Initial battery test of pre-production Nokia N900

I dont know how to react on this but it seems a good initial review for n900..

around 5 hours is not acceptable, this battery test didnt include making calls either did it? A decent phone should last a minimum of 8 hours i think. The nokia e71 lasted me almost 2 full days before needing a charge.

IMHO, this is a bit lower than I would have liked. I think the Twitter updates with Maaku every 5 minutes is too excessive though and may have had a big impact. I plan many more “typical” usage tests, but wanted to get some feedback out there since so many people are asking about it. I honestly do not make a ton of calls with my phones and am much more of a data user than a phone user so you won’t see hours of phone usage testing from me.

Thanks for that initial review. Hmm I would have liked that a bit higher as well, really tempted to purchase but the battery life has me concerned. I just want to be able to get through a day with it, moderate online usage and a few phone calls.

Which firmware version are you running? I think there was a recent version which improved battery life

The 3rd party apps are currently like a pandora box. Once you launch them, you never know what will happen to the power usage of your N900. I get extremely different battery durations depending on what I’m doing and what is running and installed right now. ONl yone thing is for sure: Recharge every night (But then, this is not a smartphone. It’s the power of mobile computing and an integrated comms platform)

I would Like to know how much juice you get from the E71 with the same settings for example just to compare

Matthew

Thanks for doing these tests. My N900 is still above 75% battery life right now and was fully charged 7-8 hours ago. It’s 5:00pm EST right now. I took it off the charger sometime between 9 and 10 am.

This has been with minimal usage, maybe an hour of calls (on speakerphone), checking facebook and twitter via the web browser for 30 mins, wifi on the entire time, manual email checking once or twice every hour (no push or automatic updates), and consistent texting over the past 7 hours. I have the display settings on the lowest lighting possible and most of my desktop displays are disabled except for one (I don’t need all the extra space right now).

I’m using AT&T so the fact that 3G doesn’t work, helps a lot, even with the wifi usage mixed in. Looking forward to seeing more of your tests on the battery life.

Great points everyone. I want to stress again that this is a pre-production device with early ROM so I am sure battery life will improve. As mentioned, there is also a lot running in the background, much like a Google Android device. Don’t forget you can always pop in a spare and there will surely be 3rd party, or maybe even Nokia branded, higher capacity spare batteries.

The E71 test wouldn’t be valid since I don’t have 3G with that device any longer and the N900 is on 3G almost all the time.

For me it looks ok. I charge my phone every day when I sleep anyway. Thank you for testing.

Hmm I think this will work for me. Don’t have 3G in my area so I only use Edge. Wifi uses more power right? would only have access to wifi when home really so that shouldn’t impact my battery life too much. I am currently on an E71 as well but the N900 has alot more stuff going on so that is reasonable that the battery life will be less.

I know you guys review a bunch of preproduction phones. How realistic do you think it is for the final version to have much improved battery life? Have you seen this in other preproduction phones you’ve tested in the past? I know based on the feedback from the 300 or so that were loaned out was part of the reason for the delay until November. I hope they can improve the N900 even further. I am pretty much using the previews as my “reviews” since I got a preorder I assume that the final will be better or at least the same as the preproduction one you are testing.

It will be interesting to see how the N900 and its battery evolve from now ’til the resale release of the phone.

Hopefully battery life improves a bit when the actual product comes out.

From My-Symbian.com – Michal Jerz has firmware v1.2009.42.9. He says:

“For instance, with the upgraded firmware (and still the same proto hardware) I noticed a DRASTICAL improvement of battery life. I started playing with the device about 7 pm and kept using it quite actively (actually almost without any breaks) until now (i.e. 1:30 am) with lots of downloads (had to reinstall everything), web browsing, software installations, configuring the device, etc. The screen was on almost all the time, i.e. almost 6.5 hours. And the battery indicator still shows almost 50% of power left.”

Having those online apps open might be the cause of the only 4-5 hours of battery life. If I set my email to update every 5 mins in my N97, the battery goes down from 2 days to barely 1

too much coverage focused on the N 900 lately..may be the name of the blog should change to N 900 experts..

would be nice to see articles on other nokia models as well!

Thank Kellie, my firmware is 1.209.41-10 so I will contact Nokia to see if I can get it updated too. Those battery tests sound awesome!

Aditya, sorry, but the N900 is the hottest Nokia at the moment while we wait for the N97 firmware 2.0 update, E72, and others. I will try to add in some more general Nokia coverage and do have a couple reviews of software I am working on, but I am only a 1 man shop and do have other jobs and do need to sleep at times

Lol the N900 is a big deal for nokia, first Maemo phone, lots of us are interested hehe

3g is the culprit (along with the 5min tweet checking). With my n97, I use 3g only when needed (youtube, etc.), otherwise I keep it on edge. I wonder what the result would be doing the same test with it only using edge.

[...] Via Nokia Experts [...]

I managed to make my N900 last for ~4 days (without using internet much):

http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-users/2009-October/014540.html

I’m running my N900 with WiFi and Bluetooth enabled, Skype and Google Talk turned on, and with quite active use (browsing, chat) it lasts my typical longish working day, but has to be charged every night.

I suspect Mauku and the other homescreen widgets are the culprits here.

[...] Nokia Experts han publicado un test de la batería del N900 basado en el uso habitual que dan al [...]

When the N900 was first announce with a 1320mAh BL-5J user replaceable battery, some people saw the negative side because of the 1320mAh capacity. I saw the positive facts like the ability to buy clone batteries for less then 4 USD$. Also there are same size clone of the BL-5J that supposedly have up to 1700mAh capacity (hopefully someone will buy it off ebay and test it out). Reading these updates of non-final firmware N900 being able to last up to a full work day of medium to heavy usage and up to 4 days with minimal usage is a big plus.

Hi everyone, I got Nokia n900 couple days ago from Nokia store in NYC. So the battery life is so poor, it works only 6 hours, if u use edge, weather widget updating every hour, using skype, and being in internet like 2 and a half hours, calling sometime, texting. Version:1.200.42-11.002 if it worked full 14 hours was great! If anyone has gotten this phone, please let me know how it works!