Nook Simple Touch reader battery life - lousy

[Nallia Distinguished Bibliophile]

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rchusid wrote:

Any chance WiFi signal strength or whether connected could affect battery life? Here's why I'm wondering:

When I first got the Nook, I kept it on at home with WiFi on. I don't recall exact battery life, but it seemed to discharge gradually and I wasn't concerned.

Earlier this month I was on vacation for over a week. I turned off the WiFi. I used the Nook while sitting around the pool at a resort for extended periods almost every day, and the battery lasted through the trip. (I did recharge towards the end to be safe, but I think it would have made it through a week).

Last weekend I was out of town, staying in a condo which did not have its own WiFi. There were weak signals from several neighboring condos. I read for less than an hour. As it was such a short trip, I didn't bother to turn off the WiFi before going. I turned on the Nook again on Monday evening and found that the battery was down to 12 percent, after having a full charge as of Friday.

Now I'm wondering if there could be a sudden problem with the battery, or if the conditions over the weekend led to increased draining. At home with WiFi on the Nook is connected to a strong WiFi signal. I'm wondering if being in a situation with lots of weak signals (WiFi on but not being used) could affect the battery. Could it be frequently trying to find a signal to connect to, but using more power searching through several weak signals?

After recharging I plan to leave it sitting at home with WiFi on at home and see how battery life is when connected to my home WiFi.

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Yes.  Leaving WiFi on will affect the battery.  Leaving WiFi on when it has a weak or no signal will affect the battery even faster because it will be constantly scanning.

[LarryOnLI]

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Nallia wrote:

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rchusid wrote:

Any chance WiFi signal strength or whether connected could affect battery life? Here's why I'm wondering:

When I first got the Nook, I kept it on at home with WiFi on. I don't recall exact battery life, but it seemed to discharge gradually and I wasn't concerned.

Earlier this month I was on vacation for over a week. I turned off the WiFi. I used the Nook while sitting around the pool at a resort for extended periods almost every day, and the battery lasted through the trip. (I did recharge towards the end to be safe, but I think it would have made it through a week).

Last weekend I was out of town, staying in a condo which did not have its own WiFi. There were weak signals from several neighboring condos. I read for less than an hour. As it was such a short trip, I didn't bother to turn off the WiFi before going. I turned on the Nook again on Monday evening and found that the battery was down to 12 percent, after having a full charge as of Friday.

Now I'm wondering if there could be a sudden problem with the battery, or if the conditions over the weekend led to increased draining. At home with WiFi on the Nook is connected to a strong WiFi signal. I'm wondering if being in a situation with lots of weak signals (WiFi on but not being used) could affect the battery. Could it be frequently trying to find a signal to connect to, but using more power searching through several weak signals?

After recharging I plan to leave it sitting at home with WiFi on at home and see how battery life is when connected to my home WiFi.

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Yes.  Leaving WiFi on will affect the battery.  Leaving WiFi on when it has a weak or no signal will affect the battery even faster because it will be constantly scanning.

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Seconding what Nallia said. This applies to 3G as well, if you are in an area with poor reception your battery will drain much faster.

[rchusid]

Glad to hear that my idea re poor wifi signal killing the battery faster sounds like a valid explanation for the problem last weekend.  Hopefully I'll verify that this was the issue with my Nook if the battery drains slowly over the next couple of days back at home with a strong signal.

[wensday]

I got around 40-45 hours of battery life on my first charge, now it seems that I'm only getting 15-20 hours.  I had charged the battery when it was only around 30-40% a couple times already.  Have I already "misconditioned" my battery?  Or would it be worth while to do the suggested cycling still?  Drain to below 10%, charge 3+ hours...

If I do cycle, would it make any difference if I leave the WiFi on to cycle quicker?  Or would that not matter? 

[LarryOnLI]

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wensday wrote:

I got around 40-45 hours of battery life on my first charge, now it seems that I'm only getting 15-20 hours.  I had charged the battery when it was only around 30-40% a couple times already.  Have I already "misconditioned" my battery?  Or would it be worth while to do the suggested cycling still?  Drain to below 10%, charge 3+ hours...

If I do cycle, would it make any difference if I leave the WiFi on to cycle quicker?  Or would that not matter? 

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The thing to remember is that you are not "conditioning" the battery, you are calibrating the charging circuitry.

Letting the battery drain almost completely and then charging fully a couple of cycles "teaches" your NOOK what the high and low levels of your battery are.

IMPORTANT: Fully discharging a lithium battery is never a good idea. A completely discharged lithium battery might not be able to take a charge again. Your NOOK (like all devices using Lithium batteries) has circuitry to prevent this, but I wouldn't rely on it totally.

[roustabout]

Using the wifi definitely has a lot of impact on the NST battery

On both the NST and the NC  I run an RSS reader (newsrob) to locally cache articles to read throughout the day.

Yesterday, I charged my NST to about 98% before starting to use it.  Last night, I read for maybe half an hour or so on the ST and set it aside (with wifi off) before moving over to the NC. 

When I got up this morning it was a 96%, which was fine by me (I'd brought up wifi a couple of times to resync content.)

Then, I pointed my RSS reader at my google reader account to pull in updates.  I would guess that process took about 15 minutes, all in good signal strength with the device not doing anything else.  I powered down and kept moving. 

The battery is now at 85%. 

That seems a little on the 'large hit' side for a relatively short networking session.  I can live with it, but I hope the nookfolks at BN are looking into some of the power-saving techniques that can be applied to wifi and seeing if Google's making them available for android yet. 

A solid RSS reader is definitely a reading centric app for me and I didn't buy the NST until I knew I could set it up to install my own software.  I'm disappointed that the networking is so inefficient on the device, but the info in this thread on page turn versus battery life has been super helpful since I also do plenty of page refreshes, both in the RSS reader and in the reader I'm using until BN fixes the reader on the NC. 

Fbreader lets me sync across both devices, and have landscape and night mode on the NC.  The stock reader on the NC is broken for my purposes.  Given that BN's had almost a year to fix the NC reader and have instead changed the wording of their marketing material, I realize I like the devices more than the corporate politics of the vendor.  

[edu500acEC]

I asked a few friends to test their batteries and report their results. I hope to profile battery consumption with this kind of experiments. I would appreciate if more people could join us. Each test takes a week to perform. The next one will start on August 1. Here is what you are supposed to do:

1 --- Charge your battery to 100% (make sure that the battery light is green before unpluging the Nook.

2 --- Don't turn the Wifi during the week you choose to take the test.

3 --- Annotate your reading activities (start time and end time).

4 --- Report your results at the end of the test. My email is phi500ac@yahoo.ca. I will post the results on www.discenda.org.

[Nallia Distinguished Bibliophile]

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edu500acEC wrote:

I asked a few friends to test their batteries and report their results. I hope to profile battery consumption with this kind of experiments. I would appreciate if more people could join us. Each test takes a week to perform. The next one will start on August 1. Here is what you are supposed to do:

1 --- Charge your battery to 100% (make sure that the battery light is green before unpluging the Nook.

2 --- Don't turn the Wifi during the week you choose to take the test.

3 --- Annotate your reading activities (start time and end time).

4 --- Report your results at the end of the test. My email is phi500ac@yahoo.ca. I will post the results on www.discenda.org.

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I have already done this.  I posted it early this week.

http://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com/t5/NOOK-General-Discussion/N2E-Battery-Life-Tracking/m-p/1108334...

[DrewG]

I returned my first Simple Touch after 6 weeks due to obvious battery problems. It sometimes went abruptly dead, and once it lost 50% charge overnight with wireless off.

After two weeks my second one is starting to seem flaky. I'll replace it again if needed since I really like the device and others are having good battery experiences.

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wensday wrote:

I got around 40-45 hours of battery life on my first charge, now it seems that I'm only getting 15-20 hours.  I had charged the battery when it was only around 30-40% a couple times already.  Have I already "misconditioned" my battery?  Or would it be worth while to do the suggested cycling still?  Drain to below 10%, charge 3+ hours...

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There's a lot of confusion about conditioning and battery life, and I had to refersh my memory about the current rules. In case it helps others:

Rechargable batteries for small electronics are usually either lithium-based or nickel-based, with lithium being more common recently. The Nook uses lithium-based batteries.

"Conditioning" a battery means charging it fully, discharging it way down, and then recharging it.

Nickel-based batteries have to be conditioned or their capacity will actually be reduced: the batteries have a "memory effect". Since nickel was king for many years, lots of people remember this rule. Deep discharge helps nickel work better.

Lithium batteries won't suffer from the memory effect. Although they'll gradually lose their ability to hold a charge (all batteries do), if you constantly deep-discharge your battery it's actually worse for the battery's long-time life. Deep discharge is (slightly) bad for lithium.

However, as LarryOnLI says, you do need to condition a lithium battery periodically to calibrate the "fuel gage" so it accurately reports the level of the battery's charge.

So if you haven't discharged your battery pretty far down yet, it's can't hurt to do that once to calibrate the circuitry. But it seems unlikely to me that your calibration would be so far off after only two discharges. You might just have a bum unit like I did.

If I've got any of that wrong, please let me know.

More reading:

USA Today

Battery University

[medic50]

My daughter and I got the simple touch in late June.  My battery life is great, hers only lasts a couple of hours just over a month after purchase.  Of course, during the 30 days that she had to return it, it was fine.

[suzatm07]

My Nook 2 sat all day yesterday not being used.  When I finished the book I was reading on it Friday night - the battery charge was at 78 percent.  I always have the wifi turned off when I am not planning on shopping and downloading books.  I put the Nook to sleep and all day Saturday I didn't use it.  This morning I got up to pick out my next book to read and the battery level was at 35% and the wifi had been turned on.   To me that is not a good thing - the battery drain was too extreme for no reading being done.  I didn't have this problem before the update.

[jackcarter75]

I am on my second N2E. The first one they did replace no problem. I could not go 2 days without having to charge my battery. I got the new one charged it up and it lasted about a month which was cool. Now I am back to a few days and I have done everything I could do. I let it charge 3+ hours, but still am losing battery power like crazy. I dont know if I should take it back and get a new one or just ride it out till they have a firmware updae. I did get the latest update and still having power issues

[RML2]

Agree batteries are a problem. I returned my first Nook because it didn't hold a charge- a fact I discovered in the airport... now have my replacement- and don't get me started on the inconvenient rigmarole involved in getting it. Now have replacment, charged it and waited as I didn't want all the trouble of registering again if this one didn't work . Two days later the batter was flat. I recharged it again last night and am waiting. It's turned off now but will see if it will power up in a day or so.

[AustinWriteGuy]

For those of you having battery issues...Try charging your Nook in sleep mode (for 3-4 hours).  After charging, completely shut down the nook, then power it back up.  This is the only thing that's worked for me.  I initially returned my first Ne2 because the battery died after 2-3 days (even sitting idle).  BN replaced it and on the initial charge of the replacement I got well over 4 weeks of use out of one charge.  However, when I recharged it for the first time,  I barely got 4 days out of it.  Through trial and error I discovered if I powered the unit down after charging I could maintain a significantly extended battery life.  A tech friend of mine thinks it's a software issue.  If that's the case a software update would be nice.  Best of luck to those of you having battery issues.  I feel your pain.

[ikoiko]

Well, there are many others, including me. The battery failed after less then 8 hours of use. Battery was fully charged prior to use. Defective battery. going to the BN store where I purchased it for a exchange. Hope they'll do that for me.

[vlee]

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AustinWriteGuy wrote:

For those of you having battery issues...Try charging your Nook in sleep mode (for 3-4 hours).  After charging, completely shut down the nook, then power it back up.  This is the only thing that's worked for me.  I initially returned my first Ne2 because the battery died after 2-3 days (even sitting idle).  BN replaced it and on the initial charge of the replacement I got well over 4 weeks of use out of one charge.  However, when I recharged it for the first time,  I barely got 4 days out of it.  Through trial and error I discovered if I powered the unit down after charging I could maintain a significantly extended battery life.  A tech friend of mine thinks it's a software issue.  If that's the case a software update would be nice.  Best of luck to those of you having battery issues.  I feel your pain.

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This is what happened to me, too.  I recharged my Nook for the first time last week, and read for 3 days before I noticed that the battery was discharging significantly faster than the initial charge even though I was actually reading less.  I recharged, powered it off, and the battery is lasting a lot longer. 

[lopaka47]

After receiving my replacement STR on 23 July, I didn't recharge it again until this last Saturday when the indicator said the battery held approximately 18% power in reserve. Today, a scant 4 days later with reading time at way less than 6 hours total, I look at my tablet and this is the message onscreen:

"Battery too low to power on."

Fine. I give up. I'm going to start charging this STR frequently just as I do my N1E, and be done with it. I thought with first the in-store exchange and then the update I was good, but such appears NOT to be the case.

[marklee99]

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AustinWriteGuy wrote:

For those of you having battery issues...Try charging your Nook in sleep mode (for 3-4 hours).  After charging, completely shut down the nook, then power it back up.  This is the only thing that's worked for me.  I initially returned my first Ne2 because the battery died after 2-3 days (even sitting idle).  BN replaced it and on the initial charge of the replacement I got well over 4 weeks of use out of one charge.  However, when I recharged it for the first time,  I barely got 4 days out of it.  Through trial and error I discovered if I powered the unit down after charging I could maintain a significantly extended battery life.  A tech friend of mine thinks it's a software issue.  If that's the case a software update would be nice.  Best of luck to those of you having battery issues.  I feel your pain.

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This was the answer for me - I originally got only three days of battery life, with Wi-Fi mode off, after a full charge.

Was just about to return it when I saw that posting suggesting powering off the Nook after a full charge.

I am now on day three after that, reading the same amount as before, and the battery meter is at 96%.  I don't plan on returning the Nook, and am now glad that I can stop worrying about that battery.  I plan on doing the same procedure after every full charge.

[PAGuy]

Well, I too have had battery issues.  My first New Touch Nook's battery was defective from the get-go and I returned the unit for a replacement within a week of purchase.  That was  three months ago.  My current Nook battery is erratic. It has held a charge for over a month, but then the last time I charged it, it discharged to 40% after two days and maybe two hours of reading.  Something is clearly wrong with the Nook batteries.  I'm going to try AustinWiseGuys' suggestion of powering off after my current charge.  We'll see what happens. 

[cjeppsen]

Another person experiencing horrible battery life. Purchased in June 2011. WiFi is kept off. I charge the battery completely, and within a day (no use, nothing touching the screen) I get the message to plug it in before I can use it.

I called BN and they offered a replacement, but after reading about everyone else's problems I just wanted a refund. I was told that they would only offer an exchange, so I asked to speak to a supervisor. I was transferred to the "escalation line" but hung up after being on hold for 25 minutes and called again. The second person I spoke to said that they could process a refund but I had to talk to someone on the escalation line. I couldn't wait for 25+ minutes again, so I called back the next day. The third person I spoke to said that the wait time would be around 15 minutes, so I called back again when I had that much time to be on hold. The fourth person I spoke to transferred me to another customer service line (~15 minutes on hold) who transfered me to someone on the management team (~5 minutes on hold). The manager said that I absolutely could not get a refund.

My husband purchased a Kindle last year, and when he called about the issue they were having with the covers and Kindles freezing (google it) they immediately offered an exchange or refund. I loved my Nook Touch until this problem, but after this hellish experience with BN customer service I'm definitely going with the Kindle from now on. And pretty much I'll do everything in the world I can think of to steer people away from BN until they die the slow death they're headed for (yeah, I'm mad).