Why is my Kindle's battery life so poor? I was given a Kindle Paperwhite at Christmas. It failed to hold a charge for very long. According to the adverts this latest Kindle's battery is supposed to last for up to eight weeks. I queried this with Amazon and was sent a replacement without any fuss. The latest one has not proved to be any more reliable. I fully charged the battery then left it aside having taken precautions to save power, including turning the wireless off. Three weeks later (not having read anything on it) there was only a thin line left showing on the battery scale. Am I being unrealistic in expecting better? Like car manufacturer's fuel consumption figures, Amazon's battery life claims are based on idealised usage patterns that may not necessarily reflect real world conditions, but I would have expected it to show more signs of life after three weeks of inactivity. However, it is not unusual for battery consumption to be temporarily higher on new Kindles, especially if you have a large number of books. This is due to indexing, and you may find that subsequent charges last longer. It can also get stuck indexing a corrupt book file. One way to test this is to search for a non existent word (enter some random characters into the Search box); it will tell you that it can't be found, along with a list of the books that are being indexed. Repeat this a day or so later and if you find the same book is still listed remove it from the Kindle and see if that makes a difference to battery performance.