[SilverMaple]

I plugged in my kindle last night before I went to bed because the battery was low.  Usually it recharges within 3-4 hours. When I checked it this morning 7 hours later, the orange light was still on.  It took another two hours to change to green....

Only thing I can see is that the WiFi was on.  Would that make a big difference in the time it takes to charge?

 

[Sam Rivers]

It is best to turn off the WiFi when you are not using it.  I don't know that would have anything to do with its charging though.

I usually don't let mine run down very low and if my wife or I am using them very much, I plug both of them into the computers and charge them up daily.

 

[Ann in Arlington]

When you charge this sort of device, as I understand it, there's a 'trigger charge' point.  In other words, if you plug it in, and it's below that point, it will charge until full.  If you plug it in and it's above that point, it won't charge.  I gather that if it sits, plugged in, but otherwise working, the charge can fall down to the trigger point.  It's not like it automatically replaces every electron used with a new one from the wall.   It waits until the charge level is down a bit.  SO. . . it's possible that you just happened to look at it when the charge had dropped -- and if you had WiFi on it could have been checking for content, etc. -- and had reached the 'recharge now' trigger point.

Also, you said "WiFi" but it will use more power if trying to connect to 3G. . . .many people say WiFi when they mean generic Wireless and vice versa, so I'm just making sure that we're talking about the same thing.  So, if your Kindle has 3G, and you left wireless on, it might have been trying to get a 3G connection.

One other thing that can trigger battery usage is if it is indexing books or other content.  Did you maybe recently download a bunch of stuff?  It is possible that one of the files has a problem and isn't indexing properly.  Here's how to find out:

Go to home and search on a nonsense string -- something you know it won't find.  See what answer it gives you.  If it says 'not found' and shows 0 items not indexed, you know you're good.  If it shows some other number of items not indexed, I recommend giving it an hour and trying again.  If it has not gone down, that's a sign that there's a problem file.  Click the link showing how many are not indexed and page through to find the book title that's grayed out.  Go back to home and delete that book the usual way. Then you can let it finish indexing again.  Once it shows everything indexed, try re-loading the problem file.  Chances are it'll be just fine the second time, but if it continues to refuse to index, contact Amazon (assuming it's an Amazon file).

Oh, one other thing:  if you perform a hard restart, that will likely trigger the Kindle to re-index everything.  I'm not sure if it re-indexes if you restart via the menu, but I would suspect so.

 

[Atunah]

Mine has been doing this on and off since the last update. I don't leave Wifi on, but sometimes after a full night of charging, its orange. Sometimes I plug it in and its green after 3 hours  . I just been ignoring it though. If its full its full, if not all the way, I get it next time.

I don't worry about it anymore now. I did notice, if you want it green really bad, unplug cable and plug it right back in. After a few minutes, its green. 

I don't worry unless it won't charge at all anymore.

 

[J.R.Mooneyham]

I've had recharging problems which seemed to be related to the Kindle's connector itself. That is, if I'm not very careful about how I plug the cord into the Kindle, the connecting edges inside get misaligned, and while the Kindle seems to think it's connected, no charging actually takes place. After my first experience with this I've been much more wary about misalignments, and so far it hasn't happened again (but since I only have to plug it in every few months, I've not had very many recharging sessions, period).

 

[SilverMaple]

Thanks all.  I will have to see what happens. I do know it's not indexing, and I don't have 3g so it's not looking for that, either.

 

[NapCat (retired)]

"...If you plug it in and it's above that point, it won't charge..."

If that is true, the "trigger point" must be at a fairly high level of charge as many of us recharge from 1/2 to 3/4. My Kindle goes to green from 1/2 in a little over an hour either from the wall or USB.

curious...

 

[Morf]

Yes it is, the trigger point is usually about 95% charge. You'll see the same thing on recent laptops, if you plug them in they don't try to charge the battery if it is nearly fully charged, so if you use it on mains all the time your 100% charged battery will gradually drop to about 95% and only then will it be charged back up again, rather than being topped up to 100% each morning.

This is to avoid the damage that used to be caused to older batteries by repeatedly putting a small top up charge in them.

So, as Ann says, if it is charging but also in use (eg wireless on or indexing), once it is fully charged the charging will stop, and it will start using the battery to run the wireless. Rather than keeping topping up the charge, it won't charge again until it's dropped below 95%.

I'm not sure how the green/amber light works in these circumstances; but it could well be that having gone green when the device is fully charged, it then eventually goes amber again once the charge has dropped off, especially if it dropped to the recharge point.