Tablet Battery Life?

[peter]

Have at last decided to spring for a tablet and have settled on a low-cost Tesco produced version called Hudl 2 that seems to be impressing many reviewers in respect of it's value for money, overall quality of usage [screen, speed, power, clarity etc], but has drawn some criticism in a few areas. The camera/video quality while ok, is [they say] not so good in low light conditions and the speakers are [as is often the case] a bit lacking in the 'base' department. But the big issue seems to be battery life - and this is the one that worries me most.

Tesco give a life of approximately 8 hours in their literature, but commentators seem to feel they are being a bit over generous; most seem to come up with a figure of around 6 hours, or enough for 'a couple of films' [nice if you're using it for in flight or train entertainment]. This would be fine for me, but I still have a couple of questions as to how batteries work in these devices.
Firstly, does what you are doing effect battery life in respect of the time needed between charges? I will be using it for reading Wikipedia [and the Watch] far more than for gaming and film/tv viewing, and also for book reading if the screen is suitable for such [and I can download them to the device]. Would I get more time reading than say watching a film?
Secondly, can you do what I used to in the past with a mobile phone I once had, and carry a second 'charged' battery with you, to replace the first when it runs out - or is this not possible [or just plain not advisable]?
Lastly [and this shows how out of touch I might be], in years gone by you could screw up a battery by charging it when it was only half empty. It was something to do with the battery having a sort of 'memory', and that once you had carried out an only partial charge, the battery would from then on only ever accept that amount of charge again, so you could never again properly charge the thing. Is this still the case with modern batteries or have these problems been ironed out [my family say this is no longer an issue - are they correct?] I'd need to charge [from the sound of it] fairly often, and I don't want to be forever buying new batteries or the whole point of getting a 'budget'tablet would be negated. I'm sure that many will feel that it's better to get a higher price one at the outset - but I'm really just not going to use it that much [plus I can't afford an expensive one.]

Any advice on this stuff or anything else guys?

[wayfriend]

Your battery will last longer if you
- deactivate the screen when you're not using it
- turn down the brightness when you can
- turn off GPS, Blue Tooth, and even Wi Fi when you can
- try to avoid widgets and apps that get updates periodically (mail, weather, etc), and if you need them, turn them down to update as infrequently as you can.
- turn off sounds you don't need, like the little bwoop noise whenever you type a letter or press a button. Ditto vibration and "haptic feedback".

Apps that compute a lot of information (like movie players) DO use more power than an idle tablet.

[peter]

Thanks Wayfriend - sound information.

[MsMary]

Other things that help:
Turn off push notifications.
Turn off apps that you are not using.

Some applications use more apps than others, as Wayfriend said. Games, movies, and the like use more battery than things like reading a book or reading email.

[peter]

On say, a long flight, would reading give you what - 50% more battery life compared to watching a film or playing a game - or would the increase in life not be that much more? Any ideas.

[wayfriend]

When you read a book, the CPU is pretty idle, and the biggest power drain is keeping the screen lit. Watching a movie is a lot more CPU-intenstive. I wouldn't be surprised if it was 2x or 3x the power consumption.

But don't guess. Let your tablet tell you. Hudl seems to be an Andriod-based tablet. So you can go into Settings > Battery and see which apps use the most power.



So read a book for an hour, then watch a movie for an hour, and see which one uses more battery.

[peter]

That sounds fair enough Wayfriend.

[wayfriend]

The apps that drain your phone's battery the most

[peter]

Thanks Wayfriend. Useful to know. So far the battery life doesn't seem too bad - I get a good few hours of reading/posting etc, but haven't tried to watch a whole film as yet.