Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

i'm gutted to have to post this as to start with i absolutely loved the n900's functionality however I've recently come up against a few major issues.

Number one which is a massive problem is battery life. I bought my phone a week or two ago direct from nokia, and i wouldn' class myself as any more than a moderate user. Still, on an average day I can listen to a bit of music on the way into work, and get some usage out of it at work, and thats it. By the time I go home the phone is dead. There is absolutely no excuse or justification for this - its a brand new phone with a brand new battery with a low to moderate use and it can't stay awake as long as me!?

Searching these forums have led me to believe this is due to a wifi fault, however these posts were from last September and the issue clearly still exists. The worst thing is during my initial excitement I persuaded a colleague to get an N900 and his phone performs worst than mine on 100% factory settings.

5his brings me on to my second issue which is the attitude on this site of 'its not a phone its a computer.' I keep seeing this on any thread describing a shortfall with the N900 and its driving me mad because its a load of crap. The Nokia site describes it as a phone, or a mobile phone. To have spent three months saving for it and then to read this kind of comment is a massive piss take. IF THE MANUFACTURER SELLS IT FOR £500 AS A PHONE ITS A PHONE!

As I said at the start of the post its a real shame as the N900 has huge potential, however the hardware I was delivered is only a proof of concept so far, not a product that I could ever justify charging for!

i'd really love to be proven wrong on this as I love what this phone could be, so any advice would be welcome...

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

Have you updated the firmware? One of the things that is much improved is battery life. I can get 24 hours off charger with ease (granted, 8 of it I am asleep) with the current firmware.

I suggest you update it. And turn off wifi if you want maximum battery life.

(re battery life, guess you've never used an iPhone 3G, or any phone made by HTC, with sub 8 hour battery life?)

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

I'm also pretty disappointed with the battery life, even more so because its so thick. However from my tests, the problem looks to lie poor power management for GSM/3G data.. I'm hoping Nokia will at look into any optimizations...

How is you battery life if you don't use WIFI, but 3G?

The "its a computer" excuse to cover it's shortfalls is complete and utter fanboy BS.

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

I've done all the recent updates, and I'm sorry but if I have to turn of functions such as wifi or 3g to get a working day out of it its going straight back to Nokia...

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

I do have some sympathy with you.
I however do LOVE my N900 and yes it has its shortcomings.
Nokia didn't really say anywhere this device for NOT FOR NOVICES, as a lot of people on here say. But then you really have to look at what the device can do and that has to be played out in power usage and battery life.

I had similar Wi-Fi issues etc...but once I reflashed my device, these issues disappeared. Granted however, this ISN'T a solution or answer.
I also agree about it being a proof-of-concept....even though it was NEVER marketed as a proof-of-concept (which would be a sh*te marketing decision if it were). Nokia is a business, they don't care sh*t about US or our views but they are happy to take out money.
Once you get over that point, then the device is pretty much open to your imagination.

Lets hope it develops with the wonderful people on here who find interesting new things to do with the device....but yes, the device is premature and to compete in this modern age of short 6-month technology cycles, it has a hard path ahead of it....

(PS, I must admit that I HAVEN'T ONCE touched my iPod Touch since owning the N900...and THAT is an amazing feat for a Apple fanboy).

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

Ok, you should return it.

My netbook with a 6 cell battery that weighs about 3x as much as the n900 (just the battery, mind you) gets 6 hours run time with wifi on.

You can leave 3G on, but expecting hours of runtime with wifi on is expecting quite a bit from a 900mah battery.

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

Is that 24hour in 3G with IM constantly connected?
I can get 24hour, but only with at&t edge and IM constantly connected and not using the device very much.

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

Don't get me wrong I'm not saying I don't love the thing but its a love hate relationship at the moment. The thing seriously can't stay awake long enough to get me to and from work, and I don't live far from work. I'm beginning to think it has narcolepsy.

I would put it down to firmware problems, but I've done the recent upgrades, and so has my colleague, and he's not even doing anything special with it...

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

No IM, 3G on, weather on, MfE + Nokia messaging email (push) on, three email accounts so pretty constant email action.

IM does run things down, but then you're no longer using it "like a phone" so you should expect less battery life.

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

Then why has nokia put a 900mah battery in? I'm seriously talking about less than 10 hours battery life, with minimal wifi usage. Nokia have no excuse for retailing a product with this battery in when they must no full well what the limitations are...

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

Sorry for your problems, but some reason image where dude says wide smile on his face and expression full of enthusiasm "always connected you know man!" and he has N900 connected to charger just came to my mind.

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

a 6 hour active 3g connection is equivalent of 6 hours of talk time (over 3g too)

do you know many phones that can last much longer than 6 hours talk time on 3g?

People do not tell you to disable these functions but to use them when needed.

I think you should return your phone as you were clearly looking for something that does not exist. Not bashing you, just saying it as it looks.

Sorry

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

Yes battery life is a joke. I have used so many smartphones but this is one of the worst. Only the Motorla a920 faired worse... I hope Nokia and the maemo team make this top priority in the next firmware. Rant over

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

For me battery life improved greatly with the new firmware. Today I made two phonecalls, and frequently checked for new mails, and when I returned home after a long working day, the battery still displayed as full in the status area (12 hours after disconnecting from the charger). Amazing, I've never experienced this before.

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

Not to nitpick, but the N900 has a 1320 mAh battery...

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

You're right - a 6 hour ACTIVE 3g connection is equivalent to 6 hours of talk time, but the only thing my phone does is check email once an hour! Thats not active that's barely even thinking...

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

It is not 900mAh, but 1256 mAh, and I can get a bit more than 2 days of Wi-Fi + IM (skype + jabber), + 3G (no 3G data connection).

Of course, start using it, and it quickly goes down to less than a day. Much less than what the N810 had in store.

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

The Nokia E71 can last at least 60hrs v.s 24hrs of n900 under similar usage scenario (2G, screen off, IM connected)

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=39816

I believe there is major optimizations possible on the N900 unless its poor hardware.

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

Could you be more specific? Do you use your workplaces wlan (your workmate also?) Bluetooth, video etc. how long

Ignore it. It´s just total BS as someone said.

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

hell my battery dies within 6 hours -_- updated to new firmware too 2 week old phone

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

Oh my beloved E71...and there I was thinking of getting rid of it...but how can you resist the AMAZING battery life of it.... Makes my N900 looks crap compared to it !!!!
Thanksfully I don't think I will EVER part with the E71....BEST PHONE EVER....with the N900 coming in a close second!!!

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

then there is something wrong with your phone, my friend

granted i am using the 2g/3g switching applet but here is an example of my day on the phone today

got up at 7:30, took it off the charger, it was at 96%

updated to 1.1 OTA over the hotel WIFI (which has bad signal and it is very slow). Update took about 30-45 minutes while I was getting ready.

Got on the bus with terrible traffic, started playing with the phone (mostly going through my MP3s and making playlists while listening to music). 45 minutes later I made it to the office (mad traffic indeed)

Used the phone to make a few calls, received a few too. Probably about 30-40 minutes talk time total. Took some notes but nothing special. Sent around 20 SMS

Finished work at around 8 and got taxi back to the hotel. Got to the hotel restaurant and on the WIFI browsing the web until my food came (20-25 minutes).

Got to my room and checked out the web and downloaded some apps etc. Browsed around for about 1.5 hours.

lshal reports a current of 371 left, or 29%.

I don't think that's too bad, given I installed the firmware on this charge!

Maybe get your device to nokia and see what they say?

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

lol this is kinda funny, didn't nokia had those "offline as it happens" ads???

I own a n900 but i try to stay offline as much as i can because it drain battery so fast and i wouldn't say it's the worst either. I'm still waiting for that new mugen battery coming out next month...

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

that's because you browse using 3g on at&t

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

Find me a phone that goes a full working day with wifi on and I'llr be gobsmacked. 3G is fair enough, but I had a Touch Pro before the N900 and it would die after about 4 hours with wi-fi on. My friends iPhone is exactly the same

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

OK specifics are about 45 minutes listening to music, maybe 45mins to 1hour browsing at work, 15-20 minutes call time, the rest on standby. Phone lasted about 9 hours. No wireless at work.

I've read about a bug where being connected to wifi meant a nonstop battery drain even though you disconnect - I'm assuming this has been fixed?

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

I should clarify, by wifi on I'm talking about the fact that at home I have wifi (for the 45minutes it takes me to shower, remember who I am and leave the house), and the phone checks every 30 minutes for available wifi. This is hardly a drain is it?

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

i don't think the wifi bug has been fixed but i don't think you have it either (does your phone get hot while it is on standby?)

it is more likely that your 3g connection stays on (and active) or you have an up that is using your cpu even when the phone is switched off

what is your screen brightness setting? bluetooth? gps? do you have touch vibration on?

there are so many things that are just gimmicks that eat away tons of battery

(I would turn checking for wifi off and see if it helps)

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

Nokia E71 or E72. Will probably go close to 2 days with wifi on

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

if you guys are having the wifi bug issue, try install the wifi switcher. it can disable wifi and disabling wifi after using wifi can avoid having to reboot just to get rid of the bug.

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6615#c111

i'm usinig it and so far it seems to be a good workaround for the wifi bug. you'll have to put the .deb file onto your phone and install with dpkg -i

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

That doesn't sound normal. I was actually a heavier user it sounds like and usually got a full day and sometimes 2 out of a charge.

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

Right, my bad.

Expecting 6 hours of wifi off a 1320mah is....

Meh. The bottom line is there is a fairly tight power budget on these things. You can figure out the load in mA for keeping various bits of the hardware powered on, and then you can calculate your runtime with that stuff powered up. Beyond bugs that prevent things from powering down when they should, there is no magic way to avoid drawing power.

You want longer life, you either have less capable hardware, or a bigger battery.

Most manufacturers have resigned themselves to getting 6-8 hours of "medium load" use as a target. Or three hours talk time. On every device I've seen with wifi, wifi is going to draw about the same as 3G, or 600+mA. Which is going to be, er, 2-3 hours total runtime per charge. Just like on the iPhone, the iPod Touch, Driod, HTC smartphones, etc, etc...

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

Being logged on to my IM:s basically cuts my battery life in half or more. I can get around 36 hours easily with normal use, but if I put my availability to "on", it goes down to 10 hours.

So, try this before you sell the N900: Click your status bar at the top (with the battery and signal strength). Choose Availabilty -> offline -> save. Try it that way for a while and see what happens. Of course I still use IM:s, but only when I can't log on from my desktop.

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

I must admit I haven't been experimenting all that much, but in my case the major killer seems to be 3G. With 3G on, my N900 runs dry pretty quickly. Wifi seems to depend on the power setting. With 100 mW it seems only slightly better than 3G whereas with 10 mW it seems quite ok.

However - 2.5G (EDGE) seems quite good. I leave it online on EDGE (and it is online because it keeps the same IP address) the whole day - while connected to MSN, Yahoo, GTalk, Skype and a private Jabber server and checking 2 email accounts every hour and it can easily run the whole day. That I actually find quite reasonable. In short - I am not massively impressed but I am not massively disappointed either.

What I would love and what - in my case would improve battery life significantly - was a tad more intelligent handling of what internet connection is on when - a bit like in my 5800 really. In other words - be able to configure per application which internet connection it should use and/or prefer.

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

I think it's online as it happens, and if you believe advertisements boy do I have a lovely bridge I'd like to sell you.

The only commercial that I like about the N900 is the guy transforming into the N900, where he says something like dangerous.

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

I for one hope that Nokia one day open sources the device state management code.. so we can all tinker around with it and try to improve battery life.

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

After having a lot of nokia phones, I do think N900's battery life is short. Compared to the N80 that would run almost a week without a charge it feels kinda annoying to charge my N900 every 2-4 days.

But here's the thing, you can't get super powerful phone without lot of power consumption. If you truly want long battery life, then you need a battery that is twice the size of the phone. Now wouldn't that be cool?

In my N900 battery lasts usually 2-4 days and I have wifi on while at home, traveling in tram or at school. I keep installing/removing apps and doing everything to show of my friends how great N900 is. My 5800 couldn't last more than 4 hours using wifi, but on the N900 it lasts. I keep forgetting wifi on at home for like 24 hours and the next day only one bar of the battery has gone. I have facebook app, weather app and software updates on.

If anyone faces battery drain like the guy in the first post, then you should look which application has hanged, or if some IM software ect is keeping dataconnections constantly alive. I bet I couldn't drain my battery in 6 hours even if I tried as hard as I could.

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

OK, that sounds like it could be a solution! Sorry to sound like a noob here but how do you control the level of connection?

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

I don't use 3G data but can connect wifi and with light usage it averages 5% battery/hour. That's 20 hours, give or take.

I can't come up with any scenario where someone would need a 3G data connection and wifi on all the time. oO

Re: Seriously disalusioned with phone and battery life...
 

In my opinion you should keep WiFi and 3G mostly offline, unless you need it. IM can go more than well on 2.5G as can receiving emails and calls.
You need to browse the web? Then you turn Wifi or 3G on (depending on which one is available), surf the web, and turn it back off. (Same applies for any task which requires a fast connection)
This way you probably save quite some battery.

For the rest you don't seem to drain the battery playing games (Quake3 and such), or watching movies on the phone..

In the case you still cannot solve the problem, you can try to flash the device as it may be a firmware issue; but this only as last option, as to force the reflash of the device is something Nokia should really avoid in a firmware since it's often very invasive (you have to mess with all your data, settings, custom stuff).

Keep us updated, and share your eventual solution with your friend of course.. ^^

edit: oh, and I forgot to add bluetooth: same rules apply as for WiFi and 3G.