Because the makers of products which compete with the Apple iPod got left at the gate when the first iPod took the mp3 market by storm in 2001, they have been doing what they can ever since to point out the flaws beneath the cool exterior of the world's favorite neck wear. With the iPod battery, they thought they had found a genuine Achilles heel.
But like the story of Achilles and his tragic flaw, most of what these competitors claim concerning the iPod battery is the stuff of myth. You, either as an iPod owner or wannabe owner, may be familiar with the most infamous of these claims, which attack the honesty of Apple’s claims concerning battery life. But did you know that there are things you can do, without any help from Apple, to maximize your iPod battery’s lifespan?
How To Get The Most From Your iPod battery
Have you ever accidentally hit the Play button on your iPod while reaching into your purse or pocket? It’s an easy way to start draining the iPod battery, and it’s also the reason why your iPod has a Hold feature. Hit Hold, and you iPod will remain asleep until you decide to awaken it.
Lose all the power-eating features like the sound checker, backlight, and equalizer unless you really, really need them. You never need the backlight if you’re just enjoying your music, and the equalizing and sound checking features are nice, but not essential for a good listening experience. They too will drain your battery, so why not turn them off?
You can eliminate the effects of the equalizer by going to EQ in the Settings menu and selecting Flat. While you’re there you can turn off the backlight and sound check too.
Another way to preserve you IPod battery is to give your hard drive a rest by storing only files which are less than 9MB. iPods, with the exception of the nano and shuffle models, keep your files on their hard drives, and try to maximize battery life themselves by bringing up the drive, loading your data onto a 32MB chip, and spinning the drive down again. The larger the file, the more often the drive has to return to get all of it and the more battery power is consumed.
You can adjust these settings by going to iTunes: Preferences: Advanced: Importing and choosing an encoder from the Import Using pop-up menu.
If you are one of the original iPod users, and your battery is has simply reached the end of its reasonably expected life span, you can choose a replacement with more power. And help your iPod battery along by trying to play it only when the temperature is above freezing. Lithium ion batteries, which are what the iPod uses, do their best work at room temperature. Cold weather won’t permanently harm them, but it will cause them to lose their charges more quickly.
Finally, limit yourself to one thing at a time. iPods are marvelously multi-functional little beings, but if you want your battery charge to last awhile, forego the habit of having a variety of iPod programs running simultaneously.
You can also find more info on Ipod Video and Ipod. knowipods.com is a comprehensive resource to know about iPods.
http://www.ipodtopic.com/articles/ipod-battery-combating-myths.php
