Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

When I got the N900 battery life was terrible!
I put the thing for sale the next day. As I used it I liked it more and more so I played around and read posts here and there and finally found a great solution!

This may or may not work on yours but very well worth a try.

3 things you need to do.

1ST

- Let you battery run DEAD on it's own.
- Charge it up till the phone says it's fully charged.
- Now here's were you need patience. after it's fully charged, plug it up AGAIN. IF it still says fully charged than your good to go. On mine it said fully charged but when I pluged again it continued to charge for almost 2 hours!

NOTE: keep plugging your device again after the phone says it's FULL. The phone eventually will be calibrated with the battery! Don't listen to "the battery is this or that it does not need to be..... Just do it!

2ND

Go to settings,
internet connection,
click on CONNECTIONS TAB,
now edit your WIFI connection,
click next,
click next again,
next again,
now click on ADVANCE TAB,
now click OTHER,
on wi-fi transmission choose 10 mW.
on POWER SAVING choose MAXIMUM.
no click on SAVE.

This will give you very good battery life if you use wifi alot.
Before I could NOT leave wifi on, the battery will be down 50% in 3 hours! Now I use the wifi to stream a 42 minute BONES/FRING tv show and the battery is still shows green all the way to the top. Before I be down 40%!

Just browsing the battery lasts and lasts. I also should point out I have the app that lets you switch to 3G or GSM. I have it set to GSM when I dont need 3G. I will test the battery difference between the 3G and GSM when I get some time.

Try this and let me know how it works out for you.

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

Thanks... Will Do!...

I Love these kind of posts we should see them here more often

Thanks Again

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

Just finished doing your 2nd tweak..Wait n Watch. Though i dont see any llogic on ur 1st on. How does over-charging give u a better battery life?

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

Thanks for sharing.

PS: Does it make my battery larger too?

PPS: If this was an email, that subject line would be caught by my spamfilter ;)

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

"on wi-fi transmission choose 10 mW."
Facepalm.

I do not even care to explain. Search forums/bugzilla. There is no silver bullet and YMMV with this setting.

.edit
btw. I had to read thread topic couple of times also :P

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

thanks a ton..

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

that hopefully isn't overcharging. if it is, do not ever never do that unless you want do destroy your battery.

and the tip might damage battery anyway. depends if the charging chip trickle charges the battery. or then it just stops charging too early at the first time.

and battery life increases after a short while after first charge cycles.

e: title is btw exactly same than a wiki article with numerous tips

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=256

Jorma Virkkunen (Nokia)
"The option of choosing the 10 mW transmission power is there only because
certain countries require this in their law. The low power transmission has a
negligible effect on the battery lifetime because the data is sent in short
bursts that last for less than 1% of total time. On the other hand, the lower
transmission power will make it harder to keep connected. Therefore it is best
to use the (default) 100 mW power, unless legislated otherwise in the law of
your country.
"

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

The switch to gsm probablhy had bigger effect, especially if there are things using internet, such as im/presence, email and voip/sip.

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

well. As far as i know . it is best to drain your battery till its dead . and charge it till its full for about 3 to 4 times. That way you will use all its potential. I work with Laptops a lot and factories have explain that doing that will give you better life span and longer use.. I use to work for Hewlett packard . Don't know if batteries have changed..

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

yes it works with laptops (calibrates the battery controller) but no, it probably doesn't work with cellphones. battery (hoprfully with cheap knockoffs too!) has only protection circuit inside.

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

"mymo900 Today , 12:44 PM
Posts: 2 | Thanked: 1 time | Joined on Apr 2010 Report This | #3

Just finished doing your 2nd tweak..Wait n Watch. Though i dont see any llogic on ur 1st on. How does over-charging give u a better battery life? "


You will NOT over charge the battery, the circuit or whatever its called will stop when its TRULY fully charged. What I mentioned does is calibrate the phone with the battery. The phone seems not to know that the battery still needs more charging, who knows but it works.

"ysss Today , 12:46 PM
Posts: 1,860 | Thanked: 1,170 times | Joined on Jul 2007 Report This | #4

Thanks for sharing.

PS: Does it make my battery larger too?

PPS: If this was an email, that subject line would be caught by my spamfilter "

If you want it to yes, knock your socks off.
And since its NOT an email subject why you bother to post, okay you have time, good for you.


" slender Today , 01:00 PM
Posts: 1,070 | Thanked: 386 times | Joined on Dec 2009 @ Finland Report This | #8

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=256

Jorma Virkkunen (Nokia)
"On the other hand, the lower
transmission power will make it harder to keep connected. Therefore it is best
to use the (default) 100 mW power, unless legislated otherwise in the law of
your country.
"

I have not had any problem keeping the connection. Even streaming movies works great. so surfing is no problem at all.

" shadowjk Today , 01:21 PM
Posts: 529 | Thanked: 192 times | Joined on Mar 2009 Report This | #9

The switch to gsm probablhy had bigger effect, especially if there are things using internet, such as im/presence, email and voip/sip.

NOPE, the first thing I did before all that I wrote was to put the phone on gsm. Right now I'm testing the phone on 3G and streaming music. So far 1 hour and the battery green color hjas not moved.

"ossipena Today , 01:44 PM
Posts: 1,430 | Thanked: 798 times | Joined on Feb 2008 @ Finland Report This | #11

Originally Posted by danx
well. As far as i know . it is best to drain your battery till its dead . and charge it till its full for about 3 to 4 times. That way you will use all its potential. I work with Laptops a lot and factories have explain that doing that will give you better life span and longer use.. I use to work for Hewlett packard . Don't know if batteries have changed..
yes it works with laptops (calibrates the battery controller) but no, it probably doesn't work with cellphones. battery (hoprfully with cheap knockoffs too!) has only protection circuit inside. "

It works with cell phones!
__________________
__________________

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

hello, I use battery eye app and noticed that when battery chrg complete, phone become to drain battery power neverthelss is on AC. so in the morning my bat level is approx 80 percent.

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

Try read the manual that came with the phone. It clearly say... Do Not Charge After It Is Done!

So it would for example be bad to charge it while sleeping... this is probably even worse than that.

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

wtf is this? please learn to use forum, this is fully unreadable to everyone except you

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

trickle charging harms battery physically as I've already said in this thread... thats why no charge until charge% drops below 80

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

Been charging phones while I sleep since back in the days of the first xda phone. No harm. Anyways, if you dont want to try don't guys. Its easy as that.

But it's good to have other cents worth so others can decide so.....

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

third time: trickle charging destroys your battery physically. so this should be known before trying any of charging tricks....

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

Yes it does. LIO batteries are very different than the old NMH batteries used in older laptops and phones. Then Gen3 LIO are even different than Gen1/2 in that they take a few cycles of charge/discharge to reach peek capacity. And unlike NCD or NMH batteries, you do not want to drain them below 7%. Nokia phones that use LIO will in fact cut you off at about 10% to prevent battery damage.

As for those worried about charging at night and waking up with only 90% battery, this is common and has happened on every phone you've owned. Look at the battery indicator in the status bar and you'll see it shows "full" until about 80%, just like your other phones did. The difference is that now you can run an app that talks directly to the battery to see what's really happening. You just didn't know it was happening before, ignorance is bliss. :)

If you really want 100% charge in the morning, use the simple low-tech approach that I've used for years: Hook your charger to controlled switch (or a timer) and have it turn on a couple hours before you wake up. That way it's just finishing charging as you wake up! :) No charge/drain/charge cycles, and you get a full days power. Just don't blame me if you wake up at 5am to your phone beeping about low battery. :p

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

Tried the 10 vs 100 mW trick several months ago when it was first hypothesized. Didn't make any difference then, except in the far corners of my house I couldn't stay connected to the wireless.

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

Well, there is a grain of truth in what's been said, in that older Li batteries didn't mind charges that were < 3% or so, as they never counted as a cycle. Note that topping 3% is NOT trickle charging.

Newer chemistries do get bothered by small charges so Nokia has to choose between protecting the battery and letting you leave home with a low battery. They chose 80% and frankly it's fine. Could be 90, but in time battery will lose capacity and when "top" is 92%, it will destroy it cycling it 4 times a night. Also, if you leave it charging and doing something, it could cycle like 20 times overnight.

80 is good, leave it be. If you want to make sure it's full, leave it charging until LED is green. It's full then.

Also, battery charges faster from low to medium than from medium to full, as above some 70% or so the rate drops (Assuming Nokia can charge a battery right, and they do). So top charge at 40% while at work rather than overfilling it to 99.9 at home. 20 minutes in a charger will do wonders. Use a wall wart.

Last but not least, a little rant. Please, before starting a hints and tips page, make sure you check your facts. Ask around. Battery university has a must read.

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

One note - I leave my N900 charging overnight and I know that it has MORE battery juice than I charge it at night and disconnect before going to sleep. N900 actually uses a charger power overnight.

So, dropping capacity to 80% overnight on charger is strange for me.

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

The logic behind the first is based on some reports of some devices (Blackberry to name one) that when battery reads 100% it's not really at 100%, it's actually closer to 95%. Which would make sense in this case.

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

N900 never uses charger power, like other phones, because charger power is too unstable. It always runs off the battery.

ETA: You have a drainer if it drops at 80% overnight. Mine tops at 97 and in the morning it's 86%, but I know why. It used to be 95-92, but with daemons and daemons it started to drain.

IIRC, ESpeakcaller, shortcutd, phone speaker switcher, recaller, battery eye, that where am i thing, all have daemons running. More probably do as well. Also, encrypted wifi. And mail. And IM. And update check.

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

my theory:
staying connected to the internet is much better than permanently connecting/disconnecting. at least as far as wlan is concerned.
i think the whole process of connecting requires a lot of energy (just like starting your cars engine) so it pays out to keep an idle connection.

not sure if that counts for gsm-internet (especially on 3g), though.

right now i'm connected to my homes wlan for aroud 10 hours nonstop and there is no difference in batterydrain.

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

Is there some kind of application available that will make a (loud) sound when the battery is finished charging? Believe it or not, but when I'm asleep I can't tell if the little green light has come on to let me know I should take it off the charger.

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

In fact doing that may be harmful to your battery.

Modern Lithium Ion batteries like those used in Nokia phones such as our beloved N900 don't have memory and don't need to be primed or "trained" like old-fashioned Nickel or Lead-based batteries. It should work to its full potential right away and your N900's battery life during the first cycle should be no different than in the 10th or 20th cycle. You can charge whenever is convenient, no need to periodically discharge, trickle charge, etc. That's battery management of the previous era. :)

The "smart" chip on the battery tries to regulate voltage for charging and discharging, preventing the battery from discharging when voltage gets low. Sometimes this can be a problem when charging requires the battery to power on (like N900), if the battery is "too dead" it won't have enough power to go into the charging state, but the charger should still be able to s-l-o-w-l-y add charge to this battery until it finally has enough to enter low voltage mode and charge like normal. During this situation the N900 probably wouldn't even indicate that it is charging. So you should really avoid ever running out of battery completely if you can help it.

You should try to always keep the battery full whenever possible, or at leat keep it "not almost empty". Especially if you're turning off the phone overnight or removing the battery for a spare. (Charge the dead battery as soon as you can, don't leave it around for weeks.) Battery percentage remaining is really a guess, voltage is what it's really all about. The battery usually outputs a consitent amount of voltage until it gets close to dead and then it starts to weaken. That's why it may sometimes seem like your battery is on "full" all day and then suddenly declines rapidly. The decline is not linear. There is logic in smart battery systems to try to estimate based on experience that "X minutes at Y voltage means Z energy was used" but from one device to another this varies.

The smart chip also prevents it from overcharging, so there should be no harm in leaving the phone plugged into the charger even when the battery is full. It knows better than to overcharge it. (beware of generic aftermarket battery chargers that might not honor this "smart charging")

Personally, I leave my N900 plugged into charger whenever I'm sitting at my desk, or as soon as the battery indicator is not "full" I will put it on a charger my earliest convenience. I have chargers at work (USB), car, home (wall, USB) so I'm usually near a charging source.

If you have an extra battery you should keep it fully charged and store it in your refrigerator or other cool place. Warm temperature will reduce the effectiveness and lifetime of the battery.

It's also better to avoid rapid charging or discharging, and ideally the rate of charging should not exceed the maximum rate of discharging (but nobody really wants to wait all day for a charge, do they?). So using your USB charger is better than using the wall charger, since the wall charger pumps energy into the battery more quickly. It does of course take longer, but if you charge frequently there won't be as much charging needed, so time is not as important.

At least, that's AFAIK. IANABE (I am not a battery expert) :D

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

Since this morning I now leave wifi on ALL the time. I tell you guys I'm now VERY VERY happy with the n900!

Also, you will NOT have to keep charging and unpluging and charge again everytime. Once you have done this 3-4 times the phone will charge to FULL and it will be correct. You can test it by simply pluging again and the phone WILL say FULL.

The phone just needs calibrating with the battery, end of story.

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

No need, the Nokia charger is smart enough not to keep charging when it is fully charged. When your N900 has a green light, that's because the battery told it that it is full. It also tells the charger, and in this state the charger is using virtually no electricity.

A simple way to illustrate this is to touch the wall plug after your phone has been charging for a few minutes (yellow light), it will be warm. Now touch it after the charging has been done for a few minutes (green light), it will be cool.

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

Hmm, then I don't get it. Why all the scary warnings that leaving it charging overnight will kill the battery? I was really worried for a second. So I can just plug it in at night, forget about it, wake up in the morning, unplug, no harm done to battery, no electricity wasted?

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

Bad idea, I think. See my previous reply. Also, Li-Ion batteries charge extremely slowly when they are nearly full (something like 98% slower than when empty), so your extra 2 hours of charging might be accomplishing almost nothing anyway.

The Maximum power saving is safe to use, but it will negatively affect your wifi speeds and connection stability. (and before PR1.1 it was absolutely unusable on this setting)

The good news is that you can set this on a per-connection basis.

For example, on my work WiFi AP i have power saving set to "Maximum" because speed is not important there. At home, I set it to "intermediate" because I download updates and do streaming and other things that are really terrible when the phone is on maximum power saving more.

I would not recommend setting power saving to "Off". It seems to have no better performance than "intermediate" and uses a LOT more battery.

10mW is not beneficial IMO. Leave it on 100mW and enjoy a better WiFi experience. :)

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

what warnings?

nobody said its dangerous to charge over night.
the dangerous part is when you unplug and then re-plug the charger after the phone told you its fully charged.

when the phone realizes that its charged the charger stops charging (omg, what a sentence).

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

Yeah, if you use the official Nokia High-Efficiency charger that came with your N900, it uses less than 0.03W during idle load (fully charged battery). Unplugging will prevent this 0.03W but there is no harm to your battery.

I charge my N95 and N900 overnight every night, and have forever, and never had any problem. :)

Also check here, the N900's charger has 5-star efficiency rating according to Nokia:
http://www.nokia.com/environment/we-...-energy-rating

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

thanks for clearing that up, I guess I didn't get what was meant by 'overcharging.' Plus the Nokia manual is a little scary on that point. Ill just keep on keepin it plugged in at night.

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

In accordance with electronic charts the battery charger chip feeds battery through the same wire which is used to get power from battery. So, the green lamp is not a prove that battery charger chip doesn't feed 3.7V. At least the charger DEFINITELY feeds a system voltage while it charges a battery.

Tomorrow morning I will look into BQ27x00 gauge indicators then charger is attached but green lamp is lit.

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

i guess companies have to be so sensitive with these kind of things just to be on the safe side of the law.

"overcharging" is a myth to me anyway. all the electronic devices i have i let charge overnight and i never had any problems whatsoever.

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

Ok the 1st tip worked like a charm for me. I dont knw wot the rest of u guys experiemced with the 10mw option. But i left my phone connected to my wifi connection overnight with a flash website idling. Normally my phone batt would conk off by morning. But it hasjust dropped 2 bars. Aweeeeeesomeeeee... :D

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

Overcharging is very real and will destroy battery quickly and spectacularly. Luckly, there are protections in place in most mid to high end gadgets.

All lithium batteries have additional, inbuilt protection.

Lithium is destroyed by as little as 3% overcharge.

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

OK, this morning, after all night on charger (green lamp on) and doing multiple measurements I see the current through charger chip in BOTH directions - battery discharge and battery charge.

But battery charge current is 10 times less than during charge start (yellow lamp slow blinking). And battery discharge current is also smaller (2 or 4 times) then usual, w/out connected charger.

So, the bottom line - charger feeds N900 with small current while battery is full. Sometime it powers N900 and charges battery-a-light but if I use a phone (unlock and run apps) then it's current is not enough and N900 is powered by both - battery and charger.

Re: Make Your Battery Last Longer
 

After awhile with green light and higher current drain it increases the current to top-off the battery.

I've seen it float between 90 and 100% whilst on charger.