Availability in online mode eats battery
 

Hi,

I was wondering why my n900 drains almost empty in 8-9 hours. Even during night time it consumed almost half of the battery.

My colleagues had about same settings (weather widget, 3G connection on, email checking, RSS, BT) with similar use and their devices lasted well over a day.

The only difference was that I have skype and the availability setting was "online" (green dot in status display). I changed that to offline and now the battery is almost full after night and seems to last very well the rest of the day and even the next night.

Does anyone know what is happening under the hood?. Top does not show any significant change in CPU load, but something must be eating the battery in online mode

Re: Availability in online mode eats battery
 

Are you online via Wifi or 3g?
if on wifi have you got wifi power saving set to max? and your wifi power setting at 10mw vs 100mw?

Re: Availability in online mode eats battery
 

Top doesn't show anything, that is normal. When you set to available, the phone pings every X minutes to send your status to the server. Everytime, this uses a lot of power. Turn off 3G when you don't need it, remove the weather widget and stop Skype always on!

Re: Availability in online mode eats battery
 

answer to the topic: yes it does (obivously).

Re: Availability in online mode eats battery
 

Weather widget is not the trouble, no significant change if it is on or not (4 hour update interval).

I think you are right, phone is pinging the server when availability is online and there is no setting to control the interval.

What you mean by Skype in on?. Isn't that the availability setting?

Re: Availability in online mode eats battery
 

I use pidgin for msn and leave it online all the time via edge, I don't use 3g or wifi. It reduces battery life significantly, was hoping I could get by with a day of regular use, checking some mail/web sites and chattin with friends. I am hoping we see some improved battery life in the next firmware...

Re: Availability in online mode eats battery
 

stop RSS, make email interval 30min and u will get a day or so...

had the same issue fixed now.

Re: Availability in online mode eats battery
 

So, the advice is: buy a device for 600Euro, crop all the functionality to make it work like 150Euro phone, and still get up to 48h of battery life on the thickest phone in the market ? lol ?

Another funny thing is like ppl advise to turn 3G off... 4G is comming, 2G will go to history soon, and you tell me to go back to late 80's ? Some netowrks like Three in europe does NOT have 2G at all !

N900 is a "charge me twice a day" internet tablet, live with it or don't buy it and don't give others the false impression that the battery life can be extended, because it can't, unless you turn N900 into what I described above.

Re: Availability in online mode eats battery
 

Lol good point. I got the N900 so I can be always online on skype, msn, yahoo, facebook and always be able to browse anywhere. Realise now that I just have to carry a charger or spare battery with me

Re: Availability in online mode eats battery
 

look nokias specs for any 3G phone. talk time and standby time are longer for gsm so its quite obvious that you should use 3g only for surfing and voip.