Help Battery usage

[lifesignz]

Just wondering what usage everyone else is getting out of a fully charged A200 battery?

I can fully charge mine, then play some games & use the browser for a while, maybe read some ebooks, and it may last about 4 hours..is this normal?
I have the screen brightness set around the 40 - 45% mark, gps is off, so is bluetooth & background data sync too. the Screen turns off after 1 minute as well.

I realize games will drain the battery quicker than most things (I think!)
Also, while it is in sleep mode, the battery can go down quicker than I would have thought in this mode (within an hour it may go down 3 - 4%)

What things can you do to reduce battery drain other than the ones I mentioned?
I have weather widgets built into the stock honeycomb (unrooted) that I am running, which I cant seem to be able to disable or uninstall, I don't really need these,
so it would be nice to disable them. I f anyone knows how to disable weather widgets, the "music" program & others that come preinstalled it would be appreciated.

 

[lordfly911]

I am having awesome battery life. I charge overnight and at work I listen to streaming radio and maybe watch some Netflix during my lunch and breaks. Plus I do some browsing and use misc apps. Right now I am at 68 percent. I took the widget off of the screen and use beautiful widgets. Plus I have an animated background.

Don't know you are experiencing low battery life.

Sent from my A200 using Tapatalk

 

[kenji57]

I second that. I take my tab to work to play at lunchtime and I'm 3 days 23 hours 31m since charge and still 78% remaining. Awesome.
Maps is the biggest battery user for me (63%), so if I turned off GPS who knows how long I'd get!

My A500 can't get through one day on a charge. I even installed Juice defender to try and fix it, but only a minor improvement.

 

[lifesignz]

Okay, I finally decided to do a factory reset on my tablet....what a difference! It now loads in about 25 seconds from system off, compared to about 1 min 54 secs. The storage issue I was having is fixed (it used to show all my internal memory as full, when I had 2gb free). Have to check how my battery goes as its too soon to tell.

Edit:
Started putting games and apps back on, got about 32 games on so far and noticed the power up from off time has gone up to 1 min and 5 secs...does it take longer to boot up when you put more stuff on? Or are you supposed to reset the machine after every gzme is installed? Seems quite strange. Also, I am running the stock launcher, so are other launchers quicker to boot up?

 

[lordfly911]

I would suggest keeping your app installs to a minimum. Unless you use it every couple of days or once a week, leave it off the device. This is just advice taken from using my Samsung Captivate. Once I cleaned it off after the last OS update, it has worked much better with much better battery life.

 

[lifesignz]

Thanks for the reply.
Is that the way android works though, slower boot up loading with more apps?
Seems a bit crazy really, I always thought android handled memory better than a windows based system.

 

[kenji57]

It depends on the apps. Take a look in Systems/ Applications/ Running Services. Some apps are running in the background even if you haven't opened them directly.

One of the great things about ICS is being able to disable apps. Maybe that's why my A200 is getting awesome battery life, because apps I don't need and don't want aren't running in the background.

 

[lifesignz]

It depends on the apps. Take a look in Systems/ Applications/ Running Services. Some apps are running in the background even if you haven't opened them directly.

One of the great things about ICS is being able to disable apps. Maybe that's why my A200 is getting awesome battery life, because apps I don't need and don't want aren't running in the background.

With ICS, don't they constantly reload though, as android is prone to do?
ie, using a task killer to kill apps, normally just means they reload a bit later.
From my understanding to fully control apps not loading in the background you need to have a rooted device.May be wrong here....
Also, with ICS can you delete unwanted "bloatware" apps that you never use? -virus killers, music programs, weather programs etc..?

 

[kenji57]

ICS lets you disable apps. Just go to System / Apps and click on the All tab. Then when you click on an app you don't want, next to Force Stop is a Disable button.

It's not quite the same as uninstalling but on the other hand you can also re-enable them anytime.
I used it to stop McAvee antivirus popping up annoying reminders and it's like it doesn't exist.

I think this is why root isn't a big issue for A200 owners

 

[lifesignz]

ICS lets you disable apps. Just go to System / Apps and click on the All tab. Then when you click on an app you don't want, next to Force Stop is a Disable button.

It's not quite the same as uninstalling but on the other hand you can also re-enable them anytime.
I used it to stop McAvee antivirus popping up annoying reminders and it's like it doesn't exist.

I think this is why root isn't a big issue for A200 owners

Thanks mate thats good to know.
I read you were having issues with a game not going in ICS, did you resolve that?
Also, what are your other thoughts on ICS versus honeycomb now?
Any feedback you give about that is appreciated, as I am currently undecided about updating. A chap on another forum said to hold off till they iron out some more bugs in ICS, as honeycomb is more stable. What do you think about that?
Cheers.

 

[kenji57]

...
I read you were having issues with a game not going in ICS, did you resolve that? Also, what are your other thoughts on ICS versus honeycomb now?
...

I have stuck with ICS, partly due to laziness, but also the disable apps feature won me over. That is a real positive for ICS.

My HD problem seems to be fixed by defragmenting the drive, although my A500 on 3.2.1 didn't have any problems with it.
Re Asphalt 6, I contacted Gameloft but they were no help, just said it is not compatible with A200 even though it used to run OK. But it's only a game and after trying a few unsuccessful fixes I installed NFS Hot Pursuit instead.

 

[lifesignz]

I have stuck with ICS, partly due to laziness, but also the disable apps feature won me over. That is a real positive for ICS.

My HD problem seems to be fixed by defragmenting the drive, although my A500 on 3.2.1 didn't have any problems with it.
Re Asphalt 6, I contacted Gameloft but they were no help, just said it is not compatible with A200 even though it used to run OK. But it's only a game and after trying a few unsuccessful fixes I installed NFS Hot Pursuit instead.

But as for ICS vesus honeycomb, are there any other issues/bugs with ICS?
Is it slower on certain things?

 

[kenji57]

I'm up to 6 days 20 hours 48 minutes since charge!
OK, so most of that time the tab has been in my bag and I only get it out occasionally at work, but that is still awesome. I think a big part of that is being able to disable unnecessary apps. On my A500 if you force stop an app or service it only comes back. So I am definitely keeping ICS.
No other issues or bugs other than the ones I've posted. Haven't found anything slower than before, but also haven't seen a big speed improvement.
Overall I was pretty happy with 3.2 but the disable apps feature without root is a big win for ICS.

 

[lifesignz]

Well, my battery seems better now.
I must say though, when I use my tablet, or my son does, it is generally in bursts of at least 1 hour, 2 hours sometimes. So a charge will probably last the 8 hours that is quoted on the specs of the A200 (constant use).
When using it in those times its always either for gaming or internet browsing, which from doing lots of reading seems to drain more battery power anyway.
Mine would probably last that amount of time if I just pulled it out for a quick burst every so often too.

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated.

 

[kenji57]

Actually I ran a test just after I got my A200 playing video and got 7 hours and 6 minutes
http://androidforums.com/acer-iconia-tab-a500/473193-bb-no-longer-carrying-a500.html#post3760726.
That was in flight mode. Obviously with wifi and gps on you'd get a lot less.

There is no way that my A500 would last a week on a recharge, even if it was in my bag the whole time, I doubt I'd get more than a day