I understand that some technical things might be bit hard to understand but sometimes I just wonder.

Ain't that pretty obvious? Radio signal chip is not on/off type piece of hardware. Additionally if you look phone standby times on 2g or 3g network they have been normally bigger for 2g network. Recently on some phones Nokia specifications say that last longer on 3g network but the average trend has been that 2g is power conservative. And same thing applies to your wifi network. With low signal N900 pushes more power to wifi chip. Obvious to me but seems that not for everybody.

I almost posted after first post that you probably know that everything depends on your current location and service provider network strength on that location. And probably it also depends on where are you located in your building..basement or top? So again huge number of variables :|

I would recommend users to install battery-eye from extras-testing and learn how your device behaves under different kind of setups.

I hope that this topic makes users bit think what they do with this device.
This is nice example:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=43748
Where people post their figures and THINK what they have done and what widgets and what protocols are on.

Thanks for using the most polite way to call me an idiot. Much appreciated.

I am fully aware that 2G is more power conservative than 3G. I just wanted to know for sure if there is a difference between unstable 3G and stable 3G network coverage.

True, I am not a power user, I have many things to do in my life other than learn how to take the phone apart and put it back together blindfolded. Maybe after about 45 minutes trawling through various development forums and technical information, I could have found out if the phone has some sort of script that prevents excessive battery usage when the 3G network is unstable. I am sorry to everyone that I didn't bother to take that risk of possibly wasting those 45 minutes, and instead making a fun poll that could get everyone thinking about how this could possibly be what is causing their brand new phone to have such a bad battery life, and hopefully reassure them that it is solvable.

Either way, thanks for your extremely useful input.

Sometimes I wonder if people can read...

Sorry if I was a bit rash. My intentions are by no means to say that someone is idiot. Just encourage.

Actually, Kaii, poor 3G coverage forcing mode flipping killing battery life is really well understood. Ask anyone with an iPhone 3G/3GS.

I'd rather ask someone with a Nokia N900 and find out of there are scripts made by the developers, that have been written to get around that. I would also like to discover if THAT is the problem that is causing everyone to have bad battery life.

Please, if you have nothing nice to say, then say nothing instead.

can i just ask has anyone noticed their battery life has gotten better since they had it mine seems to last twice as long as before :0) The thing is, is this about the battery or the phone? I am due to get my n900 replaced today as its faulty and am wondering if i should maybe switch the battery and hold onto the original one as it holds a decent charge in comparrison to what it used to when i first got it? Hope this is a correct thread to post this question on?

I have pretty bad reception where I work so am constantly being switched from 3g to 2g and back again, I had to download the switch app so I could leave it in 2g mode as this saves battery life but not by much...

I have noticed that when Im at home over the weekends where my phone can connect to the wifi and when Im out in town or whatever I get very good signal and therefore it seems my phone doesn;t have to waste loads of energy trying to gain a signal. This weekend both Saturday and Sunday I still had about 60% battery life come the end of the day with average use, during the week my phone is dead.

Im sure people will say it's obvious that your phone will drain more battery having to constantly reconnect as the signal goes up and down but could some1 perhaps develop an app that maybe performs some analysis on the current location and will automatically stop my phone from trying to reconnect every 5 seconds? is just a thought...

Hey!

Thanks for ressurecting this thread. I will make a quick report on what has happened to me (the thread maker) and how I finally solved it.

Firstly, if you are in UK, flash your phone to the global firmware. Details of how to do that are here: http://wiki.maemo.org/Updating_the_tablet_firmware This solves a lot of major battery life related bugs, as it did for me. This is the single major step you can take to improving your battery life (mine is now fine).

I also, at the same time, started using a testing program called AutoDisconnect. Seeing as I started using it at the same time, it's hard to tell how much difference it made, but I am sure it is some.

I also got a new SIM card, and did the various things like turning the brightness down and stuff like that.

Finally, let me just stay that having an unstable 3G connection doesn't bother my battery anymore, significantly at least. I can't tell if its because of the flash, or the AutoDisconnect program, but couldn't hurt to try both. However, it is best to wait until the program is finished testing.

Good luck peepz!

If you still have problems, reply to this thread and maybe we can make another poll. Feel free to PM me to ask any questions as I am now one of the veteran soldiers who has seen the trial of low battery life, and prevailed. Perhaps I can share my wisdom with you.

Peace

i believe at some point, switching within gsm and 3g bands is normal, (specially in DUAL mode). i understand that you think that the signal is not consistent.

for what i experienced, gsm and 3g switch automatically on which signal your phone needs. i often spend my whole time at the basement, and most of that time, my device is on 3g (thats my 5800 xm though, n900 has no 3g i my place).

if you want, you can just put your n900 to GSM mode, then put it to 3g when you most need it.

ye thats what I did, but even in 2g mode my signal goes up and down, if I set it to 3g only it's just worse in the fact that I get around 4 bars and then nothing, hence I assume why the phone switches to 2g but yes you are correct in that this will not be the case 100% of the time.

My majour problem is when the phone is disconnected from web n walk, because I have it set to autoconnect I believe my phone is doing this a nunmber of times over the day and then when connected is trying desperately to keep the connection open on one bar...

I shall read into autodisconnect Im looking for something that basically checks the connection iv got and decideds on weather to connect or not based on the connection quality