Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

I have my N900 for 20 days now and I was pleased to see that the baterry would last for two full days.

However, this has changed since Monday night. I charged it at 23.30 Monday and it must have drained completely sometime during Tuesday night, as I woke up Wednesday morning to see it was off.

I checked the battery indicator at around 00.30 Tuesday and it was half full (or half empty) that means that half the battery drained in less than 8 hours and while the phone was idle!

This is really frustrating as I don't want to charge my phone when battery is only half empty and yet if I don't, I won't have any battery left in the morning...

I did not change my usage routine
The wifi connection is always off
I have only installed egg timer, hex-a-hop, OM weather, FM radio, tuner, cpumem-applet and nameday applet

It seems strange to me that the battery time is cut to half with no apparent reason, unless there are some issues with the latest maemo firmware update.

Does anyone else have the same issue? Is it a firmware - battery indicator bug?

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

Can you go into terminal and type top? - Let us know if anything is sucking the CPU dry? :)

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

Right now I am charging so this is what it reads.

CPU user is 3.5%-5.5%
CPU sys is 1.2%-2%
CPU Idle is 92%-96%

Do you need more info?

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

Hmmmm we might need some N900 experts!

Mine is
CPU 2.9 - 5 %
sys 2 - 5 %
Idle 95 - 97 %

Seem similar - doesnt sound like anything is hammering your cpu.

Although half the battery in 8 hours is ok (if being used!) idling i'm getting about 28 hours at the moment.

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

Thanks for the reply noobmonley :D

Could the alarm I have on daily be causing this?

I know that sounds ridiculous, but you never now...

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

Pulseaudio could be appearing in top even though no sounds are being played. This happens to me, quite rarely though and it eats ~2% cpu all the time, shortening battery life by at least 50%.

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

Disable 3g whenever you do not need it. There should be some statusbar applet for that.

And yes there seems to be some problem with some users with new firmware use search here and maemos bugzilla.

.edit have you rebooted?

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

Might be worth listing the processes running in top :) - could help identifying what you have running.

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

I've had the same behaviour. I tend to get a good battery performance with one charge and considerably poorer performance with the next charge so there is some sort of fluctuation. Could be due to the fact that at work I charge with charge adapter while at home with the dedicated charger.

But I've also noticed that leaving browser windows running in background sometimes drains the battery pretty fast. Fortunately it seems that the fix to wlan hanging using static ip's works for me.

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

Pulseaudio? I have the media player widget on my desktop... are you telling me it never actually shuts down after playing?

And yet... i added the widget from day 1 and had no problems, this battery drain started 4 days ago...

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

Yes I have slender :(

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

I have the same problem as zifis. I've noticed it this morning. Yesterday night the battery was almost full. This morning it was almost completely empty. I had the 3g on, but the other settings were tuned on total power saving mode. I've downloaded the "2g/3g switch toggle" and now I'm waiting to see if the 3g was the problem...although the problem of the battery drain bug still remains I think...

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

I haven't been able to reproduce it, it's quite rare and random. Rebooting helps if it is pulseaudio. Normally you shouldn't see it all in top unless some audio is playing.

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

Did it happen after the firmware update?

It could be a bug. would recommend removing the widget as well for a day or two to check.

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

Yes it started after the update. I'll do that noobmonkey ;)

But if I am to remove my widgets and apps... what am I left with? :(

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

I removed the media player widget and rebooted, hope it works

The thing is though that I bought this phone so I could customize it according to my needs, not the other way around!

I hope it is a bug and will be fixed in the next update, otherwise it is pointless to keep my N900...


Thank you all for your suggestions and help! :D

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

Quick tip: WiFi eats a lot of battery, even when it's not connected to a specific network. Also, some applications change the settings for you WiFi connections, from "on demand" (in my case) to "automatically" so you may want to check that too.

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

I have checked all that Andrei, thanks ;)

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

Have you taken out the battery?

I experienced something similar and a battery-pull put things back in order for me.

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

Good idea Death, I will try that too

I dread the thought of a H/w problem! ΝΟΚΙΑ technical and H/w support in Greece is indescribable...

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

I agree, but just removed one at a time to test, if it works then it could be a software bug with that widget..... If so, a bug report could fix it and sort your problems out :)

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

Here is another thread on a similar issue:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=40541

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

It's really quite simple, if you have nothing running you shouldn't see anything taking cpu in top(besides X, osso-xterm and top).

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

Ahem. I want names named so heads can roll. :rolleyes:

An application messing with user settings that way without appropriate notification and interaction should be an absolute no-no.

Regards,

Chris.

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

I saw this happening right after I set up my gmail account in Nokia Messaging. I usually keep my WiFi connection on "always ask" but after setting up that account it changed to "on demand". I realized it after observing a suddden change in battery usage. I hope I was the only one experiencing this behaviour.

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

After a week of excellent battery performance, the problem is back. After I switched to 2g mode and had 3 full days of battery, I figured I'd install a few apps. I got jeweled, puzzle collection and mancala and I updated my fm radio (just installed not played).
That was yesterday with a fully charged battery. This morning I woke up to the beep of low battery and by the time I got out of bed the phone shut down.

CPU and Mem usage are close to zero, no active connections, no background applications running...

I am now pretty sure that something goes wrong when I install a new app or udate an existing one. I can't explain it otherwise...

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

I also have this issue from time to time. I make sure i have no cpu hogging app everytime but still sometimes it goes down from 70% to OFF after only 6-7 hours. (I sleep then wake up to find my phone turned off with battery drained) Happens during the day also. Weird.

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

I just ran into a similar problem, ran top, then corky and both were showing me that the cal app was eating 76.5 percent of my cpu, and the cpu was running at 100%. Drove me crazy then I remebered I had changed a setting in the cal function, to keep dates for 1 year past. I changed to 1 month and rebooted the N900, and now in standby I am 2-3% instead of 100% and back to 2 days of normal usage per charge, which is a mix of wifi, 3G, txt, voice, pics, games, and a little bit of everything.. hey its still new!! This problem didnt raise it's ugly head till I upgraded to 1.1.. Hope this helps. Craig

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

But the thing is in my case that the battery drains while CPU is 97-98% idle.

And both times it happened after I installed new apps.

Some of you asked me if I had rebooted. Now if it is necessary to reboot after installing a game why am I not prompted to do so by the app manager?

And how could a newly installed app like a game, that is using no connections, gps or resources, eat up all the battery?

Could someone confirm if there is a bug in the application manager?

Re: Unusual batterry drain when phone is idle
 

BTW, recharging Li-Ion atterieswhen half-empty does no harm, infact it's better on the battery to charge often :)