How To Maximize your iPod's Battery Life

Battery life means the time your iPod will run before it must be recharged (sometimes this is also called playtime or runtime). Battery lifespan means the total amount of time your battery will last before it must be replaced.

iPod can play up to 20 hours, the new iPod nano can play up to 24 hours, and the new iPod shuffle can play up to 12 hours on a full charge at original capacity. Apple runs a number of tests for battery life using songs encoded in various formats, including MP3, AAC and songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store. The songs are played continuously through a playlist without interruption, with backlight and equalizer off, using factory default settings.

Here are some tips to get the longest life possible:

1. Update to the Latest Software

Due to the fact that new ways to optimize battery performance can appear at any time is best to always make sure iPod has the latest software from Apple. To update you iPod you just have to put it in its dock or plug it into your computer and iTunes (version 7.0 or later) will notify you if a new update is available.

2. Optimize your Settings

Your iPod has some built-in features that will use the battery more quickly. Here are the features in question:

Backlight: The most resource intensive mechanism in the iPod (except the shuffle for obvious reasons) is the backlight so turning it off or even minimizing the amount of time it stays lit to two or five seconds can increase your iPod’s battery life. Head into Settings > Backlight Timer, where you can designate the amount of time you want the backlight to remain on.

Equalizer: Adding EQs to playback uses more of your iPod processor, since they aren’t encoded in the song. Turn EQ off if you don’t use it. If, however, you’ve added EQ to tracks in iTunes, you’ll need to set EQ to 'flat' in order to have the effect of 'off,' because iPod keeps your iTunes settings intact.

Volume: The higher the volume, the more power the iPod uses and thus keeping it at a normal level will lengthen the battery life. Since the introduction of Volume Limit, you could set how loud the volume will go before it reaches its max. Play with it and see what works for you. Besides, it’ll help save your hearing! To make changes to this head to Settings > Volume Limit and adjust it to your like.

3. Hold and Pause

If you are not listening to iPod, pause it, or turn it off by pressing the play button for two seconds. Also, in order to prevent iPod controls from inadvertently waking up iPod and using unnecessary power set iPod’s hold switch when you aren’t using it.

4. Use iPod Regularly

Your iPod's battery is a lithium polymer that's rated for 500 or more charging cycles. A charging cycle is a full discharge-that is, when you run the battery all the way down until it has no charge left and follow it with a full charge.
For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Be sure to go through at least one charge cycle per month.

5. Maximize Your Memory

iPod plays music out of a solid-state memory cache to provide skip-free playback and maximize battery life. iPod spins its hard drive to fill this cache, which uses power. Of course there are a few tricks that can extend your battery life.

Use Smart Playlists: Every time you use the scroll-wheel to navigate or skip songs you are using battery power and Smart Playlists exist for a reason, so use them! Instead of skipping songs often, utilize Smart Playlists to create collections of songs you love and further extend your battery’s life. You could use Tangerine, which is currently in beta to create playlists for you.

Use Compressed Songs: Use AAC or MP3 files rather than WAV or AIFF (Mac users only) files. Because WAVs and AIFFs are uncompressed and, therefore, much bigger than compressed files, they prevent your iPod from using its cache effectively, so the hard disk has to work much harder.

6. Let It Breathe

Charging your iPod, iPod nano or iPod shuffle while in certain carrying cases may generate excess heat, which can affect battery capacity. If you notice your iPod gets hot when you charge it, take it out of its case first.