I turn my Kindle off completely for a couple weeks when life gets too busy. Every darn time I find half the battery drained when I finally get time to resume reading. WTF? is going on?
I have radios that haven’t been turned on in a year and the battery is just fine. Flashlights in a drawer work fine 18 months later.
But a Kindle loses battery after two or three weeks? :dubious:
Every time I have to charge the darn thing before I can resume reading. Just to rub salt in the wound, Amazon flashes a message demanding I turn on Wi Fi to update my ads. All because the thing was off and in a drawer for a few weeks.
Anyone else getting this issue? I always turn it off and not in stand by.
I’ve got a Kindle 3 (no ads) and I’ve not had this problem. I go in spurts, some months I use it a lot and occasionally a couple weeks go by before I pick it up again.
I don’t know how the reader-kindles work, but I’ve a Fire and there is a shit-ton of stuff that runs in the background, most of which can be turned off. Maybe there’s a way for you to check which applications are running and manually tell them to shut down and stop draining your battery?
Or…just resign yourself to keeping your kindle in a place where you can keep it plugged in while not using it.
I try keeping 3G/Wi-Fi off. Kindle Touch has a nasty habit of turning it back on when you don’t expect it. My mom got her Touch Kindle when they first came out last Nov.
I updated both our Kindle Touch software to 5.1.0 at the end of March. Since then she’s complained multiple times about finding the 3G Bars active. She never shops from her Kindle. We both know that turns on 3G/Wi-Fi. She only turns on 3G when she buys a book from Amazon and wants it to dl. After the book arrives she goes into Menu and turns off 3G. She’ll start reading and suddenly notice the 3G bars back on. She’s also complained about her battery going down within two weeks. She reads about two to three hours a day.
I have had almost every Kindle model since the first, and battery life has never been a problem (except in the specific case of the faulty, er, cases, about which more below). Anyway. Currently, I have a Kindle Touch WiFi (with ads) that I use nearly daily. I almost never turn off the wireless and likewise almost never shut it down. Battery life is comparable to the older models - that is, quite good. I probably charge it twice a month with heavy usage. Amazon: “You can read for up to two months on your Kindle Touch with wireless turned off, based upon a half-hour of daily reading time. Battery life will vary based on wireless usage, such as shopping the Kindle Store and downloading content.” Yes, but if you read for more than a half-hour a day and leave wireless on, every couple of weeks is more likely.
To the specifics:
This sounds like a faulty battery, period. I would definitely call support. One, it shouldn’t drain in that state, and two, it shouldn’t take that long to charge.
When the Kindle is off, not just standby, it’s my understanding that it’s not doing anything - no Whispersync, no indexing, no nothing. I could be wrong, but this state should definitely not drain the battery. That said, there was an issue with the earlier Kindle model where the Amazon case with the included booklight that made contact with the Kindle to supply power to the light was faulty and drained the power when the Kindle was “clipped” in its case, even when off. I don’t know if that problem has recurred with the Touch model (I don’t have the case with the light), but if you have it in a case with a light, it might be worth an experiment to see if the battery drains when it’s out of the case (the new Touch does have contact points on the back for the new cases with lights).
All that said, there’s really no reason to turn the Kindle completely off. It doesn’t use any power (besides indexing, which would only be a problem if you downloaded a lot of books at once and the Kindle needed to index them all) when in standby with wireless off, and powering on probably uses more juice than leaving it alone. Every change to the screen of a Kindle uses power - every page turn, every return to the home screen, every display of each and every store page (which will of course also use power for wireless connection). I mention this not because it’s part of the problem, but because many people seem unaware they all do require some usage of battery power.
Recharging every couple of weeks with heavy daily use sounds about right. Regarding the wireless coming back, the only thing I can think of is that hitting an ad will also turn wireless on, and they’re quite easy to touch by accident.
Did you resolve the problem with the kindle touch draining the battery? I have the same problem and it is setting me crazy. I see that you can buy new batteries on other sites and change it, but no point in doing that if the problem is the Kindle and not the battery.
Would love to hear back as to what you or anyone else did to fix the issue.
Shari
I still have the problem. I don’t even waste time trying to read if the Kindle has been off for a few weeks. I know the battery will be low. I go ahead and charge it. Then read.
It’s funny that the Kindle gets all upset that its been off awhile. It starts up demanding that I turn on wi-fi and update my ads. Fussy little box.
I agree that your Touch almost definitely has a faulty battery.
I often leave my Touch alone for weeks, and it has all the charge I left it with. It should use zero power if Wifi is turned off and you’re not turning pages.
Also, I have never, ever had the WIFI spontaneously turn on.
Are you fully turning the kindle off or just putting it to sleep? That would make a huge difference. If it comes on instantly or within a few seconds, it’s just in sleep mode, if it takes a fairly annoyingly long time to come on, it’s really off. You have to hold the button to get it really off, not just tap it.
But rechargeable batteries always* will lose some charge over time. If you haven’t plugged it in and left it for a few weeks, there’s probably going to be significantly less charge left, even if the thing was completely off. Your flashlight or whatever is probably not using rechargeables, and those batteries are usually okay for years which is why they don’t have the problem.
*there are some special kinds that are better about this, like the Enerloop brand, but that’s not what you’re going to find in a kindle
