Battery Life - Squeeze as much as you can out of your battery - Tips and Tweaks
Hey all. I have read several threads about just plane out right lousy battery life for the Nextbook Next7S Premium and as much as I would like to agree I was able to increase battery life a lot with a couple tweaks. After several hours of tweaking, app testing and the like I would like to share my experience and how you can gain some valuable battery life.
The obvious...
1. Brightness - In settings make sure to crank the brightness all the way down. The back light is the number one cause of battery drain. Period. If you see yourself using your Next7S outside put the "Power Control" widget on your home screen for easy on demand brightness control. Just make sure to turn the brightness down after your done.
2. Sleep - By default this is set to never. Change this to something more reasonable like 1 or 2 minutes unless you are reading a book.
3. Wifi Sleep - This little bugger is kind of hidden. This allows for your wifi to turn off automatically when your tablet sleeps. To get to this settings go to Settings > Wireless and Networks > and the upper right hand corner click the 3 horizontal squares > Advanced. Under "Keep Wifi on during sleep" select "never." This will help keep your battery alive longer for sure.
The not so obvious...
1. Keep your app count down. Don't go and install a whole bunch of apps because chances are they will run in the background and if you were not aware the Next7S has limited memory and the last thing you need is to have several apps running in the background consuming your battery life.
2. Animation Scaling - Disable this to not only increase performance on your NextFS but also increase battery life. In settings select "Developer Options." Turn "Animation Off" on both "Window Animation scale" and "Transition Animation scale." Also uncheck "Force GPU rendering" unless specifically required by certain apps or games.
3. Background Process Limit - In settings go to "Developer Options." Select "Background process limit" and select "No Background process." ONLY select this if you do not want to be able to multi task between apps. If you like to multi task between apps select something else that you prefer.
4. Consider investing in System Tuner Pro or CPU Master by Antutu. These apps will help manage your processor better to help conserve your battery when not in use or to boost your power when in use resulting in better battery management. I have System Tuner Pro so I will be talking about it.
In System Tuner Pro go to"Tweaks." On the Auto-Kill tab click on the "Preset" button and select "Medium." This will auto kill apps based on the memory limits set within. You can play with these values manually but to make things easier just go with the presets for now. Next click on "Boot settings." Select "Active Tweaks" and select "Screen-off behavior." Click "Govenor" and select "Conservative." Then backup one and select "Max Frequency." Select "408MHz." This will keep your processor running at no higher then 408MHz while your screen is off saving precious battery life when not in use. Why would you need your tablet working so hard when its not even in use? Exactly. Backup once and select "Re-apply memory limits" and select "On boot completed." Then select "Re-apply CPU settings" and select "On boot completed." This will make sure these settings are configured after each boot. There are other settings in here for advanced users that might be able to squeeze some more juice out of your battery but we'll not get into that.
Also in System Tuner Pro you can freeze those nasty system apps, AKA bloatware, that you probably will never use but you always see them running in the background taking up precious memory. As much as freezing system apps is not recommended, as long as you don't freeze important things like, for example; the operating system(duh!), you should be good. Let back out of System Tuner Pro and re-open it. Select "Task Mgr." At the bottom make sure "Excluded and System" is colored or checked. Now scroll through the apps on the list until you see "GetJar." If you use this then great...but really you rooted your phone for a reason and that was NOT so you can use the ghetto Getjar app. So click on "GetJar" and at the bottom there is a button called "Freeze." Click it and the app will be frozen. This means the app will not be able to run until you "Boil" it which you should see now instead of Freeze. You can do this with other things like "fring", "weather forecast", "OTA Service"(If you don't want over the air updates pushed to you) and some others if you find are not worthy of your limited space. Whatever you do, DO NOT freeze anything that you don't know what it is! Don't freeze ANY kernel processes either. If you don't know what something is ASK before freezing. Also do not freeze fring.apk or uninstall it. Somehow it is tied into the OS more deeply and if you do it will cause continous crash reports on behalf of fring not being where it is supposed to be.
5. Disable Live Wallpapers - Live wallpapers not only look cool but they make you feel like your on the beach or in space with its eye candy effects. However it also consumes CPU and battery. Instead replace it with a still background of that beach or space scenery. It may not jump out at you but at least it won't be draining your battery either.
That's it!
By performing the above steps I have measured by an app called "Battery Drain" that I lose about 10%-15% battery power per day on standby which means it could last up to about 10 days, theoretically, or more realistically about 6 days. Of course that's just in standby. Depending on what your using it for will vary greatly.
I will update this thread more as I learn more.
The obvious...
1. Brightness - In settings make sure to crank the brightness all the way down. The back light is the number one cause of battery drain. Period. If you see yourself using your Next7S outside put the "Power Control" widget on your home screen for easy on demand brightness control. Just make sure to turn the brightness down after your done.
2. Sleep - By default this is set to never. Change this to something more reasonable like 1 or 2 minutes unless you are reading a book.
3. Wifi Sleep - This little bugger is kind of hidden. This allows for your wifi to turn off automatically when your tablet sleeps. To get to this settings go to Settings > Wireless and Networks > and the upper right hand corner click the 3 horizontal squares > Advanced. Under "Keep Wifi on during sleep" select "never." This will help keep your battery alive longer for sure.
The not so obvious...
1. Keep your app count down. Don't go and install a whole bunch of apps because chances are they will run in the background and if you were not aware the Next7S has limited memory and the last thing you need is to have several apps running in the background consuming your battery life.
2. Animation Scaling - Disable this to not only increase performance on your NextFS but also increase battery life. In settings select "Developer Options." Turn "Animation Off" on both "Window Animation scale" and "Transition Animation scale." Also uncheck "Force GPU rendering" unless specifically required by certain apps or games.
3. Background Process Limit - In settings go to "Developer Options." Select "Background process limit" and select "No Background process." ONLY select this if you do not want to be able to multi task between apps. If you like to multi task between apps select something else that you prefer.
4. Consider investing in System Tuner Pro or CPU Master by Antutu. These apps will help manage your processor better to help conserve your battery when not in use or to boost your power when in use resulting in better battery management. I have System Tuner Pro so I will be talking about it.
In System Tuner Pro go to"Tweaks." On the Auto-Kill tab click on the "Preset" button and select "Medium." This will auto kill apps based on the memory limits set within. You can play with these values manually but to make things easier just go with the presets for now. Next click on "Boot settings." Select "Active Tweaks" and select "Screen-off behavior." Click "Govenor" and select "Conservative." Then backup one and select "Max Frequency." Select "408MHz." This will keep your processor running at no higher then 408MHz while your screen is off saving precious battery life when not in use. Why would you need your tablet working so hard when its not even in use? Exactly. Backup once and select "Re-apply memory limits" and select "On boot completed." Then select "Re-apply CPU settings" and select "On boot completed." This will make sure these settings are configured after each boot. There are other settings in here for advanced users that might be able to squeeze some more juice out of your battery but we'll not get into that.
Also in System Tuner Pro you can freeze those nasty system apps, AKA bloatware, that you probably will never use but you always see them running in the background taking up precious memory. As much as freezing system apps is not recommended, as long as you don't freeze important things like, for example; the operating system(duh!), you should be good. Let back out of System Tuner Pro and re-open it. Select "Task Mgr." At the bottom make sure "Excluded and System" is colored or checked. Now scroll through the apps on the list until you see "GetJar." If you use this then great...but really you rooted your phone for a reason and that was NOT so you can use the ghetto Getjar app. So click on "GetJar" and at the bottom there is a button called "Freeze." Click it and the app will be frozen. This means the app will not be able to run until you "Boil" it which you should see now instead of Freeze. You can do this with other things like "fring", "weather forecast", "OTA Service"(If you don't want over the air updates pushed to you) and some others if you find are not worthy of your limited space. Whatever you do, DO NOT freeze anything that you don't know what it is! Don't freeze ANY kernel processes either. If you don't know what something is ASK before freezing. Also do not freeze fring.apk or uninstall it. Somehow it is tied into the OS more deeply and if you do it will cause continous crash reports on behalf of fring not being where it is supposed to be.
5. Disable Live Wallpapers - Live wallpapers not only look cool but they make you feel like your on the beach or in space with its eye candy effects. However it also consumes CPU and battery. Instead replace it with a still background of that beach or space scenery. It may not jump out at you but at least it won't be draining your battery either.
That's it!
By performing the above steps I have measured by an app called "Battery Drain" that I lose about 10%-15% battery power per day on standby which means it could last up to about 10 days, theoretically, or more realistically about 6 days. Of course that's just in standby. Depending on what your using it for will vary greatly.
I will update this thread more as I learn more.
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