Extending battery life.

[TonyF]

It is noticeable on this forum that battery life can be a constant source of concern for some Bridge Clubs.

  The battery life seems to vary widely with Android-based tablets\mobile phones. As most know the screen uses a disproportionate  amount of the battery capacity. I’ve set up some Kindles which tend to have approx 6-8 hours of usable battery life (unmodified). Finding a way to improve this is did prove to be a lengthy process.

To extend the battery life can be managed in three ways as far as I can see.

1.  Turning down the screen brightness to 50%, or so, will have immediate response in saving battery life. But - it is possible to improve on this.

2.  By setting the time to turn off the screen to seconds rather than minutes. The downside of this means using the on off button to reactivate the screen. This would result in excessive use of the power button.

3.  Using a ‘floating’ app to manage the brightness during play. Settling on, Display Brightness APK version 5.1. This app is available from many sources. Eventually it was downloaded from the apkpure.com website. This is an excellent app, being fully customisable. Once set up it displays a rounded ‘bar’ which can be located pretty much anywhere on the screen. The app has been set to to 20% minimum brightness and 50% maximum. The bar has been set up to show two colours - for positive and negative brightness. By tapping on this bar either end reduces or increases the brightness.  It does seem tricky to use the ‘slide’ facility - hence the ‘tapping’ process. Incidentally the ‘duration’ of screen time has been set to ten minutes. This means the screen(s) stays on all the time. Only going off if there is a delay in play - tea-break or the like.

Not all apk files seem to respond in the same way if used on different Android devices. But maybe worth giving it a trial ? I reckon an increase of useful battery time to be, in the order of, 30% - 50% with Kindles. This approach may help save the day with ageing batteries.

Earlier I mentioned floating apps. All this means is the output of that particular app appears to be on every screen.

Tony

[Reg Hull]

Hi Tony
Yes it would be great if you could get multiple sessions out of the batteries. The most productive thing I found is to dim the brightness.
My members did not like the hassle of turning the screens on at the end of each play so I have taken a slightly different approach in that I simply charge all  the devices after each session. It's not much hassle.
Interestingly most devices have nearly 50% charge left so with a bit of tweaking I could get 2 sessions out of them. We use a lot of power because we set all the phones up 20-30mins before start of play.

[Mirna]

I use Caffeine app on all my  BridgePals. With Caffeine my Alcatel Pixi 4 4inch last two sessions, Alcatel POP 4 last 4 sessions. Also use it on an old Kindle  havent measured how much this last, but it is for several sessions.

[TonyF]

Hi all,

          I am now using Totally Kiosk browser on all my Kindles. The software locks down the device and the screen saver kicks in after 10 seconds. I very happy with the result. The downside is is the software is not free. But group licence solves that problem. Good value at about ?50.

Tony