Probably not a lot of help, but that's not my experience in the field - I've used PIPsqueak around 5 or six times, typically for 2-3 hours at a time, and it's stayed green throughout.
Recharge time does seem pretty quick, sometimes as little as half an hour till it goes green.
I've had the light flickering during recording once, but that was because I had the switch set to medium for a loud rock gig, and I believe it nearly overloaded the signal. Recording was OK though.