What's up with my iPod battery?

March 6, 2006 8:02 AM

Why did my 4g iPod battery completely discharge last night?

I went to bed last night with my 4th gen, 40 gig iPod secure in its dock, and fully charged - the "charged" icon and the full battery picture were displaying (I'm on XP, for what it's worth). I wake up this morning and there's no picture displayed on the iPod's screen, and several attempts to start the iPod were met with the "empty battery" picture.

When I re-set the iPod and put it back on the dock, instead of the "charging" icon, I got a picture that looked like the charging icon, but didn't indicate charging - the picture wasn't animated, in other words, and no charge was apparently getting to the iPod.

Charging it through the wall adaptor seems to be working fine, and there's no apparent ill effects - all my music is still there, and it's charging as I would expect and working fine. The only things that changed on either the iPod or my iTunes between yesterday afternoon when it was docked and this morning is that I downloaded a couple of podcasts; other than that, nothin'.

So, what's the deal? If the dock was dying/dead, that wouldn't completely drain the battery, would it? the iPod's just over a year old, so I wouldn't think the battery would be ready to die quite yet.

Anybody have any ideas?

posted by pdb to computers & internet (7 answers total)

There's a known bug relating to audiobooks which does exactly what you describe. It only seems to affect files encoded in mono - you might have a look at what you were listening to yesterday to see if anything qualifies.

It happened to me, exactly as you say, and I was very alarmed. I re-ripped the offending files in stereo and it has not happened since.
posted by grahamwell at 8:39 AM on March 6, 2006

I used to have this problem when I would shut down my computer without unmounting my iPod. I believe that it was because the screen kept displaying the "Do Not Disconnect" message all night.

However, I haven't had this problem since the most recent software update. Is your iPod up to date?
posted by Johnny Assay at 8:40 AM on March 6, 2006

When I re-set the iPod and put it back on the dock, instead of the "charging" icon, I got a picture that looked like the charging icon, but didn't indicate charging - the picture wasn't animated, in other words, and no charge was apparently getting to the iPod.

I don't mess with my ipod too much, but this has happened often enough. I always just took it to mean "hey, i'm SERIOUSLY drained, give me a bit to get back on my feet" and done the unplug-replug every few minutes until it started charging nicely.
posted by soma lkzx at 8:47 AM on March 6, 2006

oh, also, the charge WAS getting to the ipod, it just wasn't showing it.
posted by soma lkzx at 8:47 AM on March 6, 2006

Yeah, it's up to date - that was the first thing I checked. And I'm not listening to audiobooks, nor do I have any .m4b files that I know of - but I will check to see if anything is in mono, however...
posted by pdb at 8:47 AM on March 6, 2006

Are you sure it charges when it's on its dock? As far as I can tell, iPods connected to docks can charge through the FireWire, but not through the USB connection. This is a problem for people who have computers without FireWire -- my iPod always runs out of battery during syncing, and I have to plug it into the wall adapter to charge.

If I were you, I'd check the FireWire connection, if you have one. And if you don't, that's your problem right there.
posted by booksandlibretti at 2:26 PM on March 6, 2006

And iPod that's turned off with a playlist still in memory (ie. ANYthing in the Now Playing section on the main menu) will slowly bleed power. It's keeping a tiny bit of memory alive containing that Now Playing info (they're not sensible enough to, for example, write it to disk and shut down properly).

Solution: Go to the list view of all of your songs. Go to the last song in the whole list. Set it playing, then skip to the last few seconds of the song. Let it play to the end, and your iPod will drop you back off at the main menu - with no Now Playing showing. Now hold Pause to turn your iPod off.
posted by armoured-ant at 3:05 PM on March 6, 2006