[teg]

Hello,

I really enjoy my Aurora tablet, got it two weeks ago and still cannot stop tweaking the system. There is, however, one problem which seem to be quite common for the first batch (bought from ownta shop, btw). The battery drain issue. I'm wondering if anybody can give a good advise about it.

I am, apparently, very unlucky about the battery. Everything else in my tablet seem to be working fine but the battery is a constant headache! It keeps the charge while the tablet sleeps or turned off (4.0.3 firmware), I don't get a single percent drop over night. But when I start using it, the discharge is absolutely ridiculous! 1-1.5% per minute! This way, I can run out of juice in less than 2 hours, this is completely unacceptable! Today, I took a screenshot of the battery use: started reading book (wifi off) and it used about 40% in less than half an hour :-( Then I had a break for a couple of hours, and then reading again, wifi on this time. Same discharge speed, exactly, nothing changed for about 20 min. And then, suddenly, discharge speed drops about 5 times, using about 8% in 30 min (which I would be much happier about if I had it all the time!). And I have this kind of behavior every day, no correlation to the total charge (this morning, for example, it was discharging very slowly for 30 min from 100->93%). Battery widget shows more or less the same energy use all the time, no sudden increase or decrease. And another problem, total battery capacity is 1941 mAh only, far from 3700 stated in specs :-(

Very clearly, this it the battery problem. It CAN discharge slowly as it should, so even with half capacity I'd get descent amount of time to use the tablet. But for some reason, most of the time it looses the charge extremely fast, and then randomly switches to much slower rate. Does anyone have the same problem? (I read in other forums that some people do) And does anybody know if this problem can be solved, somehow pushing battery into "slow mode"? Looks very unlikely, I'd say, but who knows... So far, the only solution I see is to buy the new battery and install it but Ainol didn't make it very easy procedure.

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[cloudynoctis]

Hmmm.... this is very interesting indeed. I used the same widget as you and I seem to have only 1500mAh total battery capacity. Yet, I can go 4-5 hours with maximum brightness.

Edit: According to this widget, there is an option that allows you to change the mAh to whatever the tablet's battery capacity is. I set it to 3700mAh and now it's showing me 1998/3700 mAh.

This post has been edited by cloudynoctis: 14 February 2012 - 09:19 PM

[v9ryu]

Friend, I think you were unlucky.
Try contact your seller or ask Ainol to fix your defective unit.

[Almaz]

v9ryu, on 14 February 2012 - 09:41 PM, said:

Friend, I think you were unlucky.
Try contact your seller or ask Ainol to fix your defective unit.

The picture you posted is totally useless to me because it is missing the bottom screen which shows what applications draws power. Also tablet does drain battery in sleep mode and once you turn on the screen then it'll update with a huge battery capacity drop just like you showed in the picture. Post the picture of your battery usage screen and what applications are using the battery. If you don't use the device then don't just turn off the screen but turn the device off. Also try to use my script which have some battery tweaks.

[Slmac]

hello teg,

the battery management does not work well with the Aurora at the moment, maybe in future releases of firmware it might get better.

the problem you are having, i think we all have, during sleep mode the status of the battery is not updated, that is why it happens so fast after turning it on - it does not actually drain the battery - it just keeps updating the battery status.

if you can use your aurora for 4-6hours with a full charge, i think all is ok.

[teg]

Almaz, on 15 February 2012 - 02:27 AM, said:

The picture you posted is totally useless to me because it is missing the bottom screen which shows what applications draws power. Also tablet does drain battery in sleep mode and once you turn on the screen then it'll update with a huge battery capacity drop just like you showed in the picture. Post the picture of your battery usage screen and what applications are using the battery. If you don't use the device then don't just turn off the screen but turn the device off. Also try to use my script which have some battery tweaks.

how come it is useless? I said in the text: only book reader was running, nothing else. As for draining in sleep mode, I don't think so. This application (Battery monitor) records battery status even in sleep mode, so if something is active when screen is off, I can see it later (and I did few times). Most of the time, there is no drain at all in sleep mode. That's why I don't need to turn it off (trust me, I checked it very carefully for two weeks!). I already applied all your tweaks two weeks ago and battery life has improved a bit but not much. BTW, when I had 4.0.1. firmware, I noticed very clear battery drain in sleep mode, about 10% per hour or even more, which is totally absent in 4.0.3.

Also, as I already said, sometimes it happens that the battery looses very little energy after long sleep, about 10% per hour, which again says against your statement that the program adjusts after sleep.

If I could use my tablet for 6 hours, I'd be very happy. Regrettably, the typical picture is: start from 99%, use to 40-50% in less than an hour (doesn't matter what I do, play heavy game or read the book at lowest brightness possible), then discharge might slow down and I get another 2 hours (or less, depending on usage) until 5% when tablet shuts down (or it may use the rest of the battery in one hour again, this is really random). So, I'm lucky if I can get 3 hours without need to recharge. And I talked to people who could watch movies and play games for 3-4 hours and then read something for another 3 hours on Aurora. So it's not the software issue. since they are using the same OS version.

cloudynoctis, I know what you mean. I guess you just started using this widget? When you just install it, it shows 1500 mAh capacity by default since it doesn't know your battery. After a couple of discharge/recharge cycles, it measures the real capacity of your battery and later uses this one for all estimations. You can enter even 10.000 mAh capacity but this won't change the battery life time. Just click the "calibration" and you will see two numbers: the number you entered (3700) - theoretical capacity and the one called "measured". If you click "update reference", the theoretical will be changed to measured.

[Almaz]

What part of other people statements don't you understand? Battery management doesn't work properly at the moment so the picture that you posted is useless. Battery widget also reports a lot of drain in standby mode. You better check what is running in the backgrounds and disable it. If you are using only reader doesn't mean anything because you have another dozen or even more applications running in the background and checking wifi for updates and other tasks.

Sent from my phone

[teg]

Almaz, on 15 February 2012 - 08:18 AM, said:

What part of other people statements don't you understand? Battery management doesn't work properly at the moment so the picture that you posted is useless. Battery widget also reports a lot of drain in standby mode. You better check what is running in the backgrounds and disable it. If you are using only reader doesn't mean anything because you have another dozen or even more applications running in the background and checking wifi for updates and other tasks.

Sent from my phone

sorry, Almaz, I cannot agree. I have android phone for more than a year, with custom rom and a lot of tweaks, so I understand a bit about android os (I'm sure, you do much more, I used your script to root aurora). I currently have: sync switched off; no software which has sync needs; all phone applications are deleted; there are no applications draining battery in the background (I check this regularly with task manager) and there is no battery drain in standby (sleep) mode, as you can perfectly see from the pic: straight white lines for several hours. And yet, the tablet lasts for 2-2.5 hours only. And thank you very much, I perfectly understand what others are saying, no need to be rude. And even if the power management doesn't work properly and we don't pay attention to the percentages and graphs, this doesn't change the fact that for some people aurora lasts for 6-7 hours, while for some 2-3 hours only (with very moderate usage). My question was: can I somehow push my battery into the mode when it looses its charge slowly (as it randomly switches from slow to fast discharge)? If you don't know how to do this, no need to answer at all

[Almaz]

Try to install BetterBatteryStats from XDA website, it might help.

Sent from my phone

[teg]

I did, about a week ago. It shows no significant energy use by any application, especially when I compare its data to my HTC Desire usage, very clear difference. That's why I think my battery drain isn't due to applications (well, not entirely). And I'm stuck and don't know what to do next. I really don't want to buy new battery, open the tablet and change it (it's not so easy process as in phone!)

[demieg]

Hi Teg,

I'm the owner of a Novo Elf and my battery lasts about 2-2.5 hour on a full charge. Think I have a bad battery too... In 8 hours in drains 10% even when the screen and wifi is turnt off..
I don't like to send it back to the shop I bought it from (Chinagrabber).. I don't know what to do too.

[Beldargr]

Can the battery be replaced at all?

[Almaz]

Beldargr, on 19 February 2012 - 10:52 PM, said:

Can the battery be replaced at all?

I don't see any reasons why we can't replace battery. Just find the suitable size and replace it. All you need just basic soldering skills

[aljshark]

yup.. battery life sux.
I have banging my head trying different roms, battery improvement apps and all almost useless.
Not sure if this is hardware or software issue but it is there.
One of the tools I used for battery monitoring shows 160 mA battery usage in sleep mode and up to 760 mA (usually around 450 - 500 mA with short leaps from time to time) when using it with wifi on.
Now when you do the math, battery of 3700 mAh should go for nearly 7.5 hours with wifi on and normal web browsing, which is definitely not the case.
I still think that 160 mA are allot for sleep mode, that is if the tool I'm using is correctly displaying metrics.

[Almaz]

The battery drain comes from Android. It keeps searching constantly for for edge/3g signal or something else and there's no way to disable it. If you install window mobile then the problem should be gone but unfortunately there's winmo ROM yet

Sent from my phone.

[bdogz24]

Has anyone tried airplane mode wifi tool? It should turn of the software for the cell radio while still allowing wifi.

[Nightprowler]

Almaz, on 21 February 2012 - 08:12 PM, said:

The battery drain comes from Android. It keeps searching constantly for for edge/3g signal or something else and there's no way to disable it. If you install window mobile then the problem should be gone but unfortunately there's winmo ROM yet

Thanks for the tip Almaz, excuse my ignorance, but is this related to ICS specifically, or all Andriod versions?

I've been reading on this and came across this site: http://blog.g4team.com/?p=5550
I don't know anything about this stuff so looking for more knowledgeable people to comment, but according to the description there, that fix should:

- improve battery drain over stock firmware
- Added an option to disable phone, sms and bluetooth services (optional)
- Increased WiFi scan interval to save battery
- Improves battery drain in standby mode by putting all the hardware to sleep mode

Perhaps this is already here on Slatedriod.

This post has been edited by Nightprowler: 22 February 2012 - 03:33 PM

[Darkn]

Yep, that's the Almaz script you posted. It's for Android 4.0.3 and is linked here

Link: http://www.slatedroi...x-v04-by-almaz/

I've used it for around 2 weeks now and it's perfectly fine. I'm bored today, so I'm probably going to check out Android-Kun's ROM.

[Nightprowler]

Darkn, on 22 February 2012 - 08:32 PM, said:

Yep, that's the Almaz script you posted. It's for Android 4.0.3 and is linked here

Ahha, yes I see the "source" link at the bottom of that page now that links back to Slatedriod. It was in dark grey text so I missed it the first time.

Something I am confused on.

Here Almaz says it's "searching constantly for for edge/3g signal or something else and there's no way to disable it"

But according to the description of that script there is an option to disable phone (3g), sms and bluetooth services (optional) & Increased WiFi scan interval to save battery

This seems to be contradictory.

[cloudynoctis]

So I left the Aurora on today for 15 hours in sleep mode. I am on the 0221 4.0.3. I did not use it once. It went from 84% 15 hours ago to 69% as of right now.

This post has been edited by cloudynoctis: 23 February 2012 - 10:45 PM