Battery use & CPU speed

Overclocking CPU use

The first thing I wanted to talk about is Profiles and processor speed. Like I told you earlier, before loading the over-clocked kernel, I have NO profiles set up on my Xoom. My Xoom acts just like my Android phone. The only time the tablet spends at the TOP CPU speed is when it needs it. So in my opinion locking the CPU to one speed when the screen is off or when it is on the charger is kind of a waste of time unless you have a specific reason to. I will give you one example when you might want to do this. Let’s say you have your Xoom over-clocked and are using it as a navigation device in your vehicle. Now since the map program is going to be running all the time, the screen is never going to go off, and you will have it plugged all the time. It would make sense to have a “Charging/Full” profile that cuts the CPU down to say 900Mhz to try and keep the heat down. Otherwise don’t try to “out think” your devices CPU needs.

Battery Life

As you see my over-clocked Xoom still can last a good bit of time. Granted I was pretty busy over the last few days and did not get to use my Xoom as much as I would have liked to but one thing I did observe, and some others have confirmed, is that if you have Maps running and the Google Latitude layer on, you will burn CPU. A simple fix for thins is just to turn OFF the GPS while you are inside. If you are looking to get the most battery life out of your Xoom, just like your Android phone, manually control the screen brightness down to as low as you can stand it as nothing uses more battery than your screen. There are a few widgets out there that can help you make this a bit easier. Other things that will help with battery life is not running every single widget available for all you programs and not having them update every 5 minutes. The last thing I do is switch the tablet in to Airplane mode before I go to bed or leaving the house for an extended period of time. This will keep it from doing updates all night while you are asleep or away. Again there are widgets out there that can make this task a simple thing (one button and done).