Power/ Battery issues with Win 8.1 RT

[demandarin]

Well, in one hour the battery went down from 100% to 89%. This is with wifi and BT on and the Mail App open and set to download messages as they arrive. Not good!

Lets look at the math. That's very light usage but would still equate to about 10hrs. Battery life on an original rt. That's good but Only if you really using device also. Now if that's just its idle drainage stats, then yeah, that's kinda bad

 

[demandarin]

Try the command to bring up built in battery report. You might can see what's causing the drainage issue.

 

[kristalsoldier]

Lets look at the math. That's very light usage but would still equate to about 10hrs. Battery life on an original rt. That's good but Only if you really using device also. Now if that's just its idle drainage stats, then yeah, that's kinda bad

Actually, no...not good at all. My typical use scenario is as follows: Wifi on (to connect to the internet), BT on (to use the Wedge mouse - though lately I have been dispensing with that); Mail App is always open and needs to have that polling schedule. In addition, I usually have the browser open with at least 3 -4 tabs open, and either Word or a combo of Word and PowerPoint open with periodic saves to SkyDrive.

Now, if without the browser and the Office apps open, the Surface is draining out at the rate of 10% per hour, then I'd expect with the other things going on, it would drain a bit more, which would reduce the available operational time.

There is certainly something not right going on here. Most likely, it is this 8.1 update which has caused this.

 

[kristalsoldier]

Try the command to bring up built in battery report. You might can see what's causing the drainage issue.

What is the command please?

 

[jnjroach]

What is the command please?

powercfg -batteryreport (Gives an HTML Report)

and/or

powercfg -energy (highlights misbehaving components)

Use an elevated CMD Prompt

 

[demandarin]

Actually, no...not good at all. My typical use scenario is as follows: Wifi on (to connect to the internet), BT on (to use the Wedge mouse - though lately I have been dispensing with that); Mail App is always open and needs to have that polling schedule. In addition, I usually have the browser open with at least 3 -4 tabs open, and either Word or a combo of Word and PowerPoint open with periodic saves to SkyDrive.

Now, if without the browser and the Office apps open, the Surface is draining out at the rate of 10% per hour, then I'd expect with the other things going on, it would drain a bit more, which would reduce the available operational time.

There is certainly something not right going on here. Most likely, it is this 8.1 update which has caused this.

Now in that case, you right. Hope you get it figured out sooner than later.

Let me ask this, are you actually experiencing the battery draining faster after physically using it or you're only going by battery icon report? Which tends to not be accurate all the time. Because it does fluctuate and could be by a large amount.

 

[kristalsoldier]

Now in that case, you right. Hope you get it figured out sooner than later.

Let me ask this, are you actually experiencing the battery draining faster after physically using it or you're only going by battery icon report? Which tends to not be accurate all the time. Because it does fluctuate and could be by a large amount.

Well, it appears that I have to retract my assertions about the battery life. Let me explain.

I started the battery test (or at least my informal, but real life version of it) at 7:00PM local time. At that time, I took the RT off the charger and the battery was at 100%. Since then I have been doing the following things:

Surfing the web with 4 tabs open all the time and moving from tab to tab continuously;
Mail app syncing 3 accounts all the time (after setting up the appropriate settings to each account - though I should mention that there is definitely something wrong with the Mail app vis-à-vis my Gmail account)
Reddit was open and I was flicking through various entries at regular intervals.
WiFi was always on, obviously
Bluetooth was on - though I was not using the BT mouse.

It is now 12:49AM - so about 5 hours 50 min and the battery - as per the battery icon - reports a charge level of 47%. This means if I continue using the Surface in the way that I have been using I should be able to get another 3 hours - minimum - of battery life, which gives me a grand total of about 8 hours 50 minutes of battery life. Let's round that off - on one side to 8 hours, which matches the claims made for the 1st Gen RT and on the other to 9 hours, which I think exceeds those claims. Either way, it is not too bad.

I should add that I did do the fix that was posted earlier even though I moved directly from 8.0 to 8.1GA. Could this have helped?

Thus, as things stand, I am quite satisfied.

The next thing to test (which I will probably do tomorrow night) is the battery life on connected standby.

I'll post an update accordingly.

 

[oion]

Well, it appears that I have to retract my assertions about the battery life. Let me explain.

I started the battery test (or at least my informal, but real life version of it) at 7:00PM local time. At that time, I took the RT off the charger and the battery was at 100%. Since then I have been doing the following things:

Surfing the web with 4 tabs open all the time and moving from tab to tab continuously;
Mail app syncing 3 accounts all the time (after setting up the appropriate settings to each account - though I should mention that there is definitely something wrong with the Mail app vis-à-vis my Gmail account)
Reddit was open and I was flicking through various entries at regular intervals.
WiFi was always on, obviously
Bluetooth was on - though I was not using the BT mouse.

It is now 12:49AM - so about 5 hours 50 min and the battery - as per the battery icon - reports a charge level of 47%. This means if I continue using the Surface in the way that I have been using I should be able to get another 3 hours - minimum - of battery life, which gives me a grand total of about 8 hours 50 minutes of battery life. Let's round that off - on one side to 8 hours, which matches the claims made for the 1st Gen RT and on the other to 9 hours, which I think exceeds those claims. Either way, it is not too bad.

I should add that I did do the fix that was posted earlier even though I moved directly from 8.0 to 8.1GA. Could this have helped?

Thus, as things stand, I am quite satisfied.

The next thing to test (which I will probably do tomorrow night) is the battery life on connected standby.

I'll post an update accordingly.

Hm, thanks for the report. I have yet to do a real battery usage run-down test for the Surface 2, though I'm doing a casual one now. For the RT, your numbers seem reasonable--8 hrs minimum in multitasked usage with wifi on.

 

[kristalsoldier]

@oion...yeah...in a sense that is a relief. Now, the only other thing that I would like to get fixed is the Mail App, and I think I will be set - for now at least. That is to say, before, I get the Surface 2. Btw, what is the claimed battery life of the S2?

 

[oion]

@oion...yeah...in a sense that is a relief. Now, the only other thing that I would like to get fixed is the Mail App, and I think I will be set - for now at least. That is to say, before, I get the Surface 2. Btw, what is the claimed battery life of the S2?

For the Surface 2, MS claims "up to 10 hours" for video playback. Heavy web browsing tests seem to come back at 8 hours (verified by Anandtech, also the 10 hour video playback). Engadget got a freakin' 14 hours "video looping off the local disk, brightness fixed at 50 percent, WiFi on."

 

[demandarin]

@KristalSoldier glad your actual usage bared better results. Since I've seen how the battery icon can fluctuate greatly based on use, I've learned to just look at the clock when I take it off the charger and time usage from there. Its always netter in the end than what icon reports.

 

[kristalsoldier]

For the Surface 2, MS claims "up to 10 hours" for video playback. Heavy web browsing tests seem to come back at 8 hours (verified by Anandtech, also the 10 hour video playback). Engadget got a freakin' 14 hours "video looping off the local disk, brightness fixed at 50 percent, WiFi on."

Thanks. So, this means that if we leave aside the odd Endgadget report (which would have been really nice if corroborated elsewhere), essentially there is no real different between the RT and the S2?