Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

i disabled 3g, but i only got 3 more hours of idle usage :(

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

I have to admit, turning 3G off worked for me...also restarting after WiFi disconnection worked as well.
But really, for a device that is SUPPOSED to be an internet tablet/phone...whats the point if you have to avoid using Wifi/3G to stay connected? Granted, some people call it a mini-computer (and therefore justify the lousy battery life) but lets hope and prey this is sorted out in the next firmware update.
(Unless it's a sly tactic by Nokia to get us all to buy a spare battery!!!)

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

Settings->Phone->Network Mode->3G

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

OK. same here. I disabled my 3G and the phone has been on (mostly idle) for the past 14 hours and is STILL FULL!!!! Normally it would be about 15% down (with the same minimal usage). Something is definitely not right with the N900's 3G protocols (or whatever it's called). Although I'm in China using a new telecom provider so maybe their 3G service isn't up to par yet but it looks like - from the majority of posts - that this is a phone fault. I also hope it gets sorted soon as I love this phone to death and can't stop admiring it while it sits here on my desk. Nokia, Maemo - Kudos on a job well done (even if it's still a little half-finished). I hope more people buy this phone so that more attention is paid to its development.

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

the problem is :
if i disable 3G : i gain battery life
if i disable WIFI : i gain battery life
if i disable Internet browsing : i gain battery life
if i disable ...

so what the interest of the phone that cannot take over 7hours by day ?

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

I agree, I disabled 3G and have been online with GSM (GPRS) and 2.5G all day but it's slow as all hell and it's not even worth it. keeps telling me cellular data not available and a weak signal, looks like China Unicom has better 3G than 2G. anyway, whats the point of having such a powerful device if I can't use it. I'll just have to resort to carrying my charger with me all the time (which I've been doing recently and charging 1-2x a day but using as much as I want without worrying about getting home to recharge) Oh well, really hope the next firmware fixes it!!! this is by far my biggest complaint. that and no proper MSN/QQ implementation.

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

I agree with you that EDGE is slow as hell, compared to turbo 3G.

I'm at that point where i switch to 3g in phone settings if i need heavy usage of internet.

I have wi-fi at home so it dosent bother me much.

I still believe that the biggest battery drainer is when you are on 2.5 and its searching for 3g, i cannot ignore that when i went on road trip before, it drained my battery over twice as fast as on regular usage with 3g activated.

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

100000% with you

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

i really agree with you guys but i have only a problem with switching dual mode off to gsm only. when i connect to internet by edge i'm not reachable by phone anymore. my friends tell me that i dont have any signal and they cannot reach me on the phone. does anyone know why?
thanks a lot...

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

Probably because your device is doing something on data at the moment and your wireless carrier doesn't handle that properly, so the call doesn't ring through.

My one big gripe about the N900 is always getting "cellular data not available". Happens all the time, and never happened with my other devices (mytouch 3g or blackberry 9700). That and the poor battery life make me think I should return the N900 for something more 'usable'.

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

Thank You. Not trying to be too melodramatic, but without this post, I would not be a returning N900 user.

I got my first unit during the first days of delivery in the US. However, no matter what I tried to turn off, I could not get anywhere near a complete workday of charge out of my phone. This combined with an inability to get any voice signal in my most recent work assignment location forced me to return the phone.

However, I kept reading this forum and saw this post in particular. I’ve messed with a few Android phones since my first return and found that each has it’s own issues with items working inconsistently. So when I saw this post, my thoughts were if this improved my battery life issue, I’d rather work through the other issues on the N900 as it was by far my favorite recent phone. Obviously it has. In 2 days of use, I’ve been near 50% battery life by the end of the day with all functionality turned on including Exchange email, IMAP email, Skype, Bluetooth.

Thanks for collecting/presenting your findings here.

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

I use only Edge for internet access on my N900 with no Wifi, I noticed that by leaving my 2g internet connection off and manually connecting only when needed increases battery life dramatically. That means no widgets updating automatically and sadly no IM running throughout the day. It has however given me a large increase in battery life that I can use to browse the web etc.

Would have been nice to have msn running all day like I did with my e71 unfortunately I can only use pidgin to get on msn, the haze/butterfly telepathy doesn't connect for me. Using such an app dramatically reduces battery life even when idel.

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

You should patent it:p

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

I'm curious what you mean ... working on something for that? Or talking about waiting for a Nokia update? This really poor battery life (I literally did not use my N900 at ALL yesterday and it was dead in 10 hours) is worse than any other device I've used.

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

I agree!! It's getting a bit frustrating. I've been charging twice a day and with very moderate usage (45min of browsing, 3 hours of 3G GPRS online, some SMSing and several calls a day) That's ALL. I really hope they come up with something for this in the FW update.

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

Maybe it would be better to give your running Widgets, connections and so on, to pinpoint why some users have such a bad battery life.

I have no issues with battery life (2 to 3 days depending how much wifi I use)
But then I mostly use 2G, bluetooth off, GPS Off.

I believe if your phone dies within 10 hours without touching it, you may have a wrong setting.

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

I primarily use 3G all day for calls and GPRS. 2G on my SIM card (China) is not great so I resort to keeping the phone on 3G since it's a 3G card. I've tried "dual" and "GSM" and it seems dual is the best setting for me. I also never, ever use GPS nor bluetooth and I dont have any widgets that connect or update. and my internet connection is set to Always Ask. I never use Wifi at all either, heard conflicting reports as to which uses more power (wifi or 3g gprs).
I'm guessing it has to do with the telecom towers here, maybe theyre not strong enough. 3G is a new service in my area....

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

I'm running with no widgets (as I know they are hogs). My only connection is Nokia Messaging (set to update interval of 2hour which is the max), under settings I have the brightness turned to the 1 of 5 bars (lowest), and conversations I only have Google Talk configured. The only thing I can think of is that this area is horrible on GSM and 3G (even though I pull -65 dBm on my other Tmobile devices sitting here).

edit: yesterday I was set to "3G only" and today I'm testing "2G only" settings

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

It really can. Did you test it on 3G only then?
When It switches (in dual) it takes a lot of battery power.
especially when traveling.

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

yep. Dual actually seems to be the best for me, dont know why (it switches to 2.5G when 3G isn't strong enough). I dont travel but China Unicom is known for not having the best service so that MUST be the main culprit. I really dont use the device as much as Id want to :(
will have to wait when I travel next to give it a fair trial. or maybe put in another SIM from another provider...

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

You know my other big issue with this device is that if I reboot it will not automatically connect to the Tmobile data service. I often get "cellular data not available" messages and it won't reconnect on it's own. I really wanted to love this device, but just not sure I can.

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

I have to say I am noticing an effect as well. On my previous N900 I had it on dual mode, even though I have at&t and no 3g, and I think that it's constantly looking for 3g is draining the battery some. Now on my replacement Im having great life. I also have no widgets other than Omweather set to update once daily, I have google chat setup and active all day, and im browsing heavily all day, refrshing facebook, lurking here, check various webmail accnts and I can go the full 8hrs of work with more than 50 percent life. I also have the wifi set low 10mw , and if I connect to wifi and disconnect I always reboot, not sure if every device has the wifi battery drain bug, but I reboot anyways to avoid this issue at least till the next fw update. Im only on two deep charges with this device too. It gets better after 4 or 5 supposedly. 3g is definitely a drain in my experience.

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

Do you have the search interval set? It wont reconnect for me either unless the search interval is set (this interval applies to non-wifi also)

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

No I didn't. I thought it was to search for WiFi signals in those set times and if found switch to it if checked. Pretty sad that you have to tell it to use the carriers internet. I just turned it on (and only has a 5min option nothing sooner).

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

Hello again everybody.
I will explain again what's my problem because first time i did't understand anything.
So, i switch my n900 from DUAL to GSM. Now, i have a 2G network.
The problem is: when i connect to internet to get my mail, update my RSS, talking in messenger or navigate on internet the voice part of the phone is off. I mean when someone tries to call me, even he/she is near me, it says that i'm not reachable and i don't have network cover. It's obviously that i have because i'm navigating over the 2G network, but apparently that blocks the voice function or calling function call it as you like.
It's a common problem or it's a setting that i did't manage to find it?
I hope someone can explain me what's going on, and i hope it can be fixed.
Thanks a lot.

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

You aren't the first to complain of this but I'm guessing it depends on the service provider. I use both 2G (GSM) and 3G and the only difference (other than sacrificing speed for battery life) is that when on 2G GPRS i get [I]disconnected[I] whenever I get a call or send an SMS. But I havent had any trouble with people NOT being able to call me. soooooo, maybe its the provider's settings?

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

For me its random most times data disconnects and the call comes through. I'd say about 10 percent of the time I don't get disconnected and people get my voice mail. It is slightly annoying.

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

mmmm well thats no good. perhaps I also am experiencing about 10 percent but my callers havent told me yet...

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

ok guys i may have stumbled into a big discovery here. i just realized that the GPRS Monitor widget has a setting for update. mine was on "every 5 sec"!!! i made it "when switching desktops" and will see if that helps any.....
ps - using 2G is definitely helping loads.

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

What do you mean by "...and will see if that helps any....."?
In what problem will help?
Thanks...

Re: 3G off fixed my battery life!
 

well its a setting that i changed. havent yet noticed a change in battery life, just updated to the new firmware so will test soon.