re: Battery life on my zune seems to have shortened

Maybe it has been happening and I haven't noticed until now, but the battery life on my 120gig zune seems to have shortened drastically. I don't listen to it more than 15 minutes a day or so and then I got the low batter signal three times a week this week. Solution?

If you have a tendancy to put your Zune on the charger when the battery is not dead; for example you listen to it for 20 mins, and plug it in to charge, then the battery can develop a memory effect.  This is why it is recommended to always charge your battery when it is completely dead.  A memory effect on the battery will cause the life of the battery to lessen severely.  The only solution would be to purchase a new battery for it.

yeah, the post above me is correct.

my Zune 120's battery life has shortened too, but i can still listen to it all day and it doesnt die on me. its normal for battery life to decrease over time as well.

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Zune 120

I found this on memory effect...

http://www.repairfaq.org/ELE/F_NiCd_Memory.html

apparently it's wrong, although there IS a phenomenon that occurs, just not loss of battery charge

Memory effect is ONLY subject to nickel cadmium batteries. All zunes use lithium batteries which are not subject to the same problem, so this issue cannot possibly be the problem. I am experiencing the same problem on my 80gb. The battery used to last several hours over a period of a week. Now, it's dead in a matter of 10 minutes. I keep it plugged in all the time in my car. The only thing I can think is that the summer heat has had some effect on the battery.  Are there any known issues with that?

Negative on that.  Memory effect is NOT limited to NiCD batteries.  A memory effect is much easier to apply to a NiCD, but it is not the only chemical makeup that can have them.  Lithium batteries are no exceptions.  I use all sorts of batteries, everything from Nimh (nickel metal hydtrate), lipoly (Litium Ion Polymer), lifepo (lithium Iron phosphate).  Each makeup I have had some sort of memory effect that has affected the overall MAH (Milliampere-hour) in a negative way.  The advantage to using a Lithium battery is the longevity of the battery, as long as you maintain it.  Small 1.5v-3.7v Lithium batteries (found in watches and such) are used because they can last up to 15 years.  Our Zune batteries are no exceptions to memory effects, rechargable cells will most always have some sort of memory effect.  However, we have made long leaps in technology and chemical makeup.  Now I can have a li-poly battery that is half the size of a NiCD yet it has double the voltage, double the discharge rate and is less than half as big as the NiCD!

I find it odd that you guys keep talking about memory effect when I keep finding articles on the internet about how it doesn't exactly exist....

it's more like voltage depression