N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios

[hece35]

Some measurementes. I have BT always on and hidden although during these tests, it wasn't connected. Latest FW. Only widget using internet automatically is OMWeather, which updates itself when connected every 4 hours. I log the current mAh capacity reported by 'hal-device bme' every 10 mins. When the device is in standby, the value does not change but it does not matter, since as soon as I unlock it, it is updated. I've measured these standby currents during the night (6-8h) when I did not move the phone or do anything with it.

WiFi connected: 15 mA -> ~80 h
3G connected: 20 mA -> ~60 h
3G + skype connected: 80 mA -> ~16 h
3G + MSN (Haze) connected: 120 mA -> ~10 h

Hours rounded downwards. A shorter test with 3g+skype+msn was also around 120 mA but it was shorter time so I'm not so sure about that yet. I do recharge my phone every night so skype+3g is still ok, but MSN can't cope 1 day. I migth try another plugins or using msn through jabber.

[bugelrex]

Some measurementes. I have BT always on and hidden although during these tests, it wasn't connected. Latest FW. Only widget using internet automatically is OMWeather, which updates itself when connected every 4 hours. I log the current mAh capacity reported by 'hal-device bme' every 10 mins. When the device is in standby, the value does not change but it does not matter, since as soon as I unlock it, it is updated. I've measured these standby currents during the night (6-8h) when I did not move the phone or do anything with it.

WiFi connected: 15 mA -> ~80 h
3G connected: 20 mA -> ~60 h
3G + skype connected: 80 mA -> ~16 h
3G + MSN (Haze) connected: 120 mA -> ~10 h

Hours rounded downwards. A shorter test with 3g+skype+msn was also around 120 mA but it was shorter time so I'm not so sure about that yet. I do recharge my phone every night so skype+3g is still ok, but MSN can't cope 1 day. I migth try another plugins or using msn through jabber.

This is great info to know. Thanks very much!

[luqman]

Team,
I did a full working day (9am-4pm) tcpdump on my 3g interface and here is what I found.
28% of packets were to googletalk
some sip packets (which i have registered)
14% to some london IP which I couldn't resolve..it is 79.69.135.209 (could someone help here pls)
rest were to random IPs, some as little as 2 packets, but around 3000 packets I think...
basically, there were packets trasnmistted almost every 3-5 seconds (or round that mark).
I further looked up the ports which these random packets were connecting from (source ports) and found them to be associated to skyhost...a skype process.
so the majority of my packets were skype & googletalk which were constanly chatting...maybe keepalive or presence messages.
tomorrow I will take these applications offline and keep my 3g connected and check how long the battery lasts.
if these programs are turned on & phone is on 3g, battery lasts at mots 8 hours with just a phone call or two lasting 10-15 minutes..

[alexb]

alexb, what IM accounts are you using? I was using plugins such as haze for msn and that would drain my battery fast. This week I started using jabber with msn transport and battery life has increased significantly.

skype and googletalk using the built-in integration.

[cenwesi]

How are you determining the battery level?

I am sure all of us are dying to find out....please LIST all your configuration

[alexb]

How are you determining the battery level?

I initially was going by the battery indicator display, but having done a search, running lshal|grep percentage says currently 53% charge remaining. I assume it's more accurate than the battery display indicator, as that looks more like 66% at the moment.

Cheers,
Alex

[whidalgow]

Updating, 22 hours with my last configuration and battery 70-80% !!!

Updating, 42 hours since last full charge, yesterday i saw 20 min of video on speakers, listened music around 30 min, web surfing 30min, phone calls, (15min), 15 sms, upload video in facebook in 10 min and shared files by bluetooth (15mb) and my battery shows little less than 50% !!!

[woodyear99]

I wonder what sort of battery life you would get if you left it connected to 3g or 2g internet all the time :p

[cenwesi]

Updating, 42 hours since last full charge, yesterday i saw 20 min of video on speakers, listened music around 30 min, web surfing 30min, phone calls, (15min), 15 sms, upload video in facebook in 10 min and shared files by bluetooth (15mb) and my battery shows little less than 50% !!!

is 3/2g on all the time?

[whidalgow]

is 3/2g on all the time?

My operator doesnt support 3G in my country, only use GSM

[woodyear99]

Yes but do u leave ur 2G gprs connected all the time?

[llacii]

Updating, 42 hours since last full charge, yesterday i saw 20 min of video on speakers, listened music around 30 min, web surfing 30min, phone calls, (15min), 15 sms, upload video in facebook in 10 min and shared files by bluetooth (15mb) and my battery shows little less than 50% !!!

What about email, do you have it checking at a regular interval? Or are you in a "disconnected" state most of the day?

[woodyear99]

I could get similar results IF I do not leave internet connected, 2G or Wifi...but when I stay connected battery seems to drain faster than ur results. Lucky u :)

[whidalgow]

Yes but do u leave ur 2G gprs connected all the time?

Yes, is connected all the time :)

[bugelrex]

Yes, is connected all the time :)

Which program do you have connected all the time? is it only the IM accounts? (only built in gtalk, skype)

[luqman]

hello again,
so I think I resolved my n900 battery problem. Here is the summary
1) I noticed battery would run out very quickly (<8hrs) when I had 3g turned on.
2) I tried disconnecting from Internet and use it just as a phone. Battery life was superb..2-3 days and battery was still above 50%
3) Obviously, n900 is not supposed to be used just as a phone, so I installed tcpdump(packet capture utility) on my phone. Yesterday i turned on 3g again and my running programs were skype, googletalk, SIP phone , gmail, exchange mail, omweather. I don't think i have anything else. The battery ran out as usual in 8 hrs.
I examined all packets transferred yesterday with the help of tcpdump (exported to wireshark on my pc) and found out that skype & gtalk were very chatty programs. They were constantly sending out packets which meant that 3g was in constant use. Until today I had assumed that simly keeping the Internet connection turned on via 3g was the reason for battery running out.
4) Today I have 3g connected full time but I shutdown skype & gtalk, its been nearly 8 hrs and battery level is 75%. note: the battery indicator is still nearly at 90% but we now know thats not true...

conclusion:::
BATTERY DOESNOT RUN OUT BECAUSE 3G OR 2G IS TURNED ON, BUT BECAUSE PROGRAMS LIKE SKYPE AND GTALK USE IT CONTINOUSLY TO SEND OUT KEEPALIVE MESSAGES...NOTE: I DIDNT USE SKYPE OR GTALK YESTERDAY, THE PACKETS I SAW WERE JUST CONSTANT KEEPALIVE MESSAGE...CONTINOUSLY EATING MY BATTERY JUST TO TELL GTALK AND SKYPE THAT IM ONLINE
5) next steps. now I need to find out how to shut up skype & gtalk while still remaining online. the skype protocol has been configured so, I believe, to get around firewalls, which is basically why many service providers find it hard to block skype.

[bugelrex]

hello again,
so I think I resolved my n900 battery problem. Here is the summary
1) I noticed battery would run out very quickly (<8hrs) when I had 3g turned on.
2) I tried disconnecting from Internet and use it just as a phone. Battery life was superb..2-3 days and battery was still above 50%
3) Obviously, n900 is not supposed to be used just as a phone, so I installed tcpdump(packet capture utility) on my phone. Yesterday i turned on 3g again and my running programs were skype, googletalk, SIP phone , gmail, exchange mail, omweather. I don't think i have anything else. The battery ran out as usual in 8 hrs.
I examined all packets transferred yesterday with the help of tcpdump (exported to wireshark on my pc) and found out that skype & gtalk were very chatty programs. They were constantly sending out packets which meant that 3g was in constant use. Until today I had assumed that simly keeping the Internet connection turned on via 3g was the reason for battery running out.
4) Today I have 3g connected full time but I shutdown skype & gtalk, its been nearly 8 hrs and battery level is 75%. note: the battery indicator is still nearly at 90% but we now know thats not true...

conclusion:::
BATTERY DOESNOT RUN OUT BECAUSE 3G OR 2G IS TURNED ON, BUT BECAUSE PROGRAMS LIKE SKYPE AND GTALK USE IT CONTINOUSLY TO SEND OUT KEEPALIVE MESSAGES...NOTE: I DIDNT USE SKYPE OR GTALK YESTERDAY, THE PACKETS I SAW WERE JUST CONSTANT KEEPALIVE MESSAGE...CONTINOUSLY EATING MY BATTERY JUST TO TELL GTALK AND SKYPE THAT IM ONLINE
5) next steps. now I need to find out how to shut up skype & gtalk while still remaining online. the skype protocol has been configured so, I believe, to get around firewalls, which is basically why many service providers find it hard to block skype.


Would be interesting to see if it's Nokia's implementation of skype+gtalk clients that is the issue. I.e Fring on s60 is known to be VERY battery conservative, unfortunately Fring on n900 may not be stable enough to test how well it manages battery

Also, I wonder if there is any configuration to reduce the number of data packets used for IM. If you halve the packets, maybe you wait 3 seconds v.s 1.5 secs for an IM response.. no big deal. Especially to reduce when no active conversations in place...

filed bug: https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8581
Hope Nokia consider this change

[liedekef]

To add a bit to the confusion, I found out that the percentage reported by lshal sometimes goes up again! I'm using the desktop command execution widget to see my battery percentage and at a cetrain moment it was 18%. Then I refreshed half an hour later or so and it was at 25%! Again 2 hours later of almost no usage at all, it went down to 20%.
So maybe the kernel battery measurement is a bit off?
On the other hand, my battery life is great. I get 4 days out of it, while being wireless online from time to time (30 minutes by day tops), only 2G and wireless switched off when not used.

Franky

[hece35]

Some measurementes. I have BT always on and hidden although during these tests, it wasn't connected. Latest FW. Only widget using internet automatically is OMWeather, which updates itself when connected every 4 hours. I log the current mAh capacity reported by 'hal-device bme' every 10 mins. When the device is in standby, the value does not change but it does not matter, since as soon as I unlock it, it is updated. I've measured these standby currents during the night (6-8h) when I did not move the phone or do anything with it.

WiFi connected: 15 mA -> ~80 h
3G connected: 20 mA -> ~60 h
3G + skype connected: 80 mA -> ~16 h
3G + MSN (Haze) connected: 120 mA -> ~10 h


3G + MSN/ICQ over Jabber: 30 mA -> ~ 40h.

That's more like it, by using jabber to connect to MSN & ICQ I get 4 times the battery lifetime compared to MSN-Haze plugin :) Very nice.


conclusion:::
BATTERY DOESNOT RUN OUT BECAUSE 3G OR 2G IS TURNED ON, BUT BECAUSE PROGRAMS LIKE SKYPE AND GTALK USE IT CONTINOUSLY TO SEND OUT KEEPALIVE MESSAGES.
That's right, my data supports this too. I have yet to analyze jabber but a friend did analyze some desktop version which only sent 1 packet per minute.

[cenwesi]

is there a way to fix this rather than us waiting for Nokia to fix it. i would really like to have gtalk on all the time but leaving it on will shorten the battery life.

[hece35]

To add a bit to the confusion, I found out that the percentage reported by lshal sometimes goes up again! I'm using the desktop command execution widget to see my battery percentage and at a cetrain moment it was 18%. Then I refreshed half an hour later or so and it was at 25%! Again 2 hours later of almost no usage at all, it went down to 20%.
So maybe the kernel battery measurement is a bit off?
I've seen this too. What I understand it relates on how the battery behaves under heavy load and how it recovers after idling some time. So maybe it's not a bug but rather a feature and maybe it can not be avoided with the way battery capacity is measured right now.

[woodyear99]

Been seeing this in daily use. Haze/pidgin/Butterfly have terrible battery life, using jabber with transports effectively doubles battery life in my experience anyway...

[jkq]

Been seeing this in daily use. Haze/pidgin/Butterfly have terrible battery life, using jabber with transports effectively doubles battery life in my experience anyway...

I've noticed that too. The last time I tried experimenting, Google Talk wasn't too bad. I think it ate around 3% of my battery in ~8 hours when I left it off the charger one night.

Is there a quick how-to on setting jabber up with AIM/MSN?

-jkq

[woodyear99]

It's pretty easy, had to test a few different servers/transports to see which was the most reliable for me (my 2g gprs is a bit unreliable) I noticed some odd behaviour on certain servers such as the N900 showing me as online even though others do not see my logged in and I would not be able to send IMs. I guess the server would timeout but the N900 would not get updated...

http://www.bigblueball.com/forums/general-other-im-news/33739-connect-google-talk-aim-msn-yahoo.html
Follow these instructions here once you create an account you need to select service discovery in PSI and it will list all the transports (msn, aim, yahoo) etc. just enter your password and login info for the service and it will populate your contact list. After that you just need to login with ur jabber ID on ur N900. One thing to note, it seems for msn anyway that some servers will pull every single contact you ever had and ask u to authorize each. It is a bit annoying, oddly enough after testing a few servers I found some that populate your list nicely just as you have it on ur desktop with groups and all...

A listing of all the servers is located here....
http://www.jabberes.org/servers/

[egoshin]

BATTERY DOESNOT RUN OUT BECAUSE 3G OR 2G IS TURNED ON, BUT BECAUSE PROGRAMS LIKE SKYPE AND GTALK USE IT CONTINOUSLY TO SEND OUT KEEPALIVE MESSAGES...NOTE: I DIDNT USE SKYPE OR GTALK YESTERDAY, THE PACKETS I SAW WERE JUST CONSTANT KEEPALIVE MESSAGE...CONTINOUSLY EATING MY BATTERY JUST TO TELL GTALK AND SKYPE THAT IM ONLINE


Can you switch manually to 2G and repeat test with skype + gtalk ON?

To switch manually to 2G only you can disconnect from 3G, go to Settings/Phone and select "Network Mode" as 2G only. (You should disconnect from cell network first or N900 doesn't allow you to switch). There is an alternative variant - application "3G2G switcher" but the native one is a more pure experiment.

[les_garten]

3G + MSN/ICQ over Jabber: 30 mA -> ~ 40h.

That's more like it, by using jabber to connect to MSN & ICQ I get 4 times the battery lifetime compared to MSN-Haze plugin :) Very nice.


That's right, my data supports this too. I have yet to analyze jabber but a friend did analyze some desktop version which only sent 1 packet per minute.

If you run hal-device bme where is how much ma the battery is using? I don't see it.

[Cernunnos]

Really depends on how much you use it. Games and emulators EAT battery life. But norrmal use, with IM accounts off. Facebook, foreca widgets on + shortcuts etc. 3g/wifi always on (search interval 30 mins) email search interval 4 hours. It usually lasts about 30 hours with a few phonecalls, about 50/60 sms'es, and a little bit of surfing.

[hece35]

If you run hal-device bme where is how much ma the battery is using? I don't see it.
Nowhere. I log the mAh number (battery.reporting.current) and after night (say 8 hours) I calculated the difference (let's say 1200mAh-800mAh=400 mAh). Then I divide the difference by the time e.g. 400mAh/8h -> 50mA. That's average current for the past 8 hours. And since I did nothing else (except slept :D), it tells pretty well the idling current for the given scenario.

[rmerren]

I have been having a similar situation--battery draining quickly over the course of the day. This morning I removed Firefox and Conversations widget (uninstalled both and rebooted) following some messages here. It didn't make any difference.

I wrote a script to record the battery percentage from lshal every 15 minutes. Two interesting things:

The percentage shown did not seem to always gel with the battery indicator in the upper status bar. For example it went all the way down to 0 and stayed there while the battery indicator moved into the green again during charging
The percentage seemed to (usually, but not always) drop steadily--about 1-2 percent every 15 minutes.

The second point was really what I was looking for, by the way...I thought that I was seeing a fast drain at particular times, but my logging script didn't bear this out. But the first point was actually more interesting.

In any case, I determined that removing Coversations and Firefox did not resolve the problem.

Now, following some more recent posts, I have disabled google talk and skype. I have also removed (but not uninstalled) the facebook and RSS widgets. (The RSS widget seems to update itself regularly even though I have set it not to do so.) If I get more than about 8 hours tomorrow, I'll see if I can winnow down any specific culprits.

Thanks to all the other posters for (hopefully) pointing me in the right direction.

P.S. Just imagine...I could be on an iphone and not have these problems--because I couldn't run widgets, have no access to the batteries, can only install apps as allowed, and would have no ability to run scripts to record any info. But I would have fart apps!

[HRZ]

It's pretty easy, had to test a few different servers/transports to see which was the most reliable for me (my 2g gprs is a bit unreliable) I noticed some odd behaviour on certain servers such as the N900 showing me as online even though others do not see my logged in and I would not be able to send IMs. I guess the server would timeout but the N900 would not get updated...

http://www.bigblueball.com/forums/general-other-im-news/33739-connect-google-talk-aim-msn-yahoo.html
Follow these instructions here once you create an account you need to select service discovery in PSI and it will list all the transports (msn, aim, yahoo) etc. just enter your password and login info for the service and it will populate your contact list. After that you just need to login with ur jabber ID on ur N900. One thing to note, it seems for msn anyway that some servers will pull every single contact you ever had and ask u to authorize each. It is a bit annoying, oddly enough after testing a few servers I found some that populate your list nicely just as you have it on ur desktop with groups and all...

A listing of all the servers is located here....
http://www.jabberes.org/servers/

Hey, I've done this and logged into the transport but my contact lists are not loading up at all. I logged into the jabber id on n900 as well and no contact list there either...how do i manually tell it to populate my contact lists?
thanks

[luqman]

P.S. Just imagine...I could be on an iphone and not have these problems--because I couldn't run widgets, have no access to the batteries, can only install apps as allowed, and would have no ability to run scripts to record any info. But I would have fart apps!

you are right. the iphone battery life is a farce..my wife has an iphone and the only way u can use IMs like skype is by turning them on when you need it and shutting it down after that. you can't have it running in the background(at least as far as I know)......ANY phone could do that!!!!....
the n900 actually runs all these applications continously in the background...

[toto29820]

i have been experiencing disappointing battery life recently, lasts about 24 hrs on average since last fw update. definitely worse than before the update.

[cardiff-blues]

For me personally I don't want to degrade performance of my N900 by tweaking a few things here and switching a few apps off when not in use.

The whole point of this phone is that it can do some cool stuff and that it's like a computer in your pocket. It's no fun having to be so very conservative with use so that the battery gets through the day.

I bought this phone to use it and whilst I am 'not over the moon' with the battery performance I don't want to carry it around with almost everything switched off. I want to be able to browse the web whenever I want and to play some games when I'm stuck in a queue and listen to music or watch a film or read a book without having to worry.

THE SOLUTION TO POOR BATTERY PERFORMANCE:

Well for me it was to buy 3 spare batteries and a desktop charger. The batteries costs me about a fiver and seem to be great value and it means now that when I go long haul in a few weeks, that I'll be able to read, listen to music and watch films on my N900 without worrying about the battery.

[mele]

Hi!

Does anyone knows what is this procsess where its relates omap2_mcspi?

Its eats my battery very fast, i could get rid of it only by booting n900.

[jasallis3]

Stupid question, where is the option to use only 2G or Edge networks?

[geneven]

Yes, I also bought a desktop charger and two spare batteries, with good results. I avoid eBay and just Googled bl-5j to find the batteries. The batteries I got look identical to the Nokia battery except in price.

I found that the batteries get much easier to install after the plastic door wears a bit.

[mele]

Stupid question, where is the option to use only 2G or Edge networks?

settings--->phone--->network

[Blackbeard]

For me pulseaudio has been suspicious lately. Something was gnawing my battery but could not determine what because top showed no spesific load anywhere. Since pulseaudio was mentioned here earlier I noticed that it was there with a load of 2-3%. I run powertop and noticed that the processor spent most of the time at state C2. After killing the pulseaudio process the most common state were C3 and C4 (as supposed I think).

[chewster]

Noticed some odd behavior yesterday. Battery was being drained really quickly all day. By the time I left work around 6pm, lshal reported the battery at 12%.

I left my cable at home, so couldn't charge it.

Went to see some family (media with FM transmitter on the 40 min drive) and was showing off the phone with the usual bounce, video, FM transmitter, browser, camera, video camera, etc.

Checked battery again (now 7pm ish) and I'm at 7%. Hmm.... That was only a 5% drop with quite a bit of heavy demo usage.

Left the thing in my pocket, and it started beeping at me around 9pm. Didn't check % though.

Got home around 11pm and was at 6% with FM transmitter on the way home. At this point I was already getting suspicious so I was actively trying to drain it. Did some wifi browsing on the couch, but it wouldn't die. So I left it unplugged and it died during the night some time. Charged it for an hour before work in the morning.

It's been on 3G all day, did some software updates and checked some email and I'm still at 77% at 6:30pm.

I'm thinking that in my case, the circuitry in the battery needed to find it's actual low point. If it were really at 12% yesterday after work, it should have died on the trip to my family. And it certainly should have died through the demo. Or using FM transmitter going home.

Hopefully, my good battery life will last more than just today.

[adamFsmith]

Stupid question, where is the option to use only 2G or Edge networks?

Download the 2G/3G selection applet, streamlines the process, saves you having to dive into settings every time you want to use 3G.

[les_garten]

Noticed some odd behavior yesterday. Battery was being drained really quickly all day. By the time I left work around 6pm, lshal reported the battery at 12%.

I left my cable at home, so couldn't charge it.

Went to see some family (media with FM transmitter on the 40 min drive) and was showing off the phone with the usual bounce, video, FM transmitter, browser, camera, video camera, etc.

Checked battery again (now 7pm ish) and I'm at 7%. Hmm.... That was only a 5% drop with quite a bit of heavy demo usage.

Left the thing in my pocket, and it started beeping at me around 9pm. Didn't check % though.

Got home around 11pm and was at 6% with FM transmitter on the way home. At this point I was already getting suspicious so I was actively trying to drain it. Did some wifi browsing on the couch, but it wouldn't die. So I left it unplugged and it died during the night some time. Charged it for an hour before work in the morning.

It's been on 3G all day, did some software updates and checked some email and I'm still at 77% at 6:30pm.

I'm thinking that in my case, the circuitry in the battery needed to find it's actual low point. If it were really at 12% yesterday after work, it should have died on the trip to my family. And it certainly should have died through the demo. Or using FM transmitter going home.

Hopefully, my good battery life will last more than just today.

I had a Palm 680 TREO and this was a constant problem with it. We had to do a calibration procedure where you plugged in the charger, waited 1 minute, pulled the battery, waited 1 min, pulled the SIM, waited 1 in. Then put the SIM in and the Battery and let charge for 6 hours. This fixed it. The battery life would triple, at least for a while.

[rmerren]

I have been having a similar situation--battery draining quickly over the course of the day. This morning I removed Firefox and Conversations widget (uninstalled both and rebooted) following some messages here. It didn't make any difference.


So a little update here:

I disabled google talk and skype and then rebooted. The battery drain seemed a little slower than before, but then I got an upgrade notice and realized that I had not uninstalled the Mozilla Runtime from the app manager. I uninstalled it, rebooted, and the battery drain seems to have slowed. I charged overnight, and unplugged the fully charged phone (green light was lit) at about 8:30am. I plugged in while in the car--but for less than 15 minutes total. I only did that because I had already hit the mid-afernoon time when it was previously bottoming out. I didn't get the low battery ding until around midnight--at least a 50% improvement in battery duration.

I am not sure why the mozilla runtime would be responsible for draining the battery. I had not even run firefox in the last few times I rebooted. Clearly it runs some background apps, though I never saw anything jump out at me in the ps output before or after removing this.

I should say that I did not take any other action to increase battery life today. I web surfed, talked, sms'ed, instant messaged, and had an email connection to my exchange server running constantly. I used the phone normally, and in the same manner I used my previous phone (AT&T Tilt).

The battery life I saw today was reasonable for a full day of phone use, and close to what I saw with the Tilt (I could go a good day and a half without recharge on the Tilt, though using an RSS reader cut that dramatically and I didn't have IM client running all day). I am actually hopeful that I will be able to use the phone without having to worry about mid-day recharging or planning around battery life.

Next steps in experimentation:

run a few more days with current configuration to see if results are consistent
reinstate skype and google talk to see if battery life changes
reinstate conversations widget, rss widget, and eventually, firefox to determine if those are actually the culprits.


One more note: there was apparently a service outage here in austin today, though it seems to have been cleared up before I unplugged from the charger.

[nbvora13]

For me personally I don't want to degrade performance of my N900 by tweaking a few things here and switching a few apps off when not in use.

The whole point of this phone is that it can do some cool stuff and that it's like a computer in your pocket. It's no fun having to be so very conservative with use so that the battery gets through the day.

I bought this phone to use it and whilst I am 'not over the moon' with the battery performance I don't want to carry it around with almost everything switched off. I want to be able to browse the web whenever I want and to play some games when I'm stuck in a queue and listen to music or watch a film or read a book without having to worry.

THE SOLUTION TO POOR BATTERY PERFORMANCE:

Well for me it was to buy 3 spare batteries and a desktop charger. The batteries costs me about a fiver and seem to be great value and it means now that when I go long haul in a few weeks, that I'll be able to read, listen to music and watch films on my N900 without worrying about the battery.

Your solution says, you got 3 spare batteries at a cost about a fiver...?? Sorry, but may I know the cost in numbers? Like $20 or so...

Thanks,
~nV!

[cardiff-blues]

Yes sorry! A fiver is slang for £5 in UK terms. You can pick up one battery for that if you have a look around. By the way, I have 5 batteries now.

I don't fret about using my N900 to the max now.

[colnago]

...[B][I]BATTERY DOESNOT RUN OUT BECAUSE 3G OR 2G IS TURNED ON, BUT BECAUSE PROGRAMS LIKE SKYPE AND GTALK USE IT CONTINOUSLY TO SEND OUT KEEPALIVE MESSAGES...

I never thought "3G", by itself, drained the battery...since switching to the 900, my Motorola Q on AT&T 3G, with a Seidio extended battery, lasts 6-8 days between charges as it forwards calls to my 900.

After having the 900 for going on 2 months now, for whatever reason, last week, I'm getting 12-14hrs before I drop (2) battery levels (~25%?). This on:

- T-Mo 3G (which seems to be lasting longer than on AT&T 2G)
- WiFi "enabled" all day (work from home) and (3) POP3 accounts polling in 1 hour intervals
- OM Weather polling every hour

I also noticed higher drain when logged in to SIP/Skype clients. I still don't believe it will get more than 6hrs of constant "use", but its good to know that I don't have to charge it if I leave the house in the middle of the day.

[geneven]

Yes sorry! A fiver is slang for £5 in UK terms. You can pick up one battery for that if you have a look around. By the way, I have 5 batteries now.

I don't fret about using my N900 to the max now.

Me, too. What now worries me is that the battery door will wear out to the extent that it will start falling off the N900. I wonder if that will happen and if so how long it will take?

[cardiff-blues]

Me, too. What now worries me is that the battery door will wear out to the extent that it will start falling off the N900. I wonder if that will happen and if so how long it will take?

Just be careful with it and treat it like a delicate piece of equipment when taking it off and it should outlast your mobile contract.

[geohsia]

I don't know if this is the right place to ask, but I'm going on a roadtrip and want to stream music through my phone, but as I drive I'll also have GPS / Google Maps going. I noticed today driving (1.5 hrs) that even though I had my phone plugged in to the official Nokia car adapter my battery still drained. On a 5+ hour road trip, will my phone be depleted at the end? Will the car charger give enough juice to keep the phone going with all that stuff on? BTW, I use TuneWiki, which is great... cuz I get to stream Shoutcast. I also have a BT headset, but its rather inconsistent as to whether or not it will connect so I think I'll opt for the wired headset if I get a call.

I'm also logged into Skype, but that is not required for the road trip so presumably I can turn that off...

[les_garten]

I don't know if this is the right place to ask, but I'm going on a roadtrip and want to stream music through my phone, but as I drive I'll also have GPS / Google Maps going. I noticed today driving (1.5 hrs) that even though I had my phone plugged in to the official Nokia car adapter my battery still drained. On a 5+ hour road trip, will my phone be depleted at the end? Will the car charger give enough juice to keep the phone going with all that stuff on? BTW, I use TuneWiki, which is great... cuz I get to stream Shoutcast. I also have a BT headset, but its rather inconsistent as to whether or not it will connect so I think I'll opt for the wired headset if I get a call.

I'm also logged into Skype, but that is not required for the road trip so presumably I can turn that off...

You sure it was charging?

How many ma. does the charger supply?

[geohsia]

You sure it was charging?

How many ma. does the charger supply?

http://www.nokiausa.com/find-products/accessories/all-accessories/car-solutions/car-accessories/nokia-car-accessory-dc-6

I know it was charging because it said so plus the screen was on all the time. I have the screen set to be on when charging. In the car I don't want to dork with turning the screen on and off while driving.

Standard DC-6. Don't know if this is correct but:

* Input: DC 12/24V
* Output: 5.0V/550mA

I found this after doing some quick searches. Significantly lower than the 1200 mA of the wall charger if true.

[calltrace]

My phone usage : ~2h listening music (all around 192kbps VBR 75% volume) with web browsing (edge, 3G) with enabled ICQ account.
~10min calls , 5 to 10 sms, then around 6hours on wifi , checking e-mails , downloading images ,working in terminal ower ssh (replacement for netbook :) ) .., unplugged from charger at 8 mourning , went back to home at 22 o'clock with 6% of battery

I thik this is not bad - but for sure I purchase Energizer XP4000 .
It fit exactly in my back pocket and with modified cable from telephone (twisted soft cable from phone to earphone) i can use phone without limitation (little worse handling, yes)
Price is same as two original BL-5J batteryes.
It's abble to make two full charges from empty battery (I think charging non empty battery at time of hard usage will extend this because of charging effectivity)

[flydeep]

How the hell do you get such usage!? I am bummed. All that I do is take my phone off charger, make few calls/sms and I need to recharge by evening!

Any tricks/tips buddy?

[tlex26]

Same problem here.

Without being connected to wifi/3g and having no apps/widgets installed that use Internet connections I can't last a day.
I send/receive a max of 10 sms's a day and/or 1-3 short phone calls

I have 2 original batteries and I have this problem with both batteries.

Any tip is indeed very welcome

[calltrace]

My phone cant break a day without charging too , bud this fifteen hours are enought for me (with xp4000 no problem at all :) )

I don't know how to help :)
Only switch of wireless lan scanning , firmware updated right after unpack to PR1.1 .. you might download powertop from this site and check if CPU is underclocked automaticly or if some aplication not wakeing up too much,
with all switched of (only cell phone on) cpu run at 250Mhz and in C4 state

with three pages (no flashplayer video) playng mp3s , wifi, icq on
15% at 500Mhz 85% at 250MHz 60% C3 40% C4 state
applets with using net - RSS (~10 channels) default weather

most time spend on edge connection,brithnes at 3bars ,at night at one
mail updates are for 30 minutes only if wifi connection , rss feeds updates manual ,weather update 6hours

duno what else ...

Only first time i loaded it with mp3's , movies and images there was some time unusable becasuse of indexing (around 4000mp3 ) , which take half of battery ...

[zuti]

Ok.

I've now been using the N900 for two months without any problems with the battery. Did some testing this past week to see how long I could keep the thing going when connected over wifi (2 days) and also when skype was running in the background (1 day).

Today after unplugging the device I noticed it was eating the battery too fast. Checked top, and saw pulseaudio using 2% of the cpu all the time (i had played a few videos and aac files before going to bed and plugging the charger in).

Well, a reboot fixed the pulseaudio problem (if i tried to kill the process, it would just start up again and eat more cpu). But now I have an even bigger problem. It seems there are a few other processes that just won't calm down, and keep waking the cpu up. At the moment the top of my top printout looks like this (all the time):


781 660 root S < 14712 5.9 3.7 /usr/bin/Xorg -logfile /tmp/Xorg.0.log -logverbose 1 -nol
735 1 root S 3540 1.4 1.3 /usr/sbin/ohmd --no-daemon
717 660 root S < 2296 0.9 0.9 /sbin/mce --force-syslog
30872 30856 user R 744 0.3 0.9 top
30840 993 user S 9940 4.0 0.7 /usr/bin/osso-xterm
1262 993 user S 11188 4.5 0.1 /usr/bin/hildon-desktop
1335 993 user S 6648 2.7 0.1 /usr/bin/camera-ui
679 1 root S 3104 1.2 0.1 /usr/sbin/bme_RX-51
695 1 messageb S < 2116 0.8 0.1 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon --system --nofork
1264 1 user S 2108 0.8 0.1 /usr/libexec/gnome-vfs-daemon
749 1 root S 1816 0.7 0.1 /usr/lib/gconf2/gconfd-2

(ignore Xorg, top and osso-xterm, since those should be using the cpu)

Also powertop says that the total amount of wakeups is around 5000.

Could someone who doesn't have any problems with their battery check these: What is the "average" amount of wakeups with powertop when you leave the display on (no network connection, no programs in the background etc.) and also observe your top for maybe 10-20 seconds and tell are there any processes that are constantly taking up cpu time. I know I'm being a little paranoid about the background processes, but if my battery goes down from 48-72 hours to 12 hours, something is keeping the device up all the time.

Thank you for any hints or help.

[egoshin]

Could someone who doesn't have any problems with their battery check these: What is the "average" amount of wakeups with powertop when you leave the display on (no network connection, no programs in the background etc.)

Total wakeups 1760, 58.7s | IRQ 1231, 41.0/s | Timers 529, 17.6/s
HW wakeups 2, 0.1/s | Real gp_timers expired 189, 6.3/s

... But I have 3G connected.


and also observe your top for maybe 10-20 seconds and tell are there any processes that are constantly taking up cpu time.

Compare with your output - you have "/usr/sbin/ohmd" running which means - a couple of programs start (ohmd is a "policy daemon" which checks application access to HW resources).
And bme_RX-51 is a Battery Management process - I think it is a consequence of battery drain.

More interesting is a combination of "mce", "camera-ui" and "gnome-vfs-daemon". gnome-vfs-daemon controls volume mount/unmount, including mSD card. MCE is a daemon which controls different buttons etc ... including magnetic switch on back cover. So - do you use mSD? Do you had chance to put in in some magnetic field? Do you expose a front side to flickering light?

Actually all that stuff may be because battery provides unstable power, for exam - due to high power consumer.

[egoshin]

Additionally, I need to admit what I may also have been exposed to high battery drain. But so far I blamed it on not properly switching video circuitry (SGX) off. Or even HAM (Hildon Application Manager) which has a habit running once at the same time of day and battery going down that time. I have plan to change that time to midnight then my phone is on charger and see.

[zuti]

Total wakeups 1760, 58.7s | IRQ 1231, 41.0/s | Timers 529, 17.6/s
HW wakeups 2, 0.1/s | Real gp_timers expired 189, 6.3/s


Wow. That is a huge difference.


Compare with your output - you have "/usr/sbin/ohmd" running which means - a couple of programs start (ohmd is a "policy daemon" which checks application access to HW resources).
And bme_RX-51 is a Battery Management process - I think it is a consequence of battery drain.

More interesting is a combination of "mce", "camera-ui" and "gnome-vfs-daemon". gnome-vfs-daemon controls volume mount/unmount, including mSD card. MCE is a daemon which controls different buttons etc ... including magnetic switch on back cover. So - do you use mSD? Do you had chance to put in in some magnetic field? Do you expose a front side to flickering light?

Actually all that stuff may be because battery provides unstable power, for exam - due to high power consumer.

I kept staring at the top results a little longer. Seems that at the moment I cut&pasted the previous list, there were a few processes that aren't usually active, camera and vfs-daemon being a few of these. The ones that are constantly active are mce, ohmd and hildon-desktop. The others pop up every now and then (10 sec interval or so). Also /sbin/init keeps jumping to the top list quite frequently, is this normal? Camera-ui appears to be activated for a second when you slide open the keyboard.

But no, no mSD, no flickering lights. I'm not quite sure what you mean about the magnetic field, though.

But basically all I did was reboot the device before this started. It had been on for 9 days, during which I don't recall installing anything special except for Shortcutd (which I had already uninstalled). I guess there is always the option of reflashing, but that doesn't really solve the mystery :)

Here is a link to my powertop readings (http://koti.mbnet.fi/zuti/power.txt) when the device is unlocked.

edit: It seems powertop is a little inconsistent. Just noticed that there are over 200 hw wakeups in the above list. Did another test earlier, which only had 5 HW wakeups (about the same amount of total wakeups, though).

[egoshin]

The ones that are constantly active are mce, ohmd and hildon-desktop.

hildon-desktop - because you use X-Term and output to it. Also, some another screen stuff.
mce - it controls any user activity. For exam - you tap in screen to keep device unlocked, that means mce work. You move device - accelerometer works --> mce works.

Both are OK, you can read about it in
http://wiki.maemo.org/Documentation/Maemo_5_Developer_Guide/Architecture/System_Software

BTW, I suggest you to make a measurement in this way - start powertop, immediately bring desktop theme (put X-Term into background), close KBD and lock device via slide button and put on table - all in 10secs. After 1min unlock and see. You should have little better values, at least mce/hildon-desktop may gone away.

ohmd is another beast. It is a daemon which control access of applications to hardware resource. It has some Nokia-written policy in files. For exam, it may allow or disallow access to audio for some application and people had in past some troubles with non-system media player. It is closed source. But in my mind it runs only if somebody tries to get access to some resource intensively. Usually it happens during application start.

The others pop up every now and then (10 sec interval or so). Also /sbin/init keeps jumping to the top list quite frequently, is this normal?

No. That points to intensive daemon processes terminations. If you can repeat it, it has sense to install sysklogd package and look into /var/log/syslog after you repeat it (and run 'dmesg' too). In past (PR1.0) I saw the terminations of some video processing software like tracker component gst-video-thumbnailerd because existence of some unplayable video files. In PR1.1 it just locks system media player from playing video.

I'm not quite sure what you mean about the magnetic field, though.

N900 back cover has a small magnet and N900 body has a magnet switch. If you don't close a back cover, your mSD would not be mounted. That stuff is read by mce and transfered to execute mSD mount even you have no mSD. Just guess - intensive magnetic field or mechanical jitter (magnetic switch is mechanical, I guess) would cause a flood of signals to mce.

But basically all I did was reboot the device before this started.

Hm-m, it points to tracker again! It starts looking files in file space after reboot (some timeout does exists, of course).

Here is a link to my powertop readings (http://koti.mbnet.fi/zuti/power.txt) when the device is unlocked.

I see many "sleep" processes. It points to some shell work - some shell scripts are executed many times. It again supports a theory that you experiences the many process starts.

[rm42]

Don't know if this applies to anyone. If so, please report it here or in the bug report.

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8848

If I reboot my device before leaving home I can last all day long with lots of activity. I can connect to WiFi at work and it causes no problem. But, for some reason, connecting and disconnecting from my home's WiFi eats up my battery. :confused:

[egoshin]

Don't know if this applies to anyone. If so, please report it here or in the bug report.

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8848

If I reboot my device before leaving home I can last all day long with lots of activity. I can connect to WiFi at work and it causes no problem. But, for some reason, connecting and disconnecting from my home's WiFi eats up my battery. :confused:

He has no WiFi.

[SavageD]

Here's some ideas....though I dont think any one will be willing to do this, here goes:

1) Use a command line that takes off the key board lights (You wont need key lights at day time) when Its night you can use a command line to turn on the key lights again.

2) Use a command line to power down the LCD lights to 80% or so...(20% battery increase)

3) Use a command line to under clock the device by 50 or 100mhz. (Dont think the n900 needs the full 600mhz anyway)...


These other methods are quite obvious but I'll state em anyway...

1) Limit your self to the amounts of apps you want to multitask (3 or so apps).

2) Make sure you close off useless applications. Widgets WILL kill your battery. Limit the amount of widgets you use, or at least use widgets that do constantly run in the background (even when wifi is off) as this will significantly decrease battery life.

3) Use 2 or 3 customizable home screens only, not the full 4 (I honestly feel the battery bug has a connection to the homescreens and their widgets)...

4) The more processes running in the background, the more battery life wasted. Battery life is wasted due to the amount of resources used by an application(s).

Well there ya have it. I'm not saying 'you have to do all of this' you can pick and choose whichever one option you prefer if your interested. Cheers...

Here's a thought also. The wifi tends to use the most resources on the phone, I'm not talking about the browser, I'm talking about the wifi itself. Most widgets are constantly connected to wifi, or if not connected, they are constantly trying to connect, whether the wifi is on or off. This may or may not bring about a points of congestion in the phone which in turn might cause short bursts of massive battery drainage. But this is just a thought....

[zuti]

No. That points to intensive daemon processes terminations. If you can repeat it, it has sense to install sysklogd package and look into /var/log/syslog after you repeat it (and run 'dmesg' too). In past (PR1.0) I saw the terminations of some video processing software like tracker component gst-video-thumbnailerd because existence of some unplayable video files. In PR1.1 it just locks system media player from playing video.

Just a quick update before heading to bed. I installed sysklogd, and there seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel. Too much stuff to go through at this point, but at a quick glance at least shortcutd may be causing some problems. Even though it has been uninstalled, it keeps starting and stopping continuously. Noticed some other problems too, but must continue tomorrow.

Stopping the nonexistent shortcutd got rid of ohmd, but mce is still quite active. Wakeups are down to 4000, which is still not good.

[SAABoy]

Here's some ideas....though I dont think any one will be willing to do this, here goes:

1) Use a command line that takes off the key board lights (You wont need key lights at day time) when Its night you can use a command line to turn on the key lights again.

2) Use a command line to power down the LCD lights to 80% or so...(20% battery increase)

3) Use a command line to under clock the device by 50 or 100mhz. (Dont think the n900 needs the full 600mhz anyway)...




I really like these ideas. I'm sure it's not for everyone, especially those who don't want to 'have to' adjust these things. Do we really have the ability to adjust these 'on the go'?

Could you explain, or link me to somewhere where I can learn how?

[SAABoy]

I really like these ideas. I'm sure it's not for everyone, especially those who don't want to 'have to' adjust these things. Do we really have the ability to adjust these 'on the go'?

Could you explain, or link me to somewhere where I can learn how?

Bump, just in case we have any weekend Maemo-goers that can chime in.

[egoshin]

Just a quick update before heading to bed. I installed sysklogd, and there seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel. Too much stuff to go through at this point, but at a quick glance at least shortcutd may be causing some problems. Even though it has been uninstalled, it keeps starting and stopping continuously. Noticed some other problems too, but must continue tomorrow.

Stopping the nonexistent shortcutd got rid of ohmd, but mce is still quite active. Wakeups are down to 4000, which is still not good.

Look into files /var/lib/dpkg/info/shortcut* - it may list some shell macro files under /etc directory. You may try to move that files to /home/user and see that happens next. Especially files under /etc/event.d, /etc/init.d/ and so on.

[900gle]

Is there any news about the extended battery from mugen.

Is it the same size and when does it come out exactly this month ?


http://www.mugen-power-batteries.com/nokia/nokia-n900.html

[bugelrex]

Is there any news about the extended battery from mugen.

Is it the same size and when does it come out exactly this month ?


http://www.mugen-power-batteries.com/nokia/nokia-n900.html

it definitely wont be the same size, i suspect they will cheap out and simply make battery that looks like 2 Nokia batteries stacked ontop of each other. Making the N900 even thicker than most netbooks.

its a shame couldnt somehow make the battery both wider and slightly thicker by replacing the internal casing (remove the space taken by the stylus)

[thelushlife]

Is there any news about the extended battery from mugen.

Is it the same size and when does it come out exactly this month ?


http://www.mugen-power-batteries.com/nokia/nokia-n900.html

various rumblings from tech sites point to a slated FEB 2010 release, which may mean absolutely nothing and a month or so more waiting.

on a separate unrelated note, that's a wicked nick 900gle. shows your support for the n900 while snubbing g$$gle at the same time. i wish i was smart enough to think of that.

[flydeep]

Do you think shortcutd could be a potential power eater?

Just a quick update before heading to bed. I installed sysklogd, and there seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel. Too much stuff to go through at this point, but at a quick glance at least shortcutd may be causing some problems. Even though it has been uninstalled, it keeps starting and stopping continuously. Noticed some other problems too, but must continue tomorrow.

Stopping the nonexistent shortcutd got rid of ohmd, but mce is still quite active. Wakeups are down to 4000, which is still not good.

[zuti]

Do you think shortcutd could be a potential power eater?

Not normally. In my case the earlier version left a few startup scripts behind after uninstalling, and when I rebooted the N900, those kept trying to run.

The problem seems to now have been fixed: http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=514377&postcount=105

[etuoyo]

My phone has been very weird with the battery. A week ago the battery life went from being very average to absolutely terrible. I would wake up 6am, have to charge the battery by 12 noon and then again by 6pm and finally an overnight charge by midnight. It simply could not last more than 6hrs. It was like that for a whole week.

Today I woke up by around 5am now it is 7pm and I have still not had to charge the device. So after having needed to charge every 6hrs at best for the last 1 week I have today gone over 14 hrs without needing a charge. Yet there has been no real difference in my usage today and I have not uninstalled any programmes that could have been eating battery life.

So what gives? Why the huge difference in battery performance?

[zehjotkah]

My phone has been very weird with the battery. A week ago the battery life went from being very average to absolutely terrible. I would wake up 6am, have to charge the battery by 12 noon and then again by 6pm and finally an overnight charge by midnight. It simply could not last more than 6hrs. It was like that for a whole week.

Today I woke up by around 5am now it is 7pm and I have still not had to charge the device. So after having needed to charge every 6hrs at best for the last 1 week I have today gone over 14 hrs without needing a charge. Yet there has been no real difference in my usage today and I have not uninstalled any programmes that could have been eating battery life.

So what gives? Why the huge difference in battery performance?

have you made a reboot?

[Netweaver]

strange thing just happened, I had 3 processes eating more than 50% of my CPU all the time :
gconfd-2 (16%), dbus-deamon --system --nofork(26%) and hildon-desktop (22%).

Reboot didn't solve it, still same behaviour and of course my battery was draining by the minute...

I finally stopped this behaviour by killing the gconfd-2 process as root, it made the others return to normal.

After reboot, same processes start acting up again, now also rivalled by the trackerd in the beginning. But that dies off pretty quickly, as expected.

So, 5 min. after reboot, still stuck with 54% solid CPU utilization. I did get quite a lot of updates pushed today, has anyone seen a similar behaviour ?

What's the gconfd-2 process ? Any way to further way (logfiles etc ..) to troubleshoot what the gconfd-2 process was doing and what (if any) the offending package might be ?

thanks.

Edit : I know know -sort of- what gconfd-2 does, thanks to http://wiki.maemo.org/Documentation/Maemo_5_Developer_Guide/Generic_Platform_Components/Application_Preferences-Gconf.

After some googling around I found there is on desktop versions of gnome, a file called "saved_states" containing a log of requests handled by the gconfd. This is should be in ~/.gconfd but is missing on Maemo. Any idea someone where to find a similar file or have a similar functionality ?

I don't like windows style solutions like reflash and restore ... So I rather find the root cause ...

Edit 2 : my source ... maybe someone else can distill some more info out of it ?http://www.mail-archive.com/desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com/msg307873.html

[deter3]

same problem here . gcnfd-2 is killing my battery now . even a reboot can not help much . 3 processes (gcnfd-2 , hildon-desktop and d-bus daemon ) is taking almost half cpu usage when idle .

[lifenexus]

same problem here. gconfd-2, dbus and hildon-desktop eat up to 80-100 %cpu all the time until i quit gconfd-2

[Netweaver]

I even reflashed, then all was fine. I then restored all apps from the backup (in multiple times, as it's such a big list). Only after the last install batch (late this morning) I got the issue again. Where can I find a timestamped list of apps installed ? I'm not that great yet with all apt tools ...

Anyway, it must be a very recent App update causing this. Should we combine our applist and see what the overlap is ? To pin down the guilty one ?

Maybe related :
in the HAM, menu item log, I can find load of errors.
This happens in LOADS of places, by the looks of it refering to gconf and file paths ...
This is one example, there are thousands similar ones, with different path. Anyone an idea where to find this log on the filesystem ?


* Error in type 'application/vnd.sun.xml.draw.template'
* (in /ussr/share/mime/packages/freedesktop.org.xml)
* unknown freedesktop.org. field 'generic-icon'


This last thing smeels like this bug :https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5448

But it really happens in loads of (gconf??) places and loads of files ... Can this be the cause for the constant high CPU load ? Anyway, I'll try to see if the temp solution mentionned in the bug report can fix this as well. Need to go now, taxi is waiting. And planes don't ....
Any idea ?

ps. Yesterday I was on PR1.1 (UK version), for the reflash I used 1.1.1 (global) and still same issue...

Cheers

[Rob1n]

I even reflashed, then all was fine. I then restored all apps from the backup (in multiple times, as it's such a big list). Only after the last install batch (late this morning) I got the issue again. Where can I find a timestamped list of apps installed ? I'm not that great yet with all apt tools ...

Look at the timestamps on the files in /var/lib/dpkg/info. "ls -clt | more" will list them in date order.

[slewis1972]

Had very similar issues - went from Uk to global firmware. I have removed all widgets and its alot better.

Still not as great as when I first got it.

Scott

[deter3]

my recent updated app are : motified hildon desktop , scim tables , scim symbol , headphone damon , maemo mapper .

My guess will be motified hildon desktop .

[Netweaver]

yep, that was also my suspect from the beginning, I tried to remove it but for some reason or another it was still active.

This afternoon I got a new update to the modified hildon desktop pushed, it looked very suspicious, 2 updates in 2 days so I accepted it, rebooted and ... problem solved !. Back to stable, not overheating system :)

At least I now have a global version of the firmware, the backup size has gone down from 26 MB to 3 MB and at it feels a lot faster. I also think the idle CPU usage is less than before. So after all, I'm kind of happy I had the problems and I was forced to reflash :D

[deter3]

Just updated modified hildon desktop 1.14 and everything is back normal now .

[BN900]

Question:

I have been searching around but I just got lost in the threads. What happens if I try to use a battery from another Nokia device which fits in the slots perfectly? Would it work?

[SavageD]

Question:

I have been searching around but I just got lost in the threads. What happens if I try to use a battery from another Nokia device which fits in the slots perfectly? Would it work?

It depends on whether it is 3.7v, contains same design concept, has the same chip as bl5j, etc etc

[BN900]

I mean, what about the BL-5c, from the n95 8gb?

[SavageD]

I mean, what about the BL-5c, from the n95 8gb?

No it wont work as Bl-5c is a different class from Bl-5j.

In any case Bl-5c contains 850mah as opposed to the Bl-5j's 1300mah. So basically the Bl-5c would not last as long as the Bl-5j. You would probably have like 4-6hrs with that battery even if it worked.

[thearcane]

I didn't check this thoroughly because I don't have the time, but I think Nokia Messaging drains the battery significantly.

Until a few days ago I had regular IMAP Gmail checking every 15 minutes. At home in the weekends I'd leave the phone on WiFi, not connected to IM, just the email and exchange calendar sync every 30 minutes, with very little other usage. The phone could last the whole day and then some, the battery not even dipping below half.

Then, last Friday, I tested Nokia Messaging. In Friday I set it on push, to get emails instantly. It worked phenomenally, but naturally the battery was well under 20% before the evening, with the same usage profile as above. Honestly, it was expected with push email.
Then on Saturday I changed the sync settings of Nokia Messenger to check every 15 minutes. Battery life still seemed to suck in comparison to regular IMAP, although honestly I did more stuff with the phone that day. Still, it was nothing major like movies or music, but the battery was at 50% around noon. Eventually I switched back, because battery life is more important to me than more comfortable email.

What do you think? Is there a difference in how Messaging operates, even when set to check at intervals, that causes it to drain the battery more, or did I imagine?

[centinela]

hi all, I tried to search the forum for similar posts but didnt find anything. Maybe some1 mentined this already but i have an issue when charging from an PC USB port.
when charged from a PC the battery discharges in no time... even idle, no connections it just drains out.

http://stud09.technikum-wien.at/~ic09m017/Screenshot-20100412-132856.png

While when charging with the normal charger i get waaay more life under heavy usage.

http://stud09.technikum-wien.at/~ic09m017/Screenshot-20100412-132930.png

is this normal?

Thanks!

ps. i <3 this phone!

[geneven]

USB ports are erratic, so the word "normal" doesn't really apply. I would say this was not unusual.

[slender]

geneven, Look his picture. He used computer usb to charge it full and also normal charger to charge it full but after using his phone after using computer usb charge it depletes battery really fast, even in idle i presume.

This is really weird. I would advise to look in xterm with top command what is happening when battery is draining that fast even if it's idle.

[juise-]

hi all, I tried to search the forum for similar posts but didnt find anything. Maybe some1 mentined this already but i have an issue when charging from an PC USB port.
when charged from a PC the battery discharges in no time... even idle, no connections it just drains out.

While when charging with the normal charger i get waaay more life under heavy usage.


My guess is that something else than the charger caused the difference. Maybe different apps running on the phone (some IM's use quite a lot of battery, there also seem to be some bugs which cause the battery to drain faster until the phone is rebooted).

[davss]

Hi,

Has anyone used an extended capacity battery before on the N900?

It's made in Japan so presumably is well-made although they are masters in faking such things so any experience with this particular model will be appreciated.

HIGH CAP GOLD BL-5J BATTERY FOR NOKIA N900
Made in JAPAN, 1930mAH GOLD BATTERY, UK POWER SELLER

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/HIGH-CAP-GOLD-BL-5J-BATTERY-FOR-NOKIA-N900_W0QQitemZ320508127680QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Mo bilePhones_MobilePhoneAccessories_MobilePhoneBatte ries?hash=item4a9fc5e9c0

[woodyear99]

Stay far far away from that. Poor quality crap for sure.

[arkanoid]

Yes, it was discussed before, this one is generic 1300mAh actually. Even its electronics does not claim higher capacity. But poor 5800 users cannot figure that out with no diagnostic tools except the phone itself ;-)
The seller deserves negative feedback for sure.

[binoymg]

I have started using N900 recently and I had terrible battery drain issue like many reported here. I did few trials and found better results.

Here are the results of my small experiement. I got better results (nearly 24 hrs of regular use):

1) Installed the 2G/3G applet and selected dual mode.

2) Disabled the wifi connection ( I think 3G to wifi switching is consuming most power). I'm using T moblie unlimited internet connection (Dual mode). Most part I am getting 3G. Changed the search interval of internet connection to 30 minutes. (use wifi when needed and disconnect it).

3) Disabled skype and other widgets.

4) Changed the display settings to 2

BTW my email client was always active and the refresh interval was set to 30 minutes.

I am easily getting more than 12hrs of battery life on extensive usage (may be an hour of surfing and constant email checking, no skype)

-binoy

[Jiia]

I have recently encoutered a weird battery problem with my N900.

I've been monitoring my CPU and battery usage with the BatteryGraph program. Usually my CPU keeps at 0% usage when not in use and occasionally jumps up to 5%. That's not a problem.

Recently I installed a few new games from the extras repository, and after that I've been having issues with the battery. My battery drains from 100% to 0% in 12 hours in normal use (which would be one hour of music and 30mins of web browsing).

When I look at BatteryGraph now, it shows that the CPU is constantly at 5-10% usage even when the phone is not in use. Every once in a while I check the four most CPU consuming programs of my phone with Conky, and the programs are always the same:

Xorg: ~6% (4-12%)
Conky: ~4% (3-6%)
hildon-status-m: ~3% (2-4%)
hildon-desktop: ~2% (1-3%)

What could be the problem here? Any suggestions? I don't have any fancy widgets on my desktop, only shortcuts, contacts and web-links.

Thanks in advance.

[Niggydip]

Please how true is it that underclocking the frequency and reducing the CPU voltage wld considerably increase battery time on the device? I'm seriously cosidering this as this battery drain problem totally limits my usage of this beautiful device

[xpress]

my battery is draining fast .. iam using conky to see whats wrong ! pulseaudio is using 2% cou 1.9 memory , i dont know how to reboot ! and i think they should make it much simpler :( my battery is barely lasting 7 hours on idle :( no wifi no 3g no bluetooth ..nothing

[AlMehdi]

I have recently encoutered a weird battery problem with my N900.

I've been monitoring my CPU and battery usage with the BatteryGraph program. Usually my CPU keeps at 0% usage when not in use and occasionally jumps up to 5%. That's not a problem.

Recently I installed a few new games from the extras repository, and after that I've been having issues with the battery. My battery drains from 100% to 0% in 12 hours in normal use (which would be one hour of music and 30mins of web browsing).

When I look at BatteryGraph now, it shows that the CPU is constantly at 5-10% usage even when the phone is not in use. Every once in a while I check the four most CPU consuming programs of my phone with Conky, and the programs are always the same:

Xorg: ~6% (4-12%)
Conky: ~4% (3-6%)
hildon-status-m: ~3% (2-4%)
hildon-desktop: ~2% (1-3%)

What could be the problem here? Any suggestions? I don't have any fancy widgets on my desktop, only shortcuts, contacts and web-links.

Thanks in advance.

Sounds like a leaking program. What do you get by writing "dmesg" in the terminal. Any repetitive messages or errors? If you write "top" in terminal instead of using Conky you will see more processes.

[No_LiMiT]

I generally don't have battery problem, it lasts for few days, but then again I don't do much. But last night I used wifi for no more then 20 minutes(I always disconnect and it isn't on auto connect or anything) and it drained 20% of my battery.
Is that supposed to happen? I went to bed and after like 9 hours it didn't move even 5%, almost straight line.
So if I used wifi for like 2 hours it would drain completely?

[woodyear99]

I generally don't have battery problem, it lasts for few days, but then again I don't do much. But last night I used wifi for no more then 20 minutes(I always disconnect and it isn't on auto connect or anything) and it drained 20% of my battery.
Is that supposed to happen? I went to bed and after like 9 hours it didn't move even 5%, almost straight line.
So if I used wifi for like 2 hours it would drain completely?

It would drain alot, that's the only thing I don't like about the N900, it seems to use alot of power once connected to a network constantly. I'd say around 3 hours or so browsing on wifi and my battery dies.

[No_LiMiT]

My battery seems to have gone crazy(again), it's going down faster even when idle. My mother's phone would go out twice a day while idling too.. Strange, maybe I should uninstall some applications or something?
Using 2g already, low brightness etc...

[darguzar]

Well just two days back i got this DURASTAR BL-5J 1700mah battery form a whole sale shop it costed me almost 13 US dollar.....

It is Great i could not fine any where on net the astimate time for those batterie mentioned before.....

Well it is Second day and man it is still full....
yesterday i got it by 6pm and the shop keeper told me to charge the battery full before using the cell....

It was fully charged at 8pm till then my N900 was recieved about 10msges then i pluged my cell to tv and listed to two music videos
the before going to bed i listed to some music tracks and played block game for about 30 mins then in the morning i have recieved some calls about 15-20 msges....
took a few pictures and amazingly the battery is still full....
It battery is excelent as compared to the original which i got with the set ......

[Crogge]

Even if I don't trust this Chinese ones at all, for 13$ it seems to be worth a try. Where you got it from?

[Jayboy5]

Well just two days back i got this DURASTAR BL-5J 1700mah battery form a whole sale shop it costed me almost 13 US dollar.....

It is Great i could not fine any where on net the astimate time for those batterie mentioned before.....

Well it is Second day and man it is still full....
yesterday i got it by 6pm and the shop keeper told me to charge the battery full before using the cell....

It was fully charged at 8pm till then my N900 was recieved about 10msges then i pluged my cell to tv and listed to two music videos
the before going to bed i listed to some music tracks and played block game for about 30 mins then in the morning i have recieved some calls about 15-20 msges....
took a few pictures and amazingly the battery is still full....
It battery is excelent as compared to the original which i got with the set ......

Hey could you tell me where I can get one of these batteries for my n900? I've searched online and can't find any place that sells them. Thanks in advance ... oh by the way, are you noticing any extra heat from the battery? Are you overclocked?

[arkanoid]

I guess it will suddenly drop to 0% at an unpredictable moment and phone will switch off.
It is more easy to believe in broken capacity meter circuit in chinese batteries than in outstanding performance. Well, i've seen batteries that report weird values quite often.

What does battery graph report?

[No_LiMiT]

I had 60% battery and I turned on alarm clock, after 4 hours it woke me up, battery was empty... Wtf, I had it going for 4 days+ and now suddenly screwing up like this...

[shaniyaar]

Well just two days back i got this DURASTAR BL-5J 1700mah battery form a whole sale shop it costed me almost 13 US dollar.....

It is Great i could not fine any where on net the astimate time for those batterie mentioned before.....

Well it is Second day and man it is still full....
yesterday i got it by 6pm and the shop keeper told me to charge the battery full before using the cell....

It was fully charged at 8pm till then my N900 was recieved about 10msges then i pluged my cell to tv and listed to two music videos
the before going to bed i listed to some music tracks and played block game for about 30 mins then in the morning i have recieved some calls about 15-20 msges....
took a few pictures and amazingly the battery is still full....
It battery is excelent as compared to the original which i got with the set ......

If he is right watever he is sayimg than its awesum....but u cant rely on these chinese products... there product quality is really poor '

[ahmadamaj]

@darguzar do you feel the phone is getting any hotter? any other problems so far?

[jmc8501]

I think yes, because I am not a heavy user, but I almost always end up with a dead phone before the day is done. Usually I charge the n900 at work as well as over night. I use all the battery tips (lowest brightness, don't use auto-connect, disable gps, etc...)

Edit: sorry this was a response to someone wondering f they would only get 2 hours if they used wifi constantly.

[grumps312]

All of a sudden my N900 battery is draining really quickly. I just started happening and nothing has changed. The only thing i could think that could had caused this is my phone died over night and i charge it back up and tried Wind Mobile network with their simcard.After those two events my N900 battery is dying quicker than usual. I can't even get 7-8 hrs out of mines anymore. It is not even multi tasking as hard as before and its not surviving my daily use... Whats going on?

[Jack6428]

The battery life dropped by 50% after installing PR1.2 ! Why? I haven't installed any new applications/widgets...

[slender]

The battery life dropped by 50% after installing PR1.2 ! Why? I haven't installed any new applications/widgets...
On some users problem currently is that pr 1.2 makes some already installed apps from extras and ovi behave oddly. So also installed apps that were on device before pr 1.2 matter. Care to list them? btw. Do you use recaller, catorise or facebook widget?

[Jack6428]

On some users problem currently is that pr 1.2 makes some already installed apps from extras and ovi behave oddly. So also installed apps that were on device before pr 1.2 matter. Care to list them? btw. Do you use recaller, catorise or facebook widget?

Regarding those apps you mention - no, no, no.

As for the installed apps:

Angry Birds, Bounce, Banner, Copernicium, Countdown Tim, Docs To Go, DrNokSnes, FM Radio, ForecaWeather, MaStory, Mirror, GPE File Manager, Open TTD, Hexen 2, KMPlayer, Numpty Physics, PrBoom, Pyrecipe, Qik, Qtirreco, Quake 2, Recorder, Sand, StockThis, Tuner, VGBA, Xournal, TouchSearch.

I have 4 desktops enabled, on them I have together:
14 shortcuts, Nameday widget, calendar widget, forecaweather widget, eyes widget, personal dataplan monitor ip adress+counter, 7 bookmarks, media player widget, cpu/ram widget, touch search widget.

Any idea what's the cause ? Thanks...It's really a PITA. Screw you Nokia. Not only you can't deliver your promises regarding Ovi, but you also bring an update which eats batteries for breakfast.

[slender]

Hmm..
- you could start x-terminal and run command "top" and see if something other than xorg stays above 2-3 % cpu when you have closed all apps

- Normal procedure with these kinds of problems would be to disable all widgets. I would recommend disabling, foreca, eyes widget, personal data/ip address, cpu ram widget and touch search. Reboot and monitor how battery lasts.

And why widgets cause problems? They run constantly on your n900 and some of them do not behave as they should when you put your device in sleep. They keep waking cpu.

[geneven]

I think yes, because I am not a heavy user, but I almost always end up with a dead phone before the day is done. Usually I charge the n900 at work as well as over night. I use all the battery tips (lowest brightness, don't use auto-connect, disable gps, etc...)

Edit: sorry this was a response to someone wondering f they would only get 2 hours if they used wifi constantly.

I use wifi constantly every day and don't have battery problems -- I would say I get a minimum of six hours.

[noipv4]

A new simcard improved battery life for my usage scenario. I am a moderate user, 3 - 4 hrs talk, 2 - 3 hrs streaming music, wifi / gprs always on. I got more talk time after the new simcard.

[noipv4]

Can you please tell us What capacity does battery eye or Battery monitor show?

[Jack6428]

Hmm..
- you could start x-terminal and run command "top" and see if something other than xorg stays above 2-3 % cpu when you have closed all apps

- Normal procedure with these kinds of problems would be to disable all widgets. I would recommend disabling, foreca, eyes widget, personal data/ip address, cpu ram widget and touch search. Reboot and monitor how battery lasts.

And why widgets cause problems? They run constantly on your n900 and some of them do not behave as they should when you put your device in sleep. They keep waking cpu.

I ran "top" and everything is either around 1-2% or even 0.3-0.5%, so there is no problem there...

I use the device normally and this is just really bad. Before the update I could use the N900 as a laptop, since the battery life for me was a whole day. Now it's just 8-12 hours and that literally sucks. Nokia is here to fix it, but they haven't even bothered to read these boards lately or post a reply. Shame on you Peter!

[Ofernicus]

I'm getting the same problem, but in a crazy way - I can charge the battery through the night, or having it connected to the charger the whole day (while using it), it would say the battry is full, and then it would die after an hour of use!

This practically makes this a desktop phone, and not a mobile!

I was such a Nokia-fan for years, and as much as I love what the N900 can do - it drives me nuts to see how Nokia is not taking its customers seriously!

[skalogre]

I'm getting the same problem, but in a crazy way - I can charge the battery through the night, or having it connected to the charger the whole day (while using it), it would say the battry is full, and then it would die after an hour of use!

This practically makes this a desktop phone, and not a mobile!

I was such a Nokia-fan for years, and as much as I love what the N900 can do - it drives me nuts to see how Nokia is not taking its customers seriously!

You either have some hardware issue or there is something running in the background chewing up your battery's charge.

[JohnLF]

This fits in with my findings actally, although it is a little extreme.

I find that if I top up my N900 every night I can get well over a days use, or 3 days with light use.

If I let the battery run all the way down to the red warning (approx 1% left) then the next full charge gives me about 6 hours use - I have tried this several times over the last few weeks and it is reproducible for me.

This makes me think there is an issue with the recharge algorithm used or potential a hardware issue. Hopefully the former which can be fixed.

Could other people please try this and see if it is a general issue and not just my phone...

[Mr_Ryde]

I would be leaning towards some kind of software/batter problem as the phone itself is not inherently bad on battery life (all things considered).

I and many people on this forum use the phone moderately with internet use both wifi and 3G on and off throughout the day and have numerous desktop widgets and shortcuts running. Including some of the above mentioned widgets known to cause problems. (apart from the facebook widget which really does suck!) It doesn't matter how or when I choose to recharge the phone I will always get more than 24 hours, sometimes 48. I have low brightness and select 2G when I don't use the 3G for internet.

There was one day when I used 3G internet for 3 hours while monitoring the F1 practice and qualifying and then it did need a charge that evening but other than that is just works.

So if your phone doesn't it has problems other than "nokia's values" or some other crap.

Either take it back, take it to a Nokia service point and get them to re flash it OR re flash it yourself and start again from the beginning. If you suspect that somehow your battery is buggered then get a new one, especially if it is more than 6 months old as that could be the problem. I know this may not be a popular post but every time I log on I read the same posts saying blah blah the phone is **** etc etc and it isn't :)

[zimmerit]

In my case, reflashing made a big chance in battery life.

Phone was updated to pr 1.2 "over the air", and charge dropped about 10 %-points every six hours when idling. After reflash that figure was only about 2,5 percentage points!

[qole]

I'm having the same weird battery life issues post-PR1.2. I have to plug in my phone every few hours to keep it charged. This is as bad as the pre-release days! PR 1.0 was so much better on battery than pre-release firmware, and PR 1.1 was even a little better than that, and now PR 1.2 took it all away for me. :( :(

[Laughing Man]

I've had a wide gamut of battery life duration. Seems heavily variant depending on hardware, age of SIM cards, apps installed, etc..

Shame I'm too unpatient to take a scientific way to see what results in the longest battery life.

[zimmerit]

qole: Have you tried to reflash allready?

Few hours battery life seems cracy, it means that phone is taking 0.3-0.4 amps all the time. Have you checked what kind of load CPU is taking?

[rebhana]

I'm having the same weird battery life issues post-PR1.2. I have to plug in my phone every few hours to keep it charged. This is as bad as the pre-release days! PR 1.0 was so much better on battery than pre-release firmware, and PR 1.1 was even a little better than that, and now PR 1.2 took it all away for me. :( :(

Do you have Categorize or something like that installed? There is a bug in hildon-desktop cpu usage (https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10412) when the menu structure is non-flat!

[darguzar]

Welll All my hope have gone..... Purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

well the battery is okey.... i mean it gives a fair good time better than the original one believe me on that......

But the problem mentioned that it only shows when the battery is on wqrning position probablly when i is 20% left and dropping...

cause yesterday i was driving out from my house, went to flee market and the market is like 5 km away from home....

so while i was exiting the market there is made the "TEDRING TEDRONG"
sound and there it was the battery warning....
so i hoped that it would last till i get back home and amazingly it did....
i came back home went for a small bathroom break and then i set it on charge and iit was On...Didn't turned off....

But i must Must say it is farmuch better that the original one....

Well regarding the heating issue No i havend had any heating up issue...
thou in my country it is very hot now a days
the temp now a days is 44 degrees celcius....

Regarding the Purchaising issue
I live in Pakistan, i baught it here, there is a website written on the pack as u can se in the pic i posted on my last post....
just use the google language translator and set it to chinese to english....
i hope you mught be able to find some thing on that....

[shazzy84]

Ever since i activated smart reflex by

echo 1 > /sys/power/sr_vdd1_autocomp
echo 1 > /sys/power/sr_vdd2_autocomp

I have noticed a dramatic battery improvement! I can last the day with 10+hours of moderate usage.

But i have to enable smartreflex every now and then because it automatically resets itself to normal. I dunno how to enable it permantly.

[dsawhney]

Ever since i activated smart reflex by

echo 1 > /sys/power/sr_vdd1_autocomp
echo 1 > /sys/power/sr_vdd2_autocomp

I have noticed a dramatic battery improvement! I can last the day with 10+hours of moderate usage.

But i have to enable smartreflex every now and then because it automatically resets itself to normal. I dunno how to enable it permantly.

You can enable smartreflex permanently by editing the values in /etc/pmconfig.

[shazzy84]

I tried typing /etc/pmconfig into the xterminal after i gained access to root but it said

"/bin/sh: /etc/pmconfig: permission denied"

So i'm not sure what to do.

[shazzy84]

And since today I unplugged my N900 from the charger around 10am and its now 9:34pm and the battery is 43%.

Thats after a few text messages(about 10), a few calls(30minutes total), emails getting checked every 15minutes from 2 email accounts(alot!), playing SPBBRAINEVOLUTION for about 20minutes, with my Foreca weather widget set to check weather every 1hr. Brightness on 2 bars, with 3g on most of the day with wifi and 3g connection switching between them.

I never would get this without smartreflex. Just letting everyone know ;)

[AzureLightPKK]

I tried using Conky and xtermial and top and I've found something draining my battery life. "associatedpress" How do I close this thing?

[noipv4]

Lithium Polymer battery discharge curve.

http://www.ibt-power.com/Battery_packs/Li_Polymer/Li_Po_DiscGph.JPG

[dsawhney]

I tried typing /etc/pmconfig into the xterminal after i gained access to root but it said

"/bin/sh: /etc/pmconfig: permission denied"

So i'm not sure what to do.

You need to use a text editor like vi to edit the file.

[les_garten]

You need to use a text editor like vi to edit the file.

If he's having that trouble, I'm sure Vi is gonna be a major PITA for him.

Here's some help for the guy who wants to edit pmconfig

1) It's a config file, not a command
2) Install Leafpad
3) Open xterm
4) root
5) leafpad
6) open config file you want to edit, edit, then save
7) smile and hope it doesn't make your N900 reset itself all the time.

[dimitrisp]

Hello,

This is my first post here. My battery, even though it's new and I'm charging it for the 3rd time, is very good in comparison with others I've read (or not?). I've written down each and every action I've done.

In summary:
2.5 hours of WiFi (which 1 is idling connected, 1.5 in use)
15' in calls + 5' internet + 2 sms on 2G
10' internet on 3G (ok, 3.5G) [and used Pidgin for IM]
Installed 4 applications (over WiFi)
Uninstalled some widgets/apps
Installed all updates
4 reboots
Constant checking of battery level using BatteryGraph
CPU was downclocked to 500mhz when not in use with QCPUFreq and SmartReflex enabled
My provider has crappy signal, in both 2G/3G
Used Terminal to modify some uKeyboard settings (which failed)
Powered off for the night, and opened in the morning (5th boot)

It took 21 hours of use (not counting the 9 hours it was powered off) to "beep" for low battery, and I put it straight to charge.

[zimmerit]

Anyone who's having problems with the battery life should install batterygraph to see if something is keeping cpu working all the time. On my N900 the cpu stays 0 % load 95 % of the idle time (after reflash!). If something is keeping cpu around 3 % - 10 % it quickly discharges the battery.

People should also consider reflashing, this made the biggest change to me (with the same firmware). Good instructions here:

http://discussions.europe.nokia.com/t5/Pool-of-Knowledge/N900-How-to-update-software-and-Reset-ALL-data/m-p/591877

In my case I left the mass memory intact, I guess that it wont affect power consumption.

[s33]

Anyone who's having problems with the battery life should install batterygraph to see if something is keeping cpu working all the time. On my N900 the cpu stays 0 % load 95 % of the idle time (after reflash!). If something is keeping cpu around 3 % - 10 % it quickly discharges the battery.

People should also consider reflashing, this made the biggest change to me (with the same firmware). Good instructions here:

http://discussions.europe.nokia.com/t5/Pool-of-Knowledge/N900-How-to-update-software-and-Reset-ALL-data/m-p/591877

In my case I left the mass memory intact, I guess that it wont affect power consumption.

Xorg process is consuming 3-7% cpu all the time.....

any idea about this?

[zimmerit]

Well, if you read my post very carefully you might notice a fix suggestion.

[s33]

You can enable smartreflex permanently by editing the values in /etc/pmconfig.

Hey can u tell me how to do it???

i dont know what command to type in inside the pmconfig file:(

Can u help me?:confused:

and i heared that u cant change both VDD's......

[s33]

Guys, i'm new in this forum and i wanna share my experience with my n900 (i got it 1 week ago). Like all of you, i had problems with the poor battery life in the n900, tried many settings to improve the battery life 'cause only worked for me around 8-10 hours. Yesterday i turn it off the GPS and with no widgets like facebook or forecast, put brightness lvl 2, disable light notification (only for missed calls and sms) and now my battery is around 80-90% in 18 hours!!!!!!!

Can u Xplain ur detailed usage in these 18 hrs

[Satchl]

Newbie here with the n900. Here is the two test that I've done with my phone with approximately the same type of usage over a day. I did both of these test twice and got the same outcome both times.

Test 1 - Fully charged the battery, from dead, in the phone and kept the wifi off and my cell service on 2g except when I needed it to be otherwise. The result was my battery would last around 4 to 5 hours.
Battery charge time was approximately 3 to 4 hours to full charge according to the phone.

Test 2 - Fully charged the batter, from dead, in an external charger then ran the same service as test 1. The result was my battery will last around 11 to 14 hours. The battery charge time was approximately 6 to 7 hours to full charge according to the external charger.

What does this tell me?

[sed8me]

The SmartReflex power saving feature of the OMAP processor is disabled by
default on the n900. To enable it:

echo 1 > /sys/power/sr_vdd1_autocomp
echo 1 > /sys/power/sr_vdd2_autocomp

You can also enable it by editing /etc/pmconfig and changing the appropriate
values to 1, and rebooting.

I've been logged in to my wifi accounts for 10+ hours now, with GPS on, and the
battery is only down by about 1/3.

Some power saving can also be achieved by setting your status to be offline and
disabling networking.

For further information follow the bug https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6615 which has a somewhat higher signal/noise than this thread...

Hiya bsm117532,

Mate I tried to edit this in midnight commander, when I go to save I get a "cannot save file" dialog box, even when I try to save as with a different name . . .

Any other method to edit and save this file ?

btw I am only editing the value of vdd1, as this is stable and the benefits of testing thus far has doubled my battery life !

:cool: thnx in advance !

[Spotfist]

to get smart reflex working download cpufreq app, it has a smart reflex option and is surely easier than editing files etc...

@satchl

What was the cpu usage like on the first test?

[s33]

to get smart reflex working download cpufreq app, it has a smart reflex option and is surely easier than editing files etc...

@satchl

What was the cpu usage like on the first test?

even if you anable smart reflex in QCPUFREQ ,i dint think its affecting any configurations.........after enabling it in Qcpufreq when i check /etc/pmconfig the values for vdd1 and vdd2 are still 0.

enabling it means vdd1 and vdd2 has to change to 1


am i missing something here?:(

[Spotfist]

I used to use it in cpufreq and perhaps it doesn't work 100% although I was sure it did, I no longer use it though it crashes my phone when overclocked. :(

[icon36]

ok super linux noob here, but i found out how to change and save pmconfig file.

using vim editor:
1. open xterminal
2. sudo gainroot
3. cd /etc
4. vi pmconfig
5. move to the "0" on the line "sr_vdd1_autocomp 0" and press r, and enter "1". Then repeat for "sr_vdd2_autocomp 0".
6. to save " :w "
7. to exit " :q!:

hopefully that works for you.

*** note: i just changed this, so i do not know if this will increase battery life.

*** Update*** I only got 8 hours usage.

[moudy91]

Dear all.
i found a way to improve the life on the n900 battery, usual my n900 it take just 24 hours before it will be dead but now it take 2 days with 12 hours working on my device.
all you have to do is recharge your N900 from the USB cable from your PC and when the led turn to green remove it directly don't keep the led green to much time.
this way did work on my device and am sure that it will work on ur device too.;)

[vins]

i edit the file /etc/pmconfig and set the two vars to 1. tested with low and high cpu usage it's still solid. will report if any reboot occurs. guys just use vi to edit it. and do it as root. then just reboot it.

[joelsk]

anyone with the right know how to get the n900 to charge via wifi? is it possible?

[vins]

anyone with the right know how to get the n900 to charge via wifi? is it possible?

definitely not

[gardzan]

I just bought a new battery from amazon (Nokia branded BL-5J) and I charged it yesterday with the phone off. I turned on the phone when the light turned green at it was at 96% which is normal from what I've experienced from this phone. I used the phone a little and the battery dropped to 90% and it was holding stead for hours, seemed to be a really good battery.

Later on I installed a few apps....Accelemymote GUI, liqflow, and IPTraf Network Monitor and ever since then the wifi has been coming on and the processor was at 100% and the battery was draining VERY fast. In two hours it went from 85% to 40% with no applications open. I've removed the three apps and rebooted. I have autodisconnect installed and no apps open. And the problem continues to occur. What could possible be going on in the background that is draining the battery so much?:confused:

I have no widgets running and I'm processor seemed to be pinned at 100%, however I didn't check the processes at that time.

A few hours have passed now (with me staring/watching my N900 relentlessly) and it seems to have improved. Can anyone recommend a good battery charger. I'm going to carry around two from now on.

[Milhouse]

@gardzan: Check your WiFi access point - does it support Power Save Mode?

[chris72]

Dear all!
During the last weeks my n900 battery seem to be broken. If the battery level is below 50% and I make a phone call it can happen that the phone suddenly tells me that the battery is empty and shuts down. My phone is now 7 months old and I made sure to properly charge it always (recharge only when phone tells me, etc.). I always have internet, bluetooth turned off. I don't have email checking or any other manual installed tasks that run in the background.

Here is a recording of battery eye from the last days:
http://www.upsilon.at/n900_battery_problems.jpg

Why does it sometimes tell me the battery is empty if it was at 50% and I started the call just 1-2 minutes before.

About one week ago it happed that I had 70% battery level and after picking up a phone call I had the message battery empty -> shutdown.

Also every 1-2 days the phone drops connection and asks me to enter my pin code again.

Do I need a new battery or is the phone broken? :(

[brandonc]

simply uninstalling catorise and the cpumem applet sent my cpu usage down dramatically on hildon desktop thus giving me leaps and bounds greater battery life. try it for one day you will notice the difference, I dont find myself running for a charger every 2 hours.

[chris72]

I've bought a new battery and I'm using the network switch applet to set to 2G whenever I don't need Internet access.
Now I have 2-3 days standby with no internet usage and just a few phone calls.
The sudden power drops are gone too.

Lucky the batteries don't cost much and they are user replaceable.

I'm using mobile phone for at least 15 years and I had no other phone or other technical device where the battery was wrecked after 6 month.

Maybe just bad luck.

[feuxfollets]

I just edited the /etc/pmconfig and rebooted but my phone is still getting a horrible battery life of 6-8 hours, no noticeable battery life change whatsoever with smartreflex enabled or disabled... although it is noticeably hotter with smartreflex enabled...

[ercanmetin]

I have 2 spare batteries with me all the time. 3 batteries a goes only half day for me.. I have seen battery drain in less then an hour. I will buy a new mobile phone and use N900 at home connected to charger all the time.. I really like this device but because of ridicilous battery life it is unreliable for daily life and business.. but at home connected to a charger all the time it is a good internet tablet.

[madehhh]

hi , my n900 in consuming baterry very quickly , i've installed a widget to see the cpu usage and mem and it tells me the cpu its always at 100% and mem going from 105 - 165MB ,

how can i see whats useing the cpu so much and how can i see at what speed is set my cpu ( i've seen on post here before that it could set it self to 250mhz )anyway i'm a novice user and havent got many things installed.. anyway i havent got many apps running and took all my IM widgets from desktop , well this is weird.. one buys the phone for some inteded use and then u cant use it becouse u have no batery.. thanks for the answers

[zlatko]

@madehhh
Just run top in terminal. It will show you which process is occupying your CPU. Or you can just make a screen shot(Ctrl+Shift+p) of the terminal with top running and post it here. Someone will help you.

[madehhh]

sorry cant screen it , how can i pass it to the pc?or how can i post it directly from my n900 ?

edit : anyhow it show cpu 73% usr 26.1%
%cpu, logf-12% - and all the rest is under 1-2%

[zlatko]

@madehhh
Just press Ctrl+Shift+p on your N900 keyboard when you are running top in terminal. That will make a screen shot and put it in your gallery. Then you can get in on your PC and post it here. Or post it directly from your N900.

[madehhh]

C:\Users\Madeh\Desktop/top.png

[nux]

Check out 22.09.2010 21:00 to 23.09.2010 08:00 on picture. :)
It would be nice if every night battery consumption is like this :)
http://www.forumcinemas.ee/Files/Temp/BatteryGraph_20100923180008.png

On 21.09 i was online with Jabber all day. But with 2G and mfe always connected from 8:00 to 20:00 I usually get 2 days of use.
And there is at least 30min of calls each day.

[madehhh]

i took out an app i had called flashlight extra and VOILÁ! CPU usage down to 5% and baterry since yesterday nidnight until now at 60 % 18h 40% used only

[Jagat4webber]

I am getting good battery life after i did the following thing

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=816676#post816676

1 Install this software.
2 Charge ur n900 switched off, usually one hour b4 going to bed.Once the green is on. on it and see it for your self.

you don't even have to worry about switching to 2g and 3g. i get normal 12 hours + of normal use( web, music, calls). hope it helps

Thankx to debernardis for such a good software.

[9000]

I am getting good battery life after i did the following thing

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=816676#post816676

1 Install this software.
2 Charge ur n900 switched off, usually one hour b4 going to bed.Once the green is on. on it and see it for your self.

you don't even have to worry about switching to 2g and 3g. i get normal 12 hours + of normal use( web, music, calls). hope it helps

Thanks to debernardis for such a good software.

Thanks for linking to debernardis' work too! I'm surprise that the laptop mode is OFF by default! By turning it on, not only it'd save battery, but also reduce the write to the internal flash thus extend its life.

Thanks!

[kristof]

I have a N900 and my problem is that once I charge the battery it shows 100% (what is OK) but after that it doesn't show drainage of the battery. About 5-6 hours later the battery just dies (I use 3G connection at all times so I am not complaining). The problem is that the battery indicator has only two stages 1: FULL 2: RED 1%?

Is this normal? Maybe I have a fake battery?

[ashy]

I am getting good battery life after i did the following thing

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=816676#post816676

1 Install this software.
2 Charge ur n900 switched off, usually one hour b4 going to bed.Once the green is on. on it and see it for your self.

you don't even have to worry about switching to 2g and 3g. i get normal 12 hours + of normal use( web, music, calls). hope it helps

Thankx to debernardis for such a good software.

What does it actually do to improve the battery life?? can u pls explain ?

[Arif]

Lately my N900's battery is behaving very weirdly.
It runs out in about 7 hours if I leave it on standby without doing anything.
Could anyone analyze this screenshot for anything weird*
http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk153/RenkliArif/Screenshot-20101005-153153.png

[bobbydoedoe]

Lately my N900's battery is behaving very weirdly.
It runs out in about 7 hours if I leave it on standby without doing anything.
Could anyone analyze this screenshot for anything weird*
http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk153/RenkliArif/Screenshot-20101005-153153.png

i had the same issue with the xorg eating alot of cpu. my fix was delete the extra conversation protocols, and config/use the jabber. my battery life increased at least 2 times.

[kulas]

my N900 is OCd ideal 500/1000 and has a brightness of 3.

i just played family feud in fb and watch some survivor episodes in youtube then the battery goes down really fast!!

i think my battery will just last 2hrs by watching youtube only.. :(

can someone help me?

[clovis86]

well regarding your idle mode only, 500 on low limit is pretty high.
gotta keep in mind that by default max cpu is 600
fyi, I put it to 250-1000 and came back then to 250-900 few weeks ago which is enough for my use
plus du you have loaded also Xlv voltages ?

[plltd]

Hi, I recently got my N900 and found that after a few days my battery only lasted fo about 10 hours on standby. Found the problem, remove the magnets from your belt holster and replace with velcro. Lasts a week on standby now.

[RenaldoTT]

hey guys is there a way to stop the battery from charging everytime it's plugged into the pc bcuz so I hear frequent minor charges and discharges can shorten battery life and make charging take longer periods. after 3months and recent plugging of my n900 into the pc to transfere files my n900 now takes 3hrs to charge :S

[geohsia]

hey guys is there a way to stop the battery from charging everytime it's plugged into the pc bcuz so I hear frequent minor charges and discharges can shorten battery life and make charging take longer periods. after 3months and recent plugging of my n900 into the pc to transfere files my n900 now takes 3hrs to charge :S

How about transferring files via BT?

[RenaldoTT]

lol i 4got bout that

[IzzehO]

So is there any conclusion to this thread as to what can cause random massive increases in battery drain?

A week ago I was easily getting 10 hours with VoIP and other things connected. Now I'm suddenly getting 3 hours and it dies. BatteryGraph (and conky) never record more than 5% CPU usage (xorg does occasionally jump to 10-15%) and it happens on 3G and wireless. Any battery grapher that tracks network usage? I'm skeptical its my network that is draining the power. I'll trial by running in offline mode once I charge up the battery (its at 0% after coming off a full night charge 4 hours ago).

[marktold]

I had the same thing twice. Charged the hole night came up empty. 15 minutes charging in offce it was full.
Markus

[les_garten]

I had the same thing twice. Charged the hole night came up empty. 15 minutes charging in offce it was full.
Markus

I've seen some bizarre stuff randomly since 1.3

[AndyNokia232]

My new "Japod" battery charges up to 98% according to my battery widget, and seems to last more than the usual 1 day scenario. Money well spent friends!

[tehowe]

All things considered, is it better to leave my phone's data connection on my 'unlimited' cellular data plan or to switch to a Wifi hotspot if one is available, in order to maximize battery life but have things like my SkypeIn number available.

In either case, I'm running OpenVPN, though I don't believe it has much messaging overhead.

Thanks!

[geneven]

My new "Japod" battery charges up to 98% according to my battery widget, and seems to last more than the usual 1 day scenario. Money well spent friends!

I haven't found my Japod batteries to be especially special compared to my Scud or Mugen batteries.

[geneven]

All things considered, is it better to leave my phone's data connection on my 'unlimited' cellular data plan or to switch to a Wifi hotspot if one is available, in order to maximize battery life but have things like my SkypeIn number available.

In either case, I'm running OpenVPN, though I don't believe it has much messaging overhead.

Thanks!

I haven't noticed that much difference batterywise, but I usually switch to WiFi because I get more speed.

[trisha02]

i am facing battery drainage problem...i installed cssu,speedpatch nd overclocked my device.my device is always overclocked to 700mhz. today i had 94% charge and started to listen music..after 40mins the battery was 80%.i played music player with someplayer.how to increase battery life.is it usual? i followed all the steps like brightness and all.help plz

[jaanusa]

Lately my N900's battery is behaving very weirdly.
It runs out in about 7 hours if I leave it on standby without doing anything.


Have similar problem myself. Charged battery full and leaving on standby - sometimes it had drained battery overnight, sometimes during one day (not using WiFi, bluetooth, phone is set to GSM only, no running applications, no calls and messages). BatteryGraph shows that something using CPU in rising manner. By opening Concy it shows briefly that Xorg uses 25-30% of CPU. Any ideas how to fix this?

[Spotfist]

I get this issue happening randomly, I was going to make a suggestion to fix this in the CSSU but then thought it may be best handled here...


It probably happens once a week on average, I don't use my phone all day appart from maybe an email or odd phone call, battery life is looking good and then all of a sudden I use the phone and the battery reports it's empty.

Anyone have similar problems? I am running power kernel v49 with the CSSU, I did have batterypatch installed but removed it.

[biketool]

My issue is that even with brand new Scud batteries arrived today I still loose about 15% an hour with or without all radios (gsm, wifi, bluetooth, gps, FM tx) turned off and running in standby mode.
Is there a particular daemon or app that really slurps power?
I think xorg may be what is pushing the CPU to 500mhz several times a minute but that is while conky is running.
I had thought it was toasted batteries causing my 5-6 hour battery life but even with bluetooth and GSM running all day seem to have little effect on shortening my battery life. Big transfers on HEN or running webos games can drain the battery in about an hour.
I have all maemo repos active and up to date and CSSU installed.

One thing strange beside the power drain, the right side of my keyboard is lit like when in R&D mode but not the left from the time I insert the battery and even when the N900 is slid closed.

[prabhuperi]

Hi, I have some useful info that helps increase N900 battery life more than twice :)

As is the case with many users, the USB port came out along with charger cable on one fine day. And, the Nokia care center in India is asking for Rs 9000/- to fix it :( where as a new phone is available at 14000/- as on today.

To continue using this phone, I have got 2 additional original batteries and an external charger (China made) available @ just Rs 100/-. The idea is to carry additional battery along with me and replace it as and when the battery gets discharged completely.

You know what. Shocking me, with the battery that is charged externally, it is lasting for more than 50 hours without any difference in my usage. Earlier it used to last a maximum of 24 hours (where I tend to use the phone sparingly to ensure that it lasts until I reach home).

I am not sure about where am I getting this additional charge from. The batteries are same and the usage is a bit aggressive now (as I am now holding a spare battery ;) ). Those people who are struggling with battery life can give it a try.