It's controlled automatically by the ambient light sensor.

Yes, if you want to keep the backlight off during the day, don't be left-handed.

I think my N900 has some kind of serious battery issue I still haven't read about in the other posts... I have been using it for a week now, and occasionally (not always) the battery will drain fast.

This morning I think I beat a new record. Unplugged my N900 this morning at 6.00 a.m. after having left it charging for the whole night. Battery was completely drained by 10.30 a.m.

The use of the device included 5 minutes on a wifi connection to check mail before I left home, no more than 1 hour browsing (UMTS 3G connection) later in the morning. I've downloaded and installed AMSN, played a little with it (by the way very slow loading). That's it. No phone calls, no pictures, no radio/music listening, movies watching this morning.... and the battery is empty.

This is not happening always, the battery will usually last a whole day, but occasionally fast battery drain occurs. Once I tried rebooting the device and the battery draining seemed to stop: eg. it took 2 hours to drain half battery, but after the reboot I was able to run for 6 more hours, and I'm talking about the phone being idle most of the time.

I am not a Linux savvy, but I have the feeling that occasionally something hangs? Some process is draining the battery?

One thing that also happened (3 times) is that I disconnect from my wifi router, and the N900 will not see the router anymore (the other devices I have don't have any issues with the router). I have to reboot the N900 and everything works again. Some service fails?


Are there some Xterm comands I can run to check if something is wrong when these strange behaviours occur? I have tried the "top" comand, but I really don't now how to use the output I get...

Any help appreciated.


Active Desktop widgets: OMWeather, Converstions Inbox Desktop Widget, Calendar viewer.

have u upgrade your firmware to the latest software? Sound like some app is Not Responding and is using your RAM and CPU. Something definitly out of ordinary. May be try reflashing it might help. I have not got my N900 yet but this is all I can help you with, SOrry.


There is not reset button for N900 either. You either have to download the flasher and reflash it. Usually it fixes problems you've had on the N900.

But have you recently installed any applications?

Can you please tell us what apps you have downloaded too in case one of the them is causing a 'hang'.

I noticed this too. If I add up widgets needing WIFI connectivity my battery time reduces drastically. Normally if I m not using it a lot, I need to recharge it once a day otherwise twice.
Had to buy a car charger which really helped me keeping it alive through out the day.

Firmware should be the latest (1.2009.42.11) as I got it just one week ago.

Installed apps are:

aMSN
Bounce Evolution
Conversations Inbox Desktop Widget
Facebook Installer / Facebook Widget & Photo Uploader (disabled)
OMWeather (with 2 extra icon sets)
Password Safe
rootsh
vim
vncviewer
zoutube
fennec (which seems to install xulrunner)

that's all, everything else is standard.

I would try reflashing only if there's no other way... I really don't like the idea of reflashing after just one week.

Do this buddy. Uninstall the app that you've recently installed one by one and monitoring the battery level. If the battery improving then the app that is uninstalled is the cause else keep going and note down on the list. Other wise I cant really tell you which one causing the hang. Since I dont have the N900 yet. But I experienced this sort of thing on my YDL6.2 linux on my PS3. lol. It does slow down very badly and seem to make my PS3 runs warmer.

I can't wait to get my N900 from the stupid Amazon.

Facebook Installer / Facebook Widget & Photo Uploader (disabled)
OMWeather (with 2 extra icon sets)
Password Safe

try get rid of these 3 apps. I think the Facebook and Omweather may be the cause. But don't take my word for it. I've seen some forum somewhere about the Facebook App draining RAM out of the N97. So I am hoping it is the Facebook app.

The "top" command in xterm gives me the following info:

Mem: 224748K used, 20800K free, 0K shrd, 1972K buff, 76036K
CPU: 4.3% usr 1.5 sys 0.0% nice 94.2% idle 0.0% io 0.0
Load average: 0.88 0.86 1.37

every 60 seconds I see the CPU value get higher, around 11/12% (usr around 9.7%)

N900 is idle with 3G connection to network (no data connection active) and Xterm window open.