Why does Likebook P10's battery discharges so quickly?

[Momentguy]

I just got my Likebook P10 couple of days ago.

I am getting like a maximum 6 - 7 hours of screen time from 100% to 20%. And the battery discharges quite unevenly. Sometimes I can read up to 1 hour and it only drops 2%. Other times, it can drop 7% or more. What is annoying is it seems to be draining battery on standby. I may turn it off or what you call it standby and the battery may drop a few percent when I come back a couple hours later. Sometimes it just doesn't drop on standby after a couple of hours.

The main thing is it is consuming the battery quite quickly. I charged it up to 100% and barely did any reading and the battery fell to 92% that is probably like 20 mins of screentime? It isn't always like this. There are moments where the battery drain much slower. But all in all I am only able to get around 6 hours of screen time on this crappy device.

I have google framework, all background activities disabled. Barely any wifi activity or at least it will be less than 30 minutes. I did read it for PDFs though, so I am sure the image heavy files would consume battery faster. But I doubt it is a major factor because I read the PDF for like 3 hours and it only drop by around 10%. It just drains battery at different moments.

Feels terrible. I am starting to wonder if Boyue repackages the rejected devices and sell it new. Whatever it is, i will not be touching another Boyue device and strongly advice anyone not to buy Boyue devices. Their product quality is simply too inconsistent. Always go for the established brands. Crappy brands like Boyue are just terrible.

[ottischwenk]

Originally Posted by Momentguy

I just got my Likebook P10 couple of days ago.

What did you install?
it is possible, that books are defective, which cause the CPU to run in a loop - this needs a lot of power.
I have no problems with my Likebook devices, but I have eliminated all errors in the books - and there ware a lot.

[Momentguy]

Originally Posted by ottischwenk

What did you install?
it is possible, that books are defective, which cause the CPU to run in a loop - this needs a lot of power.
I have no problems with my Likebook devices, but I have eliminated all errors in the books - and there ware a lot.

I have factory reset the device. In other words, everything in it is gone. Still, it just took 2% off my battery in 2 hours on standby. I can't help but feel I was not shipped a brand new device, but rather a repackaged rejected defective device.

[ottischwenk]

Originally Posted by Momentguy

I have factory reset the device. In other words, everything in it is gone. Still, it just took 2% off my battery in 2 hours on standby. I can't help but feel I was not shipped a brand new device, but rather a repackaged rejected defective device.

Where did you buy from?

[Momentguy]

Originally Posted by ottischwenk

Where did you buy from?

Taobao China. Not gonna lie, the box seems new, the serial number on the box matches the device, it has never been opened. Other than that, I can't be sure if it is a refurbished unit. Six hours on an ereader is ridiculous IMO.

[pazos]

It looks like a defective unit.

Boyue uses Rockchip socs on their entire line. They're known to perform very badly keeping battery on standby (vs. Snapdragon or NXP/Freescale). That cannot explain the screen time you got. It should be at least 10x even with a RK3368.

ottischwenk made a good point about broken ebooks that happens on all Boyue devices: there's a vendor service paired to the android MediaScanner that will try to read metadata from books you've put on discoverable places on the device (ie: all writable folders, except those with ".nomedia").

The service runs even if you changed the launcher (albeit uselessly, because the info it crawls cannot be repurposed by any other app). It should take less than 1s of cpu time per book, but if it fails it will add the book again to the end of the queue becoming an endless process)

If, before factory reset, you put thousands of books inside, try your screen time again. To see if it improves.

If you're annoyed by standby battery dry your best bet is to return the unit and never look at Boyue again.

Onyx uses Snapdragon socs on their recent models. They have a way better standby time. It is still a mobile soc running Android, so there's no point to compare with a proper ereader, built on a industrial grade soc.

[Momentguy]

Originally Posted by pazos

It looks like a defective unit.

Boyue uses Rockchip socs on their entire line. They're known to perform very badly keeping battery on standby (vs. Snapdragon or NXP/Freescale). That cannot explain the screen time you got. It should be at least 10x even with a RK3368.

ottischwenk made a good point about broken ebooks that happens on all Boyue devices: there's a vendor service paired to the android MediaScanner that will try to read metadata from books you've put on discoverable places on the device (ie: all writable folders, except those with ".nomedia").

The service runs even if you changed the launcher (albeit uselessly, because the info it crawls cannot be repurposed by any other app). It should take less than 1s of cpu time per book, but if it fails it will add the book again to the end of the queue becoming an endless process)

If, before factory reset, you put thousands of books inside, try your screen time again. To see if it improves.

If you're annoyed by standby battery dry your best bet is to return the unit and never look at Boyue again.

Onyx uses Snapdragon socs on their recent models. They have a way better standby time. It is still a mobile soc running Android, so there's no point to compare with a proper ereader, built on a industrial grade soc.

Thanks for the long response. How can i know if a book is defective? Any way to check for error?

Can i put all my books in a .nomedia file if that solves the problem?

[Momentguy]

Originally Posted by pazos

It looks like a defective unit.

Boyue uses Rockchip socs on their entire line. They're known to perform very badly keeping battery on standby (vs. Snapdragon or NXP/Freescale). That cannot explain the screen time you got. It should be at least 10x even with a RK3368.

ottischwenk made a good point about broken ebooks that happens on all Boyue devices: there's a vendor service paired to the android MediaScanner that will try to read metadata from books you've put on discoverable places on the device (ie: all writable folders, except those with ".nomedia").

The service runs even if you changed the launcher (albeit uselessly, because the info it crawls cannot be repurposed by any other app). It should take less than 1s of cpu time per book, but if it fails it will add the book again to the end of the queue becoming an endless process)

If, before factory reset, you put thousands of books inside, try your screen time again. To see if it improves.

If you're annoyed by standby battery dry your best bet is to return the unit and never look at Boyue again.

Onyx uses Snapdragon socs on their recent models. They have a way better standby time. It is still a mobile soc running Android, so there's no point to compare with a proper ereader, built on a industrial grade soc.

So i have check the advanced battery status, it says my battery is being drained by apps at 8% vs tablet idle at 2%. It doesn't mention anything about Media Storage so i think that might not be a problem. Are there any apps that may be eating up battery? I notice my RAM is is at 1.1gb free which means something must be running. I didn't download any apps, they are all stock apps.

[starpause]

Originally Posted by Momentguy

I have factory reset the device.

How do you factory reset the Likebook P10? I couldn't find the information in the manual or even by searching via Google and Duckduckgo. Thanks in advance!

[starpause]

Originally Posted by starpause

How do you factory reset the Likebook P10? I couldn't find the information in the manual or even by searching via Google and Duckduckgo. Thanks in advance!

In case anyone else winds up here: you have to click the unassuming right facing arrow towards the top of the settings screen to get to "About Device" and there is a factory reset option there. Whew!

[Jinz]

You can install something like Greenify on these devices to really shut down background apps and not be reliant on the built-in power throttling. The "hibernate now" icon isn't available but the automatic hibernation when entering standby works fine. Many apps ( like all the Google ones) like to operate constantly in the background.