Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

My N900 battery lasts for around 30-40 hours depending on the usage. But I've noticed that its Internet Surfing using GPRS that consumes the battery. If I serve internet using GPRS , a fully charge bettery's one bar will go down within half an hour or sometimes even less.

Sometime back I've read that old sim cards drain your bettery fast. Mine is a 7 yr old sim card. So is it the sim card thats putting strain on CPU for catching the signals?

Do modern sim cards have a better chip so that catching signals don't put too much strain on the CPU? Do I have to change the sim card?

Re: Its not Wifi, its GPRS that consumes the battery within hours
 

It's known that network seeking drains battery a lot. An old sim might pickup weak signal which would have similar effect as network switching. I recommend you renew your sim card.

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that consumes the battery within hours
 

Renew it, but do not expect big changes. In airport mode my n900 stays alive a lot of time. However, always connected by 2G (and wifi disabled) my n900 dies fast.

I suspect that to be connected to skype and gtalk all the time is somewhat related. But an iphone 3gs with 3G (not 2G, 3G!) and the ebuddy (=gtalk) running all the time, lasts almost twice (>1.5) than the n900.

Conclusion, I am losing my loyalty to maemo devices.

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that consumes the battery within hours
 

You say first:
Then you say:
I do not understand your logic. First of all. You are connected to 2G AND you are using data link CONSTANTLY WITH APPS you are using. Secondly for fairness it would be right to do comparison with same kind of setup. With two IM apps like gtalk and skype you are probably doubling your data rate with server and keeping N900 cpu & modem wake. Please before making this kind of statements try to even understand what is happening under the hood and try to make comparisons more scientifically.

ps.
Sidenote to all those who think i´m here praising N900 as best device.....NO I´m NOT! Learn to understand what you are reading.

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that consumes the battery within hours
 

I am constantly on 3g and/or wifi.. for night i am in flight mode. For me in last over 40h+ depending on what i do. I have also noticed that using the browser takes a lot battery. Not as much as you though. I can surf and still have ~30h left in the battery. Not if i streaming though.. like from youtube then it will go down faster.

lol! iphone.... it would not be able to do better than this.

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that consumes the battery within hours
 

My Honda car drinks an obscene amount of petrol at 7000 rpm, much more than when the engine is switched off!

Conclusion, I will never buy a Honda car again!!

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that consumes the battery within hours
 

My gf consumes an obscene amount of money at dating, much more than when she's dead!

Conclusion, I will never get another gf again!!

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that consumes the battery within hours
 

#AlMehdi, when I read posts like yours, I really thing something's wrong with my n900. I've though in doing a video of a normal "session" and to post here, to see if the behaviour is what must be expected or there's something wrong with me.

Having said that,

Sure. That was the BIG point of the n900, to be always connected to these services. This is what the n900 offers in comparison with the other phones. They can say a lot of characteristics, but then you say, hey, wait, somebody is calling me through skype. Yes, it is always running, THIS IS what a mobile phone is supposed to do presently, doesn't your iphone do it? what a shame.

You try to do it by 3G, the phone lasts 2/4 h. You install that magic widget, turn in 2G, and yeah, the battery is still poor but you're connected all the time, around 8 hours then (just being connected).

This was the situation ... before.

Yes you're right. But scientifically, I am comparing the overall feeling of the two devices.

BEFORE, the n900 had multi-task, permanent gtalk/skype connection, a browser really capable. The iphone had maps, much more speed, and vast amounts of software. Well, n900 won.

AFTER, here we have the iOS4. Guess what, the multi-task of the n900 is not so spectacular now, and they also start to be permanently connected. They still have maps (n900 hasn't, I'm too frustrated on this), a cam that works (forget the video mode if you are running the kernel ideal, at least in my case), and yes, the iphone has battery.

BATTERY, because they do not need to disable the 3G, because they do not need to overclock the device and is still 2x or 3x faster than the n900 (iphone 3gs), and because they don't need to reflash the device each month, or to reboot each week, to re-gain speed and stability.

Damn, each 5 minutes of navigation with 3G in the n900 is about a 10% of battery, and run afterwards to change again to 2G because you'll need the mobile in the afternoon. This stuff is inexistent in an iphone.

What should I do. To disconnect from these services? To be always in 2G? To put the brightness to 1? To downclock the kernel?? Then why I've bough the n900, if everything has to be off.

And well, after this experience with nokia, I'm really expecting that the next meego version will be too heavy for the n900. So I'm not going to have a better experience that what I already have now.


Having said that, I'm starting to thing that nokia has been always wanted to do a tablet rather than a mobile. So I'm truly anxious to see what they'll purpose eventually. But regarding the mobiles, I have serious doubts that my next 500€ will be given to nokia, again.

PD: To answer more precisely to you, what I say is, if nokia wanted to provide a device with these capabilities, they needed to be sure that his device could handle them in terms of velocity and of battery. The velocity of the n900 is too bad. The battery when you use these services is insufficient. So, I understand why the battery drains so fast. WHAT I don't understand is WHY nokia has sold this device and at that price if they didn't have any solution to this. It is just irresponsible.

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that consumes the battery within hours
 

I logged an error about this - look it up and vote for it... ;)

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that consumes the battery within hours
 

Being constantly connected to Two sip providers? Hmm. Maybe you have quite high expectations. Actually i can drain my N900 battery in half an hour if I like to and say that my usage is normal. So Before jumping in conclusions please be specific what you mean. Stating here that this phone does this and that is not detaild enough. If you really want to be connected to all the stuff that N900 gives you option to be connected then IT DOES but battery will be emptied in couple of hours. Suprised? If so then you have not understood what you are holding in your hands.

8 hours sounds about right. Pretty standard if you look what was sitsuation when N900 entered to market.

You gotta be kidding me? Feeling? I´m lolling here :) Who cares about that? We need data to make comparisons and to back our statements. Otherwise it´s just...yeah...feeling. Good luck with making reviews :P

Yes. What is your point? That there is competition? Suprised?

Whatta hell? Who says that you have to disable 3G? Who says that you have to overclock? Who says that you have to flash it? Or reboot? Have you installed stuff from devel/testing or some webpage? How did you measure iphone vs. n900 speed? What kind of different apps? What kind of cases with speed? What do you mean? I do not understand. Yes i could say that there might be speed difference on different task, but then again i could say that with fcron and shell i can do stuff in seconds that would take on iPhone different apps to manage to do them.

It´s not so simple as you think it is when you are talking with different kind of people. Try to think out of your box.

Sounds like HW problem.

Who has said that everything has to be off?

I have zero expectations because of current sitsuation and history of Nokia.

I think that yous should make some kind of data/bug report that shows basically your usage case and how battery lasts. After we are able to reproduce it then we should compare to other phones and try to use them as N900 (eventhought it might be to some extent even impossible to use other devices as N900). Also ruling out fact that different operators might have different 3g/2g strenghts on area where devices are tested.

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

i sold off an iphone 3G to get the N900. much of my experience contradicts the comparisons you're making.

- i ran the iphone in 2G mode ALL THE TIME... because it was the only way to get a full day's use out of it. 3G would be switched on when the data speed was required, and then immediately switched off again. this, btw, required jailbreaking to accomplish in a usable manner, because apple buried the factory toggle switch 3 menus deep.

- the 3G doesn't multi-task and, frankly, runs like **** on iOS 4.0. 3GS/4G may address some of this.

i think any smartphone is going to require the user to make some compromises in order to balance usage with battery life. i had a balance with the 3G and i'm working on settling into one on the N900. i do know that the N900 is giving me a lot more reason to want to get at that data, so i can't just leave it in my pocket like i would with the 3G. that's a good thing... now i just need to figure out how to reliably get a full day's use out of it with data speeds that are reasonable. i'll let you know how it goes.

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

Why are android phones left out of this? Any experience on how they compare?

My reason #1 for no iPhone: No qwerty.

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

Yes, feeling. I'm constantly having "feeling", I try to do things with my n900, and after a while I take the iphone and do the same (basically because I needed it in 30 sec, not in 5 min), and surprise surprise, I do it fast fast. Then, what do I do? Run some bechmarks to provide some specific data? No, I'm not doing any review, I'm just collecting data for myself, and what I annotate is "the iphone is a better device".

Mmm, uuu yes? Because I am comparing the two devices, I must be talking about competition ... Yes, that's the idea!

Me. If you want to save some battery. And in fact, also if you feel unconfortable with hot temperatures.

Please me again, the n900 is too slow, but the truth is that you don't notice it if you have not touched an iphone ... but I'm sure you have! With the overclock, the differences are REAL. But even after this, the iphone is still faster.

mmm, are we talking of the same n900?

Yes, I did it at the beginning, then I reflashed and worked with it disabled for a while, and now I've installed things again. But no, I have not noticed substantial changes. Some unstability, yes. Assumed. The necessity to reboot when things were too slow, I used to do it a lot before the overclocking, with extras/devel disabled. The truth is that I do it a lot less after the overclock.

Easy. Very very very easy. Usually, it is enough to count the time you need to do similar things. E.g., read an email, visit one web page, view a map, open the cam app, etc etc etc etc

But as it is difficult to appreciate, I really feel like doing a video comparing both mobiles. Not to criticise, since I don't want an iphone, but just to have real data to discuss about.

Yes, the iphone still loses in some aspects. But what was a huge difference at the begining, now after 8-9 months this is minimum, and the hardware is exactly the same (3GS).

Of course. But if I'm not wrong, the marketing of the n900 was not directed to a very specific niche. Actually, I'm trying to think in the bigest box, the one that meego appears to be focused on. If this discussion is about: I'm very happy with my n900 because I need a shell, a good code editor, and a physical keyboard, then you're right, in your box the n900 is the best option.

Sometimes I think it.

mmm, me? I mean, in order to have a decent battery life? What's the point of being connected to everyone, but only during 2 hours? Perhaps this feature needs a hardware that is not still available? If so, then Nokia has done a mistake here.

This is why I compare with the 3gs. Both a hardware equivalent. The 3G is older.

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

before answering any detail i have to say that if you are trying to use N900 as you are using iPhone then surely iPhone kicks the crap out of N900. Surprised?

Still you are talking about 30 sec and 5 min. Please give us taste cases so we can measure and compare. I do not care about your felling. Without saying it is of course true that iPhone handles some stuff faster than N900 and N900 is faster on some stuff. And for sake of your health if you find that iPhone is faster on things what you mostly do then please use it.

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

You know Petrelli, if you complain here you will be disqualified as being a troll.

Moreover, if you give credit at iphone or Apple in any way, you will be suggested to buy one for yourself (funny that you already own it thus they can't do that tis time :D)

It is very sad that there is people here giving such poor excuses to such simple, justifiable claims. Now THIS is what keeps Nokia doing wrong things and losing the market. No matter what mistakes they make, they come to fan sites and they will find uber trolls defending their design, ui, hardware choices.

If 8 hours in 2G mode is a normal, acceptable scenario... Seems we're back at old 5110 days (and this one lasted longer, btw)

This only reinforces them in their poor strategy.

PS: A proud, always-mains-connected-N900 user.

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

Now back on topic, that is, giving help if possible..

Petrelli, I have found that using Nokia Messaging instead of configuring separate email accounts has increased my battery life. If you are using email on your N900, consider this possibility and give us your feedback..

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

I hope dearly that you are not referring to me. I´m just poor guy who want´s some way to MEASURE. I do not try to defend N900. I´m trying to get some clear result so we can have good old discussion and not some W@anking contest like: "Its amazing" - "Yes amazing how fast" - yawwwwwn, or "Its freaking slow" - "Yes it´s slow". I want some sort of scale. How to h3ll should i know what slow or fast mean for example to you? I have no idea. Does asking these kind of "hard" question make me fanboy of N900. I doubt. Only thing it makes me is maby complicated, not nice, not wanted etc. guy who ask "stupid" questions :|

If you are not referring to me then excuse me but if you are then i hope that you learn to really read. Not just words.

Look bugzilla. There is also people stating that A and B are slow and guess what devels ask them to do? Yes! Measure and compare!

Depends on usage as always.

So that we can get some kind of clear facts. We can start posting batterygraph images and explaining in detail what happened during day. It should give us at least some kind of measurements.

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

With my operator, a single packet every 5 seconds on 3g consumes as much power as downloading over 3g constantly. My SIP provider sends a keep-alive packet every 10 seconds or so. If I had two accounts the battery would only last about 4 hours on 3g...

On 2g with my operator, the power consumption for a similar load gives about 24 hours battery life.

With no traffic, being connected to 2g or 3g has such a marginal effect on battery consumption I haven't been able to measure it.

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

also from what i think..

if you keep your phone in 2g mode instead of 3g mode and expect to use the same apps like gtalk or skype or wtever.. you are still transferring the same amount of data.. but now because you have decreased the available bandwidth to your phone.. now your phone in 2g mode will take longer time to download emal.. facebook contaccts gtalk an all..
basically your phone will run longer at high cpu
i use 2g when i only need my phone for being in touch because battery is very less.. not for surfing cos i hate waiting that long..

so u being in 2g and using same data transfer will decrease battery life.. thts wt I think

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

Except that 2g is time divided access and 3g code divided access. The 2g radio switches on and off dozens of times per second, taking its turn to transmit among all the other phones. 3g radio transmits at the same time on the same frequency as other phones but with different code, regulating power quickly and carefully so that no device overpowers another. The minimum time a transmitter needs to take part and keep its transmitter on can be very long and measured in seconds.

So 2g would be more optimized for short but frequent data. 3g optimized for lots of high speed data.

Someone with more in-depth knowledge than me welcome to explain it with correct terminology..

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

heh,
mine n900 lasts 2,5 days with the following:
- ~ 2 hours a day mp3/flac listening, daily
- ~ 1 hour of wifi usage for RSS, email, porn, whatever; also daily
- ~ 5-10 calls 5 mins each daily
- ~ 5 SMS daily
- ~ 1 hour djvu/pdf reading, daily as well

using autodisconnect/brightness minimum/wifi down when I don`t explicitly need it.

I really find that scenario ok. And don`t having 3g in mine banana republic is became an advantage, hehe :)

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

watching porn clips (flash) consumes obscene amounts of battery.

conclusion, i'll never watch porn again ...

:P

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

It is a fact that N900 battery is very bad, but so are the others'.

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

Well take no offence, but I don't care about others. I care about what I bought, the N900.

To me it is not acceptable to have an 8 hour battery life just because I have been browsing 2-3 hours. Honest.

Slender, no personal attack to you, simply that I've grown tired of seeing people being accused of trolling just because telling the pure truth and complaining. You just came accross with your opinion, so I'm sorry If I offended you in a personal way.

<rant>
About very frequent complains and whines here from very respected members that label dissapointed people as trolls and suggest buying iphones and the like, I am of course agreeing that this maybe is not the place because this is not a Nokia site. But as someone very wisely said not long ago, people usually go to complain to the most respected site when things go wrong, I may not agree with that conduct but It is part human being.

At the end of the day, If this site is only for very developer or geek-oriented people profile, or complains-free people, why let anyone who writes a username and password to come in..?
</rant>

You know, It's late.. My apologies beforehand to anyone if this rant upsets you.

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

your post makes no sense to me and you have completely misunderstood what i have just tried to say. Do we speak different language? And have i accused someone being troll? I might have asked clear use cases and detailed descriptions and if possible listing apps. simple things. I do not doubt that someone is having problems with their N900 but if so i would like to help but first you have to be able help yourself. Stating here that i have problem without trying to really open and show any interest debugging system is just big middle finger towards community. Or even worse! Trying to in general say something about device x and when asked to explain or give measurable example answer is "feeling"..wtf? how you can have any conversation after that?

Is it so freaking hard to understand that before we can help we have to measure and describe use cases in a way that its reproducible. no one cares what you experience with your device nor is able to learn from you if you can't do simple task. For example install battery graph. use phone as usual. export pic. edit picture and describe what you have been doing along day besides graph. etc. also try to be as specific as possible. Do not even think that people here have crystal balls or telepathic skills so that they can magically help someone after he has said just that his system is slow or there is battery drainage.

.edit
looks like we should have guide:"How to ask properly help for yourself"

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

***** moan complain stab jab and all over battery usage. i use the sh1t out of my 900 and YES the battery gets juiced.. sometimes way quicker than I want, but I can also do most anthing i want on it that I an do on my workstation. its a mobil computer, not a smartphone. i know that if i constantly use it, which i do i need to have it on a charger when not in use. not a big deal. i have a wall charger for when i sleep, i have a usb charger for when i work and i have a car charger for when i drive. dont you all tooo? it was no hidden secrect when i bought this device that it had a smaller battery than desired for the amount of computing power and features. really it doesnt bother me. charging is free.

sorry for my unorganoised post. its late and im sick like hell!!

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

i do have one question though. does the battery have cycle counts like Mac batteries do? if so how can i check what the count is? i drain my battery dead at least twice a week. im sure it cant be a good thing, but batteries aren't too expensive. maybe i should grab another anyways.

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

no it isn't, it costs time and adds up to the electricity bill

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

slender is right, its really not that difficult to find the root of the cause of battery drainage. batterygraph helps a lot, and I uninstalled it once I figured out the cause and I am fine ever since.

True you should only care your own device, thus you should work it out yourself.

Spare battery does not hurt you. Look at those iPhone users carrying a solar charging pad around, you'd probably feel better :)

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

o' boo f'n hoo. I paid 40k for my car and I have to spend time and money to give it gas. The more i use it the more gas i have to put in it. wasting time and money is part of life! charging is too. i'd love to hear someone chim in on the actual time it takes to fill the 900 battery and the cost in kilowatts in a daily basis. my guess its no more than 2 hours and 21 cents.

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

im wondering y people always complaining about n900's battery being drained fast, to think dat theyr surfing the net like hell..imagine ur using laptop with its own battery,do u think its battery will last up to 6-8hrs????

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

@kiss - bravo *clap clap* much better than my car analogy!

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

I just love the whole comparing the n900 to the iphone! A few days ago I had to fill in an application form, it pretty much asked for my life history. Now I'v used an iphone before and there is no way in hell I would have been able to fill out the form on one of those, the form was online so I had a browser open, another browser to check some information from another website, vnc open so I could check a document I had on another pc and while doing all of this I had some tunes playing in the background.

Hell just writing all the things I had to would have been painfull enough on the iphone lol ;)

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

2 hours and 21 cents is not free

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

Either was your $500+ N900. If you can afford it, you can afford to charge it without complaining about it.

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

unless you also camped a few days on the line to buy it, 2 hours is still quite a significant cost

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

i never understood people "camping" out for a device or anything for that matter. good things come to those who wait. for instance, the first N900 buyers got buggy phones. I waited 6 weeks after launch and got lucky with a phone that has no "problems" that i can find.

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

So, test 1:

- Wifi disabled, 3G enabled, permanent internet connection, skype and gtalk accounts enabled, three times viewing mail, three times consulting a web page (less than 5 min browsing in total).
- A constant slope seen in BatteryGraph app.

-> From ~8:50 to 11:36, battery from full (~96%) to a 54%.

Other details, kernel overclocking at "ideal" conf, 2 desktops, widget of calendar, three contacts in desktop (saying if they are online or not with the green dot), two widgets-like indicating the internet IP and the battery percentage, brightness to the 3 position, display almost all the time disconnected. Mail autocheck each 30 min.

Well, this is a behaviour not surprising for me based on my past experience. However, perhaps being always connected with the two IM accounts makes a big difference.

Test 2 will be the same with the two IMs disabled.

(now, at 11:42, a 52%)

Re: Its not Wifi, but GPRS that is consuming most of the battery
 

Another (improvised) test.
Unplug from dc at 12:00, both the iphone 3gs and the n900.

The iphone, with 3G activated. The n900, with offline (airplane) mode, cause I wanted to keep battery.

13:45, I take the iphone to search some web page. Before, I see the battery. Wow, a 97%, impressive.

14:00, I take the n900, I put it in online mode. Let's see the battery (starting from the typical 96%). Wow, a 89% (!), with airplane mode?

I really didn't expect such battery drain when the phone is just doing nothing at all. Or in the opposite, I didn't expect the iphone to be almost at the 100% with 3G (but no data connections) activated.

More tests ongoing.