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-   -   Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all) (https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=35912)

TheUnlockr.com 2009-12-05 06:19
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
So by the way, how to we report this to people that are actually in charge of OTA updates? Just need to make sure there are plans to fix this...

Venomrush 2009-12-05 06:24
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheUnlockr.com (Post 411132)
So by the way, how to we report this to people that are actually in charge of OTA updates? Just need to make sure there are plans to fix this...
https://bugs.maemo.org/enter_bug.cgi

TheUnlockr.com 2009-12-05 23:01
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
Ok, nothing seems to fix this crap.

The battery just dies before 6 hours, I have to charge the phone 3 times to last a day, its getting ridiculous.
Anyone else have horrible battery life and figure out why?

patstew 2009-12-05 23:14
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheUnlockr.com (Post 412207)
Ok, nothing seems to fix this crap.

The battery just dies before 6 hours, I have to charge the phone 3 times to last a day, its getting ridiculous.
Anyone else have horrible battery life and figure out why?
Is there anything running in the background preventing the cpu from going into sleep states while you're not using it? I think I read that some applications/widgets did that and killed someones battery life.

TheUnlockr.com 2009-12-05 23:14
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
Anyone else have this issue, vote for the bug!

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

Maybe they'll look into it and get it fixed in the next OTA.

hihai411 2009-12-05 23:16
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
I received my phone yesterday, first day it lasted for about seven hours with 20 percent left. Last night I charged it fully and today the batter does appear to last longer but thats also because i did all the battery energy saving tips.

I think there might be something to battery draining faster if you do not have good reception in your home. Mine constantly jumps from 2.5 to 3.5 in my house maybe that might be causing the battery to drain faster. Another possibility is my simcard is 5 years old. I will pick up a new sim later today or tomorrow and see.

whealy 2009-12-06 00:11
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
I've got the same battery levels that TheUnlockr.com is describing. The only interesting thing I've read here is that the people that seem to be reporting good battery life don't seem to be using email services. I know I was using Exchange and IMPA (and even tried POP version) accounts when I had the low battery life.

In my last attempt I changed both email's to download via manual initiative only. But the sync icon seemed to continue to show up anyway.

Mine is going back to Nokia for just this reason. I LOVE the OS. But the issues I'm facing make the phone unusable.

sschueller 2009-12-06 01:48
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
The battery stamina does seem quite bad. I didn't make it through the 1st day.

I did notice that if I had no signal for several hours the battery would die a lot faster.

Also sometimes (rarely) when I connect the phone to the USB port on my Win7 PC it does not enter charging mode. One morning I had a almost dead phone.

My SIM card is 13 years old and says omnipoint on it which became voicestreamn and then t-mobile.

chritto 2009-12-06 02:17
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
Have you guys turned off GPS/Location services? My understanding is that the phone polls the GPS occasionally to display your location in your IM status etc - perhaps if it's disabled entirely in settings, your battery life will improve. At least with my iPhone, GPS goes through battery life like there's no tomorrow.

TheUnlockr.com 2009-12-06 17:33
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by patstew (Post 412229)
Is there anything running in the background preventing the cpu from going into sleep states while you're not using it? I think I read that some applications/widgets did that and killed someones battery life.
I read that too, so I havent installed any 3rd party apps yet. I also tried taking off all the widgets and going down to 1 desktop screen instead of 4. No difference so I put them back.
But thanks for the suggestion!

TheUnlockr.com 2009-12-06 17:35
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by whealy (Post 412318)
I've got the same battery levels that TheUnlockr.com is describing. The only interesting thing I've read here is that the people that seem to be reporting good battery life don't seem to be using email services. I know I was using Exchange and IMPA (and even tried POP version) accounts when I had the low battery life.

In my last attempt I changed both email's to download via manual initiative only. But the sync icon seemed to continue to show up anyway.

Mine is going back to Nokia for just this reason. I LOVE the OS. But the issues I'm facing make the phone unusable.
Ya I had those issues with email with the first N900 I had (was replaced by Nokia) so this time I never even set up email at all (I just goto Gmail.com to access webmail instead, even though that is a pain in the *** lol). So the email isn't what is doing it to my phone, but eh who knows at this point.

TheUnlockr.com 2009-12-06 17:37
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by sschueller (Post 412405)
The battery stamina does seem quite bad. I didn't make it through the 1st day.

I did notice that if I had no signal for several hours the battery would die a lot faster.

Also sometimes (rarely) when I connect the phone to the USB port on my Win7 PC it does not enter charging mode. One morning I had a almost dead phone.

My SIM card is 13 years old and says omnipoint on it which became voicestreamn and then t-mobile.
Wow, youve never lost your phone in 13 years, I just want to applaud you for a second lol
Even though this may not solve the problem entirely, you DEFINITELY need a new SIM card. Those 13 year old SIM cards used totally different power consumption not too mention are not optimized for 3G (considering it didnt exist yet really lol).
See if your battery issues are better after getting a new SIM and let us know, maybe youll be lucky and thats all you needed.

TheUnlockr.com 2009-12-06 17:40
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by chritto (Post 412426)
Have you guys turned off GPS/Location services? My understanding is that the phone polls the GPS occasionally to display your location in your IM status etc - perhaps if it's disabled entirely in settings, your battery life will improve. At least with my iPhone, GPS goes through battery life like there's no tomorrow.
Thanks for the suggestion!
I actually turned mine off soon as I got the phone, not too mention though that this OS is similar to Symbian in how it uses GPS and Wifi. With my old Nokia 5800, you could leave GPS on without an issue because the phone was smart enough to only actually turn it on when an application called for it (like Maps) and that phones battery life was awesome for me (and little sidenote, had the EXACT same battery our N900s do lol).

Anything else guys? Im willing to try whatever, anyone know how to use powertop? Does that help? Tried to bring it up with sudo powertop but it asks for a password...

nokialova 2009-12-06 17:54
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheUnlockr.com (Post 410931)
Ha ya at least I dont have a Pre lol but still would like to see a fix for this.

The fluctuations in battery life because of power cycles would be nowhere near the kinda fix I need. Your talking max and extra 30 minutes difference, not hours and hours (some people on here say they are using their phone in a similar way and getting 12-20 hours and I get 4-6...

Im thinking it could be coverage in my house, it fluctuates a lot, but still is this something I can fix or should I wait and pray for an OTA?

I have long given up on expecting long battery life-cycles on all these smartphones. I have an iPhone 3GS (anathema to mention that on a maemo forum, I know), but the battery life is even worse than my N900. I do have a great feeling about everything N900 though, as the best is yet to come. I bought mine 2 days ago in the Nokia Store in London and spent some time in the Maemo Lounge. I also bought my Nokia mobile charger and that goes everywhere with me now.

j.s 2009-12-07 01:29
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
I've written a short perl script to monitor battery drain. It will also monitor charging, but not many battery items get updated during charging. The script logs the battery parameters once per minute on the minute. Ten minutes might be better. The stepsize available from the system is
pretty coarse, so it is only good for extended perioids of stable average power draw. (e.g. wifi on for an hour, all radios off for an hour, etc.)

If you name the script batt_mon.pl and want to log to 20091207bat.log, then type in a terminal window:
Code:
perl -w batt_mon.pl > 20091207bat.log
The columns are
time in seconds since 1970 Jan 01 00:00:00 UTC
battery level, seems to go frem 0 to 9
battery % full, state is still 'ok' at 10%
remaining battery power in seconds (little reality)
milliampere-hours remaining
present battery millivolts
battery state, 'full', 'ok', others I don't know yet
charging/discharging

Everything between {} below is supposed to be indented. If not, it is really part of the line above. when I paste from the preview of this post into the vi editor, the lines are as they should be.

Code:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
print "#  time\tlevel\t%chrg\tsec\tmah\tmVolts\tstate\tchg/dis\n";
while(1) {
  $now = time;
  @lines = `lshal | grep batt`;
  @level = split ' ', $lines[1];
  @pct = split ' ', $lines[4];
  @remtime =  split ' ', $lines[10];
  @mah =  split ' ', $lines[12];
  @mv = split ' ', $lines[17];
  @st = split ' ', $lines[0];
  @chrg = split ' ', $lines[8];
  @disc = split ' ', $lines[9];
  $cd = substr($chrg[2],0,1) . "/" . substr($disc[2],0,1);
  print "$now\t$level[2]\t$pct[2]\t$remtime[2]\t$mah[2]\t$mv[2]\t$st[2]\t$cd\n";
  sleep 60 - time%60;
}

mrdelgibbons 2009-12-07 01:36
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
To be fair, all of my previous phones have always started to drain pretty bad when constantly searching for network coverage in a crappy coverage area. I think that is just the way of the technology...

big_zippy 2009-12-07 13:06
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by j.s (Post 413740)
I've written a short perl script to monitor battery drain...
I don't know whether to laugh or cry over this! I got my N900 last week and I think it is a brilliant piece of technology. The fact that you can write perl scripts to monitor the battery life is brilliant. The fact that such script, when run, will substantially eat into the already ridiculous battery life is a travesty.

The N900 is a Nokia device which has cellular technology built in. As such, Joe public (even the Linux nerdy ones) will expect this to encompass all Nokia knows about mobile phone technology. In my view this would imply that the phone would last at least a day on a single charge. It is sold as lasting 2-4 days (yes, read the pre-release garb and listen to the guys in the Nokia store).

I have stripped my phone down - no e-mail update, GSM only (no 3G), 10 second backlight, no widgets (none added, maybe I should remove the calendar too), no background applications running. It still only lasts about 4-5 hours!!!! (after 15+ charge cycles). This is just not acceptable, and almost certainly makes it "not fit for purpose".

I'm hoping that something can be done soon in a firmware update. If they had been straight and said 5 hours battery life I would have walked away. Instead I've been teased with brilliant technology but can't use it, unless I carry a phone charger/USB lead around with me all day and stay near a power point/desktop computer! Well hey, I don't want to make phone calls with a USB lead in my ear.

Rant over

BZ

adrianp 2009-12-07 19:46
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by big_zippy (Post 414450)
I don't know whether to laugh or cry over this! I got my N900 last week and I think it is a brilliant piece of technology. The fact that you can write perl scripts to monitor the battery life is brilliant. The fact that such script, when run, will substantially eat into the already ridiculous battery life is a travesty.
BZ
Why do think this script will "substantially eat" the battery life ? Once started it runs 2 commands does a small amount of processing and appends to a file, then sleeps for almost 60 seconds. Typical bread and butter Unix.

Personally I think people should calm down, if they don't like the N900 return it and buy something else, or wait and see what occurs and find work-arounds for their issues until fixes appear.

danielwilson 2009-12-07 20:42
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
does wifi drain battrery even if you not using it but its connected

depu 2009-12-07 20:52
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
@danielwilson
yes it does

Dexter1759 2009-12-07 21:13
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheUnlockr.com (Post 413103)
Thanks for the suggestion!
I actually turned mine off soon as I got the phone, not too mention though that this OS is similar to Symbian in how it uses GPS and Wifi. With my old Nokia 5800, you could leave GPS on without an issue because the phone was smart enough to only actually turn it on when an application called for it (like Maps) and that phones battery life was awesome for me (and little sidenote, had the EXACT same battery our N900s do lol).

Anything else guys? Im willing to try whatever, anyone know how to use powertop? Does that help? Tried to bring it up with sudo powertop but it asks for a password...
I haven't got my N900 yet (should be tomorrow) but can you turn of GSM all together? Or would taking out the SIM card, stop the N900 from trying to search for a network?

I know that this wouldn't help in the long run but if you still have massive power drain with GSM, then it's something else running on the phone (some process somewhere). If your battery life is much improved, it could be what some said about your signal.

Might help?! Hope you get it sorted (and I don't have the same problem because that'd really annoy the hell out of me!)

Bollen 2009-12-07 21:35
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
I am wondering how many on here will return their device after the 14 Day return policy cos of appalling battery life......

rawutt 2009-12-07 21:39
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
loving n900 but it disappointed me on battrey..it doesnt last for more than 4hrs. i am only just only using facebook n other web sites not even a youtube..i end up carrying charger all time same as with n96..

eiffel 2009-12-07 22:03
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
I can't be sure yet (because every day's use is different), but I seem to have greatly improved my battery life by switching from "WiFi Power Saving On (Maximum)" to "Wifi Power Saving On (Intermediate)".

This seems counter-intuitive, but there was some talk about a bug related to the Maximum setting which might explain it.

Even so, I'm not up to a full day's battery life yet.

Regards,
Roger

That One Guy 2009-12-07 22:09
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
Have you all considered that it might just be a bad battery batch from the manufacturer of the batteries?

I know, after spending $600 US or more on one, you'll say "but I shouldn't have to buy a new battery", and I don't disagree. But maybe you should try another battery and see how it holds up?

The BL-5J batteries can be had for a relatively cheap price.

That One Guy 2009-12-07 22:11
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
Sorry for the double post...


Quote:
Originally Posted by Dexter1759 (Post 415283)
Or would taking out the SIM card, stop the N900 from trying to search for a network?
If you pull the SIM card, you'll have a nice internet tablet. Won't be able to use the n900 as a cell phone.

If that's what you're after, there is an "offline" setting that takes radios offline.

Devil 2009-12-07 22:19
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by big_zippy (Post 414450)
I don't know whether to laugh or cry over this! I got my N900 last week and I think it is a brilliant piece of technology. The fact that you can write perl scripts to monitor the battery life is brilliant. The fact that such script, when run, will substantially eat into the already ridiculous battery life is a travesty.

The N900 is a Nokia device which has cellular technology built in. As such, Joe public (even the Linux nerdy ones) will expect this to encompass all Nokia knows about mobile phone technology. In my view this would imply that the phone would last at least a day on a single charge. It is sold as lasting 2-4 days (yes, read the pre-release garb and listen to the guys in the Nokia store).

I have stripped my phone down - no e-mail update, GSM only (no 3G), 10 second backlight, no widgets (none added, maybe I should remove the calendar too), no background applications running. It still only lasts about 4-5 hours!!!! (after 15+ charge cycles). This is just not acceptable, and almost certainly makes it "not fit for purpose".

I'm hoping that something can be done soon in a firmware update. If they had been straight and said 5 hours battery life I would have walked away. Instead I've been teased with brilliant technology but can't use it, unless I carry a phone charger/USB lead around with me all day and stay near a power point/desktop computer! Well hey, I don't want to make phone calls with a USB lead in my ear.

Rant over

BZ
have you done this?

- wifi only when you use it
- wifi to 10 mw
- mobile internet only when you use it
- bluetooth only when you use it
- tap-vibration off
- dont leave windows running when idle
- brightness on 1/2
- 10 seconds to standby
- no widgets at all
- gps off
- energy save modus screen
- not logged in to not used accounts unnecessary
- fm transmitter off
- energy save modus wifi
- no automatic mail updating
- no automatic wifi checking

Dexter1759 2009-12-07 22:38
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by That One Guy (Post 415443)
Sorry for the double post...




If you pull the SIM card, you'll have a nice internet tablet. Won't be able to use the n900 as a cell phone.

If that's what you're after, there is an "offline" setting that takes radios offline.
Yeh, I know. But I was just suggesting it to try an elliminate an possible problem for the OP.

texaslabrat 2009-12-07 22:46
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dexter1759 (Post 415502)
Yeh, I know. But I was just suggesting it to try an elliminate an possible problem for the OP.
Not to mention that I seem to recall a bug in which there was an inordinate amount of power draw when no SIM card is present. I'm not sure if that got fixed or not, but if it's still present that would definitely work to defeat the purpose.

Dexter1759 2009-12-07 22:54
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by texaslabrat (Post 415521)
Not to mention that I seem to recall a bug in which there was an inordinate amount of power draw when no SIM card is present. I'm not sure if that got fixed or not, but if it's still present that would definitely work to defeat the purpose.
Ah, so perhaps just switching off the GSM radio (or Offline mode) would do the trick?!

texaslabrat 2009-12-07 22:59
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dexter1759 (Post 415539)
Ah, so perhaps just switching off the GSM radio (or Offline mode) would do the trick?!
That would be what I would try. If for no other reason than you don't have to pop open the case ;)

big_zippy 2009-12-08 11:56
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Devil (Post 415463)
have you done this?

- wifi only when you use it
- wifi to 10 mw
- mobile internet only when you use it
- bluetooth only when you use it
- tap-vibration off
- dont leave windows running when idle
- brightness on 1/2
- 10 seconds to standby
- no widgets at all
- gps off
- energy save modus screen
- not logged in to not used accounts unnecessary
- fm transmitter off
- energy save modus wifi
- no automatic mail updating
- no automatic wifi checking
I've done all of these except that I keep the GPRS connection live. This should not have a big impact over the standard GSM connection.

Fortunately today I am seeing some improvement in the battery at last. I'm at 50% after 3.5 hours off charge today, and I've even used it! It seems that Nokia phones take a long time to bed in with regards to battery life; had similar issues with my N82 when I got it - it wouldn't last the weekend on GSM! Eventually I could get 3-4 days with 3G/GSM automatic selection and moderate use.

I'm hoping that soon I will get double figures on the battery life and I can start to use some features. Probably won't be for another week or two.

There is something a bit surreal about sitting on a train and kicking off several xterms using a keyboard short cut on a mobile phone, and doing some proper tinkering. With the guy next to you looking completely baffled! Would be a shame to give it up.

BZ

MaxiKana 2009-12-08 13:01
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by j.s (Post 413740)
I've written a short perl script to monitor battery drain. It will also monitor charging, but not many battery items get updated during charging. The script logs the battery parameters once per minute on the minute. Ten minutes might be better. The stepsize available from the system is
pretty coarse, so it is only good for extended perioids of stable average power draw. (e.g. wifi on for an hour, all radios off for an hour, etc.)
[...]
I used your script to monitor battery usage today.

Took it off the charget at 7AM when my alarm rang.

About my usage
  • MSN Butterfly
  • Gtalk
  • Skype
  • GPS off
  • WiFi search interval 60 min (no Wifi usage though)
  • Constant 3g connection, full bars through the whole day
  • Surfed on the net using 3g during the 30min commute to work and during the commute home. Also listened to music
  • Sent a few emails during the day

I'll make a more scientific graph tomorrow with MSN off and wifi to never.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/77620/N900%2...dec%202009.jpg

shadow 2009-12-08 13:17
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
I usually get around 8 hrs of use-time with wifi on, occasionally slipping into 3G, activeysnc on, nokia messaging on, gtalk and skype presence on, with about 1 hr of browsing and general fiddling around with the phone by installing a few apps and trying them And some calls ofcourse.

Phantasm 2009-12-09 14:19
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
I have done thorough testing about my problem of battery dying in less than 7 hours of idle. In my case the problem is triggered by connecting to Wi-Fi and no matter if you immediately disconnect or set the phone to offline mode or whatever, the bug triggered won't go away. Only reboot will help.

Without using Wi-Fi (for me the phone searching for Wi-Fi while I manually initiate 3G connection doesn't trigger the bug. I have set the phone not to search for Wi-Fi on its own.) I get 9.1 days of idle time. See more info in the actual posting about it:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=418901

joewilcox 2009-12-21 23:55
Re: Battery Drains Way Too Fast (No Wifi/Skype/Email on at all)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheUnlockr.com (Post 412207)
Ok, nothing seems to fix this crap.

The battery just dies before 6 hours, I have to charge the phone 3 times to last a day, its getting ridiculous.
Anyone else have horrible battery life and figure out why?
My battery life was great for the first 10 days and then suddenly went to hell over the last couple days. From pretty good to absolutely terrible. That's with NO apps running whatsoever.

Still two things stand out:

1) The 3G signal to my apartment now seems to be degraded. Rather than the usual 3G, I often see 2G or 2.5G and warnings about no data connection. Could be weak signal is sucking dry the battery

2) I'm using the Nokia BH-804 Bluetooth headset, and this has gone bad, too. The headset and phone both are running down faster than before. Troubling: Headset will disconnect but the N900 will show connection. So when call comes there is no audio whatsoever. Remedy requires turning off Bluetooth on the handset. So I'm also wondering if there is a Bluetooth bug sucking the battery down.

I ran battery down to near zero last night and recharged overnight. After unplugging this morning, battery ran down to near zero -- and Bluetooth connection dropped -- in less than six hours. I previously used the MyTouch, which had excellent battery life (several days) and never dropped the Bluetooth connection.

Are you using a Bluetooth headset?


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