Mini Ipod Battery Life is Terrible

If you are being literal in that you are very minimally interacting with it, and the backlight is off the whole time, then you should be getting probably twice that life from it. I recommend you call AppleCare support, or go to depot.info.apple.com/ipod to set up your own mail-in repair.

I would do some troubleshooting, if it hasn't been done already: make sure that you've calibrated the battery (let it run down to near-zero, then charge it up to full) and that you've also tried resetting the mini.

BTW: if you've bought one from a retail Apple store, you can take it in to them.

Originally posted by Commodus
I make sure that you've calibrated the battery (let it run down to near-zero, then charge it up to full)

I see nothing in the instruction manual about calibrating the battery. I can't find anywhere on the Apple support site to do this. I did this with my Laptop battery which the instructions say to do. Can you please tell me what page this is stated on? I wan't to make sure i start things out right.

The iPod mini, like a laptop, has a lithium-ion battery. While it doesn't necessarily have a "memory," it should still be possible to calibrate it the way you would for a laptop.

Faide--

I have to agree the battery meter is weird--I think this applies to both 3g ipods and minis. I have a 3g, and the battery meter is not accurate at all. In fact, I have been able to get up to 2 hours of use after the meter is completely empty.

I usually only get about 5-6 hours of use out of my 3g iPod before needing to recharge, but I have heard that the minis have substantially better battery life.

Will be interested to hear the final results of your test!

dordale :)

Originally posted by Faide
Hi everyone

OK i did my battery test today and it finally died a little while ago.

Here is the brief.

Sunday: Fully charged (3+ hours via AC)
Monday: Used for 2.5 hours (commute to and from work) (lots of clicking and user action with backlight etc) plus it was connected to my USB for about 20 mins so must have gotten some trickle charge.
Tuesday (morning): Used on the commute to work for 45min-1hr
Tuesday (day time): ran a "leave it to run" test.
It ran for an extra 4.5 hours before it finally died.

That means in total i got just under 8 hours of use (bear in mind it must have gotten an extra 30 mins of juice via the USB port)

What was interesting was that when the battery meter was showing 1 bar i still got another 2.5 hours of play before it died. When the battery was showing 0 bars it still played for another 1.5 hours.

So i would guess that if i just let the iPod play from full charge with no interaction, no backlight it should play for at least 8 hours. Obviously the more i play around with the menus etc the less i will get.

I assume that this is what Apple mean when they state 8 hour battery life (ie continuous non interactive play time)?

Thanks for reading

-Faide

I'd say the battery life you rec'd from your iPod Mini is very good to excellent (for an iPod), based on what you wrote.

that 20 minutes you were connected via USB you probably got a lot more than a "trickle" of power back...

try using it exclusively on it's own to get a better idea of what sort of life you can expect.

I hope these things don't end up like the big iPod did with the drastic loss of battery after a month or two...