After all those threads with people experiencing poor battery life, I thought I'd share my experience which has been quite the opposite.

My N900 arrived on Monday. It is now Saturday morning, and I have only needed to charge it twice.

I was curious to know the battery life, after having read all the threads about it being too low for the unlucky, or reasonable to expect a day's use. So I decided to run it completely down from full charge.

Also, I decided to deliberately run it down to empty, and then charge it fully, a few times because that's advice I've read for older Nokia phones. (Some people said that you should never run the battery down as it cannot be charged in that state, but it is clearly not so. The manual says you might not be able to use it for a little while when charging it from empty, implying it will come up eventually.)

So when it first arrived, I played with it for a while and it lasted 7 hours on the factory charge (~50%).

Then I charged it with Nokia ~850mA charger with the adaptor in the box, not the charger that came with it. Charging time surprised me, taking about 3 hours.

I left it on charge overnight, and unplugged at 7:30 in the morning.

Much to pleasant surprise, that first charge lasted just over 36 hours.

In that time I spent about 0.75 hours talking, at least an hour playing the Bounce Evolution game (the fast track), a little web browsing, installed OpenSSH, read my mail using Mutt over 3G, installed the Location Test GUI after working out how to enable maemo-extras in order to see what's happening with GPS locks, used Ovi Maps to show me the route home for a full hour (I knew the route - I just wanted to test the app), and of course played with it generally to get a feel for it.

After the second charge, it's been 42 hours so far and the battery meter is showing approx 20% remaining.

So far, I'm pleased with the battery life, considering I was expecting to have to recharge it twice a day and carry a second phone for emergencies when travelling.

It looks like I can rely on this aspect of it as a phone after all. Great!

What am I doing that might make a difference? These come to mind:

1. Some say there is no value in "conditioning" the battery and they might be right. But fwiw, I discharged mine completely (until the phone was dead) then recharged fully, twice so far, and recharging was done with a slightly lower power ~850mA charger. I don't know if it's relevant at all, only it's what I did if anyone is comparing.

2. Turned off the vibrate-on-touch quite soon. I didn't particularly like it anyway; the sound feedback is quite enough. But I knew this might save battery too.

3. For much of each session, it hasn't been on Wi-Fi or 3G data. That is, I'm not running any data apps or widgets constantly such as IM connections. Those might make a lot of difference. In most of the places I work, Wi-Fi is not an option (cafes around here often have a broken one for some reason!). I haven't kept 3G packet data on constantly; I turned Settings -> Connections to "Always Ask".

4. For the 36 hour session the backlight was on normal, but early in the second one, I set it to minimal brightness because it was so bright my eyes hurt looking at it at night.

The mobile signal is *not* forced to 2G-only. It switches between 2G and 3G regularly according to location. (At one time, unfortunately it was stuck on 3G with no usable signal (couldn't send SMS), and needed a reboot to make it switch to 2G which was fine.)

However, a mobile *data* connection was not on all the time.
Not having 3G packet data on regularly removes some of the benefits of the device, so I'll probably find I change that when I decide to use the IM presence and/or VoIP presence and/or email fetching. It will probably drop the battery life considerably.

At least I now know that I can take the N900 on a trip and, provided I disable data connections except when I want to use them, and aren't actively using it all that much (a couple of hours calls and plenty of texts being fine), I can expect to get about 30+ hours without worry.

Send me your battery PLEASE!

Mine isn't bad, I guess it's all because of the wi-fi bug.. like when I don't connect onto the internet (or if I connect and then reboot the phone) I get great battery life.. oh well, waiting for that bug to get fixed..

Is there any reason maybe why some N900 get great battery life and others don't? I am just wondering about that.

My guess is:

1. Flash is the main culprit. People do not realize that Flash content and audipulse can stay active after closing the browser. Need to kill it or reboot.

2. Most of the widgets are battery sucking demons

3. Some people will leave apps open in the background

Main issue though is likely Flash.

Try this:
Test scenario #1
- Charge the battery fully
- Start playing your music and let it play all night
- Notice how less the battery depletes by morning.

Test scenario #2:
- Charge the battery fully
- Switch on GPRS/WiFi and keep it on all night
- Battery will be fully drained by morning and phone will be switched off.

From the above test scenarios, I'm surprised to see that playing music all night has not much affect on the battery life, rather GPRS/WiFi has a more adverse affect. I guess this should be the other way round.

I can't confirm this.
My N900 is running for 50hrs now since the last full recharge.
During the 1st night I put it in offline mode, but since then it's been online for mor than 26 hrs now (as I forgot to turn it off yesterday night).
Battery still at ~10%.

Almost 48hrs here and still at 35%... if this phone were a woman I'd marry it.

seriously your battery must be the new upgraded firmware version





lol *jk*

Well, I can't believe how good the battery is for some of you. This is my 3rd or 4th full recharge. this is what today looked like for me, after a full charge.
Connected whole time to wifi and a couple of hours of it to the 3g internet connection. the whole time the gsm network I was on said 3g.
-brightness setting to the first two bars.
-vibrate off.
-facebook widget on one of the desktops.
-about 30 minutes of talk.
-approximately 2 hours of internet and im chatting.
-accounts costantly connected: msn, aim, skype, gtalk.
-xchat connected for about 6 hours in 3 channels, 2 separate servers.
-gmail set up on modest to update every 5 mins.
-gps map routing for about 30 minutes. took about 5 pics with geotagging, and sent one to flicker, e-mailed all 5 to a couple of people.
**EDIT** omweather also on the whole time set to update hourly.
it is now 11 hours later and I'm at about 10% left.haven't gotten low battery warning yet but I will soon.

I don't know if this is normal, but I would have liked a bit better battery. for the device to last me the whole day I feel like I have to limit my usage.
**edit** OK going onto 12 hours now, and this past hour mostly browsimg and typing this message. I also updated the omweather app.
I must add that when I Go to bed and set the device to offline mode, it seems to drain almost nothing. the battery the next morning is exactly or just about where I left it.

show me your
~# lshal | grep battery.reporting
(in xterm or via ssh)

What I notice is that my battery.reporting.design is increasing after using the device now for 8 days (1260 -> 1275mAh). I also notice that I never reach the design capacity after overnight charging. I reach a quite constant level of 1220mAh.
Meanwhile my device last longer than a workday, longest running session was 18h and then I still had 10% remainig capacity.

Bye

Thorsten

Ok people with 2+ days of battery life,

what widgets are you using? how is your 3g signal? are you always connected (except night)? what IM services are you using and online? are you using email? what type of websites do you browse?
do you use wifi or 3g more often? do you reset after wifi usage?

I just can't believe how some people are getting 2+days of active use. I currently can't make it through a day or barely make it :P