Critical battery issues

My Sansa Clip+ has some severe issues, mainly because of the bad battery metter in the firmware.

First it dies with no battery remaining shutdown alert, with the built in Info menu showing ~40-50% level. Not so accurate btw.

Next it shows as everlasting charging. I leave it for like 5 hours to charge, but never sure because of the wrong levels shown. I dislike using MTP, because i have WMP badly.

Sandisk, are you listening and solve these bugs as soon as possible?

I dislike my Clip right now because it has more bugs than the previous generation.

The pitch bug on the previous Clip was nothing compared to driving you nuts because of empty battery!! 

I had an 7-8 hours trip and my Clip died after 3 hours. Judging by the built in level, it should have lasted 10 hours.

Sansa is losing terrain fast because they don’t fix one of the most critical bugs. Battery bugs should not exist in any modern player. This is just another marketing plan to wait and buy the Clip++ version, possibly!

Message Edited by icsterm on 11-25-2009 09:19 PM

icsterm wrote: 

I dislike using MTP, because i hate WMP badly.

 

You don’t have to use WMP with MTP…you can still drag and drop just the same. In Explorer you would be able to see the battery meter then.

Yes, maybe. But i don’t mind leaving the device for 5 hours (should fully charge in 99% with standard USB output power). I just need some way better battery calibration in the CPU/firmware. Let’s hope this gets fixed.

icsterm wrote:
Yes, maybe. But i don’t mind leaving the device for 5 hours (should fully charge in 99% with standard USB output power). I just need some way better battery calibration in the CPU/firmware. Let’s hope this gets fixed.

I agree, I hope it is fixed too.

icsterm wrote:

My Sansa Clip+ has some severe issues, mainly because of the bad battery metter in the firmware.

First it dies with no battery remaining shutdown alert, with the built in Info menu showing ~40-50% level. Not so accurate btw.

Next it shows as everlasting charging. I leave it for like 5 hours to charge, but never sure because of the wrong levels shown. I dislike using MTP, because i have WMP badly.

 

Sandisk, are you listening and solve these bugs as soon as possible?

 

I dislike my Clip right now because it has more bugs than the previous generation.

The pitch bug on the previous Clip was nothing compared to driving you nuts because of empty battery!! 

I had an 7-8 hours trip and my Clip died after 3 hours. Judging by the built in level, it should have lasted 10 hours.

 

Sansa is losing terrain fast because they don’t fix one of the most critical bugs. Battery bugs should not exist in any modern player. This is just another marketing plan to wait and buy the Clip++ version, possibly!

Not trying to be harsh here, but it seems pretty obvious that these problems are isolated to your unit (mine and several others don’t have these issues). Why don’t you just exchange it for another one where you bought it, or contact Sandisk directly for an RMA and be done with it?

To be honest, i bought 2x Clip+ from the US Amazon shop like 5 weeks ago. My friend who has taken the other Clip confirmed me the same issues. So this is not an isolated situation. Hope it fixes by itself when the metter gets tweaked better.

Ps. I never discharged my Clip completely. Maybe it gets fixed this time. 

icsterm wrote:

To be honest, i bought 2x Clip+ from the US Amazon shop like 5 weeks ago. My friend who has taken the other Clip confirmed me the same issues. So this is not an isolated situation. Hope it fixes by itself when the metter gets tweaked better.

Ps. I never discharged my Clip completely. Maybe it gets fixed this time. 

I would still be suspect of your problems being isolated incidents. The fact that you bought 2 from the same place at the same time and they are both exhibiting the same issues suggests that there could have been an entire batch or run from that particular factory at that particular time with those problems. SanDisk probably has multiple factories spread across China making these things.

That does not mean that all Clip+ players have these problems to where a firmware fix would be appropriate or even helpful. I still maintain that you should call SanDisk (since you’re probably out of the return window from Amazon at this point) and get another one through their 1 year warranty.

You’re getting yourself worked up into an absolute lather over this, dude. Get a new one, ease the stress and get on with your life. :wink:

The battery calibration is bad on my unit as well. It’s a 4GB unit purchased at Best Buy. I’ve seen multiple reports of it in another thread. Once it gets to 1/3 power remaining on the indicator, it’s just about to shut down.

I just keep an eye on it and it doesn’t bother me that much.

A fix would be nice, but if that’s my only issue, it’s not a big one.

I have the similar issues on my 4GB Clip+ bought at Amazon when they first came out.

I’m not too worried about it. I know it’s dead when it shuts off.  :stuck_out_tongue:

Message Edited by Seamus on 11-26-2009 08:49 PM

Indeed, the calibration will have to be addressed (no doubt, it will be) in a firmware update.  The Clip+ battery is slightly different from the Clip in capacity.  The firmware base is a hybrid of the Fuze (µSDHC capability) and the earlier Clip (OLED display module).  

Bob :smileyvery-happy: 

well, the clip+ is already 3 months old, hope the fix comes next month before general worldwide product dispatch.

Message Edited by icsterm on 11-28-2009 04:41 PM

Problem still here, i can get 8-9 hours of playback using mp3, it just dies at ~40% battery level. This is certainly a firmware bug, if no software update comes soon enough i’m selling the player and giving up Sansa because they don’t even bother answering on any forum or even confirming the bugs. Too bad for them, i love the SQ but that’s it.

Message Edited by icsterm on 12-09-2009 01:33 PM

There are two issues with battery life / indication. I have the joy of suffering both (nash).

  1. the battery gets to 50%, then within 30mins the unit is dead. Most likely a firmware / calibration issue so should be fixable. If it’s a battery / hardware issue then the units could run into big problems down the line. Li-* can be a funny technology, especially if allowed to go fully flat. Dead has a very literal meaning.

  2. Ogg Vorbis playback has screwed the pooch. This is also a problem on the Nokia N900 super phone (oops, smart phone / *nix pocket PC)

provided the post isn’t sanitized the following is a bit of research done by someone else:

tuomas.kulve.fi/blog/2009/11/07/n900-battery-duration-ogg-vs-mp3/

Search ‘n900 nokia libvorbis ffmpeg’ under your favourite brand search engine and it should be the first hit.

This is pretty promising as it states that using the libvorbis decoder you lose about 40% battery life, using ffmpegs vorbis decoder you gain about 2% (lets call it equal with mp3 for the sake of argument).

It being promising is based on Sandisk being hoopy froods who really know where their towels are at and get their fingers out, ■■■■ some nourishment, and fix the decoder.  And, if that doesn’t make sense, well never mind.

I’ve just done a test against Meat Loaf Bat 1, Bat 2, and the mild insult to Jim Steinman - Bat 3.

Vorbis encoded to 192 VBR (q6)

MP3 encoded to 128 VBR (v5)

MP3 encoded to 192 VBR (v2)

Playing the MP3 128 kb/s tracks (admittedly just the tracks in alphabet order as the playlists & tags were AWOL) I used a whole 2% battery after 9 tracks (~40 mins playback). Taking the units is dead at 50% into account this does actually equate to ~15hr playback (adjust 2% to 4 - 5 % battery use).

Playing the Vorbis back I lose about 2% per track (~6 mins) which comes to around 3 hours (I’m getting about 4.5hrs total playback time in previous straight runs). So this actually tallies. Yep, my whole collection is in vorbis, and I ain’t switching to MP3. Na, ah. They support vorbis on the tin, so they can properly support it in the device.

I already have a complaint / whining about product session open with Sandisk so this will be passed on to them (I will also start an Ogg specific thread to see what other people find).

icsterm wrote:
Problem still here, i can get 8-9 hours of playback using mp3, it just dies at ~40% battery level. This is certainly a firmware bug, if no software update comes soon enough i’m selling the player and giving up Sansa because they don’t even bother answering on any forum or even confirming the bugs. Too bad for them, i love the SQ but that’s it.

I still think it’s a problem with your individual unit, not all. Maybe I’m just lucky, but I got 11 hours, 20 minutes out of a full battery charge playing 100% FLAC files at approx. 70-90% volume. I haven’t completed testing/timing on MP3 files yet, given the FLAC results I would think I should see 15 hours easy.

icsterm wrote:
Problem still here, i can get 8-9 hours of playback using mp3, it just dies at ~40% battery level. This is certainly a firmware bug, if no software update comes soon enough i’m selling the player and giving up Sansa because they don’t even bother answering on any forum or even confirming the bugs. Too bad for them, i love the SQ but that’s it.

I still think it’s a problem with your individual unit, not all. Maybe I’m just lucky, but I got 11 hours, 20 minutes out of a full battery charge playing 100% FLAC files at approx. 70-90% volume. I haven’t completed testing/timing on MP3 files yet, given the FLAC results I would think I should see 15 hours easy.

The battery percentage indicator went down to 13% before it shut down on it’s own. 2 hours later after being plugged into the computer to charge, it was at 100% and rearin’ to go again.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that the Clip+ is a nifty unit, but the battery life ■■■■■, plain and simple.  It is tolerable with mp3-flac etc. files, but for me the battery life using the radio function is awful.  I am lucky to get 6 hours of usage playing the radio.

I would gladly accept a bit bigger unit as a tradeoff for better battery life.  But that is me…

“I would gladly accept a bit bigger unit as a tradeoff for better battery life. But that is me…”

http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=featuresuggestions&thread.id=1392

Just to add some more anecdotal evidence, I too have had battery life problems with my Clip+ 8GB.

I’ve had it just over a month now.  I would say average battery life is probably about 6 hours.  On a couple of occasions it has gone for twice that long.  On a couple of occasions it has gone flat within (approximately) 3 hours of use.  I only use it to listen to mp3 files.  No other formats, radio or voice recordings.

It’s rare that I’ll listen to it for more than 6 hours in a day, so it is not a huge problem for me.  What is more of a problem is that the battery level display is very buggy, as a few people here have mentioned.  What normally happens is that I will charge it to full, and then listen to about 1 or 2 hours of music, which depletes the battery to about 80-something percent.  Another couple of hours and it will drop to about 40 percent.  And then it will deplete very slowly for a while, until it reaches about 30 percent, after which it can go from 30 percent to flat within the space of a 3-minute pop song.

It’s difficult to be sure if it’s a meter calibration problem rather than a problem with the battery.  The generally short life of the battery in my unit suggests to me that there are problems with the battery itself, but it is possible that inaccurate meter readings are an additional problem on top of that issue.

Overall I’m very pleased with my Clip+, but a few minor problems persist which would make me hesitant to recommend it to a friend.