Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

My N900 has never had the most stellar battery performance. With heavy use I normally had to recharge half way through the day. With light use I would need a recharge by about 7pm. I am normally logged on to skype, hotmail, ymail, googletalk and facebook chat so that could be why the battery dies so easily.

However, in the last week or so something has gone terribly wrong with my battery. It is doing four hours only. This is even with me having switched off all chats and switching to 2G mode. The battery just drains constantly and consistently to last no more than four hours.

So obviously there is a serious problem somewhere as the drain has nothing to do with how heavily I use it and even with heavy use four hours seems really really terrible. Either the battery has developed a fault or peharps there is a heavy process going on in the background that is eating the battery. I haven't noticed any slow down though.

The only recent things I have installed are Desktop command execution widget, midnight commander, proximityd, tweakr, htop.

Htop shows as top process:
messageb (User) CPU 26%.

Next is: user CPU 20%;
then 2 root showing about 12%.

Total CPU is 85-87.8%. Surely this is very very high right and could explain the terrible battery?

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

Did you take the firmware update in the last week or so?

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

>95% CPU should be idle if you are running no apps. Did you try restarting? What is the CPU usage after a fresh boot?

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

I was having exactly same problem for the last week or two until yesterday (except my unexplained high CPU usage was massively affecting performance). I couldn't figure it out and was ready to reflash it until I decided to try running the 1.1.1 update it has shown available for the last couple of days (I'm in the UK) in case this helped. Suprisingly this seems to have sorted the problem completely and myh CPU usage is down and my battery life back up. Obviously this doesn't help root out the cause of the problem but as long as it doesn't go back to the way it was I'm not too fussed.

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

I rebooted and Htop is still showing 86.9% usage despite not running any applications.

Did not do a recent firmware update. Although I am in the UK I bought my N900 in the US and updated ages ago when the rest of the world got the update.

One thing I just thought to try is a hard reset. Will see if that helps. If not I guess I would have to reflash the device.

Edit: Wow CPU just went up to 100% for a second.

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

That CPU usage is suspicious. Could you post top or htop output? Perhaps we could track down what process/application is making the trouble...

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

just a thought incase some of you have missunderstood "top" (task manager in xterminal.

install conky and see what the cpu usage is or install system info widget (shows cpu and memeory)

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

Probably some extras-devel apps, check top and post the output.
Only one I remember so far was syncevolution frontend cpu nomnom, but it was fixed already.

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

as i am writting this reply, the keyboard is out. 2 widgets are running, 2.5G connected, 2 apps and web pages are open.

currently in idle, my cpu usage is 2% and 170mb of ram usage.

as i take action (like switching between apps and web windows) the cpu usage goes up to 21% and 175mb ram.

i have no more than 5 apps installed from devel and testing.

i am also running skype, msn, yahoo and facebook im's.

when i receive an email or im, the cpu goes up by 32%, ram is up to 175mb.

almost all of my devices used half of their ram even in idle mode.
just wanna ask if that is normal.

if i run my device at this rate continuosly, mt battery will last for 18-20 hrs.

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

Guys!!

I'm facing a similar problem... My battery barely lasts through the day and I need to recharge it by 5 pm. I have no desktop widgets running at the moment and I don't use the phone on wi-fi at all. It only runs on Edge cellular data connection and I use it for some browsing (mainly this forum). The call duration is also not very high - probably half an hour in all. Add to that some texting and 30 minutes of music.. and that should sum it all.

I observed it using the Battery Eye application today and saw that the battery continuously keeps dying even if I'm not using the phone actively.

I'm using the PR 1.1.1. The only reason I could think of is that I have tried out a lot of apps from testing and devel, but have uninstalled them now. I'm not sure if something hasn't been removed and is still eating the battery.

Can someone help please!!!

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

I could have sworn the last time someone had this problem it was the desktop command widget, but that's just off the to of my head.

As suggested, the best bet is to use top in x terminal or Conky, to see EXACTLY what is using up the CPU like that.

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

Interesting. I did install desktop command widget recently.

I type top and get this

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

oops not sure how I attach so you can see the full sized image.?

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

I think the blue duck is eating all your CPU ;)

Seriously, try removing desktop command widget and see if it improves. The other killer for my battery was the facebook widget.

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

The first line of the top output looks unhealthy indeed. Anybody has idea what that could be?

Anyways, the status are looks clogged with icons, maybe you need to uninstall some of the apps...

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

I had the same problem with my N900 since last Thursday/Friday. I didn't install anything before that.

I charged my phone until the green light was on (unplugged at around 9:30 PM). This morning my phone was death (email checked every 30 minutes but no other usage). Usually when battery level drops about 10% during the night for me.

http://www.raymondkwan.com/uploader2...t02%5B1%5D.png

http://www.raymondkwan.com/uploader2...t03%5B1%5D.png

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

dbus is the system used for notifications (allowing applications to respond to system changes, popup messages, etc). From the look of the top three apps, I'd say something on the desktop is continuously updating.

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

You have 3G on all night, which won't help. Switch to 2G, it should be enough to retrieve emails every 30 mins. I also set my screen brightness to 1 and ensure the device is locked.

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

There's a thought - does BatteryEye itself cause continuous DBUS notifications?

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

Even on 3G, my battery usually drops 10% overnight with only email checked every 15 minutes.

I changed my email checked to 30 minutes and the battery was dead before 6 this morning from a fully charged at 9 PM last night. Something wrong is going on here.

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

It should not. Though as with any software, bugs are possible.

The battery-eye daemon only listens, for a specific system bus signal (/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/bme). It doesn't at least intentionally send anything over DBus.

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

Oh, you mean something is draining your battery.

when I saw the subject I was actually quite concerned for you for a minute there.

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

All afternoon Dbus has been showing CPU of 23- 43% plus. Hildon-desktop up to 21%. This is with no applications running. So clearly there is alot of activity going on somewhere which is causing the severe battery drain.

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

it's probably a desktop widget going crazy.

try deactivating one by one, and monitor CPU activity while doing that. you should be able to identify the offender.

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

Thanks. Deleted all my widgets and didn't make any difference. Even cleared every single item from all my desktops and still didn't make any difference. So I guess I have no choice but to reflash.

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

Just by any chance, do you connect through a static IP on any network?

Edit: Just to be more clear, "static IP" as opposed to "DHCP".

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

have you tried just un installing everything that didnt come wiith the phone

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

best advise is to reflash it clean. This way you won't have any broken code and bug in the system OS which may be running in the background to consume your CPU and lead to drainage of battery.

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

Not sure. I just use 02 Mobile Web. Have no idea whether it is static or not. Used to switch between my wireless and 02 mobile web but when I left the house and disconnected from wireless I would find that I would not be able to reconnect to yahoo and msn chat (would just have a permanent network error problem) so now just stick to 02 to avoid this issue.

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

So, what setting do you have under Settings > Internet Connections? 02 Mobile Web? Or, "Always ask"?

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

Try to install and use some dbus sniffer application from extras-devel (sorry, I am on a run and don't remember names). It may give you the clue - what is a reason behind huge dbus activity.

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

I select 02 Mobile Web so I am always online and don't have to switch between mobile web and wireless.

By way of update I gave in and flashed my device last night. Before I flashed I would need a recharge by 9.30 to 10am after starting to use the device at 6am. By between 12 noon and 1pm it would be in need of its second charge. Right now it is almost 1pm and the battery level has only moved a single level. Looks like it should easily make it through the day without needing a charge. I can't even remember that ever happening.

The only problem is I have lost all the mods I made. I was hoping the backup app would restore all my mods but it did not. So now I have to go through the 90 page share your mods thread.:(,

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

Do you happen to be using a case with a magnetic closure?

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

No not using a case. Just screen protector. Does using such a case cause the device to have problems?

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

The magnets can trigger the "keyboard open" and/or "back panel open" sensors. The former will cause the screen to be on all the time while in the case (which soon zaps the power) as well as rogue screen presses, phone calls, etc. The latter can result in the media card being disabled/enabled & scanned repeatedly which would also affect battery life. It depends on the strength and positioning of the magnets though.

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

Hi,

I have the same problem with my N900, the battery lasts only about 2-4 hours when I'm not even using the phone.

The phone is also extremely slow when I try to use apps, open text/instant messages etc.

When I type "top" in Xterminal, i get this:

http://aleksihietanen.fi/Tiedostot/screenshot06.jpg

Any ideas what to do? If there are no other solutions, I'm probably going to reflash the device. The only problem is that I don't even know how to do that. Could someone give me clear instructions how to reflash the N900?

Thanks in advance!

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

my two pence: have you tried 'wifi-switcher'? my battery life was awful (approx 6-7 hours) before but i can get several days now. i haven't tried leaving the kernel modules loaded since updating to 1.1.1 yet but, to be honest, i'm happy with how it is now.

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

God damn... Your N900 rushes a lot... According to ''Top'', your CPU is running WAY TOO MUCH, and some daemons eat your battery.
I suggest you uninstall what you installed from Devel or Testing, and if it doesn't work, I strongly suggest flashing your device. I'd like to help in doing it, but I've got to go haha!
If you need informations about it, PM me.

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

http://whipped.nurkka.us/galleria/upload/1269446888.png

Tell me about it... Thats with 2/2.5G + Google talk, no Wi-Fi, GPS, 3G etc. + some super tux/music.

Re: Something is Eating my Battery Alive: Please Help!!!
 

I don't know if it helps but using Skype IM and the Modest email client for gmail have been the greatest battery drains for me. I need IM but I have since moved to web based Gmail and that seems to have a positive effect.

Hopefully, PR 1.2 will include some work on prolonging battery life.