Increased battery by 1 hour

[dcoplien]

I installed an app to show mWh used. Normally I check facebook with my phone but have been using my SP4 the last couple of days with Edge. Switching to the FB app added an hour to my battery life as it's mWh is considerably less.

I read a number of online news sites daily, tried apps for NBC, Huffington Post and a few others. Found they used more mWh than Edge.

 

[DavidZ]

I installed an app to show mWh used.

What's the name of the app?

 

[dcoplien]

What's the name of the app?

BatteryBar Pro. I also found that I save over 2000 mW when not using the type cover. Adds about another hour. I have a nice BT keyboard I was going test but can't find it.

 

[Cerif27]

Keep us posted.

 

[DavidZ]

BatteryBar Pro. I also found that I save over 2000 mW when not using the type cover. Adds about another hour. I have a nice BT keyboard I was going test but can't find it.

Thanks! BatteryBar is an awesome little utility. It's a must have for any SP4 owner that wants to squeeze extra hours out of a battery charge.

The most useful data item is current battery drain rate. My usage rate bounces around between about 4,000 to 12,000 mW. That's a very wide range. Based on my calculations that results in battery life ranging from 3.25 hours to 13.00 hours. Here are the inbetween numbers:

Battery
Drain................Battery
Rate (mW)....Time (hours)

12,000...............3.25
11,000...............3.55
10,000..............3.90
9,000................4.33
8,000................4.88
7,000.................5.57
6,000................6.50
5,000................7.80
4,000................9.75
3,000...............13.00

The way to use BatteryBar is to make changes to your setup (e.g., turn down the brightness, close an application, turn off a live tile, etc.) and then see what that does to your current battery drain rate. You'll probably be surprised at what's costing you battery power and what's not.

 

[dcoplien]

With my current settings, today I found I could go all day with excel. No charts but 3 sheets that auto update stock data from the web.

Edge, even with ad blocking is my worst battery drain. Since I am also going with Defender rather than traditional anti-virus, I guess I will stick with using edge....not quite ready to fully trust defender.

In the summer I do a great deal of photography but haven't installed photoshop yet or my Canon software or video for my gopros. With my i5 & 4GB RAM tablet I could do 5 minutes of video editing so hope the i7-8 will go a little faster as I hate dragging a laptop with me.

 

[leeshor]

Every little thing counts. If one item is consuming 1% but you have 10 of those it mounts up.

 

[DavidZ]

Battery
Drain................Battery
Rate (mW)....Time (hours)

12,000...............3.25
11,000...............3.55
10,000..............3.90
9,000................4.33
8,000................4.88
7,000.................5.57
6,000................6.50
5,000................7.80
4,000................9.75
3,000...............13.00

The way to use BatteryBar is to make changes to your setup (e.g., turn down the brightness, close an application, turn off a live tile, etc.) and then see what that does to your current battery drain rate. You'll probably be surprised at what's costing you battery power and what's not.

This table tells us that in order to get the 9 hours Microsoft claims, you need to keep your battery drain rate about 4,300 to 4,400 mW. If you keep it at 4,900 mW, you can get about 8 hours. These rate are very hard to obtain, particularly if you want to do any serious work. Is it possible that Microsoft can fine tune the software achieve theses low drain rates? I highly doubt it.

 

[dcoplien]

This table tells us that in order to get the 9 hours Microsoft claims, you need to keep your battery drain rate about 4,300 to 4,400 mW. If you keep it at 4,900 mW, you can get about 8 hours. These rate are very hard to obtain, particularly if you want to do any serious work. Is it possible that Microsoft can fine tune the software achieve theses low drain rates? I highly doubt it.

My drain with Excel is 2265 (i7, screen @25%) so it can be done but most people will have a mix of programs and apps that on average will get them 5 to 6 hours.

What I really find intolerable is how much time I had to spend figuring out how to increase the battery life.

 

[dcoplien]

I just tested an HD mp4 (The Martian) from my local drive. It averaged about 6000 mW but at times jumped to 8000~11000. (I just fast forwarded to motion scenes and scenes with music.) That would mean ~6 to 6.5 hours of video if all videos were the same which they obviously aren't. My gorpo mp4 videos (HD from a network drive)ranged from 5500 to a max of 6700.

tested with TV & Movie app, not media player