Nook with Glowlight Battery Problem

[Hypatia1]

I have had my glowlight for a couple of months. About a week ago I turned it on and got the low battery warning - I though it was a fluke (typically I was recharging after a couple of weeks when it showed around 50% charge. However, last night I got the 5% warning again after about 4 hrs of reading/250pages since I last charged. I am trying powering it down completly in case there is some sort of runaway process but several hours of use doesnt sound like typical battery usage to me - anyone else having problems or do I have a dud....

[keriflur]

Do a search for N2E battery issues.  There's lots of advice in the forums on the issues that can come up and how to deal with them.

[Arclight]

Mine had the same problem of not holding a charge and discharging when totally powered off. After three weeks of this, I contacted BN Support and they are sending out a replacement Nook-Glow. My Kindles have never had this problem.

Call support and request a replacement to be mailed to you.

[Mercury_Glitch]

Have you changed the brightness of the glowlight?

I had turned mine all the way up to show a friend how bright it could get and forgot to adjust it back down to where I could still easily read with it in total darkness.  Having it at max illumination -eats- the battery VERY quickly.  It's also worth mentioning that you really don't need to have the brightness that high to read with the glowlight.

Of course if you don't have the glowlight on, nor wifi, and you're still having battery issues you should call support.  I would suggest not bothering with the stores, not because they people in them aren't helpful (they're very helpful, and do their best), but because a lot of stores may not have devices they're allowed to exchange. 

[Hypatia1]

Thanks to everyone for all the suggestions - I wasn't using the glowlight at the time but did have wifi on... After powering off it looks like things might be behaving ok (1% change in day with glow, wifi off and not reading, 5% loss when read for a couple of hours without glow, wi-fi) ... but I am going to keep logging reading time/battery usage for a bit (especially with wi-fi on) in case there is some threshold after which I loose battery rapidly. I also noticed (because I am going to settings a lot) that the storage used info seems off... I have about 80 books loaded but it says I have only used 2% of my storage....

[keriflur]

---

Hypatia1 wrote:

Thanks to everyone for all the suggestions - I wasn't using the glowlight at the time but did have wifi on... After powering off it looks like things might be behaving ok (1% change in day with glow, wifi off and not reading, 5% loss when read for a couple of hours without glow, wi-fi) ... but I am going to keep logging reading time/battery usage for a bit (especially with wi-fi on) in case there is some threshold after which I loose battery rapidly. I also noticed (because I am going to settings a lot) that the storage used info seems off... I have about 80 books loaded but it says I have only used 2% of my storage....

---

Are they downloaded books or sideloaded books?  The storage used shows your space for sideloaded books, but the downloaded books go to a hidden partition, and there is currently no way to see how much of that storage is used/available.

[Hypatia1]

Downloaded mostly.... what an odd default to set.... Thanks! Tricia

[SusanaSZ]

small piece of advice for everyone... The first three or four charges, let it fully discharge and charge fully before using. The battery needs to be calibrated to properly show battery drain...

[h2oskierc]

---

SusanaSZ wrote:

small piece of advice for everyone... The first three or four charges, let it fully discharge and charge fully before using. The battery needs to be calibrated to properly show battery drain...

---

Accordning to the owners manual it is not good for the type of battery used in the nook to be fully discharged.  I would advise against this...

[flyingtoastr Scribe]

Lithium Polymer batteries tend to get angry and actually lose some of their maximum charging potential when they fully discharge (beyond the emergency shutdown that BN device do, to the point where the device becomes truly unresponsive). The best thing you can do for the battery on a LiPoly battery is to actually leave it on the charger for about 8 hours the first time you give it a charge.

[keriflur]

SusanaSZ is correct about the battery needing to calibrate.  But, if you actually ran your battery down to 0% charge, you wonldn't lose some of your charging potential, you'd lose all of it - your battery would be dead and unrecoverable from a consumer standpoint.  Fortunately this is very, very hard to do because of the B&N battery warning, and the the fact that the device will shut down and refuse to boot up well before you get to 0%.

So, let your battery run down until you get the warning, then charge it all the way back up, ideally overnight.  Do this a couple of times and your battery meter will more accurately reflect your battery life, (which will give you more time before you get the low battery message, effectively extending the amount of time you can go between charges).

If you don't ever do this, your battery meter will not actually know the capacity of your battery and will not be able to give you correct readings.

After you've done this, you can charge how ever often you want.  I think there was a study that said that charging when the battery was 75% extends it's life?  Or was it 60%?  I can't remember.  If you do a search in the forums I'm sure you'll find the thread.

[SusanaSZ]

Lithium polymer batteries certainly don´t like to be fully discharged... But they don´t get ruined if you drain them. Otherwise most phone batteries would die in the first month or so... Drain until the recharge message comes out... afterwards just small recharges revive batteries enough for good use. In my Sony T1 I never saw it go past 90% charge...

[LarryOnLI]

---

SusanaSZ wrote:

Lithium polymer batteries certainly don´t like to be fully discharged... But they don´t get ruined if you drain them. Otherwise most phone batteries would die in the first month or so... Drain until the recharge message comes out... afterwards just small recharges revive batteries enough for good use. In my Sony T1 I never saw it go past 90% charge...

---

Actually Lithium batteries do get ruined if fully discharged.

Phones and other devices that use Lithium batteries have circuitry that shuts down the device long before it becomes fully discharged.

The reason that the battery is unusable after becoming fully discharged is that attempting to charge a drained lithium battery has a high(er) risk of fire/explosion.

Because of this increased risk every consumer lithium battery produced contains a circuit that permanently disables the battery if it detects a fully discharged condition.

Products like the NOOK family and your cell phone will show 0% and refuse to start-up well above this "absolute zero" condition of the battery to avoid getting into this danger zone.

The only way to get to this fully discharged condition is to run the NOOK down to what it reports is zero, then store it for a few months (time indeterminate). The battery will continue to discharge at a very low rate, and eventually reach a point where the safety circuit kicks in and you will then be unable to charge it.

[Hypatia1]

I really think its a runaway process issue... After a couple of weeks of steady discharge I finally needed to recharge this Saturday. Sunday morning the battery charge showed at 96%, after an hours reading last night the charge showed at 65%....  I turned it off and after turning on again this morning the charge showed at 63%.....

[Byteguy]

You mentioned you had the wifi on.  Stop doing that while reading.  Especially if you aren't actively connected to a server.  The wifi will continually search for networks for you and burn a lot of battery.

[Hypatia1]

I have had the wifi on in the past - but not this time... In any case the fact it usually goes down a few percent a day and suddenly decreases about 30% given nothing else changed that I know of (glow off, wifi off) seems odd