Putting the phone into offline mode or removing the SIM card does turn the power off on the cellular radio.
But turning off the cellular radio won't actually affect battery life that much, all that a phone does in standby mode is occasionally send a signal to make the nearest cell aware it's connected. There's no permanent connection. The only time that the cellular radio really uses up the battery a lot is during calls or data access.
Isn't it true that a phone uses much more power in the event that there are no networks available at all, because it'll keep on searching for one more often? If that is indeed the case, it would be great to able to switch it off (probably not much of an issue in most developed areas of the world now, but here in the Great White North (aka Canada), there's lots of places still without coverage).
Putting the phone into offline mode or removing the SIM card does turn the power off on the cellular radio.
But turning off the cellular radio won't actually affect battery life that much, all that a phone does in standby mode is occasionally send a signal to make the nearest cell aware it's connected. There's no permanent connection. The only time that the cellular radio really uses up the battery a lot is during calls or data access.
And on a device like the N900 with a relatively large 1300mAh battery the percentage of battery life you'd save from switching off the cellular radio is fairly small.
By the way, another option if you're just trying to reduce power is to switch to 2G (GSM) mode instead of 3G (WCDMA/UMTS). 2G modes usually have slightly longer standby times compared to 3G modes. The only disadvantages of 2G are the slower internet speeds and the inability to use the internet and call at the same time.
As Grog mentioned, I believe that I've read similar things. Also if you are in an area of partial coverage, the phone keeps bouncing between networks and can rapidly drain the battery.
Thanks for the info, as I've never had a phone with a sim and wasn't aware.
If I were to buy a N900, it'd likely be unlocked with either no sim or a very minimal payg plan. In either case, I'd like to get whatever battery savings I can and primarily use it as a tablet.
I'm just interested in knowing to what extent you can use the N900 with one hand, i.e. portrait mode, seeing as they've now included the phone components, many people will instinctively want to use this as a phone (not as an internet tablet as only a few of us are familiar with that paradigm) with one hand.
Google "VOIP": What is the exact protocol used in the N900? What is the video support? How do they relate to the current implementation of Google Talk / Voice&Video Chat?
Google Talk with the N810 works only from NIT to NIT, but not to a PC using the Flash-based plugin, neither for voice nor video. For me, this must be solved in Maemo 5. One should be able to voice/video-chat with a user sitting at his PC in a gmail session of his browser.
How much of the 256 MB RAM is used by the default OS with all applications closed ?
This is Linux. Almost all RAM is used at all times. If an app isn't actively using it, Linux fills the RAM up with caches to speed things up and gets rid of them as more RAM is required.
Can we - for the sake of mine and Tim's sanity - either start clearly demarking the questions in this thread (put them in bold, perhaps?) or taking anything which isn't a question or answer about N900/Maemo 5 which Tim and I should be able to find out at Nokia World in a different thread?
Thanks. Tim and I want to communicate as much as we can back from NW09, so it makes sense to make it easy for us to answer all our questions!
