Using the Kindle app for Audio

I listen to podcasts nearly every day, and I think I have a pretty good feeling how playing podcast episodes impacts the battery life on my devices.

That’s why I was stunned to see what happened to my battery after a modest amount¹ of time spent listening to an audio book played by the Kindle App on iOS.

There’s a word for what the Kindle app did to my battery of my plus-caliber iPhone, and the word is slaughter. Within said time period the charging level went from well above 50% down to 8%.

And, as could be expected, it gets significantly worse if the audio goes to the internal speaker.

I did a quick search on the Internet, and indeed found complaints about the Kindle app’s impact on battery life here and there. But these were mostly years old and probably do not represent reliable data points for the current app.

I guess I’ll finish the book reading …

Update (2016-12-03)

Predictably, I tried the Kindle app again, trying to verify the astonishing effect of the first time. This time, the loss of battery life was way less pronounced, and not even close to the frustrating result of my first try.

Therefore, I can’t help but come to the preliminary conclusion that my experience must have been a fluke, despite the fact that I really didn’t do anything else with my phone than listening to the audio book.

Whatever happened during that period, it does not seem as if the Kindle app could be blamed for it. The book is not finished, so maybe there will be further opportunities to either reproduce my initial impression or get reassurance that it was just a one-time effect.