Battery life with firmware 3.2?

[azayn]

So the battery life on my new-to-me Nova 3 running the newest firmware version 3.2, isn’t that great. With WiFi on and front light at 50% or less, I get 17 days of standby and about 5 hours of screen-on-time with the battery at 35%. The battery seems to be draining more quickly than the Kon-Tiki2 I used before which was running an older firmware. For those unaware, the Kon-Tiki2 is basically a Nova 3 minus the wacom layer.

I’ve done all the battery optimizations recommended on My Deep Guide and elsewhere. I doubt the wacom layer is draining the battery that much. My guess is it’s the battery itself or the new firmware.

Has anyone else with a Nova 3 experienced this issue? Would be curious to hear how long your device lasts on a single charge.

[ottischwenk]

Originally Posted by azayn

I doubt the wacom layer is draining the battery that much.

You're wrong

[kandwo]

Originally Posted by ottischwenk

You're wrong

Do you mean the wacom layer is actively draining battery even when not in use? I agree that it drains battery very quickly when used.

In my experience, the Wifi on the Nova 3 drains battery like crazy. I used to have it on to manually sync my reading process in the background, but it's just not feasible unless I want to constantly charge the device. Now I just turn it on to quickly sync and then immediately turn it off again.

Try using it with the Wifi off and see if that improves battery life.

Or do you mean to say that Kon-tiki had better battery life even with Wifi on all the time?

[ottischwenk]

Originally Posted by kandwo

Do you mean the wacom layer is actively draining battery even when not in use? I agree that it drains battery very quickly when used.

In my experience, the Wifi on the Nova 3 drains battery like crazy. I used to have it on to manually sync my reading process in the background, but it's just not feasible unless I want to constantly charge the device. Now I just turn it on to quickly sync and then immediately turn it off again.

Try using it with the Wifi off and see if that improves battery life.

Or do you mean to say that Kon-tiki had better battery life even with Wifi on all the time?

The Wacom layer always needs power, otherwise it would not be able to detect the proximity of the pen and because it is behind EInk, it is also relatively far from the surface.
And with the WLAN consumption - it depends very much on the location and distance to the AP.
And I don't know Kon-Tiki 2, so I can't say anything.

[Renate]

I agree with Ottischwenk. Still, I like to see real numbers.

I couldn't find any relevant plots so I made a new one of a Nexus 7 booting up just as an example.
This shows two minutes from powered off. (30 seconds for dark lines, 5 seconds for light).
You can see that the current spikes to almost 1.4 Amperes while booting.
While this says nothing about the present case, it does show why many cases of "boot loop" are actually just a bad battery.

This method is also about the only way to see idle current and all those times that your device fully wakes up without you knowing it.

[azayn]

I too would like to see some real numbers. My Deep Guide tested the Nova 3 battery - on the old firmware - and it was estimated for 60 hours(!) with WiFi on and front light set to 50%. I'm a little skeptical about that number as my real world experience is nowhere close to it. And that's only using it for reading...I never use the writing function.

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by azayn

I too would like to see some real numbers. My Deep Guide tested the Nova 3 battery - on the old firmware - and it was estimated for 60 hours(!) with WiFi on and front light set to 50%. I'm a little skeptical about that number as my real world experience is nowhere close to it. And that's only using it for reading...I never use the writing function.

Do you have Google Play installed? Did My Deep Guide in that test? I've heard the Google Play Frameworks can use quite a bit of battery but 60 hours screen on time seems ridiculous with the front light on. I can get over 20 with my Nova 2 but with the front light off. 60 seems ridiculous unless you're never changing the page or something.

[kandwo]

Originally Posted by ottischwenk

The Wacom layer always needs power, otherwise it would not be able to detect the proximity of the pen and because it is behind EInk, it is also relatively far from the surface.
And with the WLAN consumption - it depends very much on the location and distance to the AP.
And I don't know Kon-Tiki 2, so I can't say anything.

It would be interesting to see some statistics showing just how much the wacom layer drains battery while on standby.

In general, I would love an extensive comparison of Nova 3 and the Kon-tiki 2 - screens, battery life, etc. - to see exactly what difference the wacom layer has on the device.

From the extremely few reports I have seen comparing the two, the wacom layer doesn't seem to have an effect on screen clarity (being underneath the e-ink, and all), but maybe it has an effect on battery life? It could be that it's very marginal, but still.

[ottischwenk]

Originally Posted by kandwo

In general, I would love an extensive comparison of Nova 3 and the Kon-tiki 2 - screens, battery life, etc. - to see exactly what difference the wacom layer has on the device.

I can't imagine anyone owning both devices - where the only difference is Wacom - to make a direct comparison.

[joepie]

I'm running the new firmware on my nova 3. I see no problems of the kind.
The battery drain that you have might not be caused by the firmware after the update, my battery was charged over 7 weeks ago and is now on 35%.
Screentime was over 50hours, and I guess at least 10 more to go.

I do keep my wifi off, and only manually connect once a month perhaps to synchronize time. I have the Google play store connected, but I have frozen the Google play app, so I only unfreeze it and update when I know there is an update for the reader app that I use. That doesn't happen often, and I can see on my other Android devices if there is an update. It might be that the reader app doesn't use the Wacom layer so maybe it's polled a bit less? I use the AlreaderX beta, and often it is on night mode, not sure if that saves power. I have read that the Google Playstore app uses a lot of power, I can't reproduce where I read it though.

I use no other ways to connect to internet or bluetooth devices and I don't use other apps than my reader app, though I have 2 other apps installed - both frozen.

[Renate]

I have an older Wacom external USB digitizer. I measured the current draw on that. It was more than I expected. The bumps are when I scribbled.

No, this doesn't really mean a lot for the current question, but it makes me more interested to find out.

Edit: Huh, I can't get the Wacom working on my Poke3.

[kandwo]

Originally Posted by joepie

I'm running the new firmware on my nova 3. I see no problems of the kind.
The battery drain that you have might not be caused by the firmware after the update, my battery was charged over 7 weeks ago and is now on 35%.
Screentime was over 50hours, and I guess at least 10 more to go.

I do keep my wifi off, and only manually connect once a month perhaps to synchronize time. I have the Google play store connected, but I have frozen the Google play app, so I only unfreeze it and update when I know there is an update for the reader app that I use. That doesn't happen often, and I can see on my other Android devices if there is an update. It might be that the reader app doesn't use the Wacom layer so maybe it's polled a bit less? I use the AlreaderX beta, and often it is on night mode, not sure if that saves power. I have read that the Google Playstore app uses a lot of power, I can't reproduce where I read it though.

I use no other ways to connect to internet or bluetooth devices and I don't use other apps than my reader app, though I have 2 other apps installed - both frozen.

I'm lucky if I get half of that!

I have now disabled Google Play/services completely. Hopefully that will increase my battery life. I have put F-droid and Aurora store in the app freezer, too, and plan to update once per month, before I charge the device.

[azayn]

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

Do you have Google Play installed? Did My Deep Guide in that test? I've heard the Google Play Frameworks can use quite a bit of battery but 60 hours screen on time seems ridiculous with the front light on. I can get over 20 with my Nova 2 but with the front light off. 60 seems ridiculous unless you're never changing the page or something.

Yes to both. I have, however, disabled my Google Play Framework to no avail.

Originally Posted by joepie

I'm running the new firmware on my nova 3. I see no problems of the kind.
The battery drain that you have might not be caused by the firmware after the update, my battery was charged over 7 weeks ago and is now on 35%.
Screentime was over 50hours, and I guess at least 10 more to go.

I do keep my wifi off, and only manually connect once a month perhaps to synchronize time. I have the Google play store connected, but I have frozen the Google play app, so I only unfreeze it and update when I know there is an update for the reader app that I use. That doesn't happen often, and I can see on my other Android devices if there is an update. It might be that the reader app doesn't use the Wacom layer so maybe it's polled a bit less? I use the AlreaderX beta, and often it is on night mode, not sure if that saves power. I have read that the Google Playstore app uses a lot of power, I can't reproduce where I read it though.

I use no other ways to connect to internet or bluetooth devices and I don't use other apps than my reader app, though I have 2 other apps installed - both frozen.

Thanks for sharing some actual usage data. 50 hours screen on time is very impressive. Wonder what mine would look like if I kept the Wifi off as well. I keep the Wifi on mainly to sync Moon+ Reader and Pocket and access documents on Google Drive. I’ll try putting my device into Airplane mode when not using those apps to see how it affects battery.