Eli5: Why do charged electronics (Game controllers, eReaders,) lose their charge when they’re not being used?
In: 1469
Two reasons for the most part:
1. Unless the device has a mechanical switch that physically removes power from the electronics, the odds are that the electronics aren’t truly ‘off’. They are probably running at a relatively low frequency (32kHz) looking for an interrupt (e.g. a button press, or a cord/signal connection) to wake them up, monitoring the battery, etc.
2. Again, unless power is physically disconnected from the electronics, solid state circuits ‘leak’ (if you Google up a microcontroller data sheet, look for ‘leakage current’). So, even if the device isn’t running in some standby mode pretending to be off, there will still be some power draw.
That said, #1 is the overwhelming reason for the battery discharge.
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