Hello all.
Today I noticed that the battery of my N900 was running out much more quickly than usual. I did not have any active mobile data connections, or any apps running in the background, and only used the device for some short phone calls, but still my battery got drained after about 9 hours, sitting idle in my pocket.

I noticed that the 2 wifi signal strength bars (to the right of the battery bar at the top) were showing up even though I wasn't connected to any access point. The signal bars keep varying, indicating that there is some sort of activity on the wifi.

I am suspecting that even though I am not connected to an access point, the wifi NIC itself is powered on, searching for access points or something. I have used the "WifiEye" app, and I am suspecting that it is what has caused the problem.

I tried connecting to a network, then disconnecting to see if that'd return things to normal, but nothing. Then I tried rebooting the device, and I also tried "ifconfig wlan0 down" in X terminal, none of these had any effect, the bars are still there.

When I bring down the "tray" from the desktop, it says "Internet connection: Not connected", When I go to Settings > Internet connections from the applications menu, the device is set to "Connect automatically: Always ask". It is also set to never search for access points.

My friend who also owns an N900 says that the bars are supposed to disappear when you disconnect from the wifi access point.

Any ideas what might have caused this, and more importantly, how to fix it?

Thanks a lot.

what about uninstalling that program and disabling extras-testing and extras-devel from your repository??

the solution in general is wifi switcher application. works perfect.

PR 1.1 should solve the problem. I notice the problem too, that once the wifi turn on one time, the application is running at the background. So the PR 1.1 solve this problem. Now the battery can last at least 1 day now instead of only 3/4 or 1/2 day .

PS: I am still charging daily though but now at night time only.

Thanks for your responses. I figured out what the bars were, I had installed a program called "Load Applet", which was displaying the bars next to the battery icon. I thought they were wifi signal strength bars or something like that.

As for the battery draining too fast, it hasn't happened again yet, so, well, I hope it only happened once and won't happen again :P

p.s. el3ctronick: I tried the wifi switcher app you suggested (before figuring out the bars weren't related to wifi at all), of course it didn't fix the problems (because the problem wasn't related) but I will remember about it if I ever run into a problem that is related to wifi :P Anyway, thanks for your effort