Battery Life And Recharge Time
Battery Life
Testing a tablet’s battery life is subject to variance unless you control the entire process from beginning to end. Cumulatively, touch gestures don’t have a great impact on battery life. The biggest factors are CPU/GPU processing, screen brightness, volume, and Wi-Fi use. In order to accurately measure battery life, I coded a script that automatically plays MP3s at 50% volume while browsing different Wikipedia pages every 12 minutes. This benchmark is probably overkill, but it gives you an idea of a worst-case scenario.
Recharge Time
Charging times are a double-edged sword. Ideally, you want a nice slow charge so that your battery lasts more than a few hundred cycles. Fast charge times keep you away from the wall socket longer, but in the long run, they cut down on the health of the battery. Usually, the rate of charge starts to slow down somewhere in the 80% to 95% range, which is why the charging time from 0% to 10% is faster than 90% to 100%.
Compared to other tablets, the Xoom Family Edition takes a long time to recharge. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 was the previous slow poke at 5:32 for a full charge. However, Motorola's latest takes the cake at 6:48.
We're willing to overlook this somewhat since the Xoom Family Edition can pull its charge from a USB port. In fact, this is the first Android tablet with this ability, matching the iPad's ability to charge and synchronize from a single cable. Unfortunately, the time it takes to charge slows down considerably when you forgo the AC adapter. It takes more than 12 hours just to hit 90% connected over USB.
