Picked up a 5th Generation IPOD 30GB Video last Friday night on the way back from the mountain. My mini-disc has been failing bad lately and the batteries haven't lasted more then an hour in years. I figured it was time to upgrade and enjoy shredding to music once again. Got the shiny new IPOD home and started to load my music collection, snowboard vidoes and charge the battery. All charged up I figured I was ready to go, went riding Saturday and the damn battery only lasted 2 hours. I was pretty upset, and decided to start doing some research on the web about the IPOD battery. Apple claims I should get 14 hours of continous use. Started surfing the web and the Apple discussion forums and noticed a lot of people with the same problem. It turns out that the battery meter on the IPOD is approximate, it needs to be calibrated in many cases. To do this it is recommended to do 2-3 full charge/dis-charge cycles on the battery. This allows the battery to condition itself and the IPOD will calibrate the meter automaticly. After the first chrage/dis-charge cycle my IPOD lasted 14 hours! Running for 14 hours straight shuffling music and watching a few videos I was very impressed. Some additional tips and tricks to maximize battery life are to turn off the EG, set Backlight to 2 seconds, turn off alarms, delete clocks, and not skip/rewind tracks. Way to go Apple! I'll be doing another cold weather battery test this weekend while snowboarding.Overall I'm very happy with the video IPOD, the sound quality rocks, videos are super crisp and fun to watch. Battery life is good once you condition the thing, the enclosure seems pretty durable. Check out the links below for battery information and other tips & tricks.
The iPod Battery FAQ : Apple Discussion Forums : The iPod Battery Unplugged
