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Zune Battery Indicator

A question as old as time

I've been very happy my Zune, but one thing has been bothering me since my purchase.  The battery indicator pretty much always showed that the battery was full, but after about a week (and sometimes less) I would try to turn on my Zune and it wouldn't turn on.  I would get really pissed off whenever I tried to listen to some jamz while waiting for a bus, only to find that my "fully charged" Zune was already out of batteries.  WTF?!

Eventually I got so mad that I actually looked up the problem online.  The explanation has 3 parts:

1. Although the Zune manual says holding down the play/pause button turns the Zune off, it actually only puts the Zune to sleep.  In other words, your Zune is still using battery power.
2. The battery indicator merely calculates how much power you are using when the Zune is on.  So when the Zune is asleep, it is using power, but the battery indicator isn't taking this into account.
3. The correct way to turn your Zune off is by holding the back button (not left on the Zune squircle) and the down button (on the squircle) at the same time.  You can turn your Zune on by pressing the play/pause button.  The main difference is that your Zune won't remember what song you were listening to and it will take maybe 1 second longer to boot up.  Also, it takes two hands to turn your Zune off this way.

There are actually many different button combinations for the Zune.  Surprisingly, QCF+P does not do anything.  Since looking up these haxxor codes, my Zune has been correctly displaying the battery power, and after nearly a month the battery is at around 30%.  I haven't had to charge it at all, but it's getting to the point where I have to plug the Zune in (or use Wireless sync!) or my Zune will think that my Zune Pass has expired.

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