Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

I'm sorry to hear that... it looks there are multiple battery related issues here (somebody was also talking about old sim cards draining the battery)

Today I had the battery draining again, after a couple of hours the full battery was only half full and guess what? When I tried to turn on wifi the device would not find any wifi signal (there are multiple wifi spots in my area, not only my router).
So in my case I would definetly say that the battery drain is in some way related to the wifi hanging.

The good news for now, is that I have tried typing what Laughin Man suggested:
ifconfig wlan0 down, ifconfig wlan0 up
in xterm (after gaining root access with rootsh)
and I was able to recover wifi functionality.
I will have to check if battery draining stops at this point, but I would suppose it should.

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

Thanks for the tip I'll try it next time. I am a bit shamed of ranting yesterday but since my user experience with the device has been constant struggling with battery I was extremely frustrated.

This is my checklist so far:

• Uninstalled all SW not necessarily needed
• Configured all the widgets accessing internet to be updated manually only
• Disabled most of the desktop widgets
• Forced the email client to update manually only
• Disabled automated network scans
• Switched the phone to 2G network only
• No TCP/IP connection
• Closed GPS, Bluetooth, Wifi
• Got a brand new SIM card from my operator
• Monitoring any rampant processes using top, powertop and load applet

What I haven't tried yet is to replace battery, charger or charger adapter with a new one. The charger adapter could be the culprit since using it the charging seems to take quite a long time and it makes sometimes a high pitched whizzing sound.

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

I tried the ifconfig trick (sudo gainroot->ifconfig wlan0 down->ifconfig wlan0 up) and it doesn't affect the battery drain problem.
Anyway I experienced battery drain but NOT problems with wifi hotspot search.

Wifi works fine on my n900, but every time I switch it on it starts to drain battery, and I have to reboot to stop it.

So imho the problem is related to wifi in a non-linear way.

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

Anyone been playin xvid/divx movies on this? Any idea how many hours playback you can get out of it?

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

I'm considering getting a zaggsparq for when I will be on the road, or gone for 12+ hours or when I know I will have some extensive use. I have done some testing as well and with 3g network:

- 2nd full charge of the device, before that I used it plugged in as I don't have my screen proctectors and I'm sick with flu resting at home. I have used it for 6 days though, and pretty much installed lots of applications from the extras, and a few from extras-testing.
- facebook widget disabled, weather widget, and some others active.
- 3g network online (but inactive), no wireless
- some browsing 30minutes (gmail, facebook, maemo forums and no flash content if I remember correctly)
- little talking maybe 5 minutes
- IM services and email offline
- network search offline
- took 3 photos
- recorded a 45 second video and broadcasted it via qik
- Desktop widgets set to update every 4+ hours
- some gps used due to pictures/videos taken wşth geo-tagging

I got around 17 hours of battery life.
Now with extreme (but planned) using, I bet that this device can take 7-8 hours at most, which is not that bad actually considering that during the day most people get a chance to plug it someplace.

I have not tested battery life with videos or mp3s, but I bet the device can handle media without issues and it's the radios that cause most issues.

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

I had some battery issues with N810 long time ago and reason for that was bad wlan hotspot. On that network there was some badly configured windows servers which send every second many broadcast packets. It killed the battery on my N810 very fast.

So if you have issues on some networks and you know how to use wireshark or tcpdump try to look if thats a problem.

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

btw, how long does it take for you to charge your device from a dead battery to full charge?

I'm using the USB charger, and it seems to be taking more than normal (what is normal) although the problem could indeed be not enough power being supplied from my notebook.

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

Started a bug for this, go vote for it so maybe someone will pay attention and try to fix it in the next OTA Update...

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6615

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

...along the thread you've focused on several possibilities of what may be draining the device's battery, and although i haven't got my n900 yet (stupid NOS.es), in my experience with the N95, the accelerometer could also be a battery hog: when i ran the step-counter application, it could cut my battery performance by up to 50%...

...so just pitching an idea...

Re: N900 battery life
 

No; I live in The Netherlands and use Vodafone (with a brand new sim card). (sorry for the late response).

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

People have been reporting in another thread that the Zaggsparc doesn't work reliably with the N900... so beware

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

Yeah I read about the issue.

I have a feeling it's a connector problem though.

Zagg decided not to ship sparq to Europe anyway, and I doubt it will be available anywhere in Europe soon :P

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

I haven't read this whole thread, but wanted to chip in my experiences with my new N900 regarding battery.

In a nutshell, I am disappointed.
It's worse than my previous Nokia N95.

I have it full charged when I leave work. Then a 1:30 hour commute, using it a fair bit [what I bought it for:)] see's the battery down to about 25% charge if that.

I am finding I need to charge it 3 times a day just so it doesn't quit on me.

Maybe it will lesson when the excitement/novelty wears off. But I did buy it to use it for everything I am using it.

Does anyone know about a bigger, heavy duty battery for this?

Thanks

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

Hi,

I had a strange issue regarding battery, I put my brand new N900 trough USB on my PC. When I was going to sleep the battery was 100% full, switched off the N900 and put the computer to sleep. The N900 was still connect trough the usb. Next morning the N900 would not turn on, putting it to AC power was not waking the device as well. It was completely dead, and I tried a lot of things to get it to work. Well today I went to the shop where we put in a different battery and the N900 worked well again :D

Is it possible the battery was drained so much that it broke?

Thanks

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

Yeah man I totally understand where you are coming from. Similar thing with me, I had the original N95, did not like the battery life, ended up with an E71 which has poor camera but great battery life. Decided to take a chance on the N900 ah well, we can never get everything we want in life :p

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

The E61i and E71 have incredible battery life, I know (but the N95-1 I had was decent after several firmware updates - nowhere near that level, naturally). But considering the hardware in the N900 I am not surprised that it drains so much faster. Lets see what happens after a few months of optimisations ( and hopefully a few bigger capacity batteries become available :D ).

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

I am finding the battery lasting longer now. I watched a movie the entire train trip into work (1:20 hours) and still had about 80% battery. So much better than before.

So mahbe it just takes a few full charges on a wall power socket charger.

On a side note, I am noticing that using a car or computer USB charger doesn't ever fully charge like a power socket charger does. is it just me?

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

Hi,

I got my N900 last week.
Its a GREAT PHONE but also with GREAT LACK in battery life :-(

I had it fully filled up at 7.00 AM and now its 1.13 PM and just 1 bar left.
I think it will not reach 8H of ’standby’ time…
<UPDATE: 2.00 PM when it ran out...>
<PS: my phone also got warm as hell, while doing nothing?>

I almost did not touch the phone…
It has WIFI and 3G enabled constantly with MSN/SKYPE/SIP logged in at all times, but only made 2 calls of 1 minute each and had no conversations….

I also disabled blue-tooth completely as I don’t use it.

>> happy with my phone, but want to trow out the battery out of the window :):confused::(

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

What USB charging method does not allow(which power socket does) is to overcharge the battery.

So, by using the power socket the battery lasts longer but it is advised to charge from usb from time to time, also.

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

I have seen several causes that can lead to a fast battery drain. A few days ago a copied file got corrupted and wasn't being able to delete it. what resulted in a constantly 100% CPU load causing the battery to emty in a few hours.

Second of all try removing the sd card (if you have one) mine caused the same problem using 100% load all the time due to faulty formating the sd card. Best format it in dos and out of the phone in a card reader. this solved the problem with me.

The n900 is like a small laptop. I dont know if you ever used one but mine is emty in only 2 hours! I think when fully using the phone you still have 6 hours of use.

And ofcourse the battery drains in 8 hours if you have an internet connection running all the time! my n96 is emty in less then 2 hours.

But i must agree that when the phone is in idle mode, it has to atleast make 48 hours before the battery runs out of juice! and thats far from the truth at the moment!

in 2012 a company will introduce a new kind of battery that charges in less then 6 seconds. it works with some sort of pipelines to guide the electricity to its place. at the moment its like spraying and waiting till it falls onto the right place with the current batteries. These new batteries will not only be charged 10.000 times faster but also have less weight and higher capacity. They are working on it at the moment. But i think its very expensive in the beginning so it will be more likely 2015 before we will see them in normal phones.

Here a few articles. there are a dozen on the net:

http://www.slashphone.com/69/1671.html

http://www.autoblog.com/2009/03/12/n...harging-still/

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

_No_ charger will overcharge the battery. The difference between USB charging and power socket charger is simply that USB charging may limit you to 500mA while the power outlet charger can push up to 1.2A. So it's faster.

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

1) thats really bad, there should be some check in the firmware for 100% load and kill the instance if there is no 'improvement/progress'.
almost like firefox (asks) for a website that is not progressing, that seems to work quite the same way.
2) I do not have a SD card installed.
3) I know its a small laptop, and therefor I like it very very much! :-)
though I was not really really using the device as I explained, however the internet connection was enabled. Its insanity to disable it en enable it every time you decide to use it... If not used it should not be sending a lot of data and stuff to keep it 'alive' and therefor it should not drain that much in my opinion.

I've had 3 HTC's before and as much as you could say for instability of these devices, the battery was great.
I could play around with them all day, run apps and stuff.
The battery for a HTC usually is like 10% of the device measures, in stead of the 2% or something from the N900.
However I'll NEVER turn back to HTC as crappy as the devices are! :s
hardware breakdowns/broken styluses without any good reason etc etc.
my N900 is COOOOL :cool: (or rather HOT, when taking such battery power...)

with all due respect: I CANT WAIT FOR 2012!!!! :P
Hopefully by then I'll have a Nokia N9000 running Maemo 7 or something ;)
Besides of that it may be the end of the world (or a new beginning ) according to the mayans, maybe the beginning of real battery life improvement haha:D

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

Today, to do a test I've loaded the battery full again.

I've made some SIP calls, had a MSN conversation and the battery still shows all blocks!...

I'm disconnecting wifi and put msn/skype/sip offline every time I lock my screen again.

at same time yesterday with wifi on and the chat/voip accounts logged in all time it was down to 1 or 2 blocks already.

CONCLUSION:
either way. setting this manually every time is not really a option.
can't there be some build in option that closes the wifi connection and switches to 3g or even 2G to save bat. when 'locking the screen' and optionally log off msn/skype? :-)

PS: I've basic knowledge of c++ and will look into programming for n900 soon if I have more time, but I guess i will have to start with hello screen as I have no knowledge of linux and needed reps etc etc. haha

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

hey guys is this a Genuine Nokia battery?
http://cgi.ebay.com/NOKIA-BL-5J-5800...a9d07c981#shId

its in package and have the hologram

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

Hey, I whould not trust it really if it comes from Singapore and is THAT cheap.... normal price should be about US $25.00 ?
In europe (well everything seems more expensive here the cheapest is about 20 euro! :confused:

it sais 100% nokia bat. the one in the picture seems real yeah,
but I guess if you were to order it you might get a clone.

"poor quality battery, but seller quickly issued full refund, so all ok overall." was a feedback...
Not sure but just a first feeling and experience from ordering from foreign countries haha.

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

hahah i'll stay safe then. First gotta wait and see how my N900 performing with the battery. Else I'll get a genuine battery one as spare in NZ but it is ripped off here $40-50NZD.

Really hope to get my hands on the N900 real soon (Friday).

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

I'd do the same thing, better to spend a little more then to be disappointed or even worse: a battery that explodes, whould be the first time...
[QUOTE=Really hope to get my hands on the N900 real soon (Friday).[/QUOTE]

I don't think you will be disappointed! As long as you keep the WIFI off when not needed ;-)
That was the only minus I could find on the whole phone. I really LOVE the device :-)
I guess there will be a fix soon for the wifi that, lets hope so!

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

I thought I'd share my contribution to this thread; my battery lifetime doubled when I removed the original Calendar-widget from homescreen.

I can repeat the bug by putting the widget back to homescreen.

If I have the widget on, my battery will be drained to empty in 6-9 hours and if I have the widget turned off, the battery will easily go from 12 to 24 hours.

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

And what connections did you have on? was that with wifi/3g? and your battery still doubled?

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

I'm running out of options besides replacing the battery or getting a new n900 which is just about impossible right now. Here is my setup..

Off the charger at 6 a.m. fully charged
Brand new SIM card
GPS completely off
Bluetooth completely off
Network mode set to GSM
Screen brightness set on lowest
Backlight timeout set to 30 seconds
Always connected to T-Mobile. Wifi set to manual, search interval set to never. Not connected to wifi at all during the day
2 desktops: 1 with facebook, calendar, media player widgets and 2 contact shortcuts. The other with nothing but shortcuts and 2 bookmarks
2 email accounts set to poll every 30 minutes
Mail 4 Exchange set to manually synchronize contacts, calendar

Usually web browsing on EDGE for a total of 1.5 hours
Maybe play 30 minutes of media

Dead by 4 p.m.

I've reflashed more than once and ran with no extras-devel apps with marginal improvement

My signal strength isnt great but I should be getting better battery life even with idle. I've pretty much scaled back the intended use of the n900. Even with light use I have yet to break more than 12 hours on a full charge.

Also, how accurate is the battery information from running "lshal | grep battery"? This morning after coming off the charger and only installing 3 updates, my battery looks full, but my percentage says 86%.

Anymore tips would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

Could you try with 'top' in an xterm and look for any process using more than a couple of percent CPU? (except for just after starting top, which by itselfs consumes some CPU).

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

I have 3G open all the time and no wifi connections.

I noticed I can have a little longer lasting battery if I close the 3G after surfing but the difference is minimal.

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

I noticed this as well. It was going 96% Now when it hits green, it's about 86%. I had a TREO 680 nd had to do a Battery meter calibration every so often or the meter was way off. The meter would show empty when the battery had many hours left in it.

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

I realise you've already scaled back your intended usage, but just for troubleshooting purposes, what happens if you remove some of the desktop widgets, e.g. the Facebook and Calendar ones?

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

I've removed those and now I'm reduced to one desktop w/o widgets and only shortcuts and bookmarks. Half my battery is already gone, so we'll see how it goes the rest of the day

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

Hey Guys!

So i already tried a lot of improving my Battery...

Now i got at least 2 Days of Standby.

My Setup:

- Always connected to Vodafone Internet
- 4 Desktops with a lot of Widgets in use. BUT: NO FACEBOOK! That´s one of the Widgets which will drain your Battery fast!
- NO WIFI
- NO Messenger online. If i am Online with the Messenger App on Skype and ICQ my Battery drains in about 5 to 6 hours!
- Email is manual Sync.
- Light on 3
- 30 Seconds of Light Timeout.
- Bluetooth off except of Driving in my Car.

Can anybody confirm that the Messenger and the Facebook Widget will drain the Battery fast?

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

How to get the percentage od battery? Any possiability to get mAh of battery?

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

Ok, so I reflashed the n900 last night, didnt install any extra apps. turned off all automatic email checks, removed all desktops but 1, no widgets at all, only shortcuts, charged to full overnight.

Took it off the charger this morning, used the web browser for 45 minutes on EDGE only and my battery is already down 30%.

It may be time for the N900 to go back. I love the potential of the N900 but I think I have a lemon.

What else is there to do?

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

(disclaimer: don't try this if you don't understand what it does)

I've looked at the power management settings
And then it looks as if they don't support 125MHz mode in the kernel: :confused:

So, to save a bit of the battery one can lower the max cpu freq on the next reboot by changing "scaling_max_freq 600000" to "scaling_max_freq 550000" in /etc/pmconfig

or in the live system (temporary util the next reboot):
So now your device can be as crippled as Droid ;)



Also, for the people with wifi problems a temporary bandaid that I've seen somewhere posted for the N8xx (YMMV):

1. create a file in /etc/network/if-post-down.d/restart_wlancond with the following contents:
2. Then make sure that it's executable by doing:

Re: N900 battery life questions, issues, scenarios
 

I'd probably suggest to send it back. I had an n900 that would reset every 10 seconds to 2 minutes. Reflashed it several times with different images, tried all sorts of different things, nothing worked... Finally sent it back, will be getting my new one Monday.

Lemons happen, I guess.