Sansa Fuze Firmware Update 01.02.26 & 02.02.26

@etoja wrote:
Marvin_Martian, if I were you I would rely too much on 32 Gb card - I noticed that the external cards drain Fuse battery very quickly just by the virtue of being in the player. It doesn’t matter if it is 1, 2, 4 or 16 Gb or SanDisk, Kingston - all of them shorten battery charge even if you don’t play the files on those cards. I guess it is the price we have to pay for the seamless integration of those cards in the player. Most likely it is the reason why Creative Zen is that staunch against the card integration in their devices.
Message Edited by Etoja on 05-10-2009 03:34 AM

Message Edited by Etoja on 05-10-2009 03:35 AM

My 8GB card is always in my 4GB Fuze, and my battery has never died on me. In all fairness though, even if it did make a bigger difference in battery life than I have noticed, that would still be ok with me, given that I use my Fuze strictly at home, where charging is convenient. Whenever I leave the house and am truly on-the-go, I bring one of my Clips.:smiley:

@etoja wrote:
Marvin_Martian, if I were you I would rely too much on 32 Gb card - I noticed that the external cards drain Fuse battery very quickly …

All the more reason to want greater internal storage capacity…

C’mon, Sansa, listen to your market! 

@robisan wrote:


@etoja wrote:
Marvin_Martian, if I were you I would rely too much on 32 Gb card - I noticed that the external cards drain Fuse battery very quickly …


All the more reason to want greater internal storage capacity…

 

C’mon, Sansa, listen to your market! 

This may be a stupid question…but would a 16GB card require more battery power to access than the 8GB card I have now, if I was to upgrade?

@etoja wrote:
Marvin_Martian, if I were you I would rely too much on 32 Gb card - I noticed that the external cards drain Fuse battery very quickly just by the virtue of being in the player. It doesn’t matter if it is 1, 2, 4 or 16 Gb or SanDisk, Kingston - all of them shorten battery charge even if you don’t play the files on those cards. I guess it is the price we have to pay for the seamless integration of those cards in the player. Most likely it is the reason why Creative Zen is that staunch against the card integration in their devices.
Message Edited by Etoja on 05-10-2009 03:34 AM

Message Edited by Etoja on 05-10-2009 03:35 AM

Although not everyone has seen the battery drain issue with cards inserted, I have.

Glad to know I’m not alone. 

@Reviewboy - Not scientific by any means, but my new Fuze w/o an sd card (yet) seems to have less battery drain than my previous one, which I had an sd card in from day one.

@Marvin_Martian - I’d also like to know more specifically about this. Is the so-called/alleged “drain” a static thing due to the presence of the sd card or is it a dynamic function related to level of data usage from the card (e.g. the player has to pull data from the card to the internal memory to ‘play’ it, resulting in more power usage than data from the internal memory). Clearly if it’s the latter then a larger card holding a larger percentage of total data would result in increased battery usage.

 Robisan, IMHO the size doesn’t matter in this particular case… I feel the drain  with 1Gb, 2Gb, 4Gb and 16Gb SanDisk cards.  

As I mentioned earlier I think that the drain happens due to the integration of a card in the player.

If I am right -  wouldn’t it be reasonable to introduce in a future firmware (if any) a kind of function switching off seamless integration in MSC mode while using only FOLDER browsing to access the files? In case of folder browsing the seamless integration is not needed at all. It might improve the battery life.

For comparison I had a look at my 2-3 year old unbranded Chinese Rockchip-based  mp3 player with an external card (it uses only folder browsing - which is very fine for me) and I can’t see any difference in the battery life - no matter if has a card inserted or not.

Adding a memory card to the player is exactly the same as adding a memory card to a computer. You are adding extra electronics that require additional power to operate (whether or not you access access or use it). Memory chips are not designed in a way that allows their data and address lines to remain connected to hot circuitry with their power lines not connected (or turned off). Doing so could damage both sides of the electronics.

As such, anytime you put a memory card into the player it will always drain more power from the battery than without the card.

Beyond that, the amount of power needed to actually access the memory (to play music from it) is very, very little. It’s unlikely that you’d even be able to notice a difference in run time just based on playing all from the internal or all from the external card memory.

It’s really only the fact that the card requires power all the time (regardless if you access it or not) that drains the battery more.

Interesting discussion. Anyone out there who has some numbers on battery life with and without external memory card (e.g. playing mp3 only)?

@ewelot wrote:
Interesting discussion. Anyone out there who has some numbers on battery life with and without external memory card (e.g. playing mp3 only)?

Not me…my card is always in. :smiley:

@marvin_martian wrote:


@ewelot wrote:
Interesting discussion. Anyone out there who has some numbers on battery life with and without external memory card (e.g. playing mp3 only)?


Not me…my card is always in. :smiley:

Perfect! You are the one I’m looking for because I don’t own a card. :smileyvery-happy:

I get 25hrs of mp3 playback (96kbps, volume level 75% on “Normal” scale, backlight 50% for a total of about 20min). I’m curious to see your numbers soon …

@ewelot wrote:


@marvin_martian wrote:


@ewelot wrote:
Interesting discussion. Anyone out there who has some numbers on battery life with and without external memory card (e.g. playing mp3 only)?


Not me…my card is always in. :smiley:


Perfect! You are the one I’m looking for because I don’t own a card. :smileyvery-happy:

 

I get 25hrs of mp3 playback (96kbps, volume level 75% on “Normal” scale, backlight 50% for a total of about 20min). I’m curious to see your numbers soon …

 

 

Thing is, I have lots of different file types, and bitrates…so I don’t know how scientific a comparison would be. I do have a few WMA VBR and Ogg Vorbis files that are close to your bitrate there, but those codecs use more battery power to decode than MP3. The vast majority of my files are much higher bitrate…my 4GB +8GB card has 2,224 songs on it. I’ll try to remember to keep track of the time the next time I use the Fuze, but it’ll take a few days to get through it. You might have to remind me though. :stuck_out_tongue:

@marvin_martian wrote:


@ewelot wrote:


@marvin_martian wrote:


@ewelot wrote:
Interesting discussion. Anyone out there who has some numbers on battery life with and without external memory card (e.g. playing mp3 only)?


Not me…my card is always in. :smiley:


Perfect! You are the one I’m looking for because I don’t own a card. :smileyvery-happy:

 

I get 25hrs of mp3 playback (96kbps, volume level 75% on “Normal” scale, backlight 50% for a total of about 20min). I’m curious to see your numbers soon …

 

 


Thing is, I have lots of different file types, and bitrates…so I don’t know how scientific a comparison would be. I do have a few WMA VBR and Ogg Vorbis files that are close to your bitrate there, but those codecs use more battery power to decode than MP3. The vast majority of my files are much higher bitrate…my 4GB +8GB card has 2,224 songs on it. I’ll try to remember to keep track of the time the next time I use the Fuze, but it’ll take a few days to get through it. You might have to remind me though. :stuck_out_tongue:

Only a suggestion: pick a single mp3 file and let the fuze play it back repeatedly over night or some other time you are not using it - if there is any. :wink: 

Alternately, get about 8-12 hrs of mp3s and play them all with the fuze set to power off after 10 mins of non use. 10 Mins after they complete playing it should turn off I believe. Test 1 would be to play them from internal memory on a full charge overnight then power on and check the battery % in System settings. Repeat this 2 more times recharging in between, getting an average. Then do the same with the exact same files from external memory and compare the averages. The mp3s could be anything, but you may want to mix up the bitrates and CBR and VBR

Unless you do something like this and it seems repeatable you dont know what you’re seeing.

You could play a single mp3 in repeat mode for a specific amount of time, but that’s a bit of a pain… 

@ewelot wrote:


@marvin_martian wrote:


@ewelot wrote:


@marvin_martian wrote:


@ewelot wrote:
Interesting discussion. Anyone out there who has some numbers on battery life with and without external memory card (e.g. playing mp3 only)?


Not me…my card is always in. :smiley:


Perfect! You are the one I’m looking for because I don’t own a card. :smileyvery-happy:

 

I get 25hrs of mp3 playback (96kbps, volume level 75% on “Normal” scale, backlight 50% for a total of about 20min). I’m curious to see your numbers soon …

 

 


Thing is, I have lots of different file types, and bitrates…so I don’t know how scientific a comparison would be. I do have a few WMA VBR and Ogg Vorbis files that are close to your bitrate there, but those codecs use more battery power to decode than MP3. The vast majority of my files are much higher bitrate…my 4GB +8GB card has 2,224 songs on it. I’ll try to remember to keep track of the time the next time I use the Fuze, but it’ll take a few days to get through it. You might have to remind me though. :stuck_out_tongue:


Only a suggestion: pick a single mp3 file and let the fuze play it back repeatedly over night or some other time you are not using it - if there is any. :wink: 

Well, I found one album that is 160kbps, CBR MP3 ( the lowest bitrate MP3 that I have) . The Fuze backlight timer, 10 seconds…brightness is about 33%… volume, about 66% into 60-ohm 'phones. The Fuze is repeating that album (The Doors-Waiting For the Sun) which happens to be on the external card (a SanDisk 8GB class 2 microsdhc ) . When I crash out tonight, which will be about 04:00 , I will  make a personal note of battery level and time elapsed, and shut it down. I’ll continue on with it tomorrow.

P.S. After 4 hours it was at 84% battery, although it’s well documented that the battery meter is not exactly linear. Test will continue tomorrow. 

Message Edited by Marvin_Martian on 05-14-2009 04:39 AM

Does anybody know if it is possible to delete a folder but not just a single file from the player using the latest firmware?

@g3u5 wrote:
Does anybody know if it is possible to delete a folder but not just a single file from the player using the latest firmware?

No - as far as I know. The only way to delete several files at once is to do it from the computer with the Fuze being plugged in.

Not AFAIK.

You can either format the whole thing from the Settings->Sytem Settings menu, or use Delete Song from the Music Options menu when playing a track. But nothing in between…

The assumption is that you will manage your music from a host PC.

Edit: Beaten to the draw by ewelot :slight_smile:

Message Edited by daytona955 on 05-14-2009 03:24 PM

@marvin_martian wrote:

P.S. After 4 hours it was at 84% battery, although it’s well documented that the battery meter is not exactly linear. …

Instead of “well documented” I suspect that it rather has been vaguely guessed - or somehow felt. At least with the latest firmware there is no measurable deviation from linearity. Even the scatter of the individual points matches with PERFECT linearity and the fact that the battery power is given at steps of about 5-6 percent. This has probably not been taken into account by a few users.

Happy listening to another few hours of The Doors …    (Yeah, I like this one a lot)

P.S.: I didn’t succeed to insert my battery power plot, grrrrh. Any advise (file formats)? To whom may I address this issue?

Message Edited by ewelot on 05-14-2009 04:50 PM

@ewelot wrote:


@marvin_martian wrote:

P.S. After 4 hours it was at 84% battery, although it’s well documented that the battery meter is not exactly linear. …


Instead of “well documented” I suspect that it rather has been vaguely guessed - or somehow felt. At least with the latest firmware there is no measurable deviation from linearity. Even the scatter of the individual points matches with PERFECT linearity and the fact that the battery power is given at steps of about 5-6 percent. This has probably not been taken into account by a few users.

Happy listening to another few hours of The Doors …    (Yeah, I like this one a lot)

 

P.S.: I didn’t succeed to insert my battery power plot, grrrrh. Any advise (file formats)? To whom may I address this issue?

Message Edited by ewelot on 05-14-2009 04:50 PM

I’m not listening to it…just letting it run. I’ll look at itafter another 4 hours have gone by, and see where it’s at.You may have a point about this particular firmware , but in the past, both Fuze and Clip have not run down in a very linear fashion…I recently did a FLAC test with my Clip here which illustrates what I meant.

P.S. After an additional 4 hours, the tally stands at… 63% after 8 hours.

Message Edited by Marvin_Martian on 05-14-2009 02:05 PM

@marvin_martian wrote:


@ewelot wrote:


@marvin_martian wrote:

P.S. After 4 hours it was at 84% battery, although it’s well documented that the battery meter is not exactly linear. …


Instead of “well documented” I suspect that it rather has been vaguely guessed - or somehow felt. At least with the latest firmware there is no measurable deviation from linearity. Even the scatter of the individual points matches with PERFECT linearity and the fact that the battery power is given at steps of about 5-6 percent. This has probably not been taken into account by a few users.

Happy listening to another few hours of The Doors …    (Yeah, I like this one a lot)

 

P.S.: I didn’t succeed to insert my battery power plot, grrrrh. Any advise (file formats)? To whom may I address this issue?

Message Edited by ewelot on 05-14-2009 04:50 PM


I’m not listening to it…just letting it run. I’ll look at itafter another 4 hours have gone by, and see where it’s at.You may have a point about this particular firmware , but in the past, both Fuze and Clip have not run down in a very linear fashion…I recently did a FLAC test with my Clip here which illustrates what I meant.

 

P.S. After an additional 4 hours, the tally stands at… 63% after 8 hours.

Message Edited by Marvin_Martian on 05-14-2009 02:05 PM

Thx for the reference. And there is the plot of the battery running down on my Fuze (mp3, 96kbps, volume 75%, backlight 50% for a total of 20min):