Whether you’ve
got a Tesco Hudl or a Nexus 7, a few simple tweaks can help you eke more life
out of your Android tablet's battery.
Step 1: Check what's sapping your tablet's power
Android provides
a quick and easy way to see what's draining most of your tablet's power. Go to
Settings > Battery. This will show you a bar graph of the different
hardware, apps and processes that are putting the most drain on your battery.
The greatest
drain is almost always the screen, as powering the backlight for your tablet's
large display uses a lot of energy.
Step 2: Turn the screen brightness level down
Adjusting the
brightness level of your tablet’s screen can save a lot of battery power. To do
this, open Settings > Display > Brightness. A pop-up window will display
a slider which you can use to change the brightness level. If the slider isn’t
visible untick the box marked Automatic Brightness. Reduce the brightness to a
level that's less intense but still comfortable for you to read text on your
screen without straining your eyes.
Step 3: Reduce the screen time out
Reducing the
amount of time your screen stays lit after you've stopped interacting with your
tablet is another good way of slowing battery drain. Return to the Settings
> Display menu and select Sleep. Reducing this setting tells your tablet to
turn off the screen after a set period of inactivity. The shorter the time you
select, the less power your display will use. Try changing it to a setting of
two minutes.
Step 4: Turn off unwanted connections
Wireless network
technologies such as wi-fi and Bluetooth also consume quite a bit of power, so
if you're not using them it's best to turn them off. This is especially true of
Bluetooth, which many people never use on their tablet yet still leave turned
on.
Go to Settings
and select Bluetooth under the Wireless & Networks heading. Flick the
switch to Off to disable Bluetooth.
If you're using
your tablet on a long bus or train journey – or anywhere there's no wi-fi
reception, you should also turn off wi-fi to save power. Open Settings and
switch the wi-fi toggle switch to Off.
Step 5: Avoid using live wallpapers and widgets
Android's Live
Wallpapers and Widgets require processing and graphics power to run so put
extra drain on your battery. It's a relatively minor amount, but if you do want
to absolutely maximise your tablet's battery life you may want to get rid of
them.
Delete widgets
from your homescreen by tapping and holding on them before swiping them up to
the Remove icon. To change your wallpaper, tap and hold on an empty part of
your homescreen and choose Wallpaper from the pop-up menu.
Step 6: Fully discharge the battery
The lithium ion
batteries used in almost all Android tablets don't suffer the over-charging
problems of older Ni-Cad batteries, so they don’t always need to be run down
completely to stay at their best. However, to keep the battery's power meter
correctly calibrated it's still a good idea to let your tablet run out of
battery power after every 30 or so charges.
Step 7: Turn off Auto-sync
There are
various apps and services on your tablet that automatically sync data with
online servers, for storing contact information, providing Facebook alerts and
sending email to your tablet. These syncing processes can drain power,
especially if they’re pulling in a lot of information.
You can see
which accounts are set up to auto-sync by opening Settings and choosing
Accounts and Sync. If there are any you don’t want or need to sync in the
background just tap on their name and untick the Sync option.
No comments:
Post a Comment