A battery test for clix

[clieos]

The review of clix's battery life is quite confusing for many users. while it is very easy to claim some number from our experience, I decide that it will be better if someone could just take a few days to do some actual battery tests and so here it is.

General info of my clix:
2GB, firmware 2.01, 6 months old, has been charged all the time regardless of battery status, occasional deep discharge (1~2 times per month).

Songs used for the test:
Album of Roxette Hits encoded under these setting: Windows Media Audio 9.2, 128 kbps, 44 kHz, stereo 1-pass CBR (encoded in WMP11).

Part 1:
Clix was charged to max and stay in the charger overnight, than run continuously for 10hrs under these setting: Volume 18, SRS WOW, Shuffle+Repeat with Creative EP-630 in-canal 'phone. After this, it was putted into sleep mode for 9hrs. The test continued for another 8.5hrs until the battery was flatted. Battery checks were done every hour by unHold + Hold actions. Total run time 18.5hrs.

Detail:
10hrs Run (battery 3 bars) > 9hrs Sleep > 4hrs Run (3 bars) > 2hrs Run (2 bars) > 2hrs Run (1 bar) > 0.5hrs Run (Battery flashing) > Battery flatted

Note:
Notice the battery bars didn't drop in a linear fashion. For the first 14hrs it was 3 bars, and drop quite rapidly at the last 4.5hrs.

Part 2:
Part 2 has been concluded.
By using the same setting as in part 1, clix was able to continuously play for 19.5hrs before battery flatted. An extra hour was gained by not engaging the sleep mode, an equivalent of 5% of battery gain. On average, a power lost of ~0.56% in every hour of sleep mode. Of course, test replicates will give a more accurate number, but I am too lazy for that (It was a really x2 long test).

Detail:
15hrs Run (battery 3 bars) > 2hrs Run (2 bars) > 2hrs Run (1 bar) > 0.5hrs Run (Battery flashing) > Battery flatted

Notice that sleep mode is also included in the total time (test 1)

Note:
If we assume the battery drops is linear in the real world (and of course it isn't), we can conclude that an average of ~5% battery power was used for every hour on playing (on my setting). Than we can further concluded that sleep mode will draw around 10% power of play mode, and it will take a little more than 7 days to drain the battery in sleep mode (well it would have shut itself down by than). Adding more to the point, if you play 2 hours of music everyday (sleep mode 22hrs), you will draw around 22% of power per day, which will give you a total usable time of 4 days before battery is flatted. If you play for 4 hrs per day, daily battery drain will be ~31%, and give a total usable time of 3.2 days (~77hrs). This will be tested by part 3 of my test, although I will expect a shorter usable time (65~68 hrs maybe?)

Part 3:
This was done by a cycle of playing (4 hrs) and stopping (sleep mode 20hrs) till the battery was flatted.
After day (cycle) 1, 2 and 3, the battery still showed 3 bars as expected. In the beginning of the 4th cycle (4hrs playing), The battery showed 2 bars for 1hrs, 1 bar for 2hrs, and flashing for 1/2hrs before battery flatted. A total runtime of 76.5hrs, which is very consistence with my calculation of 77hrs.

Detail:
3 full cycles (3 bars) > 1hrs Run (2 bars) > 2hrs Run (1 bar) > 0.5hrs Run (Battery flashing) > Battery flatted

Note:
A few interesting things came out of this test.
First, the rate of battery drop is with in +1% of my estimation, which actually suggested the battery drop is closed to linear and reconfirmed the result of 2nd test. So now we can actually roughly calculate the daily battery use based on my estimation. For playback, it takes ~5% power per hour. For sleep mode, around 0.56% per hour. So your clix daily power usage will be:

(playback time) x 5% + (sleep time) x 0.56% = (daily power usage)%

remember that (playback time)+(sleep time) = 24hrs. Adjusts the final percentage based on your codec: Mp3 will be less, Ogg will be more (+5~10%).
And the total battery life will be:

100/(daily power usage) = (Usable days)

Secondly, since my clix didn't reset after every 20hrs of sleep mode, I am almost certain that the minimal time for clix to shut down is >20hrs.

Part 4:
This was done by a cycle of playing (4hrs) and stopping (manual off 20hrs) till the battery was flatted. The test was not as precise as the previous parts (kind of lazy to keep track all the time), but the total usable time was slightly the longer than part 2 and timed roughly to 20hrs as expected. The extra half an hour of battery life was most likely due to the fact that I did not check on the battery bars as regularly as I did in part 2.

Detail:
4 full cycles (3 bars) > 1.5hrs Run (2 bars) > 2hrs Run (1 bar) > 0.5hrs Run (Battery flashing) > Battery flatted

Note:
The whole purpose of part 4 is to estimate/confirm whether manually off with significantly prolong battery life. So what is my conclusion?

If we compare the result of part 2 and 3, we can conclude that if you only listen to 4hrs of music and charge every 3 days, you get (15.5/19.5)x100% = ~80% of total usable time.

If we compare the result of part 1 and 2, we can conclude that if you let clix sleeps 9~10hrs between use and charge every 2 days, you get (18.5/19.5)x100% = ~95% of total usable time.

If we compare the result of part 2 and 4, we can conclude that listen to 4hrs of music than turn it off manually and charge only after battery is flatted, you get 100% of usable time but you will need to charge every 5 days.

The most interesting part is:
if you use clix for 1 hr per day, you get 7 days with ~36% of total usable time (19.5hrs).
if you use clix for 2 hrs per day, you get 4.5 days with ~50% of total usable time.
if you use clix for 4 hrs per day, you get 3.2 days with ~80% of total usable time.

My questions to you are: Is it really so troublesome to charge your clix every other day? or will you willing to trade some battery life for the convenient of charging every third day? or is it absolutely important that you can use every single drop of battery power so you don't have to charge until every fifth day? How much do you use your clix everyday to justify the time between recharging?

I leave these questions to you so you may answer for yourselves, and hopefully it will make sense to you all.

Part 5:
A continuous playback of movie encoded on the max setting until battery was flatted. This was designed to find out how fast the battery was drained in video playback. The video was encoded with these settings: Xvid MP4@Simple level 3, 320x240, 15fps, LAME mp3 44100Hz stereo 128bits CBR.
The video was playback at volume 40. Total runtime 4hrs 10mins.

Detail:
2.5 hrs run (3 bars) > 1hrs Run (2 bars) > 30mins Run (1 bar) > 10mins Run (Battery flashing) > Battery flatted

Note:
Based on the assumption of linear battery drop, calculation indicates ~24% of battery is used for every hour of video playback. So now the battery life formula can be further improve by including the video factor:

(video playback time) x 24% + (music playback time) x 5% + (sleep time) x 0.56% = (daily power usage)%

For instant, if you watch video for half an hour and play music for 1 hour daily, you will used ~30% battery power per day. So you will need to charge your clix every 3.3 days.

It has taken a very long time, but all the tests are finished, for now.

[qwerty9876]

Yeah, the info for part 1 seems correct. One of the major gripes I have with my 4gb clix is how the battery animation barely changes from first bar but then it rapidly changes once it's on the second bar.

[Step666]

Originally Posted by clieosandclix

Note:
Notice the battery bars didn't drop in a linear fashion. For the first 14hrs it was 3 bars, and drop quite rapidly at the last 4.5hrs.

Originally Posted by qwerty9876

Yeah, the info for part 1 seems correct. One of the major gripes I have with my 4gb clix is how the battery animation barely changes from first bar but then it rapidly changes once it's on the second bar.

That's just the way such batteries work.
My mobile behaves similarly.

It's a peculiarity of Li-Poly batteries that they charge very quickly at first but the last little bit takes much longer to charge and the reverse happens when draining - the first bit takes ages but the apparent rate of discharge increases the further through the battery you get.
The two are undoubtedly connected but, as I say, it's not the Clix's fault, nor iRiver's, that's just the way it is.

[clieos]

Originally Posted by Step666

It's a peculiarity of Li-Poly batteries that they charge very quickly at first but the last little bit takes much longer to charge and the reverse happens when draining - the first bit takes ages but the apparent rate of discharge increases the further through the battery you get.
The two are undoubtedly connected but, as I say, it's not the Clix's fault, nor iRiver's, that's just the way it is.

I understand totally how it is designed to work. It is for those who 'believe' their clix battery is faulty

A smarter way will be to make the battery bar reflects the remaining play time of the battery (which many presume it is) rather than the voltage left. Well, one can dream

[Step666]

But of course, my reply was not merely for your benefit

As for trying to adjust the way in which the Clix displays the bars, that would be fraught with too many problems for it to be worth their while.
I mean, as the battery starts to age and it's performance wanes, you would have problems. Also, different activities use different amounts of battery, so that would throw the readings would it not?

[clieos]

Yeah, I know.
From my own experience, only the more expensive notebooks actually have a smart battery reader that will self-adjust as the battery aged. We are just not there yet. Hopefully I can see it in my lifetime. *fingers crossed*

[qwerty9876]

Just out of curiosity, how is the battery reader compared in the iPods. IIRC, they don't have bars for the battery and they seem to go down depending on the amount of playing time remaining and not voltage.

[Goodgot001]

This test is a very good idea!
Well done! I'm waiting for part 2 and 3...
This can make some order about sleep mode...

[saeglopur83]

Are you going to test the battery with ogg files as well?

[clieos]

Ogg? Not in my plan yet, but I might get to it once I got the first 3 parts done.

[derekg1023]

Would you say that firmware 2.01 is better at energy saving than 1.11? Just curious, because I've read a few times now that the 2.01 firmware uses less resources, (particularly in sleep mode) saving more energy for longer playback vs. the 1.11 firmware. I'm also running 1.11, would you say I should upgrade?

[clieos]

I am not sure whether FW2.01 is better than FW1.11 on power saving, but FW2.01 has proven to be more stable and less buggy to me. I will upgrade just for that.

Part 2 updated

[aluminumblue]

I found that after i upgraded my firmware to 2.01 that my clix was less responsive i.e:

1) during playback when the screen turns off, it would take like 5 seconds after me clicking the screen for it to come back on
2) there was significant lag between me clicking forward to the next track and the next track actually starting
3) i wouldnt even think about trying to skip a couple of tracks during playback because the display would freeze and which ever song was playing would continue to play - i had to reset the device to get the screen back to normal

Eventually i gave up and thought that the firmware had screwed my beloved clix, and since resetting the device didnt seem to fix anything, i formatted it and put everything back on.

Fixed.

Now my clix is as good, if not better, than when i first got it

[clieos]

Ha, it is the formating that did the trick. You always need to format it after upgrading FW or it will run slow. It is a known issue.

[clieos]

After 4 days of trial, part 3 of my test is really for all of you to read. The result is VERY interesting, even for me

[clieos]

Another 5 days and part 4 of the test is finished.

[balllist1c]

Hrmm interesting... those test results are a little bit dissapointing. It really is a shame that the 'off' mode consumes so much power. I like to take my clix camping and traveling where it could be days without touching base with a PC.

I really expected the 24~ hour battery life to be true... and although it is ... the end result is still unsatisfactory.... who honestly plays there clix in solid 20+ blocks everyday.

but at the end of the day, with my usage of the clix, it has similar convienience to my 1998 yum cha disc man, except with the discman I can atleast buy AA batteries from most general stores.... i cant always find a PC let alone carry my USB cable everywhere to charge it.

I hope this is something they fix... the clix is a great player... but this is just dodgy.

[hecatomber]

when i first got my clix, i fully charged and then played it continuously till the battery drains. according to those experiences, it's true;

if you don't plug an earphone to the device, it takes more than 24 hours of continuous play