Zaurus Battery, Zaurus battery Options

[nicologic]

Hello,

I've a questio about Zaurus C3100 battery.
How long is the charge, if I use it for music and video player?
Many thanks.

Best,
Nico

[Cresho]

hmm. Depends. 2 hours minimum? I have gone for 3 hours but never bothered looking at the ccharge after.

i was on bluetooth, listening to shoutcast radio through zaurus off the phone for net connection, MSN chatting to my girlfriend through pdaxqtrom on the sharprom, and watched videos for a good 4 hours total before the battery died but i had a car charger which worked right before the last bar droped.

My cellphone died before my zaurus.

[adf]

hmm.  Depends.  2 hours minimum?  I have gone for 3 hours but never bothered looking at the ccharge after.

i was on bluetooth, listening to shoutcast radio through zaurus off the phone for net connection, MSN chatting to my girlfriend through pdaxqtrom on the sharprom, and watched videos for a good 4 hours total before the battery died but i had a car charger which worked right before the last bar droped.

My cellphone died before my zaurus.

Right. The z has great life if you aren't using wifi contantly. Your phone net connection is fater than mine, or you were listening to some 24kbps music though

[nicologic]

So, do you suggest to use my Zaurus (I've already it) also for listening mp3 in train (it's an example) or is it better in you opinion an USB key or similar for this purpose? Many thanks.
Nic

[portalgod]

So, do you suggest to use my Zaurus (I've already it) also for listening mp3 in train (it's an example) or is it better in you opinion an USB key or similar for this purpose? Many thanks.
Nic

Playing MP3s with the LCD off and "downclocked" to 143Mhz will last ~24 hrs according to the following benchmarks :

http://ldrolez.free.fr/software/zaurus/#Benchmarks_

My personal experience is sitting on a 6 hr 40 mins flight from Miami, Fl to Seattle, Wa with the LCD on but on low brightness, playing mp3s from both a mounted CF and SD card. The mp3s kept playing from the time I entered the airport in Miami, leaving the airport in Seattle, coming home and still having available battery left. So it's a good while before you'd have to recharge. (This test was with a fully charged battery to begin with).

[desertrat]

So, do you suggest to use my Zaurus (I've already it) also for listening mp3 in train (it's an example) or is it better in you opinion an USB key or similar for this purpose? Many thanks.

Personally I would use the Z's battery for something else like browsing the web or something and leave the music playing to a dedicated mp3 player.

Playing MP3s with the LCD off and "downclocked" to 143Mhz will last ~24 hrs according to the following benchmarks :

Not sure how practical that is. At that speed even if it can play properly you probably won't be able to do anything else. In my tests on a C3100 (running IceWM):

- at 104MHz (lowest speed) the music doesn't play in real time
- at 208MHz it plays OK, but when you do anything else (like switching windows or even switching tabs on mrxvt) the music will stutter
- at 312MHz the cpu has enough power to play the music and multitask (albeit slowly), but for some reason, at this particular speed the screen sometimes flickers (doesn't flicker at lower speeds)
NB this is using mplayer. XMMS doesn't play without stutter at lower than normal speed (416MHz).


Obviously YMMV if you use a different WM and if you don't use X even.

But like I said at the beginning, it's a shame to relegate the Z to a dumb single tasking music player when it could be doing some better

[Da_Blitz]

make sure you have an intiger decoder like libmad, with mpd on my Z running OZ with a 2.6 kernel it uses about 5% max cpu on my Z and i rearly see it peak that high

mulittaskin works like a dream and i get no stutering, but then again i am using the cmd line and not x so it sounds to me like you didnt use an integer codec libary (libmad) and xmms might be a bit of a cpu drain (try turning off the pretty visuals)

[desertrat]

mulittaskin works like a dream and i get no stutering, but then again i am using the cmd line and not x so it sounds to me like you didnt use an integer codec libary (libmad) and xmms might be a bit of a cpu drain (try turning off the pretty visuals)

I believe I am using it - I already have libmad installed. In the input plugins of XMMS the MAD MPEG Decoder plugin 0.10 [libxmmsmad.so] is there and enabled. That does mean I'm using libmad doesn't it?

If I disable scope/analyzer then it plays ok at 312MHz if I don't do anything else (like switch windows/desktop). I don't run any other visuals anyway because they slow down the machine too much even at the normal speed of 416MHz.

[Da_Blitz]

are there any other mp3 decoders enabled?

i do know that the scope chews throgh CPU like crazy, but i prehaps xmms does as well

i guess this would be a great chance for you to give mpd a go?

[desertrat]

are there any other mp3 decoders enabled?

Nope.

i guess this would be a great chance for you to give mpd a go?

Not really because I usually use my mp3 player to do music, and now my new phone does music too.

Also I don't think there's an mpd package for pdaxrom. When I have time I might have a look at what console players are out there.

[portalgod]

So, do you suggest to use my Zaurus (I've already it) also for listening mp3 in train (it's an example) or is it better in you opinion an USB key or similar for this purpose? Many thanks.

Personally I would use the Z's battery for something else like browsing the web or something and leave the music playing to a dedicated mp3 player.

Playing MP3s with the LCD off and "downclocked" to 143Mhz will last ~24 hrs according to the following benchmarks :

Not sure how practical that is. At that speed even if it can play properly you probably won't be able to do anything else. In my tests on a C3100 (running IceWM):

- at 104MHz (lowest speed) the music doesn't play in real time
- at 208MHz it plays OK, but when you do anything else (like switching windows or even switching tabs on mrxvt) the music will stutter
- at 312MHz the cpu has enough power to play the music and multitask (albeit slowly), but for some reason, at this particular speed the screen sometimes flickers (doesn't flicker at lower speeds)
NB this is using mplayer. XMMS doesn't play without stutter at lower than normal speed (416MHz).


Obviously YMMV if you use a different WM and if you don't use X even.

But like I said at the beginning, it's a shame to relegate the Z to a dumb single tasking music player when it could be doing some better

I assume'd if one is in the train, you're not wifi'ing or doing much else than jamming to some MP3s. Even at 416Mhz, I would guess the Z can take both mp3 playing and some other "general" tasks for ~4 hrs or so.