Battery meter fix in next upgrade???

[keithnyc]

I really have a problem judging how much time remains on my Nano using the current battery meter (e.g., my meter reads the same whether it has 1 hour or 4 hours remaining). I'm wondering, can a software upgrade be made to change the tiny battery meter into a longer meter (maybe running the width of the top of the screen)? My thoughts are that this longer meter, along with a software patch to make it a little more sensitive as well, the more realistic the battery readings can be. Then I won't feel the need to unecessarily charge the nano if I can see it still has a few more hours remaining:rolleyes:

[nihal310]

Battery meters on iPods are notorious for being wrong a lot of the time. If you've ever tried the 'Battery Meter -> Numeric Battery Display' hack (I have on my 4G 40Gb B&W), you'll see that the actual 'reading' the iPod's processor takes of the charge remaining in the battery varies a lot...the value will dip sharply whenever the hard drive is accessed, or the song is changed, or if anything processor-intensive is going on. And then a few seconds later, the battery meter will pop back up to a slightly higher value again. This makes reading the battery life remaining quite difficult, given the large amount of error. This error is magnified as the battery is getting close to running out of charge - so the battery meter gets more and more inaccurate as you use the iPod.

Just gotta live widit!

[keithnyc]

Cool....I was wondering how it worked. Didn't realize that the error is magnified the closer it gets to the end of the charge. Still, I'd like to see a similiar numeric-type hack for the nano.
Thanks for the info, nihal
;)

[nihal310]

Look around for the hack, it's probably available already.

As for the error getting magnified closer towards the end of the charge cycle, that's just maths and percentage. Absolute error gets larger with smaller values.

[keithnyc]

Ahhh, yes. My stats and quant analysis is coming back to me (all in a haze......).

[nihal310]

Originally posted by davewnyc
Ahhh, yes. My stats and quant analysis is coming back to me (all in a haze......).

Hehe. Those are absolute necessities for an undergrad engineering student ;-)

[keithnyc]

Understood....I did my graduate work in risk analysis (building risk management systems for financial service companies). Who would have thought I'd be leaving all that for the exciting world of complaince and internal audit ;)