# Does your Paperwhite's battery life indicator go down really fast?



## adelgabot (Aug 25, 2011)

My Kindle's power indicator shows an unusually low reading, as if it was about to lose power, barely a couple of days after I fully charge it. It doesn't really lose power, not yet anyway, but all the same it's kinda puzzling and irritating. It's like it's hanging on for dear life, endlessly, while never really going over. I'm thinking of sending it back in for repair or replacement, but then again, it's not really that much of a problem, just maybe a faulty battery life indicator. Does anyone else have this problem?


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## Toby (Nov 25, 2008)

No. Call Kindle CS.


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## Tatiana (Aug 20, 2010)

Yeah, my PW battery indicator shows about 1/4 charge left after just a few days; it drops quickly sometimes.  I read 4 or 5+ hours a day with the light on 12 -15 and I have to charge it about every third night or so.  I had to charge my Touch every 4th or 5th night.  Considering the light use more battery I'm not worried about my PW.


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## rleanne (Dec 12, 2012)

It depends on how much you read. If you read 4 or 5 hours a day, the battery will go down faster than if you're only reading 30 minutes a day. If you're only reading 30 minutes a day and your battery is going down fast, then it's a problem.


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## Cloysterpete (Aug 21, 2010)

Mine seems to slowly drain when I'm not using it, didn't do that on k3.


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## CAR (Aug 1, 2010)

This helped mine....When I first got my Paperwhite the first charge was very fast, but the battery did not last very long.  So I did a couple complete discharge, then full charge cycles.  Now the battery is much better then even my K3's.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Great tip, CAR.  Good practice for any device where the charge indicator doesn't seem accurate.

My Paperwhite doesn't seem to go down very fast.  I probably don't read on mine as much as some, because I have other Kindles I also read on, but I've been pleased with battery life.

Betsy


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

A couple of thoughts:

First, CAR's advice is good. Let it go nearly to zero and recharge to full a couple of times. You will get a 'low battery' warning before it actually turns off for you. Then be sure to charge to full -- like overnight. It's not that the battery is not good or wearing out, it's simply that the indicator isn't well calibrated and that will help fix the problem.

The other thing that could be happening is that, if you've recently loaded a lot of content, books could be indexing. That will use the battery faster. AND, if it's just one book, but the file is corrupt, the device can get hung up trying to index it. So it keeps working and working and draining the battery, but nothing gets done.

To check if that's the problem, do a search on a nonsense string -- some 'word' you know isn't going to be found -- and see what comes up. It should show that it couldn't find it but will also give an indication as to whether there are books that are not finished being indexed. If there are any, select the link and see the list. If you see one that it grayed out, make note of it. Give it a little while longer and do the whole search thing again -- if you see the SAME BOOK still grayed out, it's likely stuck and nothing will get better until you fix it.

So, to FIX it,  go to the home page and find the book and then delete it from the device. After a bit, do the search thing again and see if it's gotten finished. Now you can put a fresh file copy of that book back on.

Other things: the battery will drain faster with wireless turned on all the time. And even _faster_ if WiFi is on but you're not, regularly, in an area where the device can access a known signal. I leave mine on all the time: I have WiFi at home and the Kindle knows most networks for places I am likely to be for any length of time. But if you're not usually at home, you might want to have the WiFi off so it won't keep looking for a network. The problem is even worse with 3G in terms of battery drain. If you really NEED to conserve the battery, best turn the wireless all the way off.

How high you regularly use the light setting will have an effect as well, I suspect, even if LED's are very very efficient.


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## JimC1946 (Aug 6, 2009)

My graphical indicator does appear to drop off pretty quickly after a charge. I haven't had any sign that the battery is draining too quickly, though, so I assume it's just the indicator.

I'll try the discharging tip, though.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

One other thing I forgot to mention -- it's rather like the gauge on your gas tank.  Or, at least, on MY gas tank.  Seems I fill up and that needle doesn't move off FULL for a good hundred miles. . . .then it starts dropping much more rapidly.  So it's not really exactly proportional to how much fuel is actually in the tank.

I think the kindle indicator is similar, but in reverse.  It seems to drop pretty quickly early on, but then stays at 'almost gone' for a very long time before any low battery warning appears.


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## adelgabot (Aug 25, 2011)

I did what some of you guys were suggesting. I ran my Paperwhite's battery down and then recharged it overnight. That seems to have taken care of the problem, and things are ok once more.


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## LDB (Oct 28, 2008)

Mine was fully charged, in theory, with the green light on and dropped about 1/4 in one day but I had it on with the light near full brightness for several hours plus downloading about 95 items out of my cloud and indexing them. I used it about the same amount of time after the second theoretical full charge to a green light but with only maybe a dozen additions and it appears to be down about 1/8 this time. I'm going to let it completely discharge this time and maybe for 2 or 3 times in a row before I start recharging with partial charges.


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## Morf (Nov 18, 2010)

Ann in Arlington said:


> First, CAR's advice is good. Let it go nearly to zero and recharge to full a couple of times. You will get a 'low battery' warning before it actually turns off for you. Then be sure to charge to full -- like overnight. It's not that the battery is not good or wearing out, it's simply that the indicator isn't well calibrated and that will help fix the problem.


Please, please, be *VERY CAREFUL* if you do this.

The only thing that will kill - completely kill - a lithium battery is if you run it completely flat.

If you really want to do this discharge/recharge cycle you must charge it back up as soon as you get the low battery warning. If you get the low battery warning, then keep going until it switches itself off, and then leave it a day or two before charging it you are running a very real danger of killing your battery.

Personally I wouldn't recommend cycling a lithium battery - they are completely different from Nicad and NiMH batteries and it does them more harm than good.

Treat a lithium battery like your car fuel tank - top it up as often as you want, it won't do any harm, but don't run it completely down or you will break down!



CAR said:


> This helped mine....When I first got my Paperwhite the first charge was very fast, but the battery did not last very long.


This is perfectly normal with lithium batteries. They do not not take a full charge for their first couple of charges, and discharge quite quickly. There is no reason to fully discharge, it will settle down by itself, and once again I would say that a full discharge can do more harm than good.


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## LDB (Oct 28, 2008)

Hmmm. Or maybe I'm not.


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