earlier.

@miikerman wrote:
Ulp–now THAT’S not good. One thing you might want to try is, reapply the latest firmware–perhaps a glitch got into the code when it was installed earlier.

Applied it twice already; nothing else is flakey except what has been reported here earlier.

I just finished charging up the player a few hours ago.  One thing I noticed when it was still flashing the battery logo: I stopped the charge, checked the state of charge via the ‘info’ menu.  It said 100% but I had interrupted charging the bugger.  It either was at nearly fully charge and trickle charging or the indicator is off. I plugged it back in, let it go until it reached the battery logo in the display quit flashing.  It should be at 100% for sure now.

We’ll see if it happens again.  If it does I’l roll back to the previous FW revision.  I hope I did something stupid but I don’t think so.

Sadly, I think the CZ (with FW x.18, the latest) does have a power drain when off.  My CZ was at 66% capacity last Thursday, left the unit off since then.  I checked it this evening, it down to 55%.

The power steps in the display are rather coarse but there’s a definite power drain in the unit when off.  My old Clip had virtually zero off-state drain.  I remember some complaints about the Clip having drain when off but I never experienced them or they were pretty small.  The CZ doesn’t share that trait it seems.

Any others who see (or refute this claim), please chime in.  This may be another reason to switch eventually to Rockbox (assuming RB differs in this department).  And I do hope it’s a firmware issue, not a hardware issue.  The unit should have virtually zero power drain when off with modern ICs technology.  The only thing I can think would drain the battery is the clock but any gizmo I’ve owned that had a clock built in had flea-power drain due to that.

I’m on 1.01.18 and my CZ also has the same problem… it has gotten relatively cold (15 degrees F) at night, and i’ve been leaving it in my car… so i wonder if the cold is eating the battery… but i too have charged it and returned to very little battery life even though its been off.

If the battery is cold it’ll mess up the battery indicator on the player (which is calibrated for room temp), but once it warms up it won’t have lost much charge unless you leave it for a very long time.

Best to take the player inside with you at night–not the best to let it get down to that cold. 

Just got a clip on.  It was advertised as great.  I’ve found it to be less as the first time i used after charging an entire night it said low battery and turned off.  Tried to go to the site for the owner’s manual and got a lot of pay to play advise sites.  If anyone onf this site can help a tech non-savy guy, i would appreciate it as i apparently have no other recourse.

@sharkster wrote:

Just got a clip on.  It was advertised as great.  I’ve found it to be less as the first time i used after charging an entire night it said low battery and turned off.  Tried to go to the site for the owner’s manual and got a lot of pay to play advise sites.  If anyone onf this site can help a tech non-savy guy, i would appreciate it as i apparently have no other recourse.

Don’t know where you’re encountering this, but you can find the user’s manual by clicking here.

Very useful information for the player can be found at the very top of this forum, in the “sticky” threads (they always stay at the top)–this includes the manual and the latest firmware.  Enjoy!