Should I keep my Android tablets' power off or leave them on standby mode?

Question

I have two tablets: Allwinner A10 single-core 10 inches (old one) and Allwinner A31 quad-core 9.7 inches (new one).

I notice that sometimes when not using the tablet's standby mode, the battery drain is 20 to 30 percent, there's also a little heat near the battery on the back of the tablet, and it sometimes becomes slow so I have to restart anyway. (I install lots of programs, software, browsers, readers, games, movie/music players. Recently the tablets are filled with Android applications.)

A couple of questions:

1. Should I keep my Android tablets power off or leave them on standby mode? Which option is better?

2. Will turning the tablet off at night when not using it increase the tablet's life?

3. Will it increase the battery life in terms of charge/discharge cycles if the tablet is left off when not used? So it increases battery longevity for years?

4. Will it also increase the life of the memory card and flash memory (as they are dependent on read/write cycles)? Something might be getting written to them by some background programs if the tablet is on standby?

5. Will it also increase the MTBF (mean time between failure) and longevity of the ARM processor and other electronic chip components, etc., of the tablets?

Answer 1

Turning the tablet off at night will most likely extend its life, but this defeats the purpose of having a tablet, since a key feature of the tablet is instant power-on from standby.

Generally, there are two things that drain the battery of any device: the display (when it's turned on), and any wireless communications (3G, WiFi, etc). If you really want to conserve power at night time, turn off the tablet's WiFi and 3G (airplane mode).

The power draw of the CPU and RAM is negligible compared to the power consumption of the display and wireless comms. And it's normal to feel a little heat near the CPU, the wireless antenna, and the battery when charging.

I wouldn't worry about battery life, in terms of charge-discharge cycles, unless you plan on keeping your tablet for 20 years. The same goes for the MTBF of the physical components.

The flash memory will not go bad if the tablet is left on. In fact, the tablet probably reads and writes to flash more when booting up than when it's idle.

Generally, I would suggest enjoying the tablet the way it's meant to be used! If it breaks because of normal use, then it wasn't worth having anyway!

Answer 2

I have learned that keeping my tablet on 24/7 works a lot better than turning it off overnight. I have an Amazon 10 inch Kindle Fire, and I tried leaving it off overnight while charging only once, with disasterours results. It took forever to reboot from a cold overnight shutdown, and was really acting very strangely until it warmed up, about 10 minutes later.

It is a brand new tablet, less than one month old. It works fine now, so I now keep it on 24/7, and no longer have any trouble with it at all. I know that Kindle Fires are very low end tablets, but why should shutting it off and then restarting it cause such an adverse reaction each time I reboot it? No, thank you.

I will take my chances leaving it active in standby mode unless absolutely nessicary. It just takes too damned long to reset.