Zen micro battery drain resolve

Just wondering if the battery drain problem on the zen micro has been resolved, I notice that there is a firmware update for this issue but would like feedback from any users out there ,, Thanks Lenny<IMG alt=ph34r.gif src="http://www.advancedmp3players.co.uk/forum/html/emoticons/ph34r.gif" border=0>
Message Edited by lennyuk on <SPAN class=date_text>03-25-2005<SPAN class=time_text>2:2 PM
Message Edited by lennyuk on 03-25-2005 2:2 PM

No, it hasn't been resolved, but as the other poster pointed out, it depends on useage patterns. If you charge every day you won't notice it. The only effect would be to reduce your playing time from 2 hours to hours by leaving it on standby for 24 hours.
But most people probably don't listen for hours straight so they wouldn't notice the missing hour before they put in on to charge again.
It's only a problem if you want to charge it up once and use it for like a week, turning it on and off at least once a day, without ever recharging all week. My useage pattern is I manage to charge it sometime every day. This is also how I use my cellphone, which has a Li-ion battery. I've had the cellphone battery for at least 2 years and it's still going strong.
I don't feel it hurts the battery that much to do frequent partial charges. It's supposed to be better for Li-ion batteries to charge this way than to completely drain and do a full charge.
So in my case I can easily li've with the battery the way it is but if Creative wants to fix it that will just make a great player even better.

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Zen Micro battery drain: Is there ho

After reading through the boards the past couple of weeks, I'm starting to think I may be completely stuck, sadly. The Zen Micro features are great, but the battery drain is a problem for me. I've completely emptied the unit and fully charged it to do some testing. I confirmed that it will indeed (as mentioned by others) completely discharge itself after a while if left unattended a few days. With no music installed, default factory settings intact (save for firmware update), and the earbuds unplugged. It almost seems the only way to get 0-2 hrs out of the unit is to practically use it all in one sitting or with very brief periods of nonusage. I really don't want to have to constantly charge the unit every single night just to ensure I'm not bleeding away a bar on the power indicator by the time I pick it up again.
Is there anyone whose Micro does not suffer from this, perhaps a more recent one purchased directly from Creative itself? If so, that gives me some hope, but I'll still be calling customer service today to explore my options. If a firmware can fix this, great, but I don't want to have to wait months for it (but I do realize that these things take time and Creative wants to do its best). I'd rather wait for the bugs to be (hopefully) worked out in the Zen Micro Photo, but as it's basically the same architecture it may have the same issue. Other option would be to get a iRi'ver H0 (though not as good s/n ratio as the Zen), depending on its quirks. However, my 5-day refund period at PCMall for my Micro has definitely expired and I don't want to pay for a second player and be "stuck" with this one. Wonder if I can trade it in toward Zen Micro Photo credit. That or I'd have to recoup what I can of my costs on eBay or something. This would sadden me as this is otherwise an excellent player. Any input or advice is appreciated. Thanks gang.

That does make me wonder, though, if anyone has found significant differences using different batteries. And by significant, I mean a way reduced bleeding rate or a couple of hours time difference in playback. Perhaps I could even get Creative to do some testing along those lines on my unit. And, standard battery bleed aside, it'd be good to determine whether having headphones plugged in accelerates it or if there's no difference.

Zen Micro battery draining quic

I'm sure that at one point this topic has already been covered but does anyone have any tips to increase battery life. I only listen to my micro for a few hours each day but I have to charge it up every night. Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Heather

Go here to talk to support:
http://tr.creative.com/support/contact/emailform.asp
The claim of 2 hours is not wrong per se, it just doesn't say on the packaging what settings were used to achieve this playtime.
First of all, it is continuous playtime. If you have shut-down (=standby) time inbetween, that drains the battery.
Secondly, Creative used a very much under-standart test environemt. 28 kbit CBR MP3s, volume at 0, no equalizer, no smart volume, no shuffle. Basically, if you want any extras with your play, you pay in terms of playtime.
Thirdly, with any firmware but ., you lose a lot of playtime, if you only play one or two hours a day, because the standby mode consumes a lot of power. See my site for details.
One thing I don't really get is how you can listen to your ZM with volume at 25. If I did that, my ears would turn deaf after a few minutes. If you need 25 for a normal song, then either:
- you are quite deaf already
- you use very high-impedance earphones not designed for a low-output pocket player
- you use songs with a big dynamic range that are not designed to be played with a low-output player (e.g. clasical music)
- something in your ZM is malfunctioning, which might also be accountable for the battery power loss
In your case, I would send a very detailed email to Creative support, asking them, among other things, for a telephone contact in your language, so you can issue an RMA if necessary.
Cheers,
Jan.

My Zen Micro Battery Te

Hi Everyone,
I've had my new Green Zen Micro for 2 weeks now and it's great, I love it! I've got about 000 songs on my Zen and they are mostly CD rips at about 28-92kb
ps.
I been doing a battery test for the last few days and I just leave it on continuous play from when I go to work and when I come home from work. I can get aboout 0 hours out of the thing, but would want the 2 hours as Creative have told us. I think the battery bar indicators are very inconsistant, the first bar will drop after 2-3 hours and the last bar can last for 3-6 hours. I think it's to do with the songs the player is playing during the time.
What I'm going to do tonight is to fully charge my Zen up, rip a cd at low quality (64kbps) and see how long that lasts. I will be posting here tomorrow and let you know how it goes.
So far so good....

Well i just tested my brand new Micro, using SSR's wise advice and I am pleasantly surprised.
When I opened my new micro, there was a small charge in the battery, so I ran that down to empty before I did anything (as advised by CL).
I charged for 4 hours, making sure I left it after the lights went out and showed as charged.
I actually left mine off overnight, to test for battery drain when switched off, turned it on 9 hours later and still had 3 bars, so I hope this means mine is not one that acts like its on when its off )
Started my test at 8am, 28kbps MP3, EQ off, SV off. Lasted till 6.50pm, so a decent 0hrs 40 mins from the very first charge. So that is looking pretty decent. Have to admit about half way thorugh I kept playing wiht it and set EQ to on, so even better results )
so far I am pretty happy mine already ahd the .0.03 firmware installed.
Only had one glitch, on the first switch on, it did not track the progress of the tracks, the indicators just stayed at zero even though the track was playing...........so tried to switch off micro, but it wouldn't switch off, stayed on the now playing screen. It wasn't frozen as I could get round all menus okay.
Removed battery instead and switched back on and it had resolved itself, the track indicators worked fine and it switched off okay, so seems to be a minor glitch easily solved.
So far I am very happy, no sign of any dreaded things happening yet, and my battery life seems to be great too, almost hours on first charge is more than I expected, hopefully that will rise more over the next few charge cycles. i will be fully charging and disacharging it for the next 4 cycles at least....
have just done a second charge for 4 hours, will see how long it lasts this time............
BTW on first charge the blue light switched off when full, on second it stayed on, constant not flashing, I remember someone else saying this happened too....................odd but no problems )
hugs
babyd

Old zen micro battery problem wont fully cha

okay lets see my zen micro is really old. 5gb its like the really old generation. anyways i havent used it for like months. now im giving it to my lil sister so yea of course the battery is drained. so im charging it. i've been charging it for 2 weeks now at least 5 hours a day. why not continuous? because no computer in my house is on for that long. but anyways yea at least 5 hours a day for at least 2 weeks and its not fully charged yet! its charge time has been like total almost 00hours and its still on 2 bars. is it messed up or what?! any suggesions

well yah im like 60/50 i've had batterys for a while and the end up dead ofr some odd reason also dont let ur sis down the new battery all the way let her use it til its like 20 or 30% juice left if u drain ir completely it litterally will kill ur battery much earlier than expected

Zen Micro battery won't charge, can't turn on MP3 pla

Hey guys,
I;ve bought a Creative Zen Micro 5GB, 3 weeks ago and it was working GREAT...until now. I was using it one night until the battery completely drained off and the Zen Micro turned off by itself. The icon "LOW BATTERY" flashed for a few seconds and the unit basically shuts down.
I tried to plug-in the USB 2.0 cable provided by Creative into a PC USB 2.0 port
. the MP3 player wouldn't start up. The blue light glowed, followed up by the intro 'Creative' screen and then it died off. That happens everytime i plugged the unit into a USB port.
2. On the upper right screen on the unit, it showed that power is supplied by the USB port (battery + electric symbol flashing), but the battery wouldn't charge up and I can't turn it on either
My questions are:
a) Since the battery is dead flat, wont the unit still run/function normally if its plugged to a PC USB2.0 port?
b) Why does my Zen Micro die off a few seconds after it's been plugged on to USB?
c) Can't the PC USB power supply charge up my MP3 player battlery?
Please help,
Cheers.
JJ

I'm having the same problem, but in my case i didn't run out of battery, i used it last friday and it showed it had one bar left of battery, this morning (monday) i wanted to use it and it wouldnt turn on. I came to my office where i have my usb cable and plugged it in. and it shows like its chargin but it wont charge and wont turn on.
I will try woith the AC adaptor when i get home. But it looks weird... anybody else had/has the same problem and fixed it's?
I need help, this is the second Zen micro i have, the first one came defecti've so i returned it.

What is going on with my Zen Micro battery?

Ok, so far I have been fairly happy with my Zen Micro (only one freeze/reboot) but something is serioursly up with my battery. Yesterday, I used my Zen Micro for no more than 2 hours after a touch up charge and I had two bars left on the battery display. Then when I tried to turn it on this morning it wouldnt turn on, so I plug it into my power adaptar and it shows that my battery is completely drained! How can this be? Does the player use up battery power while the Micro is off?
The has already happened to me once. I charged my battery the first day I got it and used it for a while. Then the next morning the Micro wouldnt turn on so I plug it into the adaptar and it keeps flashing the Creative logo so I had to clean the disk.
Two different battery problems not even within the first 5 days of purchase
(I can still return it to Frys thankfully). Please tell me what is going on or I might have to just swap it for an Ipod......

Well my player has been fine after I ran the disk clean for the first time, but it is my **bleep** battery and its battery life.
Maybe I should swap in the extra battery I got. Any suggestions on how I should handle it's Like what should be my charging routine? Because when I popped in my first battery it had one bar on it and I was using it for a while, then I did a full charge and used it for a while and the next day is when I had the freeze. so for the new battery, should I pop it in and just fully charge it before using it's
::I have visited the ipodlounge and have seen alot of problems with ipod, but since there are so many Ipods out there I am not surprised. I am surprised at how many problems the Zen Micro is having without having sold as many units::

Zen micro battery doesn't cha

I accidentally drained my battery completely on my zen micro. I plug it into the wall plug to charge, but after 8 hours, the battery's still dead. I try to turn it on while connected to the wall plug, but it only shows the start-up screen that says "creative" on it, then it turns off again.
The strange thing is that this happened once before, and after several attempts at charging, each time for several hours, I finally see one bar and my zen micro can start up again.
No luck this time, however, as my zen is still dead. Help me!

As well, you might wanna try going to the rescue mode (see the sticky post on top of the forum), and just do a reboot.
Afterwards, charge your player by first attaching the USB to the player, and 2nd the AC adaptor in the wall plug. What firmware are you on, btw?

Zen 4gb battery draining fast even when the unit is off

Hi,
I have the zen 4gb. I also have the newest firmware loaded onto it. The battery goes down fast even when off. I also notice that if I go and turn it back on after 24 hours it appears to be still in standby mode. Any ideas? Thank you.

I remember the Zen Micro power issue (bought one for my son). That one was where the player stayed in "standby" when you powered off for many hours. This enabled a much quicker start up, but also resulted in some battery drain while "off". They changed this from 24 hours standby to 4 hours, I think. My Zen Touch did the same thing, but had a big battery so the drain was not so bad. It started almost instantly from standby, vs. maybe 20 seconds from true "off". The Zen (I have a Zen 4GB) seems to have a similar feature. I am not sure how long it stays in standby mode before shutting down completely.

Zen mirco battery drain over night.

i fully charged my zen micro, took out the USB, turned off the zen off and came back the next morning to find "low battery". what gives?

Welcome to the club!

Zen Micro Battery Wont Cha

I recently bought a Zen Micro for a 2 week long vacation I was going on. I got it home and fully charged it like everyone says to do the first to you charge, and during the vacation i tried to charge it with my dad's laptop via the usb ports. I noticed once that it had one little line on the battry icon, so i plugged it in, and when i came back 4+ hours later, it hadnt charged at all, which mad me mad because the very first time I charged it it only took around 2-3 hours to fully charge it. What I am wonderin is if there couldve been some way I damaged the battery so it wont charge? If so what kind of warranty does this have? i'm so mad because i had around 50 songs on it already and about 0 playlists set up. any help would be appreciated, thnx

ok one more question. Is the only reason I would need to update my zen micro's firmware is to add music from supscription music download companies? What exactly would I need to download a new firmware for?Message Edited by augi55 on 06-26-2005 08:44 PM
Oh and I Checked the instructions and there is nothing on the removable media mode. Any help on getting to it'sMessage Edited by augi55 on 06-26-2005 09:06 PM

Zen Micro Battery L

I was just wondering what the longest was that anyone got a battery to last in a zen micro. I have managed to get mine to last approx 4hrs. Has anyone else had this sucess?
Blade

If you all don't have Firmware v.0.03 or higher, you may want to update.
Taken from the details of the Zen Micro Firmware .0.03 download:
"It has been reported by some of our customers that they have experienced reduced battery life after charging their Zen Micro. Our product development team has researched these reports and determined that the users may have experienced this after they plugged their Zen Micro into the AC adapter that was already inserted into a wall socket with the AC power on.
While this is not the conventional way to plug in a player for charging, we wanted to ensure our customers did not experience this problem, so we have developed a solution to address this which simply involves upgrading the Zen Micro's firmware."

Zen Micro battery flat by itself .

Hi,
I bought my Zen Micro in early Dec.
Lately I observed that battery flat in two days time even after fully charged and left idle without using it.
It didn't seem to be like when it was first used.
After a call to Creative Support Center, they advised me to upgrade the firmware to .0.03
I upgrade it this morning and am going to observe it for the next two days.
It seems that some users also have similar unpleasant experience....
May I know what was the scenerio? Was it solved? How?
This is my first time to use Creative product ..... Hope it isn't the last time :manwink:

I just got a zen micro for xmas. I've noticed my battery will go dead over night no matter what I do. I follow the good battery life steps always. (only charging when completely dead and never leaving plugged up after fully charged) But lets say I charge the player fully today, maybe use it for an hour at the gym, go to use it the next day same time. the battery will either be dead or close to it. I'm going to try the firmware tonight then observe. If that doesn't work then I will try to remove all the music and observe and i'll definitely post back. If i don't get good results i'm calling creative. Also, my buttons seem hard to push, especially the lower left button(return key?) I have to press HARD, a tap won't work most times. I barely tap for skip forward and skip back and they work fine.
J

Zen Micro battery problem e

Hello!
i have zen micro wich is about a year old or so.. i was listening to it normally couple of weeks ago, when it suddenly crashed.. i had to take the battery off to shut it down, and after that it crashed allways in the creative logo screen for a while.. i plugged it to my computer and it began working normally.. i thought it was nothing and transferred some music to it and started listening to it.. it worked normally for a while but soon began crashing again and didn't power up at all after a while... i formatted it and reloaded it's firmware and now it works fine until the battery's powerbar's wich can be seen in the player's display go from 3 to 2 in usually 30 mins :| then it crashes and wont shut down again after a while when i have taken out the battery i can restart it for a while but it say's the battery is empty. so, is the battery broken and has to be replaced or is there something wrong in it's HD or something?
-Bane02

To both: It seems to me that your battery is dying, or has died already. If you are saying that it goes from 3 to 2 bars in just minutes, you might want to get a replacement. Did you maybe overheat the battery and left the player in a place with high temperatures? It can greatly affect your battery and the player-but the battery more. If you tried everything in recovery mode and still didn't work, call costumer support or get your player replaced, but I think it's only a one year warranty, that's always a bummer, unless you have a protection plan....
Good luck to both. Hope that helped a little =S

Charging Zen Micro battery quest

Hello all,
I went to charge my Zen Micro 5Gb last night. Plugged the usb end into the Micro and put the plug in the wall socket and the Zen showed it was charging, but I had caught the lead between the li've and neutal pins of the plug, so it wasnt flush in the wall socket.
I unplugged, moved the cable and plugged back in (a matter of no more than 5 -0 seconds) and the Zen did nothing, just a blank screen.
Pulled the plug out again and waiting this time before plugging back in and all went well, 3 hours later all charged.
I assume I spiked the battery? Could I have done any harm to the battery or player?
Any replies would be appreciated.

I guess at worst you might have had an intermittent connection, which in turn might have damaged the player (constant "spiking", as you mentioned).
If the player is fine though it sounds to me like it didn't suffer any damage.

Zen micro battery drain resolve

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