Zen Mosaic Battery Problems

I purchased a brand new Zen Mosaic on Ebay a few weeks ago. The battery life on my new Zen Mosaic is really low. Even after letting the player charge all night, I only get about 4 hours of playback before the battery dies. I've set the backlight level to 0%, and I never listen to the volume at more than half power (2 out of 25 max). I've tried reinstalling the firmware, reformatting the player, and letting the battery run out and recharging it again to jump start the battery. Nothing works. Since this thing is advertised to have over 30 hours of power, I am not at all satisfied. I think I have a faulty product. What can I do?

celestialwolven wrote:
Since this thing is advertised to have over 30 hours of power, I am not at all satisfied. I think I have a faulty product. What can I do?
That statement is inaccurate.
It is marketed with the phrase "up to 30 hours [of] continuous audio playback." Like all marketing numbers that establishes the absolute upper limit under ideal laboratory conditions (i.e. source material that isn't particularly hard to decode, no user interaction with the device during the battery burn-down test, player configured with settings to most favor battery life, etc.). In other words it in no way reflects typical end-user operating conditions. Meanwhile, it also says "up to 5 hours [of] continuous video playback" which is, again, an absolute upper limit of possibility.
Unless you're configuring the player to allow it to turn the display off entirely you're basically operating it in "video playback mode." The screen is going to be the highest drain on the battery life (even at only 0% brightness). So your 4 hours of typical use is reasonably consistent with a theoretical maximum of 5 hours of video playback use under ideal conditions. If you allow the player to turn the display off (which typically means putting a Creative player into "locked" mode) you'll likely see much better battery life during audio-only playback. However, you're still never going to see anything close to 30 hours. I'd guess no more than about half that.

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