I've made a few observations that seem to clear up the issue. I was reading "The Demon Haunted World" by Carl Sagan when I noticed that the value of the Kindle Touch's location seems jump forward quite a lot more than usual. I have no idea if there is a formula to convert between actual page flips and kindle locations. If there is one it probably varies with each book. So this paragraph I wrote in my earlier post is wrong.
Considering the fact that an average book like "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley has 3993 locations (that's the kindle's substitute for a page number) which translates to about 2000 page flips and that a person like me can finish a paperback edition of a book like that (If I find the book exciting and therefore impossible to put down) in about 8 hours or so ( I read quite a bit faster that 250 words per minute) I could probably drain the Kindle's battery with one night of reading!
It is evident that the 3993 page locations are not equivalent to 2000 page flips. It's most probably a whole lot less since I've seen the location value jump by 5 or 10. So I probably can't drain the battery with one night of reading. However the rest of my calculations still hold.
I did a quick search on the kindle forums and found that most people do use the estimate of 250 words per page to calculate actual page flips/numbers on the Kindle Touch. So for the average person with an average reading rate 1800 page flips do seem to be a reasonable estimate for the battery life (+ a bit more depending on discharge while not using the device).
So here's what I know for sure.
1. The Kindle Touch by amazon's estimate can last two months if used for half an hour per day.
2. If used continuously it can last for at least thirty hours. I reason that it may last more if used continuously. The lithium ion battery used in the Kindle Touch will discharge slowly over time if left unused. Amazon must have calculated the two months battery life taking into account this self discharge.
On the whole the one week of usage I get seems reasonable since I use the device for much longer than half an hour a day.
I wonder if I should use the device for a timed period of half an hour daily for a month as an experiment just for the fun of it...
2 comments:
I heard that locations correspond to a certain number of characters, although I've tried copying excerpts from the PC kindle program and the character count appears to vary. Seems to be about 120-150, however. That's about 13-16 locations per page, I think.
Thanks for the insight. I had initially assumed that one location equalled 128 words. That's why I thought one page flip equals two locations.
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