keyboard battery and tablet

[partridge]

Does anyone know how the batteries are prioritised when the tablet is docked? By that I mean, does the keyboard battery take over when docked in order to save the tablet battery for when it's detached.

Or, does the keyboard charge the tablet, keeping it topped up while docked?

Just curious really. At the moment it's usually docked, but once I get a case it will be undocked mostly so I wondered what happens when you have 50% on the tablet and 100% on the keyboard; will the keyboard take over so that when you undock the tablet it remains at 50%

Thanks

 

[eddiewawa]

Does anyone know how the batteries are prioritised when the tablet is docked? By that I mean, does the keyboard battery take over when docked in order to save the tablet battery for when it's detached.

Or, does the keyboard charge the tablet, keeping it topped up while docked?

Just curious really. At the moment it's usually docked, but once I get a case it will be undocked mostly so I wondered what happens when you have 50% on the tablet and 100% on the keyboard; will the keyboard take over so that when you undock the tablet it remains at 50%

Thanks

basically the main unit always takes priority, when the tablet drains the dock charges it up at the same time, hence why technically its better to charge both tablet and dock seperately.

in your scenario, the dock will drain to about 3% then starts on the tablet.

 

[MassacrMan]

So, essentially your dock's battery will run dry before your tablet itself every starts taking a hit. After the dock is dead, the tablet battery is all alone.

 

[AutobahnSHO]

What they ^^ said. Really really ingenious way to do it. Basically the Keyboard is a portable charger for the tablet.

 

[Bunjiweb]

Just got mine this morning, loving it so far!

 

[chrisfsullivan]

The Asus support site said the pad drains first then the keyboard.

My career as an Asus fanboy lasted all of four days. I love the form factor, I think there is nothing out there that can compete with it. But that love and pride for my machine has turned into shame and disgust for the company.

I just bought a new Asus Eee Transformer along with the keyboard dock for my trip to San Francisco this week. I bought it Thursday, charged it overnight, used it Friday through Sunday. I got it all configured with my accounts, the software I want to use, and I even downloaded some movies to watch on the plane. Monday morning I get to the airport and I go to turn it on, I get nothing, the screen was black.

So I contacted customer service, no replacement offered, I have to pay to ship the computer to them for the repair! I was shocked. This is not the type of service I would get from HP or Dell. A very disappointing experience that has made me not want to recommend the Asus Transformer to people.

 

[Bunjiweb]

I totally disagree that you would get any better support from Dell, their customer service is terrible!

How long have you had your tablet? Unless you can prove it was a manufacturing fault rather than a hardware failure you will rarely get a replacement past the first 6 months and most companies will only replace in the first 14-28 days.

I appreciate you may be frustrated by the let down but I wouldn't write asus off unless they take ages repairing it.

 

[AutobahnSHO]

The Asus support site said the pad drains first then the keyboard.

My career as an Asus fanboy lasted all of four days. I love the form factor, I think there is nothing out there that can compete with it. But that love and pride for my machine has turned into shame and disgust for the company.

I just bought a new Asus Eee Transformer along with the keyboard dock for my trip to San Francisco this week. I bought it Thursday, charged it overnight, used it Friday through Sunday. I got it all configured with my accounts, the software I want to use, and I even downloaded some movies to watch on the plane. Monday morning I get to the airport and I go to turn it on, I get nothing, the screen was black.

So I contacted customer service, no replacement offered, I have to pay to ship the computer to them for the repair! I was shocked. This is not the type of service I would get from HP or Dell. A very disappointing experience that has made me not want to recommend the Asus Transformer to people.

We get it. Yours was broken out of the box. No need to keep spamming the forum over and over with the same copy/paste.

Take it back to the store or ship it in for repair. Like I pointed out, I've had to return a laptop and a netbook at My Expense in the past, broken in the first 30days. They were both fixed perfectly fine.

I think I read somewhere that failure for consumer electronics is around 10-20% industry wide. Even Apple sells "refurbished" stuff- meaning some are returned because of defects or whatnot. I buy refurbished mp3 players, they typically get better quality control as they leave than the brand-new electronics get off the assembly line. Cuz they HAVE TO double-check to make sure they work...

 

[AutobahnSHO]

For instance

The Return of the iPad | Dan Edwards Photo

 

[chrisfsullivan]

We get it. Yours was broken out of the box. No need to keep spamming the forum over and over with the same copy/paste.

Take it back to the store or ship it in for repair. Like I pointed out, I've had to return a laptop and a netbook at My Expense in the past, broken in the first 30days. They were both fixed perfectly fine.

I think I read somewhere that failure for consumer electronics is around 10-20% industry wide. Even Apple sells "refurbished" stuff- meaning some are returned because of defects or whatnot. I buy refurbished mp3 players, they typically get better quality control as they leave than the brand-new electronics get off the assembly line. Cuz they HAVE TO double-check to make sure they work...

Ok, so maybe I was spamming a little, I was pretty upset. I also want people who are considering a purchase from Asus to know what the policies of the company are.

I am sorry that you view it as just because you have had to pay to ship back a defective product in the past that it is acceptable. Your statement that "a 10-20% defective rate in the industry" actually makes the policy that much more egregious to me. The last thing I am going to do is to accept a bad policy quietly, I will make sure that as many people hear about it as possible.

The story does have a positive because Newegg put me through to their tech support group. Amazingly, the Newegg tech support group was more knowledgeable about the issue that Asus. He had me try several different debug and reset steps. In the end nothing could wake my sleeping beauty and it needed to go back. The pleasant part of the story comes from Newegg's return policy. They will send me a free shipper label and put the device through the paces. I they can not get it operational, they will send me a new one at no cost.

For those of you keeping score that is Newegg +2 and Asus -2

 

[AutobahnSHO]

I don't think it's acceptable- just reality.

Hmm, wonder what kind of laws govern this type of stuff? Is it LEGAL for a company to sell a product that doesn't work and make the consumer pay to ship it back?

Glad Newegg stepped up-
I buy from them and Amazon because of good (usually) customer service. (My TF from Amazon (Target actually) and dock and harddrive enclosure recently from Newegg.)

 

[Deleted User]

basically the main unit always takes priority, when the tablet drains the dock charges it up at the same time, hence why technically its better to charge both tablet and dock seperately.

Just to clarify...

When the tablet is docked, the dock battery is used to power the tablet and the tablet battery idles unused. If the dock is not charged, the dock battery will drain to a few percent and then the TF tablet battery will kick in to keep it running until it drains. But if you connect the charger to the dock before the dock battery is depleted, then it will charge it back up and still not use the tablet battery.

If you always keep it docked and never drain the dock battery, then the tablet battery will never really get used at all. However, since Li-Ion batteries have a mild self-discharge rate due to the microchip in the battery and electron loss, the tablet battery will slowly drop from 100% over about 10 days or so down to 95%, at which point the charging circuit will top up the tablet battery to 100% again using the dock battery. The dock battery will then drop a bit for this charging process. You then charge the dock battery as usual. The tablet battery will go through this mild self-discharge cycle every so often and top itself back up so the tablet always has a "full" charge (a full charge is considered to be 96-100% capacity and is why the battery won't charge continually. The charging circuit waits until capacity drops to 95% before charging up again).

So personally, I like to remove the tablet from time to time and use its battery, reducing the regular drain on the dock battery. If not, then the dock battery will run its life cycle of X number of charges and begin to lose capacity, while the tablet battery is still good. There are many times I want the tablet by itself anyway so it's good to remove it from the dock once in a while let the dock battery have a "rest". This will extend the life of the dock battery allowing both batteries to extend the life of the TF in the long run.

Charging separately is not needed, but if you use them separately from time to time, and charge them separately, then you will extend the overall life of the TF unit. It's like having two batteries for the tablet - if you only use one all the time, then it will lose capacity long before the other reducing the usefulness of that battery.

If all you ever do is leave the TF docked as you like using the keyboard all the time, then a netbook would be a better choice, but you wouldn't have Android on it.