Forma Sudden Battery Drain Syndrome

[Haesslich]

Originally Posted by Janet56

I have the same problem with my 32 gb Forma (the 8 gb one is fine). The battery drain is terrible. It goes to sleep and I can only wake it by plugging it in. So I thought I would set it to power off after 10 minutes to save battery power. It was at 91% battery when it turned off. Today I tried to turn it on and nothing until I plugged it in and it came on - and the battery was down to 0. It is now plugged in and hopefully charging. I'm not sure as it won't wake up from sleep mode. I got this as a refurbished unit just over a year ago and it has been nothing but headaches. And just to say - I don't do collections and there are about 80 books on it. I'm going to try one more factory reset on it and if there is no improvement, it's going to go to the electronics recycle place!
That said, I love my older Forma and my Sage. And my Libra. And my Glo HD! LOL

That seriously sounds like it's draining itself overnight trying to index something. What happens if you just have one or two books on it? Or no sideloaded books? Do you turn off the WiFi except when syncing?

[Janet56]

No I leave the wifi on. It has now charged up to 51% and I am planning to factory reset it and turn the wifi off after it has updated. Side load a few books from Calibre and see what happens. I don't have high hopes though, I agree with the poster who figured Kobo had a batch of these Formas with bad batteries as my friend bought a refurbished one at the same time and hers did the same before freezing completely and not charging/waking again.

Update - I tried to wake it up but no go, so I pressed the power button and the page turn button together and it gave me a picture of pushing the power button. I did that and it finally turned on - and is showing me the choose language page. So I'll see what happens..

[Haesslich]

Originally Posted by Janet56

No I leave the wifi on. It has now charged up to 51% and I am planning to factory reset it and turn the wifi off after it has updated. Side load a few books from Calibre and see what happens. I don't have high hopes though, I agree with the poster who figured Kobo had a batch of these Formas with bad batteries as my friend bought a refurbished one at the same time and hers did the same before freezing completely and not charging/waking again.

Update - I tried to wake it up but no go, so I pressed the power button and the page turn button together and it gave me a picture of pushing the power button. I did that and it finally turned on - and is showing me the choose language page. So I'll see what happens..

Finish the setup, then don't do anything with it. If it's the battery, then it'll die like that without anything to index or get stuck processing.

[Janet56]

I had downloaded some books, it was great for a few days and then last night it went from 84% to 3% in just over an hour. I did charge it and did another factory reset tonight. I disconnected the wi-fi once it set up and it has no books on it. I will just watch it and see what happens.

[Janet56]

And I checked it last night before I went to bed - 98%. This morning - 0%. Think it is safe to say the battery is toast and it will be going into electronic recycling...

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Haesslich

That seriously sounds like it's draining itself overnight trying to index something. What happens if you just have one or two books on it? Or no sideloaded books? Do you turn off the WiFi except when syncing?

Kobo doesn't index like Kindles do. You know when importing is done.

[Aleron Ives]

I did a few deep cycles on my Libra, and the sudden battery drain has stopped for the moment. It seems like a periodic deep cycle is required to keep the battery meter calibration accurate. Going from 98 to 0% overnight definitely sounds like more than a calibration problem, though.

[Janet56]

If by deep cycles you mean letting it go down to 1 - 3% and then charging it till full, I have done this about 5 times in the last week and a half. I didn't drain it that low purposely, it just drained itself. This last time the wifi was off and there were no books on the Forma so there was nothing for it to do. The only other "maybe" is that the sleep cover doesn't work anymore and the backlight drained the battery. Just to give it one more chance I am charging it again (from 1%) with the sleep cover off and the enable sleep cover box unchecked. I have also set it to go to sleep after 5 minutes. Debating having it power off after a certain amount of time but I will go with the sleep cover removed for now.
Would be nice to know why this is happening but I am leaning towards a bad batch of batteries.

[Manguas]

My Forma's battery too become drained without any usage.

I did two test with original battery. Then I puchased a replacement battery and it seem nothing is changed.

On my tests,
WiFi was off
Auto sync was off
Sleepcover auto wake/sleep was off
Device did not have any book or collection (archived everythink on my Kobo account)
I didn't read anything. Device was sleeping all the time, and I occasionaly waked it up to take note of the battery level.

On original test 1, device was up-to-date.
On original test 2, device was manually factory resetted, so it had old firmware.
On replacement test 1, device was up-to-date.

Replacement battery is not something official. I bought a li-ion battery with same voltage value. This battery has slightly larger labeled capacity than the original.

I don't understand why there are sudden drops? I know replacement will not be perfect, but i didn't expect to see same sudden drops.

Is there any firmware settings on Kobo which survived manual factory reset? Could the problem about hardware releated not about the battery itself.

[Haesslich]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Kobo doesn't index like Kindles do. You know when importing is done.

It certainly doesn't act that way. It happened to me again two nights ago and last night - I unplugged r from the charger at 100%, left it overnight, then 8 hours later saw the battery was at 54%. This behavior even survived a full shutdown and power up, so it shouldn't be a stuck process.

I just had to factory reset it again a few hours ago, and it no longer drains 3% an hour in sleep mode. I've also seen a similar issue on the Kobo Sage, which already has bad battery life. There's something wrong with their firmware, and I'm still waiting for a fix.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Haesslich

It certainly doesn't act that way. It happened to me again two nights ago and last night - I unplugged r from the charger at 100%, left it overnight, then 8 hours later saw the battery was at 54%. This behavior even survived a full shutdown and power up, so it shouldn't be a stuck process.

I just had to factory reset it again a few hours ago, and it no longer drains 3% an hour in sleep mode. I've also seen a similar issue on the Kobo Sage, which already has bad battery life. There's something wrong with their firmware, and I'm still waiting for a fix.

What version firmware are you running?

[Haesslich]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What version firmware are you running?

The latest version. It's been happening for the last four revisions, and it's only occurring after a few weeks of syncing and adding new books. It can be delayed as long as a few months if you don't add any new books, but the more often you download, the sooner the database seems to corrupt and start trying to index 24/7, resulting in nonstop syncing or battery draining overnight.


The Sage also tends starts to lag badly or stop syncing after a few weeks of use, which is why I think it's an indexing issue - after a certain number of changes in the DB, it seems to break down and that's when it starts spending an abnormal amount of CPU to do things it shouldn't, resulting in the Forma or Sage freezing or draining its battery.

[moshano]

The Kobo battery management is pretty crappy, and already was years ago with my first Kobo (Aura One). Don't understand why, it shouldn't be that complicated... Never had a problem with any of my Kindles

[moshano]

Originally Posted by Manguas

Is there any firmware settings on Kobo which survived manual factory reset? Could the problem about hardware releated not about the battery itself.

I'm pretty sure about that, my Libra 2 calibration went to hell when battery was charging and at the same time a firmware update was applied. A factory reset didn't solve it (at least for the moment in the first cycles).

[JSWolf]

I've not had a battery calibration issue with my Aura H2O or Libra 2.

I don't sync and hen I do update the firmware, I make sure the Kobo is fully charged.