[tadad1]

poddie. Your player should always be on when charging.
Depending on the mAh rating of your battery you should expect a minimum of about 5 hours of continuous MP3 play with all power saving features enabled. Some players will run for 7 to 8 hours or more.
The on screen battery meter is not terribly accurate so do not put to much faith in it. I have one player that from full will reach a 1/4 in the first hour or so then run a furthur 6 -7 hours from there.
As long as you are getting an acceptable amount of play time there is possibly not alot you can do. If your running time is significantly reduced to a few hours then you may have a charging problem.
You may also find editing your battery icon images may give you a more accurate reading as some only show a level change every second or third image so the indicator changes in larger chunks rather than a smooth increase.