XOOM Battery vs. Other Tabs

[Jrockttu]

I'm somewhat ignorant about battery efficiency on phones and tabs. We were all freaking out about how small the XOOM battery is, but the battery life is unexpectedly awesome.

My question is, do we think the efficiency is due to the device itself (like the Tegra 2?), or Honeycomb?

Can we expect better battery life off of other tabs like the Galaxy 10.1, or will they have a bigger battery and worse efficiency?

I'm still way on the fence for the XOOM, because the news gets worse and worse. The battery info has been promising, but not if it means the other tabs out in a few months will have 15 hour video life.

 

[Sirchuk]

Engadget had this sum-up:

Motorola Xoom	                8:20
Dell Streak 7	                3:26
Archos 101	                7:20
Samsung Galaxy Tab      	6:09
Apple iPad	                9:33

 

[Sirchuk]

Double posted instead of editing. Oops!

 

[Jrockttu]

Engadget had this sum-up:

Motorola Xoom	                8:20
Dell Streak 7	                3:26
Archos 101	                7:20
Samsung Galaxy Tab      	6:09
Apple iPad	                9:33

I'm more concerned with new tabs coming out soon like the Toshiba, LG, and Galaxy 10.1.

Also, if the battery efficiency is built in to Honeycomb, will the Galaxy 7" see a sudden increase with Honeycomb?

Or did they intentionally gimp the OS at release with things like only allowing 5 programs to run in the multitasking to get better battery life? If that's the case, the battery will decrease if they enable new features in the future. Just curious.

 

[Sirchuk]

I'm more concerned with new tabs coming out soon like the Toshiba, LG, and Galaxy 10.1.

Also, if the battery efficiency is built in to Honeycomb, will the Galaxy 7" see a sudden increase with Honeycomb?

Or did they intentionally gimp the OS at release with things like only allowing 5 programs to run in the multitasking to get better battery life? If that's the case, the battery will decrease if they enable new features in the future. Just curious.

Can't really compare to the new stuff coming out until we actually get our hands on them.

As you've seen, every site that got a Xoom was held to an NDA not to say anything until today. Other manufacturers are probably going to do the same.

That said, I think it's a combination of the hardware and the software that determines battery life. With a tab, if you ran Honeycomb on it, likely the battery life would drop simply because the CPU is going to need to run faster to run the OS.

But the determining factor for me isn't what one has the longest battery life, it's more what one has a battery life that I can live with. I don't think I'll watch 15 hours of movies. I mean really, who will sit there for that? Even on a long flight, I won't use it the entire flight.

8 hours is more than enough for me of constant use.

Also, keep in mind that the numbers above are with stock Android. Once XDA devs get into it, I wouldn't be surprised to see it pushing 10 or 12 hours.

 

[Eclair~]

I'm more concerned with new tabs coming out soon like the Toshiba, LG, and Galaxy 10.1.

Also, if the battery efficiency is built in to Honeycomb, will the Galaxy 7" see a sudden increase with Honeycomb?

Or did they intentionally gimp the OS at release with things like only allowing 5 programs to run in the multitasking to get better battery life? If that's the case, the battery will decrease if they enable new features in the future. Just curious.

You must not be familiar with Android. There is not only 5 applications running in the background, that is simply how much Google chose to be seen with the shortcut. Long pressing the home button on Android phones does the same exact thing but simply just with icons.

If were to look in a task manager you would notice that there are several other applications running as well. It just presents you with the most used ones.

 

[Jrockttu]

You must not be familiar with Android. There is not only 5 applications running in the background, that is simply how much Google chose to be seen with the shortcut. Long pressing the home button on Android phones does the same exact thing but simply just with icons.

If were to look in a task manager you would notice that there are several other applications running as well. It just presents you with the most used ones.

I'm familiar with Android, I've had a Nexus One for about 8 months. When Android on phones runs low on memory, it unloads apps that haven't been used in a while, but keeps those 8 running for you to switch back to. My concern is that, to save battery life, they may unload those background apps faster in Honeycomb. Why else would the phone OS show you 8 apps and the tablet OS show you only 5? If this is the case, we may get the ability to see more than 5 apps (scrollable list) in the future, but it would sacrifice battery life.

 

[droidtacular]

How about the fact that the Xoom is dual-core (Tegra2) and the Galaxy Tab is single-core (Cortex-A8)? Nvidia has talked up the power efficiency gains that supposedly come with multi-core processors. (I would have posted links to a site that discussed this along with a white paper by Nvidia, but I'm a new user here so no links for me yet... )

So, it would be interesting to run some battery life tests using an app that had been optimized for the dual-core Tegra 2 processor vs an app that had not been optimized. Here's hoping that the Xoom's battery life proves to be as good as Engadget has reported it to be.

 

[muyoso]

Engadget had this sum-up:

Motorola Xoom	                8:20
Dell Streak 7	                3:26
Archos 101	                7:20
Samsung Galaxy Tab      	6:09
Apple iPad	                9:33

Well, if the xoom can get 8 hours on a charge, the galaxy tab 10.1 will be pushing 18 hours. So excited for the galaxy tab 10.1 now.

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