Something is killing my battery life...
 

The last couple of nights, I have had around 20-30% battery life left before going to bed around 1am. By the time I wake up in the morning, my battery is on low battery or dead. I have gotten rid of every widget except countdown and calendar. I only have 2 screens and the other 2 are disabled. I also disabled auto update for e-mails. Since my phone died overnight, my 10am alarm did not go off. Luckily I was awake. I pressed the power button to check the time, but my phone battery was completely dead....




During the day, I have to go through about 2 full charges a day. I hardly use the phone, it is all internet. I had a Google G1 phone a year ago and it did the same thing. I'm guessing it is due to 3G, but I didn't think the battery would be this bad.

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

Have you used WLAN at all?

It's know to cause battery drain even if you disconnect from the network and disable it afterwards.

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

I have much the same problems. Never use wlan. It is 3G that uses that much power. As soon as you turn on widgets that use internet or check mail periodically my battery starts draining. Having to charge my phone twice a day is just ridicules, Android phones and iphone have an always on 3G connection and they at least last through the day.

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

I've noticed that since installing openssh that my battery life has decreased a bit. Though I don't know if it was active if I put the device in offline mode. I use to be able to leave the tablet unplugged online overnight and it was fine. But since after installing openssh I can't leave it even offline overnight without the battery depleting.

I'll have to test with issuing an ssh stop command before bedtime to see if openssh is my issue.

But basically, it can be an application issue too.

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

Try turning off GPS, network positioning, Auto wifi scanning (so I manually connect to everything), any unnecessary desktop widgets, and keep processes closed if their not being used. I did this and I can easily go 48 hours without a charge.

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

I know it can be an application issue but i am not using the phone how i want to use it because the battery would be dead before i get home. I know a lot of bugs will be fixed but it is just plain stupid that you have to turn of all widgets, sign out of im networks, uninstall most applications and can't use 3G because of battery drains.

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

I believe in another thread you asked if you got a lemon?

I would probably say so. Since I was able to leave all of my widgets (except Facebook since that one is known to be problematic) on, leave it on online mode, and check email (I have it set to once an hour) and still have it last the night unplugged. Though it would be at 3/4th battery life remaining after the night.

It was only after installing openssh that I begun to have a shorter battery life duration. So I need to experiment with stopping the server overnight.

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

@cyi1: Before going to bed, start an xterm and run 'top'. Look for anything using CPU. You should see only Xorg at the top, with some 1-2% CPU (and that is only because it's busy showing the activity of 'top').

I had 'pulseaudio' running with 18-20% CPU the other night, for no reason (I wasn't running anything that sounded the speakers). That killed the battery over night. A 'kill' on the pid(s) of the offending processes, if any, should prevent overnight battery drain from CPU usage at least.

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

If alarms don't go off, that totally defeats their purpose.

My old LG Viewty would shut down the phone when the battery got down to some minimum voltage, but would keep enough capacity that it could sound one more alarm at the appropriate time. Once you're awake you can then recharge the phone.

Any other behaviour is deficient. No-one needs an alarm that may or may not go off.

Regards,
Roger

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

Also, I forgot to mention that after a week it seemed like the battery life got better regardless. I do not know how to explain this, but it just did.

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

I'm in the same boat with the battery. I'm to the point of trying to get another n900 or replacing the battery. Either way something isnt right

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

umm iPhone does NOT have a constant 3G data connection I can tell you that much.

make sure to shut off data connections when ur not using data to save battery as well.

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

Yep noticing this too on mine.

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

yep, true about the iphone and that is what people don't understand. What Nokia should have done was provide a profile that will allow n900 to turn off 3g when no 3g/data activity going on...

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

I found that disabling skype from being always online improved my battery life dramatically. Which is I guess to be expected but still a bit disappointing

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

i have always had location/gps off. i removed all widgets, turned wifi searching off, brightness on 2 bars, etc. im starting to think its pretty lame to have a phone thats supposed to multitask and have a nice ui with widgets but i cant because the battery will only go 4 hours lol.

i also have rootsh installed...maybe thats the reason?

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

No way. Rootsh installs some files but doesn't leave any process running.

Regards,
Roger

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

Can I ask you guys why you aren't keeping your phone plugged in to the wall at night? It seems that would solve your battery being dead/alarm not going off in the morning problems.

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

That's what I usually do. But leaving the N900 unplugged over night is the best way to test it idling (e.g. no user interaction).

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

well when the battery is really low i charge it overnight... but it had at least 30 % and died idling.....

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

i have root user/bin/xorg using between 40 and 80 percent of my cpu most of the time wtf . its just idle

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

Try filing a bug asking for that enhancement, assuming there isn't one already. You might want to check Brainstorm first, just in case.

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

I recently changed my wi-fi settings to connect ONLY manually (no searching for signal) and it seems to have made a pretty significant improvement in my battery life.

I have a few widgets, including the Facebook one, but someone mentioned in another thread that if you are not on the homepage with the FB widget it will NOT drain your battery life by constantly updating. I think this is true b/c the widget only seems to start when I scroll to that page. I make sure that whenever I am in an idle mode I am not on the FB widget page and it seems to help.

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

In your original post, you said you go through two full charges in a day. I would think that you would want to start the day with a full charge.

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

Using GSM instead of dual increases your battery life significantly.
The battery lasts at least 6 more hours, even with wifi on the whole time !

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

i own a restaurant so i let it charge during lunch hours when i open up. i figured 30 percent would last the night fine..

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

went to bed with 50% last night around 1am...woke up at 8:30am and it was on red (low battery). it is now 10:20am and the phone is dead. lol

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

dude, charge your phone @ night.

with some of the tips posted even in this thread, I am getting 12-15 hours of use under moderate to heavy usage.

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

Just found out a cool feature by accident. Alarm will work even when power is off! Phone was turned off last night because I was low on battery and didn't feel like leaving it powered on while charging all night. alarm went off at desired time and I was prompted to turn the phone on or keep it powered off. I wanted it off so it immediately went back to sleep.

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

Well if yuo are using the cellular phone then that would be using the 3G!

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

BIG difference between "using 3G" and "using 3G with data connection active".

Lets not forget that data connections on the mobile network are PPP. That means it will always sap a little more CPU and bandwidth to keep the connection active compared to just cellular.

Personally, I wish they would hurry up and roll out a SINGLE data connection for everything so we can stop having these annoying layers upon layers of protocols. PPP was never designed for roaming, I am sure roaming performance would improve dramatically if they ditched PPP in favour of something more fit for purpose. They only use PPP as its an easy method for tunneling over various networks and accounting.

Surely with a custom designed protocol for voice and data, it would make establishing a data connection null and void, it would simply need to ask for more bandwidth rather than the current situation where while you have 3G voice you can't even be sure there is 3G data capacity available.

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

bottom line is nokia could have used a better battery. i have the same battery n my 5800xm and it can barely run that let alone the n900.

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

Bottom line is that there is a bug or two causing many of the battery issues. I normally had a full day of battery life, but after installing Pidgin, even if I didnt have it running, I could only last for a few hours. It might be a coincidence, but once I uninstalled Pidgin, I was back to normal. Might have been something else though..

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

before i sent my n900 in for replacement , i downloaded the cpuload or w/e app that shows you the load on the cpu and memory and it seemed to improve the battery life . just a suggestion , might wanna try it . after you install it it should be where you check battery /change or disconnect interent connection etc . make sure the thing that looks like a webcam is turned off .

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

Hey guys..
Well I received my N900 yesterday and was afraid about battery life but I can't understand what people are saying about it. I was trying to get the battery to zero tu charge it, and it took an eternity. I didn't install extra-devels, 3g is always off since im in canada and the phone doesn't support our bands, wifi searches every 10 minutes, screen brightness is at 3, 30 seconds delay...... well anyway unplugged it at 20h00 yesterday and I'm still at 68%

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

People, please note that charging is different from average phones. This phone designed to run from battery even charging is plugged, so whenever you see the green light thats the battery started running even its plugged in with charger.

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

I put my phone fully offline during charge. The minute it's greenlighted I start browsing with 3G or WLAN. Just 10 mins and the battery already loses couple pixels from the statusbar. This awful battery life was a big suprise to me. Can't really do a thing with it if I want to stay connected in case someone calls me. But then again, I'm used to be using E90 and it's huge battery :/

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

Lithium battery life does get a bit better after the first few recharging cycles, I think?

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

hi guys
my nokia gives just may be 3 to 4 hrs of continious internet in 3g network and also slowly heats at the back side.
is it same for all or it's just me

Re: Something is killing my battery life...
 

yes, same here :(