Swipe to wake/turn-on Playbook, draining battery?

Hi there,

I was wondering if the function "swipe to wake" where you swipe from bezel to bezel on the PB is affecting the PB's battery life? I got my PB yesterday at BB(bestbuy) and after doing a full discharge, and full recharge overnight(9 hours), I unplugged it at 9:00AM, and by 11:00AM it was already at 78%. That's like 10%/hour... I'm asking because wouldn't it mean that the touch panel would have to be active even when it's the PB is sleeping in order for touch to wake to work? And if it is active then wouldn't it drain battery??

All I did was some light browsing on the internet, BBC news, Globe and Mail, crackberry, and tech blogs. My brightness was set to 20%, and I've "optimized" my settings like I did my 9900 to save battery already.

Is this a normal occurrence? Or should I send it back to BB?
Please, any help would be appreciated, this is my first tablet, and it's unfamiliar territory! ^_^

Yes touch panel is active during standby means some battery drain, but it wouldn't drain 10%/hour. If your battery drains that fast something is wrong.

Interesting concept. So if someone constantly does a partial swipe - bezel to middle - NOT waking it from standby, they may be using battery power even more.

In standby, the tablet should use only about 0.05W to 0.1W, which would mean only about 0.3% up to 0.5% per hour.

My app (Battery Guru) can help you investigate the problem. Some people have experienced increased power consumption in standby, but the causes are not yet known.

Note also that judging these things based on the % indicator on a brand new unit is not wise... do a full drain and recharge, or use it through a few recharge cycles first, before considering the % level to be properly calibrated. It may be simply that your unit thinks it has only half the battery capacity it really does, and will reset the measurements after a few more days.

It's also possible it's defective... a few units have been returned under warranty for this reason. It's too soon to judge, and those cases are very rare.

Note that Battery Guru's on sale for the holidays, at only $0.99. :)

Originally Posted by F2

Interesting concept. So if someone constantly does a partial swipe - bezel to middle - NOT waking it from standby, they may be using battery power even more.

F2, sorry, I don't see how that would work. The bezel swipe itself uses hardly any power... the tablet is constantly monitoring for swiping, and the physical changes caused by actually doing the swipe make almost no difference at all to the power consumption. We're talking nano-watts of difference, most likely.

I must be missing your point... but I think the OP didn't really mean that the actual act of bezel-swiping must be causing the problem. He's merely making an assumption about why he might be seeing increased standby power consumption. There are many reasons other than the touch controller being active that could explain it.

I do believe it has a 10 hr battery.

I believe, or at least the way my PB works, in stand by that bluetooth connection is still active. I notice that if I turn off BT and then go to standby my battery drain is negligible overnight. I could be wrong about this, but it seems to work for me.

Is a full discharge on these batteries recomended? I've always read that fully discharging lithium ion batteries will kill them or harm them in someway. I'm taking this info from my RC Heli lithion battery manufacturers. I'm also assuming playbooks have lith ion batteries.

Wi-fi is still active in stand-by. Also, if you are running the OS2 developer beta, some background tasks may be running in Android.

like all new devices it will need a couple of cycles before it gets into a more efficent battery life mode (thats my experince using these devices). My battery looses like 3-5% overnight if i leave it on (with bedbuzz +wifi running all night). Just dont leave andriod running - i notice tweetdeck runs even if the window is closed (so it sucks up a bunch of data constantly updating)

Originally Posted by peter9477

In standby, the tablet should use only about 0.05W to 0.1W, which would mean only about 0.3% up to 0.5% per hour.

My app (Battery Guru) can help you investigate the problem. Some people have experienced increased power consumption in standby, but the causes are not yet known.

Note also that judging these things based on the % indicator on a brand new unit is not wise... do a full drain and recharge, or use it through a few recharge cycles first, before considering the % level to be properly calibrated. It may be simply that your unit thinks it has only half the battery capacity it really does, and will reset the measurements after a few more days.

It's also possible it's defective... a few units have been returned under warranty for this reason. It's too soon to judge, and those cases are very rare.

Note that Battery Guru's on sale for the holidays, at only $0.99. :)

I'm going to get Battery Guru now =D

Thanks for everyone's help!!

I'll give it a few more days for the battery to settle in, and I guess just keep an eye out using battery guru. The initial use that drained 10% almost instantly scared me quite a bit hahaha.

<3 Crackberry community

Originally Posted by zorecati

Is a full discharge on these batteries recomended? I've always read that fully discharging lithium ion batteries will kill them or harm them in someway. I'm taking this info from my RC Heli lithion battery manufacturers. I'm also assuming playbooks have lith ion batteries.

The full discharge and recharge of the battery tends to calibrate it for better efficiency. The PB batteries follow the same pattern. I believe the PB does have lithium ion batteries.

Originally Posted by zorecati

Is a full discharge on these batteries recomended? I've always read that fully discharging lithium ion batteries will kill them or harm them in someway. I'm taking this info from my RC Heli lithion battery manufacturers. I'm also assuming playbooks have lith ion batteries.

When you do a "full discharge" of a battery inside a device like this it's not actually discharging all the way, there's some % left to keep it from getting to the point of damage. I forget what it supposedly is for most devices, but I would assume at least 10%. So you charge and discharge all the way up and that tells the % indicator that that is 100%, when in reality it's only like 90% of the battery's actual capacity.