So I got an N900 from the retail store about a week ago and have been amazed at how horrible the battery life has been on the phone. Moderate use, the phone still cant survive more than 5 hours tops.
Now, after Googling a bit found that most users have much better battery life and that one other reviewer had the same crappy battery life as me. Someone had suggested to him that his Power Save Mode for Wifi might be off and that he should turn it on.
For the life of me I can't find how to check if PSM is on and/or how to enable it.

Does anyone know the terminal commands or whatever to check if PSM is on and then how to turn it on if it isnt on?

Thanks so much guys!

It's on by default, and you can set it to a lower-savings mode or disable it completely in the individual connections' advanced settings (Settings -> Internet connections -> Connections -> pick a connection -> Edit > Next -> Next -> Next -> Advanced -> Other -> Power saving).

BTW, most people report at least a days' use per charge. If you only get 5 hours it sounds like something else is wrong. What else do you have running? Any desktop or statusbar applets in particular?

It doesn't depend just on the N900, if your wi-fi router doesn't support PSM you'll find yourself in the same boat. I have one such router, my N800 emptied in 2-4 hours while connected. My other routers are fine (N800 lasted for days).

Hey guys,

Im thinking it isnt the PSM mode, from what I understand, PSM mode only effects your battery life if you are using WiFi, I don't connect to WiFi at all during the 5 hours. I just assumed with the WiFi constantly pinging in the background like Maemo (and Symbian) do I thought it might be something to check.
I looked though and PSM is enabled anyway.

I also hafe heard others phones lasting the day, thats all I want lol For it to last from when I wake to when I goto sleep like the last 3 phones Ive used recently did.

Im wondering if I should send it in for warranty....

Im running widgets, Facebook, Media Player (not on just sitting there), few bookmarks, a few contacts, weather (auto update is off entirely) and thats it.
I did hear that Skype and IM could effect ur battery and Ive had Skype and GTalk running all the time, so I disabled them for this charge cycle to see if there is a difference. But the weird part is I would actually turn off the internet connection completely when not using it, so dont see how Skype etc could still effect my battery.
An example of how bad my battery is, was posting and surfing this site last night and after an hour battery had dropped by half... is that normal? Id hope not.

I have achieved 2 days of use without a recharge.

Battery life is not a problem exclusively with the N900 I have seen this with my N97 (NAM on AT&T). The scenario is that when on battery and WiFi is enabled the device chews a ton of battery. The N97 can drain a much larger battery in 3-4 hours if Gravity and ProfiMail are running. WiFi radios use a great deal of battery power.

The N900 is a sneaky bugger and will switch on WiFi without you realizing it!

The N900 has a sick WiFi setup. 1) It prefers WiFi to GPRS, so it automatically will switch you to WiFi. I have seen my N900 (NAM on T-Mo) switch from GPRS to unlocked WiFi networks while I drive down the street! 2) The WiFi Radio is hugely sensitive and powerful. I was freaked out when using Maps while driving I was stopped a a light about 800 meters from a mall and the N900 told me that I was logged into the WiFi network of the Panera restaurant in the mall???!!!, How crazy is that, my laptops don't have that kind of sensitivity/power.


We need to have a solution that allows us to turn WiFi on and off based on profiles. Several tools exist in the S60 space that allow this functionality. Some even automatically change profiles based on GPS coordinates, or cell tower ID ( Best GSM Navigator by Smartphoneware as an example). This would allow WiFi to be enabled at Home, but disabled in the car. Secondly the OS needs to manage WiFi better and turn WiFi off automatically when the apps widgets are not using WiFi.

Several suggestions:

On the support forum it has been posted that there might be a bug in PSM and moderate actually saves more battery then maximum.

I would also suggest turning on "always ask" in the internet connections section. This helps rouge jumping of WiFi networks.

lastly turn off WiFi when you aren't using it!

The N900 doesn't connect to unknown wifi networks without prior user approval, regardless of their encryption.

Battery life gets better. When you completely drain the battery, the first charge will hold for just under half a day. If you allow it to recharge before it is completely drained, battery life will improve drastically. I now get easily 2 days of normal usage, and could probably push it to 3 if I allowed it to drain.