Need opinion on N900 battery life.
 

I have a N900 for about 3 months now. I have been reading posts about people's experiences with battery life and ways to improve it. I have been trying everything to improve it, but I can barely make it one day. Here is my config for the device.

T-Mobile service.
GPS is disabled in settings.
Wi-fi is disabled.
Bluetooth is disabled.
I have the switcher for 3G and 2G. I only use 3G when I go on the internet. Any other time I keep it on 2G.
I only have a data plan, so I do not make calls or text.

I only have 2 desktops enabled.
The only widget is the calendar widget.
I have shortcuts for address book, phone, Foreca weather, messages, and email.
My email is set to update every hour.
Foreca weather is manual set for update.

My screen is set to 2 out of 5 brightness.
I am running the black plastic theme, but that doesn't seem to make a difference.
I do not have a Micro SD card installed.

I usually charge it every night and take it off the charger at 7AM.
With maybe one or two hours of internet surfing a day. It is almost dead by 10PM.

Is this the same experience as everyone else? Or is it just me. I am starting to lean towards getting a new battery just to see if it will make a difference. How is everyone else configuring theirs for the best battery life? Am I missing something or is this normal?

Re: Need opinion on N900 battery life.
 

my battery life improved a lot when I overclocked, as the lower frequency is set to 125mhz rather than 250mhz . I left it on standby for about 7hours and it only went downs about 9%

I am not in anyway recommending that you overclock

Re: Need opinion on N900 battery life.
 

That's an interesting idea. I might have to try it. 7 hours and 9% is really good. One day I took it off the charger set it down for the whole day. Did not use it at all. When I came home and looked at the battery it was at about 1/4 left. About 14 hours with no usage. Makes me believe it could be something running in the background, but I can;t imagine what it might be. I don't have much installed on it.

Re: Need opinion on N900 battery life.
 

do you have battery graph installed?? if so does it show large cpu usage??

Re: Need opinion on N900 battery life.
 

my OC'd N900 lasts 2-3days with 1 hour internet and 3 hours music and standby on 3G (not connected to internet). it never lasted this long before OC.

Re: Need opinion on N900 battery life.
 

So i ran Battery Graph for a couple of hours. The CPU never spiked high at all. I will run it for a while and see if anything changes. As for overclocking, I might give it a try. Which way did you guys do this? I know a couple different ways, but I'd like to get opinions from people who have tried it. I would like to try a small overclock. Drop the frequency slightly just to see if I can improve battery life.

Re: Need opinion on N900 battery life.
 

We do it by trying all kinds of random things and screwing up our N900s and blaming Nokia. Then eventually we read

http://wiki.maemo.org/Overclocking

which gives simple instructions. And we live happily ever after.

"Americans always do the right thing -- after they've tried everything else first." Winston Churchill.

Re: Need opinion on N900 battery life.
 

I've seen the battery of my N900 perform like this:

• When using the default kernel and only GSM, no data connection of any kind and not doing anything on the N900, except for a few calls it lasts 4 days
• Like above, but adding around 30 minutes of wi-fi per day, it lasts 2 days
• Like above, but adding more wifi (total 1 hour per day, not continous), it lasts one day.

In general, if I stay a while (from 30 min to 1 hour) reading something or playing, the battery lasts just one day.

After upgrading the kernel to Titan's power kernel, but without any kind of overclocking (default settings), the max time I get is 2,5 days.

If I use the MStarDict application and forget to close it, the battery drains in a few hours.

Re: Need opinion on N900 battery life.
 

When you say wifi is disabled! what do you actually mean by that? disabled as in card is down or that wifi is not connected.

Also as your phone updates your email everyhour and if you receive a lots of email, I would say, keep on 3g only. 2g will just make things worse during the email retreival.
I goto 2g when my batter is has one bar and I dont have a charger around :P
Also I turn "off/down" my wifi card most of the times as I like to have full control over my fone as in.. " Hey phone.. I must tell you what to turn on n off and when to :D"

Re: Need opinion on N900 battery life.
 

Just to add , Overclocking will void your warranty ... In case you get excited and miss that line on the link given by geneven ;)