Insignia Flex Elite 7.85: Standby Battery Drain

Over at XDA Developers, FreeTim said:

It’s fast and snappy. Display is crisp & nice and bright and is the perfect size. I too am seeing unexpected battery drain overnight (losing 50% of battery) while the tablet is sleeping. I wish the battery lasted longer on standby as my needs are to read to fall asleep and then wake up and study – the Tab A has a longer lasting battery than this. Takes a long time to boot up if it’s entirely shut down. It refuses to run Netflix either in the Netflix app nor in the browser. I have all the latest updates of the OS plus Netflix but it’s not working. It’s a shame but I am today returning it to BestBuy due to the Netflix issue which I consider a core app. WINS: Display is awesome and CPU speed is very good! CONS: Won’t play Netflix, battery life is weak, takes long to boot up.

I’m not surprised. There has to be some phone bits inside the Rockchip — or Lightcomm, or Five Technology — Android that haven’t been taken out. This has been the cause of standby battery drain from other China-originated tablets too. The phone bits keep searching for a signal, I think. Then again, given the borkiness of the update checking, it could be the damn tablet is constantly phoning home to see if an update is available. I wonder if going into Airplane Mode — turning off all of the radios — would improve things?

Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8.0 Super AMOLED Annoys Me

I’ve tried the new Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8.0 a few times now and there’s an issue with the screen I just can’t tolerate.

I mentioned it in an earlier post:

The Super AMOLED screen is killer. But I have to point out that when viewed at a sharp angle, whites tend to become bluish.

Well, it’s not just at sharp angles that pure white begins to have a blue tint!

I noticed this during another fondle of the Nook edition of the tablet. I downloaded a sample of an eBook. That gave me a pure white background for reading. And if I wasn’t just about perfectly head-on to the display with my eyes, it would shift to an increasingly-blue color.

Maybe most people can live with that, but it irritates the hell out of me.

Let’s Compare iPad Mini 4 And Clones Weights

Same-day revised

Samsung wins for the lightest tablet.

As for the iPad Mini 4 gram weight being higher than the Asus ZenPad S 8.0 “Pro,” chalk that up to Google conversion math. Apple lists 0.65 pounds, not ounces or grams, on their U.S. site.

That said, the iPad Mini 4 probably kicks the Samsung’s ass because it has the guts of the iPad Air 2, which is a supernaturally-powerful beast from the pit.

Same-day update: It turns out the new Mini 4 does not have the guts of the iPad Air 2. It’ll use the A8 CPU, not the A8x CPU of the Air 2. Which means I’ll have to go through an entire new round of Google Books PDF tests on the beast. Thanks for not making my life easier, Apple!

Previously here:

Let’s Compare iPad Mini And Clones Weights

Effin Money

The money thing part 1: there is none in writing about comics

This stands in stark contrast to a piece that ran a few days ago on the Atlantic by Olga Khazan called Can Mommy Bloggers Still Make a Living? that showed CPMs circling the drain at an alarming rate. One mommy blogger who once made enough to support three people and pay for an assistant has now all but moved on[.]

And:

I know I’ve said this before — just a few days ago in fact — but without my own Patreon campaign I couldn’t even keep this site running. For some insane reason, I live in NYC, where working two jobs 14 hours a day to pay for a room in an apartment with three other people living in it is pretty common. A 260-sq. foot apartment built from Legos in the middle of a park full of homeless people across the street from a mental hospital rents for $2000 a month here. (This is a block from Stately Beat Manor, BTW.)

Brutal.

Sony Siri

Twitter:

Even Sony’s Twitter has gotten better…

Same-day update after the break

BAM! Blu Products Brings Gionee ELife E8 Superphone To U.S.

I woke up today to see this as the first tech news item. This is more exciting to me than any new iPhone announced later today: