MP3 Players and Batteries
The truth about MP3 Player batteries
You're shopping for an MP3 player and you're concerned about the battery life. Maybe it's your second MP3 player and you're replacing the first because the battery died and you don't want to get burned like that again. The MP3 player you buy is only going to work as long as it has a working battery inside. The impressive playback times per charge offered by today's MP3 players may look good, but they're only part of the story when considering how long the battery will last. You can easily find hard drive based MP3 players with a 12 hour battery life. This simply means that under optimal conditions, a fully charged battery will run the player for 12 hours before requiring a recharge. We'll examine exactly what those optimal conditions are and how long that battery will last.
Most modern Mp3 players, including cell phones, media players and other gadgets are made with a type of battery called the Lithium Ion (LiI) rechargeable battery. The key benefit to these batteries is that they're lightweight and offer a tremendous amount of energy. What makes these batteries even more perfect for consumer electronics is their scandalously short lifespan. A LiI battery pack will last only two to three years (or about 500 charge cycles) before circuits inside the pack suffer oxidation to the point they can no longer pass a charge. Remember, this is two years from the day it's made, not two years from when you buy it and take it out of the box.
A short lifespan is perfect for consumer electronics because a built in obsolescence feature forces you back into the market for a replacement. This is just as well for many people who are bored with a two-year old gadget. If you're about to spend $300 on a hard drive based MP3 player believing you're investing in a long-term item, forget about it.
Removable Battery Packs
You're best chance at long-term ownership of an MP3 player is to look for one that has a removable / replaceable battery pack. However, there is no guarantee that the style of battery pack you're device takes will be available in two years. You can try to stock up on a few now while they're plentiful, but a two / three year old battery pack still in factory shrink wrap is just as corroded inside as the one you're replacing. You must find one that was just manufactured. Apple's iPod has a program where they will accept your iPod in the mail and replace the battery for a flat fee, which has come down from $100 to $70. At some point in the future the price may come down even further or just be done away with altogether. One thing is for certain, the program exists knowing that most people will just buy a new iPod when the battery dies.
Factors that contribute to shortened battery life:
- Humidity
- Cold temperature conditions. Keep your LiI at room temperature
- Heat. Again, keep your LiI at room temperature
- Running the battery down completely
- Over charging the battery
- DRM sucks battery
Battery Charge Cycle
As previously mentioned, your LiI battery pack is rated to give you about 500 complete charge cycles, but could give you up to 2000 charge cycles. This is a significant difference if you're a real MP3 warrior. If you want your battery pack to last as long as possible, you definitely want to go for partial charge cycles as much as possible. Don't let your battery run out completely and avoid letting it charge up completely.
The battery time specification is expressed in numbers of hours. The impressive 12 hour charge of the Creative Zen Micro is indicative of LiI's greatest strength, but these charge times are measured under unrealistic lab circumstances. For instance, to get 12 hours out of your Zen Micro, you'll need to playback only 128 bit MP3s in one or two sessions. You'll have to use the supplied earbuds at 50% - 75% volume.
Deviations from this method include anything, such as selecting songs, running the backlight, listening to the clicker, forwarding to the next song, and compiling an "on the go" playlist. Using any of these features will contribute to the shortening of your battery's charge life.
Recently, it was discovered through testing that playing back MP3s that are encoded with DRM can suck your battery's charge by up to 25%. The worst offender is the online music services, like Napster and Yahoo Music who have made .WMA files encoded with Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM. Apple's FairPlay DRM has been demonstrated to drain about 8% of your battery's life.