Getting the best battery life

Here is how to get the best battery life from an eBookwise-1150

From Garth Conboy from eBook Technologies is the technology and hardware provider to eBookwise.

Determining the firmware version

First, please determine what version of firmware you are running:

• Power on the device
• Tap on the lower-right icon on the screen (stack of books icon)
• Tap on the upper-left icon on the screen (eBook guy icon)
• Tap on the "info" softmenu item
• Tap on "more"

The firmware version is displayed following "Viewer: ".

If the version is older (lower) than 4.0f6, please connect to our servers (USB or dial-up) and accept the firmware upgrade -- to get the upgrade just tap on "Online Bookshelf" either using the phone connection, or the USB connection with no Librarian software running on your PC/Mac. You should see a page that lets you know an upgrade is available -- accept the upgrade -- after an automatic reboot, you should be running version 4.1f40 firmware.

Reset the device

With firmware version 4.0f6 or greater, you should do the following -- reset the device:

• Power off the device
• Open the rubber flap on the back
• Poke a paper-clip through the reset hole
• Re-close the rubber flap

When you power on the device, it should take 3-4 seconds to turn on the screen -- this is normal after a reset.

Then, plug the device into a known-good power outlet, and:

• Power on the device
• Tap on the upper left icon on the screen (eBook guy icon)
• Tap on the bottom/battery menu item

After a 5-ish seconds there should be text appearing below the battery charge elevator -- it should be of one of the following two forms:

"XX% charged"

or

"YY hours and ZZ minutes remaining"

Verify that it says "XX% charged" rather than the other message -- this means the charger is likely working correctly. If it says "hours remaining" we'll need to replace the charger for you.

Improving Battery life

Assuming it's behaving properly, you should be able to use the follow trick to help the device learn the battery's maximum charge:

• Power on the device
• Tap on the upper-left icon on the screen (eBook guy icon)
• Tap on the "settings" soft-menu item
• Tap on the "eBook settings" link
• Turn off the "Automatically go to sleep while plugged in" checkbox
• Tap on the upper-left icon on the screen (eBook guy icon)
• Tap the bottom/battery soft-menu item
• Verify that the text under the "elevator" says "XX% charged"
• Leave the unit powered on while charging for 2+ hours
• Eventually the message under the elevator should intermittently say "fully charged"

You can then reset the "Automatically go to sleep while plugged in" check box if you desire and the device should now have a very good understanding of its state of charge and running time remaining.

After that, unplug the unit and see what run-time it reports. I expect it should be 8+ hours.

Best,

Garth

Comments

The 8+ hours is even with the backlight turned up very high. With the backlight turned down a low as you can and the contrast set higher you are likely to see +20 hours.