From: ian douglas <id_at_w98.us>
Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2006 10:08:37 -0700

I've admittedly only used Rockbox for a few days, but have been part of
the mailing lists for months now to keep an eye on things like H300
stability, etc., and decided it had reached a point of maturity to try
it out.

The other night when I installed Rockbox, I had my battery fully
charged. Through a bunch of spin-ups and spin-downs while I navigated
menus and wps layouts, I noticed my battery life significantly draining
- over a period of about an hour the battery was almost flat dead. I
charged it back up and drove to and from work listening via Rockbox to
an mp3 audiobook for a total of about 3 hours and left the unit off
overnight without charging. The next morning I got about an hour into my
90-minute commute, and the battery was dead. That means I got maybe 4.5
hours of battery life on my H320 since installing Rockbox.

After I got to the office, I let it charge all day long via USB since my
AC adapter is at home, to where it was very nearly fully charged - from
the graphic representation I'd have guessed 80% or better. My drive home
lasted about an hour, during which I listened to the same mp3 audiobook,
and simply powered off the unit when I arrived home and left the unit
alone, not charging overnight. I got up this morning to drive into work,
and an hour into the drive the battery was dead again. Total play time
this time was maybe 2.5 hours.

Aside from my question of which AC adapter can be substituted for the
H320 (was it a PSP power supply?) so I can buy a second AC charger (with
the presumption that it'll charge faster via AC than USB), are there
known battery drainage/charging issues with Rockbox and the H300 series
firmware? I was able to go a full week of 3-hour commute drives with the
original 1.04US firmware before the battery was dead, now it won't last
3hrs on Rockbox.

Also, to charge via USB, since there are no indicators when plugging in
the USB cable and seeing the "Bootloader USB Mode" message that we've
been discussing recently, I must hold PLAY & REC to boot the iRiver
firmware, and then immediately plug in the USB cable to see that it's
actually charging.

Thanks,
Ian
Received on 2006-04-07