battery life as MP3 player

[Box]

*Z, get rid of that annoying progress bar in your signature. I'm about to freak!

Could you correct the spelling in your signature, it has been annoying me for months!
I won't bother commenting on the actual content of your signature!

[raincloudboy0]

Thanks for the information about the 3600 batteries! It wouldn't do me any good at all, since I have it in a magnesium case that I consider crucial, since I'm sure my Axim ends up getting bashed around a bit. I'll go for a 2200 in that case.

[Box]

Be aware that a 2200 may not fit in your Magnesium case.

[raincloudboy0]

What? Are they all bigger than the 1100?

[Box]

The standard Dell 2200 battery is about twice as thick as the 1100.
It requires a whole new battery door, and to be honest, is quite heavy and ugly.

I believe there are some extended batteries that aren't so big, but I can't point to any off hand.

Make sure when you go to buy a battery, you check the dimensions, and check that you get the door as well if it is larger than normal.

[raincloudboy0]

Damn, I had no idea. That's ridiculous. Thank you.

[bbz_Ghost]

I did another test this week. I decided to charge up the extended 2200 mAh battery, hard reset the x50v completely (running a MagLite WM6 ROM with a 0 pagepool mod and it's freakin' fast), load up the CF card with about 125 songs in mp3 format, encoded with LAME 3.98 -V2 from FLACs. I then plugged the CF card in (16GB card but didn't need that much), installed TCPMP 0.72RC1 from a .cab file on the CF and got ready to play some tunes.

While the x50v was still on the cradle I made the following adjustments and checks:

- checked to make sure the power settings were on Power-Saving so the x50v would be locked in at 208 MHz (that's all that's needed for audio, and actually it plays fine at 104 MHz too but I'd require some other tool to get that low... more on that later

- didn't care much about the backlight because I set the option in TCPMP to turn off the display after 10 seconds. Really, when using the x50v or most any PocketPC as a DAP (digital audio player) do you really need to be staring at the screen, at all? Why bother with dimming the backlight when the LCD still draws juice - it's best to just turn the entire video display off completely and is a MAJOR boost in battery life. I also set a button (the Recording button on the side) to turn off/turn on the display as well

- set TCPMP for Random and Shuffle playback

- closed every application except for ActiveSync (it was still on the cradle) and TCPMP

- loaded all the files in the \Music directory on the CF card (I created the directory, of course) into TCPMP's playlist and made sure the first song queued up and started playing ok, then stopped playback

- took the Axim off the cradle - still with a fully charged extended battery (as noted by the green power light)

- closed ActiveSync

- pressed Play, with volume at about 75% (system volume was 100%)

- waited the 10 seconds to make sure the display turned off while the music was still going (I plugged the Axim into my Klipsch Promedia 2.1 speakers with a 1/8" to 1/8" stereo patch cord)

- listened to a lot of tunes over the next few hours on Thursday night as I worked on my PC, almost as bad as radio stations since I kept hearing the same songs over and over again each hour :D

- turned the volume down on the speakers around 1 AM Friday morning and went to bed

- woke up about 6:45 AM or so, reached over and turned up the volume and the music was still playing

- pressed the Recording button to enable the display, brought up the power settings and the battery showed 36% left

- turned off the display with the Recording button and turned down the speakers again as I started my Friday

- went out shopping in the AM and returned home about 2 PM, turned up the speakers and it was still playing. I started this whole test about 7 PM on Thursday evening, just for the record. At that point the x50v had been playing back mp3 files randomly for roughly 19 hours or so. Turned on the display and brought up the power again, it showed 7%, turned off the display and let it keep going

- around 3:45 PM or so on Friday it was down to 3% when I checked it and then it dropped to 2%, then 1% and then shut off while I was watching the power level. Apparently when it gets that low, enabling the display/backlight just finished it off totally

All told, this Axim x50v at 208 MHz played mp3 files non-stop on repeat/shuffle for just shy of 21 hours using the extended battery with almost no interaction. In real-world terms people doing this will probably change songs more frequently, alter the volume more often, stop, skip, look at the PDA while music is playing, perhaps do any number of things so that will definitely affect the battery life.

But in this experiment of mine, I got over 20 hours of playback off the extended 2200 mAh battery. With either of the following I would expect it to be even longer:

a) a larger capacity battery, like the 3600 mAh or whatever. Also note this is the original extended that I'm using right now, I have no idea how much usage the original owner of this Axim put onto it when he owned it (I just got this from him last week)

b) lowering the CPU speed to something between 104 MHz and 208 MHz would obviously give even longer battery life so I'll look into something that'll let me lock in lower speeds, perhaps PocketHackMaster or something similar.

Take a + b and you could end up with 30 hours or more of playback capability. And there's nothing stopping you from having another regular battery or another extended charged up and ready to stick in in 15 seconds or less. :)

[Zaniax]

Nice work, bbz_Ghost !

Now I just wonder how long a (standard) 1100 mAh would play under those conditions :o


Again: Thanks :approve:

Zaniax ©

[bbz_Ghost]

I'd guess 10 hours, maybe a bit better. If I can spare the x50v just for testing again I'll run the test but, I'm testing some ROM mods at the moment so, that takes a long time dumping and reloading 'em... but 10 hours sounds good to me either way. I've always got the extended in the x50v and the regular battery fully charged anyway, it's not like I'm gonna run out of juice. ;)

[johnhu_2005]

!! The progress bar comes back to haunt me!
I sure do hope my life is a serious matter.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.