Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

Correct, in theory most widgets should behave this way.

Signals are provided by hildon to tell applets whether they are visible or not.

Well behaved applets should not do anything intensive while not in view.

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

with
it always says between 50% and 70% for /usr/bin/Calendar !!
Loaded it all through last night - till now only two incoming calls - no internet, no Wlan, but battery is down to almost less than half now; about five hours after disconnecting the charger.

I forgot to mention: also no gps !!

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

I have tried to use my phone today with skype disabled... lots of calls, lots of sms and around 1 hour of internet browsing.. the battery lasted twice as much as it would have with skype enabled... does skype integration really uses so much battery? any user tried that?

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

Continuous internet use as in what? Skype? Video Streaming?

3 to 4 hours of solid use sounds about normal for a mobile device if it's doing two things at once (such as video playback + internet access).

If you just have 3g on standby without doing anything, the battery would last for days.

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

I just disabled the automatic gps and network positioning and my battery life has since doubled. Definitely one to try if you don't need gps often.

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

I just got my N900 yesterday, got it on the internet and installed SSH client and server, VNC viewer and Maemo-Mapper. I didnt setup any email or widgets. Left it plugged in vis USB to charge, and it never seemed to fully charge, and when the laptop it was plugged into went to sleep the battery on the N900 completely discharged overnight.

I believe the battery will get better, but performance is pretty poor now. I've turned off the WLAN auto check and GPS, and uninstalled the server component of SSH (dont really need it anyway). Is there a way to turn off the WLAN radio without deleting my wireless network configuration?

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

I had to charge my phone two times a day with heavy use if the data connection was "always on". I disabled the "auto check email" and "auto connect to internet" and now it seems to have many days of battery. It even survived a whole night with "low on battery" warning. So the battery time on n900 is great, but as with a computer; when you got loads of activity and it is always connected it WILL use alot of battery..

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

Don't charge it in the usb.. its the slowest way to charge that exists.. If you use the phone heavily and its connected to the computer it can acctually use more power then it gets..

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

Thanks for the tip; it has charged up much faster today on the wall outlet.
I also found a WLAN power setting that allowed me to reduce the output from 100mA to 10mA; reduces my range but its fine for the places I use it, and I can bump it up if needed. I also set the data service to GMS only as i dont have a data plan.

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

I don't enable GPS and network location. I'm on GSM all day, and occasionally 2.5G data transfer (no 3G with my SIM). I'm on wi-fi (100mW + max power saving mode) whenever I can. My battery doesn't drop a bar until the day after charging. I don't really have to charge more often that every second day, or, if I stretch it, the third day.

The battery did seem to get a little bit better after the first couple of recharges, but I don't have any real evidence to back this up.

I only keep an eye out for CPU-using problematic applications. Had trouble with pulseaudio once (caught it by the 'top' program), which caused the battery to discharge too fast, but other than that my N900 is behaving beautifully as far as battery use is concerned.

p.s. I repeat that I never use the GPS or network location.

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

Same here disabled gps, most widgets except foreca weather @ 4 hour interval updates. I do not use wifi, only gprs internet access. Brightness down to 2/5 and only have 3 screens active.

I can get close to 2 days like this. I noticed however what really cuts down on battery life is leaving a messenger such as pidgin running via edge. It really kills your battery in only a few hours standby. I was hoping to get it to last a day as I like being able to keep in touch with people via msn.