5 ms·

Not following. According to TFA, it does turn off automatically, but the screen is E-Ink which uses zero power after programming. The user doesn't understand th

Not following. According to TFA, it does turn off automatically, but the screen is E-Ink which uses zero power after programming. The user doesn't understand this. Why the freakout, what am I missing? (Disclaimer: I have a 2013 Kindle and I still get about a month out of each full charge.) EDIT: If you really want a freakout, how about the fact that Amazon is no longer loaning their publishing catalog to libraries. That makes owning a kindle a difficult choice. https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/10/22323434/amazon-publishing-library-lending-access-refuse-overdrive-libby https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/10/22323434/amazon-publishin...

falcolas 6y ago
Kindles have background processes which do drain the battery badly. To support their search feature, they will index all of your books that are downloaded onto the kindle. They will also regularly poll the network to download new books you've purchased. And then there's bluetooth (on the Kindle Oasis). I've had an "off" kindle drain itself dry in a day from these.
- mdoms 6y ago
  > I've had an "off" kindle drain itself dry in a day from these. I don't believe you.
  - falcolas 6y ago
    That's your right, but it's a pretty useless comment. New kindle oasis, downloaded as much of my library as I could. Once downloaded, I pulled it off power (not realizing there was an indexing process). Battery goes dry, internet searches reveal the indexing process occurs with a download. Even now the Oasis can't stand up to a long-ish book's worth of reading if the network's on.
- SavantIdiot 6y ago
  > I've had an "off" kindle drain itself dry in a day from these. I find that hard to believe. I've left my in non-airplane mode and maybe after a week it drops 40%. Since I always leave it in Airplane Mode I'm probably seeing different behavior than OP. Plus it is an older kindle, not a fancy new one. But still: screw active Wi-Fi.
  - hansvm 6y ago
    > I've had an "off" kindle drain itself dry in a day from these. > I find that hard to believe. Assuming good faith on their part, it's a little more interesting to ask why their experience is so different from yours. It might be something mundane (different models, battery degradation, ambient temperature throwing off the voltage sensors on a partially degraded battery), or it could point to something like careless programming. E.g., I've had phones with 2day battery life in normal use which would fully discharge in 1-2hrs in the presence of weak network connections because of aggressive scanning and reconnecting (and I'd imagine the storage location for an "off" kindle wouldn't have great connectivity).
neartheplain 6y ago
The screen may not draw power, but the WiFi, cellular modem, and system board remain on in the background. The device wakes and sleeps according to its own software and schedule, or network activity. In terms of user experience, this change makes it harder to store your Kindle in a charged state for longer than a week or so. Edge case for sure, but still a seemingly unnecessary feature removal.
- brewdad 6y ago
  This is why I keep my Kindle in airplane mode until I need wifi to download something new. I really only read on my e-ink kindle, so keeping books synced between devices isn't an issue for me. YMMV.
  - alexgmcm 6y ago
    Yeah, I've always used airplane mode as well and it's been fine.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
morpheuskafka 6y ago
Additionally, whatever micro-controller inside could easily be set to stop all clocks and go down to picowatt levels of power, triggered on a pin interrupt from any of the buttons. This is no different that most computers that draw a phantom amount of current whenever plugged in.
- SavantIdiot 6y ago
  Wake on interrupt with aggressive gating and poweredown has been around for about three decades now. Pretty much anything with a battery and an MCU has multiple levels of clock gating / power gating at the core, package, and platform. It's implied when building a low-power device, so I'm sure it wasn't a kindle oversight. (FYI "phantom power" is unrelated, it is power supplied to microphones to power the condenser.)

falcolas 6y ago

Kindles have background processes which do drain the battery badly. To support their search feature, they will index all of your books that are downloaded onto the kindle. They will also regularly poll the network to download new books you've purchased. And then there's bluetooth (on the Kindle Oasis). I've had an "off" kindle drain itself dry in a day from these.

mdoms 6y ago
> I've had an "off" kindle drain itself dry in a day from these. I don't believe you.
- falcolas 6y ago
  That's your right, but it's a pretty useless comment. New kindle oasis, downloaded as much of my library as I could. Once downloaded, I pulled it off power (not realizing there was an indexing process). Battery goes dry, internet searches reveal the indexing process occurs with a download. Even now the Oasis can't stand up to a long-ish book's worth of reading if the network's on.
SavantIdiot 6y ago
> I've had an "off" kindle drain itself dry in a day from these. I find that hard to believe. I've left my in non-airplane mode and maybe after a week it drops 40%. Since I always leave it in Airplane Mode I'm probably seeing different behavior than OP. Plus it is an older kindle, not a fancy new one. But still: screw active Wi-Fi.
- hansvm 6y ago
  > I've had an "off" kindle drain itself dry in a day from these. > I find that hard to believe. Assuming good faith on their part, it's a little more interesting to ask why their experience is so different from yours. It might be something mundane (different models, battery degradation, ambient temperature throwing off the voltage sensors on a partially degraded battery), or it could point to something like careless programming. E.g., I've had phones with 2day battery life in normal use which would fully discharge in 1-2hrs in the presence of weak network connections because of aggressive scanning and reconnecting (and I'd imagine the storage location for an "off" kindle wouldn't have great connectivity).

neartheplain 6y ago

The screen may not draw power, but the WiFi, cellular modem, and system board remain on in the background. The device wakes and sleeps according to its own software and schedule, or network activity. In terms of user experience, this change makes it harder to store your Kindle in a charged state for longer than a week or so. Edge case for sure, but still a seemingly unnecessary feature removal.

brewdad 6y ago
This is why I keep my Kindle in airplane mode until I need wifi to download something new. I really only read on my e-ink kindle, so keeping books synced between devices isn't an issue for me. YMMV.
- alexgmcm 6y ago
  Yeah, I've always used airplane mode as well and it's been fine.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

morpheuskafka 6y ago

Additionally, whatever micro-controller inside could easily be set to stop all clocks and go down to picowatt levels of power, triggered on a pin interrupt from any of the buttons. This is no different that most computers that draw a phantom amount of current whenever plugged in.

SavantIdiot 6y ago
Wake on interrupt with aggressive gating and poweredown has been around for about three decades now. Pretty much anything with a battery and an MCU has multiple levels of clock gating / power gating at the core, package, and platform. It's implied when building a low-power device, so I'm sure it wasn't a kindle oversight. (FYI "phantom power" is unrelated, it is power supplied to microphones to power the condenser.)