Sony Infolithium battery losing minutes...

[sparkyo]

I just bought a new 128 mb Infolithium battery and have used it about a half dozen times. Each time I recharge it, the display tells me it has "lost" minutes even tho it says the battery is "full." It started out displaying something like 525 minutes when full. Now this last charge it is down to 468 minutes when full. Has anyone else had this experience with a sony battery? The smaller one that came with the camera seems to recharge up to its original minutes okay. I wonder if it's just a faulty memory or do I have a bum battery???

Thanks,

Bruce

[sparkyo]

Correction on my post:

not a 128 mb battery! Just the QM91 large capacity Infolithium. Sorry about that!

sparkyo

[chazzie]

Batteries wear out, that's why the warranties on them are so short, but from my experience with the Sony InfoLithium system is that it doens't work. I can shoot for 15 minutes when the camera shows 5 minutes. So ignore it and use the cam, it'll probably work perfectly for you.

[sparkyo]

Thanks, chazzie!

sparkyo

[chazzie]

Don't take my word for it, but do this. Use the camera and time how much you use it until the camera dies (not indicates out of power, but actually turns it self of due to lack of power). Then after you've used it like 20 times, repeat the procedure. Anything other than a few minutes lost time might be a problem.

Cheers,
Chazzie

[solarfox]

Well, to be fair, no battery-life indicator is ever more than an estimate of remaining capacity. Expecting to-the-minute accuracy is somewhat unreasonable -- there are too many variables to account for.

The InfoLithium system is better than most, to be sure, since it actually tries to track discharge current out vs. charging current in, but even then it will have some margin for error since it's programmed to report based on "average" capacity, and your battery might be slightly above or below the average baseline due to manufacturing tolerances and such.

All in all, I'd rather have a half-decent estimate displayed in minutes than the stupid full-2/3rds-1/3rd "idiot light" indicators that always seem to show 2/3rds right until the battery is two minutes away from dead. The Infolithium display is at least something I can see counting down as the battery discharges...

As to why the original poster's battery seems to be losing so many minutes after only a half-dozen uses... if your other pack is charging up to its original capacity OK, you may indeed have a bad battery pack. It happens sometimes. (I had one a while back whose capacity seemed to keep going up by a few minutes with every charge, until one day it suddenly claimed to be charged to 999 minutes -- but would only run the camera for about 30 seconds.)