WP8 Bluetooth Shortcomings

Now that my Lumia 925 is running Windows Phone 8 Update 3 + Lumia Black, I decided to give Bluetooth audio on WP8 another try. Pairing with the Avantree Cara in my car went just fine, playback was uninterrupted, and the phone also promptly paused the playback when I pressed the multifunction button on Cara. So when I arrived at the daycare to pick up my son, I just paused the playback and shut down Cara before I turned off the engine like I normally do.

The point where things went south was when I returned to the car, turned on the engine as well as Cara, and pressed the multifunction button to resume playback like I typically do with my iPhone. Nothing. A few more attempts. Still nothing. I'm not sure whether it's actually WP8 or the app (WPodder) to blame here, but I'm not impressed. You'd think that at this point Windows Phone would play along with Bluetooth a little bit better. Well, I hope Windows Phone 8.1 does something about this. If you know it's the app and there's a better option out there, please let me know in the comments.

EDIT: It might not actually be Bluetooth that's to blame here. I've got similar issues when trying to resume a podcast also when using a wired headset. So maybe the flaw is in the way Windows Phone handles external audio controls (e.g. multi-function buttons in headset and Bluetooth receivers) and listens to input from them.

Transformer Book T100 Issues - Battery Drain

Looks like I ran into one obvious issue that's plaguing the T100: Battery drain when the keyboard dock is connected. I've now accidentally run the device all dry by just having it sleep overnight with the dock connected and not having the charger connected. Twice. On the first occasion I thought it was due to some process having gone wild on my browser (I had a bunch of tabs open), but on the latter occasion there wasn't anything special running.

So I made a test and charged the device all the way to full and then after using it a while I let it sleep with the dock disconnected -> battery went down 7% during the night with my usage included. In the morning I plugged the tablet part to the dock and put the combination into my bag (in sleep mode) while getting to the office. During the hour or so charge had gone from 93% to 80%! That's quite an insane pace, considering that for the rest of the working day the keyboard dock was disconnected and the battery went down only to 76%.

So it looks like there's a major battery drain with this device when the keyboard is connected. Also the idle battery drain is a bit high in the tablet only mode, but fortunately it's still on manageable level. This is an unfortunate downside on otherwise fine device. I hope there will be a firmware update to fix this.