~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

Hello,

my biggest problem with my n900 actually is the bad battery live (respecting my using behaviors).

I'm always online with skype, icq and sipgate, download emails one time per hour and my battery lasts only 7 hours :-(

I liked the idea to have a "computer" in my pocket, but like this it's not quite usuable.

I bought some more batteries, but changing battery twice a day sucks. When I'm at home, my N900 is on charger all the time.

I know, that it's not Nokias fault, but that's so disappointing.

What are your experiences?

Bye
MPW

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

When I'm at school it usually only takes 50% battery each day.. Checking up a few facts on the internet, texting, a few calls etc...

When I use it to listen to music, at the same time as I'm using it as a bluetooth modem from my laptop, I get about 6 hours with it.. I keep it plugged into the charger alot though under that heavy usage so that is not a problem..

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

I have maybe 24 - 36 hours battery life, I have 3.5G on all the time but I'm not connected to any chat service... My email checks every half-hour. Also, 7 hours for a "computer" in your pocket is quite good.

EDIT: Oh and once I got 72 hours of battery life, right after flashing PR1.2 :eek:

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

Ofcousre its nokias fault ,for supplying a shitty battery, maybe they can realise their mistake and at least release a better battery for n900 one that goes for at least 2 days.

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

Yeah the same, and don't believe those who will be like 24 hrs or so its not true. Always online, music player, a little browsing, email, some calling its about 5-8hrs. Maybe i sit at home too much but this was never was a problem, if it took it of changer in the morning. If you want to extend battery life, wifi switcher is the one that gives the best results, but again you will lose the idea of N900 "Online as it happens" I still remember the days of Nokia 5110 battery life :D

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

If I use it as I advertise it I can get about 5 hrs.

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

And where exactly do you suggest sticking a bigger battery?

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

If I don't really use my N900 at all it will usually last about 9 or 10 hours. I'm not connected to any IM or SIP but it does check e-mails.

If I use it for any reason then time is much shorter.

And sometimes it's really bad depending on application. For example, on Saturday I took phone off charger -- green light, fully charged -- used eCoach for 45 minutes, and 3 hours later my phone was giving me the low battery sound and warnings (i turned it off at that point). So less than 4 hours from fully charged to nearly dead battery.

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

I dont know but take off the back. look all the thick plastic around, do you think it was impossible to design hardware to fit like 1800mah? or nokia was to lazy to manufacture whole new battery model for this device.

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

I share your experience, sometimes it is just great being online, having everything you need in your pocket, I was walking around Athens, listening to some tunes, and bam battery low I have no idea where I am, i launched OVI maps quickly, was waiting for a GPS fix for like 5 min (no data plan, wifi) and it died on me... In middle of nowhere no one to call, nowhere to look at... Then i remember my 6300 at home it never failed me. Yes 7hrs is too little, 12 would be reasonalble on heavy usage. But on days I am working its all okay. I am online only on my way to and off work.

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

i switch to 2g whenever i don't need a fast connection, it usually lasts up to 15 hours or so

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

I got about 15hours to 30hours depending on my usage. I always online watching video lol. And also sms, calls, music, video, taking picutures, instaling and testing new apps

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

I would say around ~20hours.

-Always connected to the skype,
-wifi set to maximum power saving and 10mW. (Always on)
-Modified two-desktop-setup
-Enhanced Power user kernel.
-I try to avoid running apps on background
-Listening mp3's about 3 hours a day.

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

i get around 10 hours constant browsing

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

There's something going on there, a few questions for you:

Is the N900 brand new?
Have you upgraded to the latest Firmware?
Do you have any software which was installed from Extras Devel repositories?

It takes a few weeks(in my case) for the battery to mature and start giving you maximum usage. Untested software could cause battery drain, and the old firmwares were riddled with battery draining bugs.

My battery usage profile is the following:

Skype always connected
Google voice plugin always connected
OMweather updates every 4 hours
Email updates every 15mins(2 accounts)
Xchat (irc client) connected at all times to two channels

If I have these on at all times and on 2-2.5g gsm and connected to wifi at home, and with no user usage in about 8 hours I lose about 20% battery life...

When I am at work I have wifi only on, my gsm turned off, and all the same things connected, and I do a few texts, some browsing(1 hours), a couple of hours of music playing, my battery will only drain about 20-40% over the course of 9-10 hours.

The heaviest battery usage occurs under 3G internet.

GPS usage is actually not bad if it were just up to the gps... the problem is that the stupid map software costantly downloads, so if you are on 3G with costant downloading of maps and gps receiver on, this will give you very high battery drainage.

Also, when using the internet everything depends on traffic, if I'm on irc and I am idling in an extremely active channel, my battery will drain much more.

When I first got the device I had Horrible battery life. maybe 8-10 hours with little usage from a full charge

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

I am testing it on 2g mode, this graph looks pretty good.

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

I get less than 7 hrs if I use AIM messenging on there.

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

My suggestion is to have an external battery pack and keep it plugged in while it is in your pocket - you can get those solar chargers with 3500mAH batteries which are about the size of the iphone.

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

I bet that won't feel very comfortable in your pocket....

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

Or you can buy a Mugen Power 2400 mAh battery ;) ... your phone will look really big but to be honest it wasn't really small in the first place :P

Normally I could use my phone for aprox. 9 hours, now the MP battery lasts at least 18 hours (of heavy usage, not even thinking about saving the battery etc. ... of course with heavy I don't mean 18 hours of watching video etc.this I didn't try yet :P)

More about this MP alternative batteries here -> http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=38068 and my small laic review here http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...&postcount=254

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

It was brand new when I bought it in 2009. :)

I will be honest when I say that if I have to disable basic features of the N900 and avoid using it as advertised, then I might as well not even bother to own it. If you want to disable cellular radio or whatever in order to save battery, that's fine, but I won't do that. If that means "real life" battery time is 4 hours for me, then that's what it is. Having a longer battery life at the expense of not actually using it is pointless.

That being said, you're using much more "active" stuff than me, so it is disappointing to me. I have Foreca Widget checking once an hour, mail checking once every 15 minutes (IMAP gmail and MfE exchange acct). That's it. No open programs or active connections. No IM, no SIP, no GPS, no Bluetooth. I am connected via Wifi when I'm at home or work, and 2G/3G when I'm out.

Coming from using a N95 for a couple years, I'm already used to horrible battery life. This is my third Nokia phone and battery performance has gotten worse with each one as phone capabilities have gotten much better. My 6682 could last almost a full day -- sometimes even more than 24hours (but never 2 days). N95 was much closer to N900 in battery life: Fully charged in the morning, dead before I go to sleep that same night. So, like with my N900, I bought extra chargers and just tried to keep my N95 charged as much as possible. At home, at work, in the car, it's basically a wired device...

I hear co-workers complain that their phone "only" lasts 3 or 4 days on one charge, and their old phone lasted a week... it makes me both laugh and cry :)

Earlier this year I went 2+ months with nothing installed on my N900 (because I was sure PR1.2 would be right around the corner... heh) and basically never using it other than web browsing and e-mail, and battery life still sucked. When PR1.2 finally came out I flashed and started over, but things are the same.

My gut feeling is that MfE is a big cause of most of my battery drain, as it is one constant from the first day I bought N900, but it's pointless to try to investigate further because I will not stop using MfE anyway.

I'm fortunate enough to work a job where I'm at a desk all day, so I can keep my N900 on the charger the whole time. This gives me enough battery to last from the time I leave work until bed time (about 6pm until midnight). But depending on what I'm doing with it, sometimes it doesn't even last that long.

Weekends are the dangerous time because I'm away from chargers and have to pray to Nokia that my battery will last until I get back home. :)

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

Sigh, don't you people ever stop?

Buy a second battery, get yourself a solar charger, bring your USB lead to work, whatever. The battery life in the N900 is no different to the myriad of other tablets & cell phones on the market right now.

Sure, if you turn on 3G, GPS, and WiFi all at the same time and make heavy use of it all, your phone is going to go flat after a few hours. Please point me to any similar product by any manufacturer that lives up to whatever expectation it is you have.

If you want 2 days with everything turned on, then you're going to need a battery about the same size as the N900 itself. Do you want that?

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

well i guess thats why Nokia gave us a free DC-11 when i got the phone. :) It helps to have a battery handy. I did get another battery (compatible) that works great with my 5800 but when i use it with the N900 it DOESNT EVEN BOOT UP!!

Well but in reality the battery levels are really unstable. sometimes even doing the same activities day in day out, SMS, calls, mail check (thru Wifi) it doesnt give the same results.

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

The only reason I disable the gsm option when I am at work is because reception for me is so poor that it is worthless to keep it on.

I am not sure about Exchange as I do not use it. Maybe you're right that is the culprit of your battery issues.

All I was doing was offering you an example, ie. My battery usage profile.

I would definitely like it if the N900 had better battery life, but for my use, and considering I have USB in my car as well, I end up being able to charge the device any time I need, so it is not really an issue for me.

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

Ovi Maps is a huge battery drain for me. Especially if the phone is overclocked, the battery is drained in 2hrs.

I feel the phone is not responsive enough at anything less than 1GHz, but the battery life sucks big time at that clock speed.

IMHO the battery drain is also has some amount of randomness to it. Somedays the battery drains much slower than other days, in the same usage scenario.
Maybe it's some kind of placebo effect.

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

Yesterday 5pm (96%) to now 10.40am (25%), 17h40m, 2h Skype-call pulled it from 60% down to 25%, I was up all night with a bit of texting all over wifi with gsm on and an alarm going off. Just a normal day? No 2 hours of talking I normaly do not do with my mobile. Another day I get 26h, another I survive a rock-festival 4 days without charger. My previous phone happened to give me 2 weeks standby... nice I never tried what n900 is up for as I now use it just more frequently as I would do with a normal phone. My previous I could drain down to zero in no time with continuous browsing over 3G. Worn out battery made it through the week but never stayed alive for 5 hours with gps, music, and surfing. If you like to have a battery keeping an n900 busy for 2days you might want an attached batterypack which raises the size factor with a 1.8x multiplier. 35% in two hours means 12 batteries of the same would blow through your system for that 2days setup..

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

if you read it correctly i said better battery not bigger battery, as in a 1500 mah battery as opposed to a 1320 mah battery.

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

You know what i make from this thread and other's similar? That there is no single culprit for battery drainage. It sounds like doing anything on this sucks the life out of the battery. True some report miracles with 20+ hours with always online.

I dont think MfE is to blame.
I dont think IM online is to blame.
I dont think Ovi maps is to blame.
I dont think MicroB is to blame.
Ultimately, they all are to blame.

I have disabled every possible function of the phone and discovered it made no difference (lowest brightness, all radio intennas off - except phone function, vibration off, zero multi tasking) and battery drops life like a ....

(View The graph)

- Internet browsing through the wifi drains the battery AS fast as 3G.
- When the phone radio is offline (underground train) the battery stabilises but still falls. What does this tell me? well that no application is sucking the battery excessively. No extra devels app uses the phone radio so this filters this possibility.
- Idle. Not really, connected through 3G (check emails etc, but not online on any IM account). But nothing else. Kinda idle i guess.

I know, with long testing that 2G is wonderful to the battery life. But who can seriously advise that we use 2G on a daily basis? it's fine for IM chat etc but when you have to open a browser window the pain returns.

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

You'd be much better off using battery graph as it shows CPU usage and wifi/gsm connections.

Autodisconnect is in extra's at the moment and defo helps with saving battery life. It's a shame that a higher capacity battery wasn't used but if one uses Autodisconnect then less time is spent using the 3g connection as this drains battery like a pig! I sometimes have facebook,msn and skype turned on and this can rape the battery a tad but sticking the phone on 2g all day one could easily get 24 hours, internet would be slow but for email, calls it's perfik! ;)

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

I use the 2g/3g switcher about 10 times a day.
on 2g while idling and online on im's, and I switch to 3g when I browse and do other stuff. The switch only takes 2 seconds so I don't mind. I get 13-16 hours, depending on what I do. Online on 2g only checking mail every 30 minutes I got 48 hours. (Did about an hour of 2g browsing during that period)

I get only about 3 hours battery life when I watch the world cup over 3g ;)

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

I think there's probably more to this than meets the eye. Just because you're underground and the phone radio is offline, it doesn't mean it's not draining any power. In fact, I suspect that constantly looking for a connection will drain more battery. Offline /= off..

As for extras-devel apps not using the phone radio, that may be the case, but there are other things apps can do to affect battery life. One of the biggest is keeping the CPU working and stopping it from stepping down to a lower frequency. WIfi & bluetooth will use up your battery even if they are not connected (unless you switch them off).

For the record my n900 does anything between 6 and 24 hours. I generally have wifi on, 3g on, skype, yahoo, facebook and ovi messengers on, feedingit rss hourly, 6 email accounts (1 hourly, 5 through ovi push email), facebook widget, and dataplan monitor widget.

On top of that I probably talk ~2 hours a day, sms, browse, play games, do some coding, calendar, todo etc

All in all, I'm not really careful about battery life and, for what I do with it, I'd be surprised if it had longer battery life.

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

It's fine in cargo pants. All geeks where cargo pants right?

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

Did you actually turn the radio off in the underground? Looks like it was just not connected what means to power up for signal strength automatically and broadcast for AP constantly till connection is established. With nothing on you tell you get that kind of graph? Nice, that looks like you got some stuff installed running in the background.
This battery-eye graph does not show much detail, would you mind to install batterygraph in replacement and take a full graph lets say charge till full when you get at home and turn radios off but GSM just no BT, no wifi, no data uplink and disable autoconnect and update for your clients (mail etc.) aswell. We will see what your graph looks like tomorrow.

The graph shows also that you have charge loss while charger is plugged in, there is already a bug filed about this behavior.
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8965

There you also see my graphs from batterygraph.
I found some weird CPU load I wasn't able to attach to any process but it started to drain the battery.

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

Hi, I hope it didn't seem like I was dismissing your reply, I didn't mean it that way. Thanks.

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

Try Autodisconrct it does exactly what you do but on it's own, I think the app still needs a bit of work or playing with the settings but is defo a good app to have, the worst thing about manually switching is when you forget to switch back to 2g and drain your battery, this is compounded when you get used to the battery life using 2g, come to use the phone "aaaaaaah" left it on 3g and now it's dead! autodisconect will turn back to 2g for you WOOT! ;)

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

The only problem with autodisconnect is it's tricky to setup if you leave your IM status online. Since it took me a few tries to find the sweet spot for switching to 2G when I'm only using IM.

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

Only if you have them open all of the time. 90% of the time one of the following will kill your battery:

• Excess CPU usage
• Weak cellular signal (switches to higher power xmit)
• Constant radio activity (IRC constantly ticking, AJAX scripts)
• Poorly behaved program waking up the CPU (foreground or background)

What software have you installed? There are a handful that are known to be brutal on the system for no good reason.

When phones lose contact with a cellular base station, they go into a high power mode to try and reach the nearest one they can. This kills your battery.

I can, have to because I'm on AT&T. And honestly I've had little issue with the browser at those speeds, though I'd rather have 3G if available.

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

lol how true, hence my post in the autodisconnect thread ;)

still though once setup you can't go wrong, should be part of the firmware!

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

what is that sweet spot then? I also use autodisconnect, does the job for me, although i'm actually trying to use as much data as pos at min (vodafone issues).

I dont know what i've done recently, but my battery was draining VERY fast all the time, If I played a game or used the web it would fully drain within an hour or 2. Today my battery has been fantastic, when i'm not connected to the net my battery eye line is almost horizontal (still flies down when I actually use the phone thou)

Re: ~7 h battery live, who get's less?
 

Seriously batterygraph is Waaaay better! I used battery eye but battery graph shows the cpu usage so could help with the like of games, playing a few hours of scummvm can use up the battery so I assume the more you hammer the cpu the quicker u drain the battery.