Texrat | # 31 | 2010-01-19, 23:50 | Report

That doesn't sound normal. I was actually a heavier user it sounds like and usually got a full day and sometimes 2 out of a charge.

schettj | # 32 | 2010-01-19, 23:56 | Report

Right, my bad.

Expecting 6 hours of wifi off a 1320mah is....

Meh. The bottom line is there is a fairly tight power budget on these things. You can figure out the load in mA for keeping various bits of the hardware powered on, and then you can calculate your runtime with that stuff powered up. Beyond bugs that prevent things from powering down when they should, there is no magic way to avoid drawing power.

You want longer life, you either have less capable hardware, or a bigger battery.

Most manufacturers have resigned themselves to getting 6-8 hours of "medium load" use as a target. Or three hours talk time. On every device I've seen with wifi, wifi is going to draw about the same as 3G, or 600+mA. Which is going to be, er, 2-3 hours total runtime per charge. Just like on the iPhone, the iPod Touch, Driod, HTC smartphones, etc, etc...

jaysire | # 33 | 2010-01-19, 23:57 | Report

Being logged on to my IM:s basically cuts my battery life in half or more. I can get around 36 hours easily with normal use, but if I put my availability to "on", it goes down to 10 hours.

So, try this before you sell the N900: Click your status bar at the top (with the battery and signal strength). Choose Availabilty -> offline -> save. Try it that way for a while and see what happens. Of course I still use IM:s, but only when I can't log on from my desktop.

lbthomsen | # 34 | 2010-01-20, 00:02 | Report

I must admit I haven't been experimenting all that much, but in my case the major killer seems to be 3G. With 3G on, my N900 runs dry pretty quickly. Wifi seems to depend on the power setting. With 100 mW it seems only slightly better than 3G whereas with 10 mW it seems quite ok.

However - 2.5G (EDGE) seems quite good. I leave it online on EDGE (and it is online because it keeps the same IP address) the whole day - while connected to MSN, Yahoo, GTalk, Skype and a private Jabber server and checking 2 email accounts every hour and it can easily run the whole day. That I actually find quite reasonable. In short - I am not massively impressed but I am not massively disappointed either.

What I would love and what - in my case would improve battery life significantly - was a tad more intelligent handling of what internet connection is on when - a bit like in my 5800 really. In other words - be able to configure per application which internet connection it should use and/or prefer.

Laughing Man | # 35 | 2010-01-20, 00:11 | Report

I think it's online as it happens, and if you believe advertisements boy do I have a lovely bridge I'd like to sell you.

The only commercial that I like about the N900 is the guy transforming into the N900, where he says something like dangerous.

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Last edited by Laughing Man; 2010-01-20 at 00:13.

pinsh | # 36 | 2010-01-20, 00:21 | Report

I for one hope that Nokia one day open sources the device state management code.. so we can all tinker around with it and try to improve battery life.

Naughty | # 37 | 2010-01-20, 00:24 | Report

After having a lot of nokia phones, I do think N900's battery life is short. Compared to the N80 that would run almost a week without a charge it feels kinda annoying to charge my N900 every 2-4 days.

But here's the thing, you can't get super powerful phone without lot of power consumption. If you truly want long battery life, then you need a battery that is twice the size of the phone. Now wouldn't that be cool?

In my N900 battery lasts usually 2-4 days and I have wifi on while at home, traveling in tram or at school. I keep installing/removing apps and doing everything to show of my friends how great N900 is. My 5800 couldn't last more than 4 hours using wifi, but on the N900 it lasts. I keep forgetting wifi on at home for like 24 hours and the next day only one bar of the battery has gone. I have facebook app, weather app and software updates on.

If anyone faces battery drain like the guy in the first post, then you should look which application has hanged, or if some IM software ect is keeping dataconnections constantly alive. I bet I couldn't drain my battery in 6 hours even if I tried as hard as I could.

chrismint | # 38 | 2010-01-20, 00:28 | Report

OK, that sounds like it could be a solution! Sorry to sound like a noob here but how do you control the level of connection?

Flandry | # 39 | 2010-01-20, 00:34 | Report

I don't use 3G data but can connect wifi and with light usage it averages 5% battery/hour. That's 20 hours, give or take.

I can't come up with any scenario where someone would need a 3G data connection and wifi on all the time. oO

thecursedfly | # 40 | 2010-01-20, 00:59 | Report

In my opinion you should keep WiFi and 3G mostly offline, unless you need it. IM can go more than well on 2.5G as can receiving emails and calls.
You need to browse the web? Then you turn Wifi or 3G on (depending on which one is available), surf the web, and turn it back off. (Same applies for any task which requires a fast connection)
This way you probably save quite some battery.

For the rest you don't seem to drain the battery playing games (Quake3 and such), or watching movies on the phone..

In the case you still cannot solve the problem, you can try to flash the device as it may be a firmware issue; but this only as last option, as to force the reflash of the device is something Nokia should really avoid in a firmware since it's often very invasive (you have to mess with all your data, settings, custom stuff).

Keep us updated, and share your eventual solution with your friend of course.. ^^

edit: oh, and I forgot to add bluetooth: same rules apply as for WiFi and 3G.

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Last edited by thecursedfly; 2010-01-20 at 08:50. Reason: added bluetooth