Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

My N900 battery lasts for around 30-40 hours depending on the usage. But I've noticed that its Internet Surfing using GPRS that consumes the battery. If I serve internet using GPRS , a fully charge bettery's one bar will go down within half an hour or sometimes even less.

Sometime back I've read that old sim cards drain your bettery fast. Mine is a 7 yr old sim card. So is it the sim card thats putting strain on CPU for catching the signals?

Do modern sim cards have a better chip so that catching signals don't put too much strain on the CPU? Do I have to change the sim card?

Re: Its not Wifi, its GPRS that consumes the battery within hours
 

It's known that network seeking drains battery a lot. An old sim might pickup weak signal which would have similar effect as network switching. I recommend you renew your sim card.

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that consumes the battery within hours
 

Renew it, but do not expect big changes. In airport mode my n900 stays alive a lot of time. However, always connected by 2G (and wifi disabled) my n900 dies fast.

I suspect that to be connected to skype and gtalk all the time is somewhat related. But an iphone 3gs with 3G (not 2G, 3G!) and the ebuddy (=gtalk) running all the time, lasts almost twice (>1.5) than the n900.

Conclusion, I am losing my loyalty to maemo devices.

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that consumes the battery within hours
 

You say first:
Then you say:
I do not understand your logic. First of all. You are connected to 2G AND you are using data link CONSTANTLY WITH APPS you are using. Secondly for fairness it would be right to do comparison with same kind of setup. With two IM apps like gtalk and skype you are probably doubling your data rate with server and keeping N900 cpu & modem wake. Please before making this kind of statements try to even understand what is happening under the hood and try to make comparisons more scientifically.

ps.
Sidenote to all those who think i´m here praising N900 as best device.....NO I´m NOT! Learn to understand what you are reading.

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that consumes the battery within hours
 

I am constantly on 3g and/or wifi.. for night i am in flight mode. For me in last over 40h+ depending on what i do. I have also noticed that using the browser takes a lot battery. Not as much as you though. I can surf and still have ~30h left in the battery. Not if i streaming though.. like from youtube then it will go down faster.

lol! iphone.... it would not be able to do better than this.

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that consumes the battery within hours
 

My Honda car drinks an obscene amount of petrol at 7000 rpm, much more than when the engine is switched off!

Conclusion, I will never buy a Honda car again!!

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that consumes the battery within hours
 

My gf consumes an obscene amount of money at dating, much more than when she's dead!

Conclusion, I will never get another gf again!!

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that consumes the battery within hours
 

#AlMehdi, when I read posts like yours, I really thing something's wrong with my n900. I've though in doing a video of a normal "session" and to post here, to see if the behaviour is what must be expected or there's something wrong with me.

Having said that,

Sure. That was the BIG point of the n900, to be always connected to these services. This is what the n900 offers in comparison with the other phones. They can say a lot of characteristics, but then you say, hey, wait, somebody is calling me through skype. Yes, it is always running, THIS IS what a mobile phone is supposed to do presently, doesn't your iphone do it? what a shame.

You try to do it by 3G, the phone lasts 2/4 h. You install that magic widget, turn in 2G, and yeah, the battery is still poor but you're connected all the time, around 8 hours then (just being connected).

This was the situation ... before.

Yes you're right. But scientifically, I am comparing the overall feeling of the two devices.

BEFORE, the n900 had multi-task, permanent gtalk/skype connection, a browser really capable. The iphone had maps, much more speed, and vast amounts of software. Well, n900 won.

AFTER, here we have the iOS4. Guess what, the multi-task of the n900 is not so spectacular now, and they also start to be permanently connected. They still have maps (n900 hasn't, I'm too frustrated on this), a cam that works (forget the video mode if you are running the kernel ideal, at least in my case), and yes, the iphone has battery.

BATTERY, because they do not need to disable the 3G, because they do not need to overclock the device and is still 2x or 3x faster than the n900 (iphone 3gs), and because they don't need to reflash the device each month, or to reboot each week, to re-gain speed and stability.

Damn, each 5 minutes of navigation with 3G in the n900 is about a 10% of battery, and run afterwards to change again to 2G because you'll need the mobile in the afternoon. This stuff is inexistent in an iphone.

What should I do. To disconnect from these services? To be always in 2G? To put the brightness to 1? To downclock the kernel?? Then why I've bough the n900, if everything has to be off.

And well, after this experience with nokia, I'm really expecting that the next meego version will be too heavy for the n900. So I'm not going to have a better experience that what I already have now.


Having said that, I'm starting to thing that nokia has been always wanted to do a tablet rather than a mobile. So I'm truly anxious to see what they'll purpose eventually. But regarding the mobiles, I have serious doubts that my next 500€ will be given to nokia, again.

PD: To answer more precisely to you, what I say is, if nokia wanted to provide a device with these capabilities, they needed to be sure that his device could handle them in terms of velocity and of battery. The velocity of the n900 is too bad. The battery when you use these services is insufficient. So, I understand why the battery drains so fast. WHAT I don't understand is WHY nokia has sold this device and at that price if they didn't have any solution to this. It is just irresponsible.

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that consumes the battery within hours
 

I logged an error about this - look it up and vote for it... ;)

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that consumes the battery within hours
 

Being constantly connected to Two sip providers? Hmm. Maybe you have quite high expectations. Actually i can drain my N900 battery in half an hour if I like to and say that my usage is normal. So Before jumping in conclusions please be specific what you mean. Stating here that this phone does this and that is not detaild enough. If you really want to be connected to all the stuff that N900 gives you option to be connected then IT DOES but battery will be emptied in couple of hours. Suprised? If so then you have not understood what you are holding in your hands.

8 hours sounds about right. Pretty standard if you look what was sitsuation when N900 entered to market.

You gotta be kidding me? Feeling? I´m lolling here :) Who cares about that? We need data to make comparisons and to back our statements. Otherwise it´s just...yeah...feeling. Good luck with making reviews :P

Yes. What is your point? That there is competition? Suprised?

Whatta hell? Who says that you have to disable 3G? Who says that you have to overclock? Who says that you have to flash it? Or reboot? Have you installed stuff from devel/testing or some webpage? How did you measure iphone vs. n900 speed? What kind of different apps? What kind of cases with speed? What do you mean? I do not understand. Yes i could say that there might be speed difference on different task, but then again i could say that with fcron and shell i can do stuff in seconds that would take on iPhone different apps to manage to do them.

It´s not so simple as you think it is when you are talking with different kind of people. Try to think out of your box.

Sounds like HW problem.

Who has said that everything has to be off?

I have zero expectations because of current sitsuation and history of Nokia.

I think that yous should make some kind of data/bug report that shows basically your usage case and how battery lasts. After we are able to reproduce it then we should compare to other phones and try to use them as N900 (eventhought it might be to some extent even impossible to use other devices as N900). Also ruling out fact that different operators might have different 3g/2g strenghts on area where devices are tested.