I was expecting the worst when it came to battery usage, but the MiniJam seems to make excellent use of power saving features.  As the MiniJam can run in the background, battery life can vary.  According to InnoGear, battery life is 5 to 7 hours but playing games or using the backlight in the foreground can drop it to 2 to 3 hours.  As with other Springboard modules, I saw the battery meter drop pretty low during use, but the meter went back up when the MiniJam was not in use.

The best advice I can give is to make sure that you put the MiniJam into sleep mode (hold the MJ Control for a few seconds) after you're done listening to music.  You can also change the Sleep Timeout by going into MiniJukeBox and changing Playback | Preferences to a shorter time.  The MiniJam will beep once when it goes into sleep mode.

Another way to extend battery life is to record MP3 tracks at a lower sample rate than the 128Kbs default, such as 64Kbs (radio quality).  This also allows you to squeeze more tracks onto your MMC.

Additional Features

InnoGear didn't chintz on the extra software on the MiniJam.  In addition to the great desktop software, you also get full (not shareware) versions of AlbumToGo and Peanut Reader stored in the 2MB of flash RAM.  Peanut Press allows eBooks and DOC files to be read on the Visor, and AlbumToGo allows the user to view various photos on the Visor.

InnoGear is also working on a special MiniJam website that have file uploading and other features.  All Pre-order customers have access to this website, and InnoGear has extended this offer for at least another 60 days to new MiniJam owners. It is still in beta and was not fully available for testing during the review, so its feature list may change.

The earphones that come with the MiniJam have a very nice "wind up" case that keeps you from having a tangled cable.  Anything that fits the headphone jack will work -- in fact, I did most of my testing using my computer's speakers.

The MiniJam doesn't have a memory limitation, so as MMCs come out with more memory you can effectively double the number of songs you can carry.  If you have the money, I suggest you get the 64MB version of the MiniJam, as 64MB MMCs are not yet available outside of OEMs, and 32MB MMCs are expensive.

Cases & Conclusion >>

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