Dell Venue 8 Pro's Battery Life Improved with New Update
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Dell Venue 8 Pro is one of the best cheap Windows 8 tablets that you can buy at the moment. However, the tablet has allegedly been struck with some problems affecting its battery life, but now a new update to its internal software has been made available and fixes these problems.
At the end of last year, we have written about an important update that Dell Venue 8 Pro had received to fix its annoying Wi-Fi connectivity problems. Now it seems that the popular Windows 8 tablet has been updated to improve its battery life, as multiple users were saying they were experiencing battery drain problems. Dell has recently rolled out the fifth BIOS update (you can follow the download link at the end to get it) and the most important upgrade seems to be the enhanced battery life.
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A few readers of our own said that the fifth version of the BIOS update is indeed making wonders for the battery life, and some forums users confirmed that after some intense hours of gameplay, the battery is still surprisingly good. Also, by running some benchmarking software, it has been founded that the tablet is now cooler, which is a much welcome upgrade, as we all know how annoying it is to hold a hot device during summer, your palms get all sweaty, especially if you like to play for more than just a few minutes.
No more battery drain for the Dell Venue 8 Pro
Just upgraded from A03. My test result shows that the eMMC with A05 is even faster than A03’s HS200, but SD is as slow as DDR25 (my SD card is Sandisk Extreme. Since most of my files and x86 programs (except Office) are on the SD card (my V8P is 32GB version, so I have no choice), I think it’s still a big limitation.
Besides this, there are some other improvements according to Dell:
- enhancements to LAN dongle function, LTE module function;
- improved performance of eMMC write/read speed, BIOS setting for Enable/Disable fTPM through SCMOS tool;
- added upgrade to Embedded controller firmware version for charge behavior and LTE module;
- added upgrade to GOP driver to 7.0 1005 to match PR7 driver, FRC to 1.6.1 and MCU to 30673/321, 30678/80A for better functioning system;
- adjusted CPU temperature against thermal over the SPEC;
- improved system info allowing correct battery info to be display.
So, we can see that besides the fact that there were problems with the battery life, some might have been “virtual”, just because the battery level wasn’t being displayed correctly. It will be interesting to observe whether the upcoming Windows 8.1 Update 1 will bring any improvements to all the devices running Windows 8.1. If this is your first time installing manually a BIOS update, don’t worry, as the steps needed to install it are very simple – just download it, open it, wait for the auto reboot and voila. However, make sure you suspend BitLocker encryption before updating BIOS on a BitLocker enabled system – here is our own guide on how you can do that.Â
There are many reasons to choose the Dell Venue 8 Pro as your next Windows 8 tablet, one of them being the fact that it comes with a good, sunlight readable display. You can also have a look at our previous comparison posts with the Surface 2, Toshiba Encore 8, and the Lenovo Miix 2 to see which one is indeed the better choice.
