Terrible Battery Life

[Alpha eX]

I just payed £30 for a rechargable battery pack with with 4 2500mAh batterys, fully charged them, put 2 of them in the gp2x, no less than half an hour later of the odd 5 minuite burst, not even that, the first pair of batterys are fully dead.

this is ridiculous, the ammount ive spent on batterys this weekend! :angry:

Whats up with that, I know about the processors but they cant be running that fast to drain newbatterys in about 20 minuites.

How long are we going to have to wait for a firmware update to fix this?

Anyone else experiencing this or is it just my GP2X?
How did something this bad get overlooked in testing?

 

[DijiTao]

Might be the brand of batteries - See this thread:

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=22156

 

[grahf]

Your batteries wont reach full capacity until around 5 charge-discharge cycles.

 

[davey g]

And even then, my 2500mah have lasted about 2 hours so far and are down to medium and it's after their first charge.

 

[Alpha eX]

I tried 3 brands of batterys,

Those cheapo Korean brand
TDK something or others
Uniross Rechargable 2500 mAH

Could it just be my GP2X?

 

[Squidge]

Uniross?! *cough* I'm suprised they even work

Try some Ansmann batteries, best there is

 

[Eolair]

Feels like people get very varied battery life. Could be battery type, battery brand, how you charged them, what you did with the gp2x (video, games, nothing). But I suppose it could also be a higher power drain in some units than others. Who knows. 20 minutes for 2500mAh NiMHs sounds extremly short.

 

[Alpha eX]

All I did on the device was,

Watched the intro of family guy episode, about 30 seconds, whatched about 2 minuites of american dad.

Played C64 emulator for about 2/3 minuites, played the SNES emulator for about 10 minuites in total.

Went to load up the new family guy episode so i could watch it over dinner and then the screen froze, checked the battery status screen..."Empty"

Its really bad, any idea whats eating the batterys so hard?
The only thing I can think of is that the device drains the battery while its switched off.

 

[stepp]

Send it back for a replacement mate. If that was mine id defo want it replaced....something doesnt sound right with the way its eating batteries.

 

[lucoxade]

All I did on the device was,

Watched the intro of family guy episode, about 30 seconds, whatched about 2 minuites of american dad.

Played C64 emulator for about 2/3 minuites, played the SNES emulator for about 10 minuites in total.

Went to load up the new family guy episode so i could watch it over dinner and then the screen froze, checked the battery status screen..."Empty"

Its really bad, any idea whats eating the batterys so hard?
The only thing I can think of is that the device drains the battery while its switched off.

​

Are you using the latest firmware?

If not, upgrade before sending it back

 

[EvilDragon]

Errm, as me in another thread and Squidge said: Use Ansmann. Use special PHOTO batteries.
All other ones are simply to weak for the mighty gp2x.

 

[craigix]

You need decent batteries, some of these '2500ma' ones you can pick up in asda are complete rubbish. Like Evildragon says, you need Ansmann or something similar to get 5 hours.

 

[fedup]

it would be nice to have something to put batterys in !!!

 

[Jarska333]

Think positively, without 2X you can not run out of batteries!

 

[Quiest]

ED tested them (he posted the results on gp2x.de) that the batteries he mentions lasted for ca. 5 hours and that is, with all bugs like TV-Out sucking energy, processors at 200mhz and switched on backlight, really good!

So don`t bitch around that early, wait for the firmware updates...


EDIT: Just noticed, that ED posted the results here, too.

 

[declaration]

I use Uniross 2300mah and they go for a few hours. Maybe not five, but certainly 3+, maybe more.

 

[Eolair]

I use Uniross 2300mah and they go for a few hours. Maybe not five, but certainly 3+, maybe more.

​

Hmm, and Alpha Ex doesn't even get 30 minutes with same brand but 2500mahs... kinda worrying. Maybe bad soldering somewhere is causing a power drain in that particular unit?

btw...ansmann photo batteries...problem is we don't all live in germany. I can't even find photo ansmann batteries in sweden and shipping all the way from germany for just a few batteries cost a fortune. I'll keep looking though. But I really can't see how one brand can give 8 times the battery life of another.

 

[gaterooze]

The batteries could be duds too (I've had this problem with cheap rechargables). Try taking them back and replacing them for other ones.

 

[Alpha eX]

The batteries could be duds too (I've had this problem with cheap rechargables). Try taking them back and replacing them for other ones.

​

I dont think £30 is cheap for some batteries, Uniros have always done a great job in the past but the GP2X just drains the life out of them within minuites litterally.

 

[craigix]

We are going to stock some batteries which we know return around 5 hours at max 200+200mhz.