Connected standby battery drain (Ativ 500t)

Yes, yes, I'm having this problem too, right after the BIOS update. It's extremely annoying. My tablet used to lose only 10% of charge if I didn't use it for an entire day but now more like half the battery is going down the drain! On the upside my tablet always wakes from sleep and it seems much faster for some reason. I will try going through some of the tips here and seeing if they fix the problem!

 

Update on the hack with acer DPTF drivers and lenovo wifi drivers instead of broadcomms - I'm still getting 20-30% battery drains during the night and steady juice drain during the day, regardless if I turn off all running apps and go into airplane mode.... My initial power logs after one day of testing must have been just extremely lucky Oo'

Anyway, I'm still suspecting the bios update. Just to make everyone's day a little bit better - I emailed samsung support (send them links to a ton of reference materials, detailed description, hints as to which drivers might the cause and why the suspicion). The guy I got with said he'll elevate the issue to a specialist. So there's a chance it'll get investigated and fixed by samsung.

I mean, would have been way better if they did in-house testing before rushing products to the market, but it's better late than ever.

There's another person on samsung support Q&A site for ativ 500T addressing the bios update power drain issues and demanding rollback capabilities or a fix - a post which I happily bumped with a post of myself, which they seem to have censored - so probably they don't want to get this more dirty.

As optimistic as it can be having a tablet with an insomnia.

 

I tried contacting Samsung support about this issue about a month ago, but they refused to do anything or even elevate the issue.

I hope you have better luck! Let us know how it goes.

 

Just a quick update on the Broadcom driver: I think there's been some improvement beyond the Acer DPTF driver, but it didn't make nearly as much difference as the DPTF driver. I still often see drains of 2.5%/hr, but I also have periods where it's lower than that. Occasionally (and much less often than before), battery drain is much, much higher in standby--those are the really annoying periods, especially since they're unpredictable. But I'm much happier now than I was before--now I can at least go a full day without charging.

I also contacted Samsung about rolling back the BIOS (which I still suspect as a major contributor), and they ignored me completely! I'm mostly afraid now that new product season is fast approaching and they're never going to release another BIOS update for the 500t that fixes this.

 

My suggestion would be, at this point - to terrorize samsung until they get this fixed. If it's all about pushing crippled, not yet in-house tested products to the market and then being sloppy in making them actually usable - time to flame.

I don't live in the US and I don't have an amazon account, I'd request a favour from someone who has - here's ativ 500T page - Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Samsung ATIV Smart PC 500T - it would give something to think about for Samsung, if someone left there 1-star review stating that the device was crippled from the beginning in november 2012, starting with sleep/wake issues and the power button not working, through wifi and keyboard disconnections, to the latest crazy power drains during sleep in connected standby. I mean, cashing 750$ for a tablet that can't wake, and the bios update that fixes this makes the device drain 30% of the battery overnight, sleeping... seriously? "Samsung, a global leader of.." selling BS.

To be fair - it's a really cool toy,my humble opinion, deserves 4 stars if it works properly, thing is there are dozens of people for who it doesn't at all... and samsung support ignoring reports on the power drain issue, nice job. So I wouldn't update 1-star to 4-star untill this bloody power drain caused by bios is fixed (I'm stating this is caused by bios with such certainty because of this guy - http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/sam...0t-staples-review-purposes-95.html#post327211 - not to mention people who did wipe and system restore to solve this, no updates from MS, just from samsung, and after bios update - bam!)

If you want them to remember, you need to kick them. Oh they read all the negative reviews from amazon. Since they ignore support emails, that's probably how they got to know about wifi and keyboard disconnection issues.

Seriously, if someone wants to kick samsung in the butt on amazon, feel free to copy&paste bits of this post if you please. Permission granted.

 

I sent an email to Samsung support about this and here's what they replied:

 

Well I'm looking forward to that fix. I just pulled the 500T out of my bag with 5% left after not using it for a day. This kills the main strong point of this tablet: the near-inexhaustible battery.

 

I for one doubt such a fix is coming. I really wanted to like this machine - I have owned several Windows tablets over the last 8 years, and was hoping for a" long battery life- fast enough" solution. Samsung has done very poorly with this device, in that they have not fully responded to the problems present when it was first released. This power problem has been known about since last year, and was attributed to the keyboard initially. I agree the problem is the BIOS most likely, but with upcoming Haswell chips and new Atom chips in 4-5 months, there is no realistic way that Samsung will fix the 500T. My interactions with customer support have been miserable- the worst customer relationship I have had. One of their staff advised me that, essentially, I should not complain because it does no good and makes them less likely to take my concerns seriously. No joke, no exaggeration. So, for now, I just shut the machine down every time instead of use sleep - and plan on moving on to another vendor when Haswell or Bay Trail come out. I will not buy a Samsung device again anytime soon.

 

the strange thing is when I bought my Ativ 500 in genuary I was used to use it 3 days without charge, weeks/months later I had to charge every day even if I don't use it.
now I charge it every 2 days when I'm luky even with little to no use.

 

Just follow the directions in the link:
http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/samsung/56487-lost-40-overnight-sleep-mode-normal.html#post327484

Battery is on 80% after charging it late Wednesday night with light usage. You really only have to do (up to the fourth step)