Thursday, January 26, 2012

Kindle Battery Life with Wireless On

Just a quick update to say that I finished testing the Kindle Touch 3G with wireless on continuously. The Touch had a strong Wi-Fi connection the entire time, and I used the reading light once for about an hour. To my surprise, the Touch lasted at total of 10.57 hours before the low battery warning came on the screen, which is almost exactly what Amazon claims.

Keep in mind that the Touch will use more power in areas of weak W-Fi or 3G coverage, partly because the data rate slows down and the wireless transceiver stays on longer to transfer books and other items. If you don't have access to a charger at least every few days, it's best to leave wireless off, turning it on for a few minutes at a time to sync and check for new items.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Kindle Battery Life


I just completed testing my Kindle Touch 3G with wireless off. The test conditions were as follows:
  • Wireless off except for 5-10 minute periods to sync and check for new items
  • Wireless usually Wi-Fi but occasionally 3G
  • Reading periods of 5 minutes to an hour
  • Some use of the reading light on the Amazon Lighted Cover for Kindle Touch
Unfortunately, I blew it toward the end of the test when the battery was down to about 40% by leaving wireless on overnight by mistake. In the morning the charge was down to about 10%. By that time I had logged 23.25 hours of reading. That matches up well with Amazon's claim of 30 hours battery life with wireless off based on 30 minutes per day for two months.

I'm partway through a test with wireless left on continuously with a strong Wi-Fi connection. So far I have 5.65 hours logged with about 30% left on the battery indicator. It looks like I'll fall a little short of Amazon's claim of 10.5 hours with wireless on, based on 30 minutes per day for three weeks.

The difficulty of testing battery life with wireless on is that battery drain varies with the strength of the wireless signal. Data transfer slows down with weaker connections so that transferring a book or blog takes more time and uses up more battery.

My conclusions so far are that the battery on the Kindle Touch 3G will last through most wilderness trips as long as wireless is off. Using the light on the Amazon Lighted Cover for Kindle Touch seems to add little to the battery drain, which makes sense because the cover uses a single LED.

Since most backpack trips are a week or less, wilderness hikers should be able to read as much as they like, unless they read for hours on layover or storm days. River runners on extended trips (such as the full three week trip through the Grand Canyon) are going to need a way to recharge the Kindle, which usually means a solar charger. I'm going to look at some solar chargers over on my new blog, Travels With Kindle. I'll also look at travel accessories such as covers and sleeves.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

E-Readers on the Trail

If you're an avid reader like me, having reading material on a backpack trip, especially a solo trip, is an essential. You know you're in trouble after you zip through that paperback book you brought on the first two nights of the trip and then find your self reading food packages and tea labels over and over.

My traditional solution was to bring a book that fell short of being a page turner so I wouldn;t be tempted to stay up until the wee hours reading. Like the time a couple of friends and I were camped on the first day of a week in the Sn Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado. The weather was fine so we just laid out our bags on our unpitched tents and slept under the stars. Well, one of us sleep. At midnight Larry was snoring away but I was still reading by headlamp. A pool of light next to Larry gave away the fact that his wife, Sherry, was still reading too. I switched off then and sacked out but in the morning the horrible truth emerged- Sherry had finished her book. On the first night.

When PDA's came out I did some reading on my Palm Pilot but the screen was tiny, the type coarse, the battery life limited, the book selection very limited, and the eyestrain immense. Later PDA's improved, but not enough. To fair, they weren't designed as book readers.

So I followed the release of the original Amazon Kindle with interested, but it soon became apparent that the first generation had problems that needed to be addressed. Of course Amazon did that and any Kindle from the Kindle 2 onward makes a great wilderness e-reader.

Of the current crop, the lightest and cheapest is the Kindle basic with special offers. At 6.0 ounces or 170 grams it is lighter than a paperback and holds approximately 1,500 books. Even Sherry couldn't read that many books on a hiking trip. Amazon claims a month of battery life based on half an hour a day with wireless turned off. For a week hiking trip, that works out to 2 hours of reading per day.

For more battery life with just lightly more weight, the Kindle Touch starts at $99, weighs 7.5 ounces or 213 grams, and has double the battery life. For me the Touch is pretty much the ideal e-book reader.

Avoid the Kindle Fire or any other tablet computer for backcountry reading. They are too heavy, the battery life is only 8-10 hours, and the screen is unreadable in bright light.

Note that to get long battery life wireless must be off- in the backcountry you're not going to have a WiFi signal anyway. If you have a 3G Kindle Touch, and you're in an area with 3G service, turn wireless on only when you need it.

My use of the various Kindles pretty much verifies that battery life is close to what Amazon claims, but I'm going to run a real-world test. Unfortunately I can't go on a long backpack trip right now because of a looming book deadline (yes, I have to write about hiking rather than doing it.) So instead I just started a test with my Kindle Touch. It's a month old, so the battery should be close to its original capacity. Starting from a full charge today, I'll read with the wireless turned off and keep a log of my reading until the battery runs down.

When that happens I'll report back and also review some Kindle accessories that are useful in the wilderness.