Forma Sudden Battery Drain Syndrome

[Haesslich]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Mine is 9% (when I require a higher level, I use my Libra 2). That said, I have no idea if 38% is too high for the Sage or not; but people have had battery issues with the light over 50%.

I've bought the Sage to go with the Forms I have. Anything over 30% is too bright, IMO - it's like 50% brightness on any other reader, especially with the small battery capacity on the Sage with how much power the CPU uses.

And I'm still seeing that occasional battery drain on the Forma, which happens after the database has been changed quite a bit. Only after a full wipe and fresh sync does it stay normal. It's definitely doing something overnight to drain its battery.

[compurandom]

Originally Posted by Haesslich

It's definitely doing something overnight to drain its battery.

If you leave wifi on overnight, it will try to do a sync. If the database is large or fragmented, it makes it more likely the sync will get stuck and run until your battery is dead.

[Haesslich]

Originally Posted by compurandom

If you leave wifi on overnight, it will try to do a sync. If the database is large or fragmented, it makes it more likely the sync will get stuck and run until your battery is dead.

Wifi off. I don't even have it set up for the WiFi where it spends its night anymore. It just seems to try to do something with the DB that kills the battery unless you've freshly rebuilt the battery, like a factory reset.


Kobo has had this problem for almost five years now. I've been waiting for them to fix it, and they've yet to do it. It affects the Sage too, but in that case it just never finished syncing.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Haesslich

Kobo has had this problem for almost five years now. I've been waiting for them to fix it, and they've yet to do it. It affects the Sage too, but in that case it just never finished syncing.

The only times I've run into a overnight battery drain was when I had Automatic sync on and my Kobo would attempt to sync so turn on WiFi, attempt to connect to a network, timeout, repeat until either the battery died or I restarted it.

My workaround for when I was not at home, was to set the sleep timeout to 5 minutes and the power off timeout to 15 minutes. From sleep it would attempt to sync but power off seemed to prevent that.

[Haesslich]

Originally Posted by DNSB

The only times I've run into a overnight battery drain was when I had Automatic sync on and my Kobo would attempt to sync so turn on WiFi, attempt to connect to a network, timeout, repeat until either the battery died or I restarted it.

My workaround for when I was not at home, was to set the sleep timeout to 5 minutes and the power off timeout to 15 minutes. From sleep it would attempt to sync but power off seemed to prevent that.

Powering off happens, but whether it's me doing it or the Kobo doing it is the question.


I'm tempted to throw in the towel and to get a Libra 2 or whatever new Kobo is coming out. I didn't have these issues with the Libra H20, and I only got the Forma after the Libra got stolen. I then bought the Sage on sale hoping that it would last longer than the Forma does when it gets stuck trying to sync or rebuild the DB.... but that hasn't happened. I love the Forma's weight, but damn this sucks. I've never had a Kobo reader that caused so many headaches.... and I've been using Kobo since the Touch. I didn't buy the original blue button one, but that's it.

This takes me back to the Sony PRS-600 days. Those were bad days - it froze at the drop of a hat, unlike the older models.

[enuddleyarbl]

Well, I've been through two full discharges to 10% since my Sage shutdown with the battery empty. No problems. Both times, as it hit 10%, I got the notification. I must have fat-fingered the screen when that original notification was there and dismissed it without noticing it.

[Aleron Ives]

It's good to know that it was just a calibration problem / user error and that your battery is still in working order.

[Haesslich]

As an update, I did switch to the Libra 2... 5 days before we got leaks for the Libra Colour.

I just did a full factory reset to 4.21 after it froze while charging... and then it went straight to 4.38. Let's see if I can get a better experience from jumping straight from 4.21 and factory specs to this.


Ah well. I'm within the return window for the Libra 2,and have the Sage and Forma still so I can afford to experiment with color. Hopefully the faster CPU makes it turn pages better than the Forma (the Libra 2 is amazing in this).

[Lily7]

My Libra 2 is having this sudden battery drain issue. This one is a warranty refurb that I got a few months ago, but the sudden battery drain issue seems to have only started recently, as in the last couple of weeks, but I can't figure out what's causing it:

- It's always on airplane mode, so it's not trying to sync or anything.
- It doesn't sit on anything metal, but the FIRST time this happened, it had been next to a metal box in a bag, but I made sure it hasn't been anywhere near metal since then and it's still happening anyway.
- It doesn't seem connected to a particular book that I can tell.
- It hasn't been updated or anything in the last 2 weeks (since it's kept on airplane mode).

It happened when I put it to sleep while reading 3 different books, and a couple of times when I put it to sleep while it was on the home screen. I did a bit of testing with those 3 books and it didn't drain the battery any other time when I put it to sleep while reading those. It doesn't do it all the time, either. It seems truly random.

I solely side load books, and have the KoboTouch extension convert my ePubs to Kepubs. I don't know if that makes a difference in troubleshooting.

I am not a tech nerd, but is there a way I can figure out what's causing this? Or what I'm doing to cause it to happen? I can't seem to figure out a pattern to it. Thanks!

[Haesslich]

As an update, my Forma just had the battery drain after not even following a full factory reset to 4.11 (the firmware it shipped with) that was updated to the latest firmware. There's something about that firmware that causes some process to get stuck running, since otherwise I can't see why it would suddenly drain when not on WiFi, not using any sideloaded titles, doesn't have Dropbox or Google Drive linked to it....