Severe battery issues with N900 (not your usual moan!)
 

I'm having some severe problems with my N900's battery life. I've messed around installing interesting packages from dev and testing, and now I can't even go a working day on standby. I can't figure out what app it is exactly, I've removed the majority of what I had installed recently but am still facing the same issue.

Can anyone help? I can't see anything different that I'm doing, I've had the device connected to Skype & MSN all day as usual, connected via Vodafone 3g.

Thanks in advance..
Kieron

Re: Severe battery issues with N900 (not your usual moan!)
 

keep removing apps one by one till your battery life improves. Worth a shot.

Re: Severe battery issues with N900 (not your usual moan!)
 

Already tried that. :(

Been experiencing this for about 5 days now - first I put it down to the cold weather, but now it only lasts with my normal usage until around 5pm...

Re: Severe battery issues with N900 (not your usual moan!)
 

Could you perhaps borrow/switch a battery? (friend with 5800?)
It may be a longshot and probably not the cause, but li-ion batteries do lose a lot of capacity in certain conditions, like overheating
Maybe it would be best to uninstall all apps that are not vital and start re-adding

Re: Severe battery issues with N900 (not your usual moan!)
 

Turn off all widgets (especially the facebook widget)
Turn down the screen brightness
Check what's hapening with wifi - there's a wifi-disconnect bug that people have reported. Search this forum if you think that could be your trouble.

(If I can find that thread I'll come back and link it)

Try this thread. :)

Re: Severe battery issues with N900 (not your usual moan!)
 

having the same problems, ive turned everything off, no wifi, no gps, no widgets, brightness down to half way and i barely get a full day on standby and about 4 hours average usage, ive even re-installed maemo.

not impressed. :(

Re: Severe battery issues with N900 (not your usual moan!)
 

Lol if all fails.. Try reflash the device, then freshly start with your N900 with the programs that isn't from extras-devel..

Re: Severe battery issues with N900 (not your usual moan!)
 

Back up, reflash, restore, but don't restore settings. Worked for me with same problem. It doesn't take long to put the settings back in manually - I was surprised how many were preserved.

Re: Severe battery issues with N900 (not your usual moan!)
 

Try running top, and see if an app is hogging CPU cycles.

x Term
top

Re: Severe battery issues with N900 (not your usual moan!)
 

I wish someone would publish the powertop package to the repos. Its on some firmwares not others. There is a thread or two on it but I don't believe anything came of it.

Re: Severe battery issues with N900 (not your usual moan!)
 

I've removed the widgets like you said, and I always have brightness on one or two bars. For me it can't be Wifi - I never use it. Thanks for your input though :)

I've run the top thing, and xorg is at the top, everything is hildon- something and a few other processes that I recognise. Nothing stands out as a particular powerhog. :(

Re: Severe battery issues with N900 (not your usual moan!)
 

i read somewhere this is a bug in the firmware: once wifi is enabled, the battery will drain faster. rebooting is my only known solution with pr1.0.

Re: Severe battery issues with N900 (not your usual moan!)
 

I don't use wifi, so it can't be this :(

Re: Severe battery issues with N900 (not your usual moan!)
 

Doesnt matter if you use the wifi or not, it is a bug with the wifi card in the phone. Done a lot of reading here. https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6615

Re: Severe battery issues with N900 (not your usual moan!)
 

Also looks like this problem's been addressed in the upcoming firmware, based on the latter posts.

Re: Severe battery issues with N900 (not your usual moan!)
 

ok i did that and noticed that

/usr/bin/xorg -logf

its all over the place, ranges from 2.2% to 66% CPU when ever the screen refreshes or i hit a key to refresh

is that normal???

Re: Severe battery issues with N900 (not your usual moan!)
 

I have the same thing....logf....wonder what's that?

Re: Severe battery issues with N900 (not your usual moan!)
 

I use wifi and I don't have this issue... @ home many times I forget to turn it off but it still makes it past the 12H with ease :confused:

I have though noticed that the wfi stays on since after connecting to wifi & disconnectiong, yahoo won't allow me to check my email - free yahoo only works via my GSM carrier, not wifi.

So obviously the wi-fi module isn't turned off.

What I can advise is to enter red pill mode and check the uninstaller, you might find the app/package that's causing the issue and you also might brick your phone; EXTREME CAUTION!

Re: Severe battery issues with N900 (not your usual moan!)
 

I built powertop but I don't think that it will help.. Here's a screenshot. Sent me a message for the executable (not a .deb, sorry).

Re: Severe battery issues with N900 (not your usual moan!)
 

I had similar problems with battery and found it draining no matter what was installed(extras and devel).
All my battery issues dissapeared when i disabled 3G when not in use. Now I get 2-3 days use as opposed to under 8 hours.
There is now a 2g/3g switcher applet for this purpose but disapears from status bar now and again for me but might be something i'm doing wrong.(you can still change connection in main device settings under phone settings).

Re: Severe battery issues with N900 (not your usual moan!)
 

Something is not ok on OS level guys, I keep 3G always on...

Do you use apps that constantly use a network connection? Like the weather widget FaceBook, or the email app?
I must admit I only sync when I want to read my email and I don't keep instant messaging on at all times either, I use pidgin...

Either way my device lasts a day and 1/2+ with moderate usage (30min calls, 20 emails syncs, 1hour+ of web browsing and about 40 minutes fm transmitting.
That's on a work day; If I've got spare time to play around and check the repo's it dies @ ~12 p.m.