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Make your battery last longer

Revision as of 12:39, 1 November 2009

The battery life on modern portable gadgets is much lower than ten or twenty years ago, mainly because electronics technology is developing much more quickly than battery technology. Batteries are struggling to keep up with all the amazing new things that portable gadgets are capable of.

With this in mind, it's important to use a portable device's battery as efficiently as possible. This tutorial will look at some simple ways to do this on the Nokia tablets.

Don't switch off the tablet!

Yes, that's right, if you want to save battery life then do NOT switch off the tablet when you've finished using it.

You can charge it while it's switched on, and if you want to carry it you can lock the touchscreen and keys so it doesn't accidentally activate anything while in your pocket or bag.

Leaving the tablet on to save power might sound absolutely insane, but it does work apparently, and there are good reasons why it works.

When you switch on any modern computing device such as a PC, smartphone or pocket computer, it has to go through a complex and intensive process of getting the device ready for use. This takes a lot of effort by the computer, and anyone who has booted up a PC knows how long they have to wait between powering up and actually getting to use it. This effort uses a lot more power than simply staying switched on doing nothing.

If you switch off your tablet and then switch it on a few hours later, this apparently uses up more battery life than just leaving the tablet switched on for several days. For this reason, it saves energy if you leave your tablet switched on all the time, just like you'd leave a mobile phone switched on all the time.

Shut down any applications you're not using, and be careful when using unofficial applications

If you have an application running in the background, this uses up battery life. If you're not using an app, it's a good idea to shut it down (or "kill" it) using the task icon in the bottom left hand corner of the screen: just click on it and click on the X next to whichever app you want to shut down.

Some applications, especially unofficial ones, may use up far more battery life than they're supposed to because they're badly programmed. If you find that your tablet's battery life has suddenly turned to mush since you installed an application even though you don't use it very much, bad programming in the application may well be to blame. The easiest way to check if this is the case is to remove the application and see if the battery life improves.

Most applications work fine and don't mess around with battery life, but some do, and it's this minority that you have to watch out for.

Turn down the screen brightness as low as you can cope with

One of the major sources of battery drain on a portable device is the screen. If it's very large and very bright, it will use up a lot of battery life when it's lit.

One of the best things you can do to save battery life is to turn down the brightness on your tablet's screen to the lowest level that you feel comfortable with. The lower it is, the more battery life you will save. Just click on the screen brightness icon (the icon that looks like a sun in the status bar at the top) and adjust the brightness on the sliding scale.

Make the screen dim and switch off as soon as possible when not in use

Like all portable gadgets, Nokia's internet tablets have an automatic dimming and shut down period on their screens. If you don't use a tablet within a certain time period, the screen will dim, and if it continues to be unused the screen will switch off. You can make it switch back on at any time just by touching the screen.

To get the maximum battery life, set the time-out period for screen dimming and shut down to the shortest possible time. To do this click on the brightness icon in the status bar (the one that looks like a sun at the top of the screen), click on "Display Settings", set Brightness Period to 10 seconds and Switch Off Display to 30 seconds. Click "OK".

If you get annoyed by how quickly the screen dims or shuts off, you can always increase the Brightness Period and Switch Off Display time until you feel more comfortable. However, this will use up more battery life than the minimum times.

Switch off Bluetooth when you don't need it

The Bluetooth wireless system is intended to let the tablet easily connect to nearby accessories or computers, but if you're not using the connection then it's worth switching it off to avoid it needlessly wasting battery life.

Bluetooth doesn't use much power in standby mode so this may not have much of an impact on battery life, but if you genuinely don't need it then there's no point having it switched on.

To switch off Bluetooth just click on the angular B icon in the status bar at the top, click on "Bluetooth Settings", and untick the box marked "Bluetooth On". Click "OK" and the Bluetooth will switch off.

To switch it back on again, go to the Applications menu (the green squares on the left), click on Settings, click on Control Panel, double-click on Bluetooth and tick the box marked "Bluetooth On".

Switch off Wi-Fi when you don't need it

Again, like Bluetooth the Wi-Fi wireless standard doesn't actually use that much power when it's in standby mode, but if you really don't need the Wi-Fi connection then there's no point having it switched on.

To disconnect Wi-Fi, just click on the connection icon in the status bar at the top (it looks like a small ball with curved lines radiating upwards) and then click on "Disconnect". Click "OK" and the Wi-Fi connection will be disconnected.

To re-connect, click on the same icon, then "Select Connection", then click on the connection you were using before and press "Connect".

Use Offline Mode (aka Flight Mode)

A quick and easy way to shut down the tablet's radio transmissions (ie. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi) is to put the tablet into offline mode, which is the same thing as flight mode.

To do this, press the power button briefly so that a menu appears, click on "Offline Mode", click on "OK" as necessary, and you will be in offline mode.

To get back to normal mode, just press the power button briefly again, click on "Normal Mode" from the menu, click on "OK" as necessary, and you will be back in normal mode.

The reason this is also known as flight mode is because many airlines have a ban on passengers using devices which transmit radio signals (including phone signals, bluetooth and wi-fi). If a device is in flight mode it does not transmit any radio signals, so many airlines will allow its use in this mode.