Battery Draining Mercilessly Stays Unresolved

If you are a once proud owner of the Nexus 7 with a battery draining problem, you are certainly not alone. Many people all over the internet have been lamenting Google's firmware update of Jelly Bean to 4.2.1, blaming it for the reduced battery life of the Nexus 7. What used to be a workhorse that put the competitors to shame has recently been reduced to a limping mare with the stamina of a sloth. 

A thorough search of forums all over the internet seems to have the same conclusion - there is no fix available as of yet. Some suggestions that seem to help people with their battery drain include: 

1. Turning off your wifi connection 

2. Turning off Google location services

3. Checking what apps are running the most in the Battery Settings page

How did you go? if you find a solution that works or perhaps a firmware is released, leave a comment below.

What's Causing the Lagging on my Nexus 7?

Another issue that comes up with the Nexus 7 is sometimes it no longer shows the awesome responsiveness that made you so excited when you first bought the tablet. The problem may only be as simple as one naughty application - Google Current the magazine viewer. It has a feature that synchronizes various magazines etc in the background on the off chance that you may be using Google Current today. To be honest, it was just one of those free Google apps that I just downloaded and hardly noticed after that.. until the lag!! This is how to fix it.

1. Open Google Current
2. Tap on the three dots in the top right corner then go to Settings
3. Unselect Sync in the Background option
4. Exit settings

There could be other such applications that are running operations that is slowing down your tablet but it seems according to the internet community, Google Current is particularly evil when it comes to slowing your tablet down to a halt. If you have found some other problem applications, please leave a comment to help a friend in need who may be reading this now.

Its Not Charging - is it Dead?

I was using the Nexus 7 until the battery completely died, so I plugged the charge in and the screen fizzled for a bit and then went dead. I unplugged the charger and plugged it back in. This time, the sides of the screen partially illuminated in white and pulsed. What is going on? I thought my Nexus 7 was completely gone. 

Then I found out that this is one of the problems with the Nexus 7 when it is upgraded to 4.2.1 Jelly Bean. When the Nexus 7 battery runs completely out, it sometimes refuses to charge at all. What you are seeing is the device chucking a tantrum. The device is in sleep mode and you need to get it completely off in order for the device to charge. Without these tips, I am sure you would never have figured it out, so this is what you do;  

1. Unplug the charger. Hold down the POWER and VOLUME DOWN keys simultaneously and with the other hand somehow plug in the charger. If this works, there will be a large boot screen that will appear. 

2. Press the Volume Up button until you see the option POWER OFF DEVICE

3. Press the POWER Button to select this option. The device should now switch off.

4. Unplug the charger and then plug it back into the Nexus 7. The battery charging icon should appear if you were successful.

Dropped my Nexus 7.. twice!

Without intending to, I have tested the Nexus 7 with the 'drop test' and the saddest part is that I have done it twice! In both instances, it was a carpark with no soft landing than pure unyielding bitumen! Both times, the device was in the Poetic case that I was posting about a few weeks ago and I think if it wasn't for that case, I probably won't be keeping this blog any more!

This is when you can be happy that the Nexus7 doesn't start its active screen so close to the edge. As you can see, there is a pretty clear hairline fracture on the bottom right corner of the device. I didn't see this until I took off the Poetic case. So the question is, how is the device now? Everything seems to be working fine. There doesn't seem to be any effect on the device. However, my habits of bringing this along with me to shops to do research will now be revised. Both times, I was heading into a shopping centre when such damage was sustained.

Have you dropped your Nexus 7? Leave a comment below and perhaps a link to images of the damage sustained.The photos were taken by my Galaxy Nexus