Dell Venue 8 Pro and Windows 10 - Battery Drain?

[garak0410]

Windows 10 is running better (10240) than expected on my Dell Venue 8 Pro but I noticed battery life is poor, especially in sleep mode. It seems like, more often than not, I will go pick it up after a day or so and it is dead. On Windows 8.1 sleep/standby would last up to 5 day or so and now, it just goes it. Anyone else experience this?

 

[Jazmac]

Windows 10 is running better (10240) than expected on my Dell Venue 8 Pro but I noticed battery life is poor, especially in sleep mode. It seems like, more often than not, I will go pick it up after a day or so and it is dead. On Windows 8.1 sleep/standby would last up to 5 day or so and now, it just goes it. Anyone else experience this?

Good to see you got it installed. Let me pick your brain as to what process you used to install it?

 

[garak0410]

Good to see you got it installed. Let me pick your brain as to what process you used to install it?

I am usually a CLEAN INSTALL guy...but the Windows 10 "upgrades" have been pretty solid, so I decided to try it...I've been on 3 builds and the last two builds on the Venue 8 Pro have been quirky...when waking from sleep, the start screen would not scroll...usual fix would be to try to get the notifications panel open and then bam, it worked. Sometimes, I had to reboot. But 10240 has been stable...just sucks battery dry...and I think it may be the option to remain on WIFI when sleeping...I just turned that off and we'll see how it goes...

 

[Jazmac]

I am usually a CLEAN INSTALL guy...but the Windows 10 "upgrades" have been pretty solid, so I decided to try it...I've been on 3 builds and the last two builds on the Venue 8 Pro have been quirky...when waking from sleep, the start screen would not scroll...usual fix would be to try to get the notifications panel open and then bam, it worked. Sometimes, I had to reboot. But 10240 has been stable...just sucks battery dry...and I think it may be the option to remain on WIFI when sleeping...I just turned that off and we'll see how it goes...

So you didn't lose the touch screen? I installed on my Toshiba Encore and the touch screen no longer works. I can't get past the home screen. But my Venue Pro 8 isn't updated yet. I got a little gun shy.

 

[garak0410]

So you didn't lose the touch screen? I installed on my Toshiba Encore and the touch screen no longer works. I can't get past the home screen. But my Venue Pro 8 isn't updated yet. I got a little gun shy.

Touchscreen has worked great and the Stylus as well...no problem with writing. My biggest complain is the battery life...I turned off Wi-Fi while sleeping and I still get battery drain...I now have to charge this this every 1-2 days now instead of every 5-6 days with light use. ​

 

[Jazmac]

I expect I'll go for it. Did you have to delete everything and start from scratch?

 

[NearDenver]

I've found w10 works great on vp8. Only thing I had to do was turn on hibernate mode (or battery dies)
It's a bit hard to find.
Systrm/Power&Sleep/"additioan power settings (at bottom of screen)
Then "change plan settings"
Then "change adv power settings"
Open up sleep node in tree and turn on hibernate.

 

[garak0410]

I expect I'll go for it. Did you have to delete everything and start from scratch?

I did an upgrade and it was perfect...there are a FEW 8.1 apps that don't work but overall, it was seamless and didn't have to delete anything.

It is just the aforementioned battery life​/sleep drain is hard to deal with...I may have to do the hibernation suggestion...

 

[garak0410]

I did an upgrade and it was perfect...there are a FEW 8.1 apps that don't work but overall, it was seamless and didn't have to delete anything.

It is just the aforementioned battery life​/sleep drain is hard to deal with...I may have to do the hibernation suggestion...

Oh, I should mention, the insider program has been halted until the release date of Windows 10, so to my understanding, no more upgrades until release date.

 

[Jazmac]

Oh, I should mention, the insider program has been halted until the release date of Windows 10, so to my understanding, no more upgrades until release date.

This is true. Well, just a few more days anyway. Thanks.

 

[mkdr]

This is a bug which is there back to mostly the beginning of the Insider Program (build 9xxx). I have reported it several times over the past 1,2 years over the insider tool, but also in the MSDN forums. Like you can see, it was ignored and got into final (RTM) version (nice work Microsoft).

The problem is simple, and you can monitor it yourself. Open task manager or CPUz, and you will notice, that Windows 10 never throttles down the Atom CPU to its lowest energy state (500-800MHZ), and just idles at around 1.3-1.8GHz. If you google a little bit about this, it seems it's a bug related to Intel Turbo Mode. I am not sure if it's an Atom (baytrail) only bug, or related to other CPUs too.

About the connected standby drain, yes, it is also true. You can simple monitor it yourself with the powercfg tool. Creat a bat file with "powercfg /batteryreport". It will create a html file with battery stats. Scroll down and youll see the last drained watt/energy over time period.

A normal, and also by Microsoft declined value for connected standby is about 0.3mW/h. Every mobile device which has connected standby certificate needs this to fulfill. And here comes the issue, that Windows 10 on the Venue 8 Pro drains about 1.1mW/h (for me), which is about 3 times over the max limit, leading to a 3 times faster drain. I am talking just about the standby drain here.

Tested this last week with 10240 (clean install) => bug present, went back to clean Windows 8.1, and got a normal drain of 0.35mW/h again. Also the throttling worked again.

I suggest not to upgrade to Windows 10, sadly, for your mobile devices, until Microsoft will finally notice this. Maybe it helps when you also open a forum post on the MSDN forums about this, and also post that other people have this issue too.

 

[Terje Mathiesen]

I can confirm this issue too. The battery drain on my DVP8 in connected standby is way over what it was in W8.1.
If you run "powercfg energy" command, I get a lot of error messages related to power saving setting.
Microsoft has to fix this issues - if not - connected standby is useless in W10.

 

[BaritoneGuy]

Have you updated the drivers for the chipset? Dell has new ones on their site.

 

[Terje Mathiesen]

Yes, new A11 BIOS and chipset drivers. It is a windows 10 issue. Now my device is turned completely off between usage to have a reasonable battery life.

 

[Rep1978]

I have upgraded my V8P to Windows 10, and have installed the dell drivers... However I'm not seeing hibernate in windows 10, even after trying to enable it via command line... anyone else experiencing this issue?