Back in the olden days (circa 2011) we used to be able to buy ereader cases that included their own battery. I actually still have one such case built for the non-touch basic Kindle from 2011, but those days are long past.
Now ereader owners are limited by the battery that coes with their devices, and while screens may be getting larger, batteries generally aren’t. Most ereaders have a 1Ah or 1.5Ah battery, which is actually good enough for a couple months of usage – if you are careful.
Here’s how you can extend the battery life of your ereader.
1. Turn down the frontlight. Frontlights are the best thing to happen to ereaders since Amazon launched the original Kindle with free 3G, but you would be surprised by just how much of an impact they have on battery life. I was recently reading on Kobo’s original 6.8” ereader with the frontlight turned almost off, and that thing actually lasted through 4 ebooks before I had to recharge it.
2. Turn off wifi. And 3G One reason that that Aura HD lasted so long was that the wifi had been turned off. I usually have it disabled by default because while downloading ebooks over wifi is great, it still drains the battery.
3. Change the screen refresh settings. Most ereaders, including both Kindle and Kobo, now have an option in the settings menu where you can limit how often the device refreshes the screen rather than just changing the text. This saves battery life because a full screen refresh entails flipping the entire screen to black before refreshing the screen with the next page.
4. Restart Your Device. Your ereader is actually a small computer, and like any computer sometimes the software goes awry. When that happens to power management software, your batteyr life could be reduced to only a couple hours. If you notice that your device’s battery life is unexpectedly short, and you can’t find a cause, restarting will force the ereader to reload the software. (Turning it off and on again may be a joke on IT but it actually works.)
5 Turn off auto-brightness. Some ereader models have a feature where the device adjusts the brightness of the frontlight so that it matches the ambient light condition. That’s nice and all but it can also impact battery life any time it makes your frontlight brighter.
6. Only add ebooks (or use the wireless networks) while charging. Every time you add an ebook to the Kindle, the OS will index it. And every time you turn on the wifi, the Kindle will sync with Amazon’s servers. These two activities drain battery life, so why not kill two birds with one stone by taking care of them while your device is connected to a power source?
7. Reduce the font size, and line spacing. This may sound silly but if you have more text on the screen, you will be able to go longer between page turn, and each time you turn the page you will get further into the ebook.
8. Turn it off! The last and most important way to expend the battery life of your ereader is to simply shut it down. Yes, putting it to sleep does reduce the drain on the battery, but turning it off does an even better job.
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So tell me, what’s your favorite trick for extending your ereader’s battery life?
You just finished reading Eight Tips for Extending the Battery Life on Your Kindle which was published on The Digital Reader.