Crossing the Battery Threshold

I'm always carrying around 2 extra batteries for my N95. Keeps me going without a charger for about 2-6 days. But i really wish that the N95 Classic had a better battery (like E90's 1500mAh).

I've been using a N73 for a year now and I've never had any problems with the battery, even on days when I go crazy with the camera. The battery is wearing out now though, so I'll need to replace it(or get a N95 8 gig 😉 ).

An interesting read...the 'threshold' indeed not only varies from phone to phone, but also from person to person, depending on usage. Moreover, newer phones have better ways of regulating and maximising battery life e.g. introduction of the 'Sleep' mode, as opposed to none on older phones.

My 6110 Navigator lasts two days on its 900mah battery with bluetooth on all the time. For 7 hours of each day it's syncing to a PC over bluetooth every hour, and it's in a building with a very weak signal, so the GSM circuitry is running at full power trying to get something. Obviously it's only got a 2Mpx camera, so that doesn't drain much.

Even with the GPS running, it will last a day's driving unplugged if the screen is set to only light up when directions are given.

When I'm off work, but just at home, it will last 4 days thanks to a clear GSM signal, and no syncing.

All the scenarios (at work, driving and at home) are well over the "battery threshold" for me, especially since at work, I'm close to power anyway and I've got a car charger for when I'm driving if I want the screen on all the time.

Less than a certain battery capacity (relative to overall functions) and the result will be misery. Greater than the same figure results in happiness and contentment.

That's from Dickens, surely? 😊

Hi Steve,

Having been fortunate to have owned both a E61 and now a E90 I really can't remember the last time i had a battery run out on me. I have also had a N73 N93, N95 and N95 8GB and never had a problem with them either. Now there are many solutions to charge your phone whilst away from a power point and I'm not going to list all the products but even Nokia now has them. I have never understood this my battery needs to last days as have always charged my devcie whilst i sleep, to not charge it overnight and then complain it goes dead seems some what bizarre to me. Like skipping breakfast and then complaining mid morning your hungry, but that's not the point really of course as our devcies do more we need more power but at least there are solutions coming to our aid should we need them.

As someone that remembers the original cell phones where you needed multiple batteries to make it through a day or a transportable that virtually meant carrying your own car battery with you . I think we have come a long way from those days and am sure it will continue to improve but we have to realise the more we do with our devcies the more power they will use and there is just no getting away from that simple fact.

Marc

When I was first looking for a PDA the options I was weighing up were Windows PocketPC devices, Psion Series 5, or Nokia 9210. I had a number of friends with the PocketPC things and while they looked flashy and more powerful, they were useless in the fact that the batteries wouldn't last half a day's use. The Series 5 was out of date and ran on AA batteries (see the cost mount up), the 9210 ran on it's own battery and through reasonably heavy use would last 3 days before I'd think about needing to charge it.

Similarly my 9500 and E90 have been great with regards to battery life.

A good mobile device is one that only needs to recharge while I sleep. However if devices were designed like that they would could run all day at their peak of power consumption, we either would not have video and GPS and more on the N95 or we would carry those 'portable' old carphone size mobile phones around. And I am talking 12V battery blocks here!

I prefere a device that will take me 95% of my days without worry and can be extended for the remaining 5% of exceptional circumstances. Those 5% are during peak usage (holidays i.e.) where my power usage increases to 2-3 full battery charges.

Size and mobility are truly connected. Size truly determines the mobility of the device as it limits your mobility as a user. The smaller and unobtrusive a device the more occasions there are in which you can carry it with you. As such you may choose between a E-90 for the active professional and a N95 for a weekend warrior like me. Or simply glue the N95 permanently to a Proporta. Doubling it's size and weight. For me a more flexible and adaptable version is more interesting. Sometime I whished the N95 would be even smaller.

However my biggest annoyance about the N95 is still it's lack of RAM.

Convergence and mobility are here to stay and they have a very interesting impact on size and battery capacity of mobile computing. As such they are the main reason for the current MIMD's with Nokia leading the market with the N810/N800. But that's a post on my blog.

L8ter,

Snoyt

I have the N95 classic. The battery life was 16 hours in some cases, until I heard a tip to disable 3G. Now I get even 3 days out of it with minimal use, and easily get through the day with active use. Essentially the biggest drain for me was that my house is a non-3G zone and whilst I was at home, the phone would be constantly scanning for a 3G transmitter. Turn that off and the battery life must have tripled. I no longer worry about it either - I'm over the threshold too now.

If I need to use 3G, which, let's face it, for most people is only useful if they're browsing the web then I just switch it back on. Otherwise it stays off and my battery life stays up.

I still maintain that the battery life (1100 mAh) of the N73 is fantastic,I was able to get 4 days stand-by time with above average use,which I think is fantastic for an N-Series device with a good quailty camera,even though it missed out on WLAN & GPS...😊

Even the N73's successor the N82 has a only a 1050 mAh,along with way more tech on board...

It's fair to say that regular phones have long since passed the battery threshold, often lasting for days without charge. Smartphone users have less of a battery expectation because they know they can do so much more with their devices.

I was going to add that as regular phones get more features that were previously reserved for smartphones, people won't accept a lower battery life, but to be honest, if you get at least a day do you need any more and will people care? Most people stick their phone on to charge at night anyway, which entails almost no effort. Battery life only becomes an issue when you're away from a charging point for any length of time.

How reliable is the battery status indicator on nokai phones? Thought it wasn' t only giving a good indication when starting the phone.

Battery indicator is not bad. It needs like most Li-Ions a reset once a while. Meaning draining the battery until low and fully charging it again. There is a slight tendency for the 8th power bar (top bar) to indicate a higer power amount of capacity then the rest. But that is largely a feeling. I did not measure it.

snoyt

Thanks for the article Steve.

For me the happiness threshold is at least 36 hours. I travel to Eastern Europe a few times a year from Canada. On the day of the departure there are plenty of calls and emails and smses to the office and family and friends... There's also the in between flight connections time and calls from duty-free shops, and checking your email and calendar and jotting down notes. Then, at the arrival, everyone seems to have the urge to call and see if everything went smoothly. And after the airport, it usually takes a few hours till I can get to a power point because I never end up going straight home. I could never get through a complete cycle on a single battery charge with any device I used to own, most of them high end. Now I have an E61i and I hope it will be better.

For regular use, the e61i will last at least 2 days with wifi and synching constantly. After the last Motorola and the n93, this is a godsend.

Sergiu

i'd just like to add that one helluva treshold i came across is the one in the n81 8gb. this is how my first day with it went:

2 hours of web surfing, taking at least 10 pictures, 4 hours of continuous music, installing and uninstalling stuff, bluetooth on the whole time for file transfer, and not to mention all the calls i did with it being my new cell.

contently it lost just 1 battery signal bar and recharged in a few minutes, i didnt keep track of time but roughly it was 15 minutes.

then i kept it going for 9 hours music playback straight till it dropped 2 bars at the end of the day. so if you ask me, that's an incredible battery life treshhold seeing as my old n93 couldnt stand finishing one movie playback.

edit: right now ive had it for occasional music listening (about at least 1 hour per time) for like 15 times, gaming outbursts that lasted like 15 minutes each at about 3 of them, and almost the whole day web surfing. ive been doing that for the past two days and i still havent plugged it into a wall charger since the weekend ended. it hasnt lost 1 battery signal bar. simply amazing.

I've been using the E90 for two months already and i have no complaints with battery life. I was a windows mobile user before i got my communicator and one big factor i went back to Nokia is the battery life of windows devices. With my present phone - i can live without a charger for a full weekend. I'm very impressed with this device since i'm able to do almost everything (for three days) in one full charge - watching movies, phone calls and lots of SMS!

I'm currently a WinMob 6 user (couldn't live with the size of the E90 but wanted the features so went for TyTn II with which I'm generally satisfied) but a major drawback of HTC devices is that the battery life is not great - on moderate useage (no/little cam, HSDPA but rare wifi, an hour of games, a few hours of Pocket Word/Excel, 2 hours of calls and a dozen emails) I'll find myself very light on battery power by the evening.

I found this with the TyTn I and I'm told the Touch has similar issues.

All this is to say that Nokia is far from the only culprit on inadequate battery power but it is something that needs a lot more focus from all maufacturers.

I remember reading somewhere that battery technology has not kept pace with the technology of phones and other devices we use. So true, reading through this article and the comments of others. We all want to do so many things on our devices and never seem to have enough battery power to support it. And this is not limited just to phones. Take laptops for instance. A standard laptop these days does not have a battery life of more than 3-4 hours for *normal* work. And if you turn on multimedia or the internet surfing, the same machine barely gives you about 2 hours.

Are there any reports of better battery technologies been implemented? Earlier phones had NiCd batteries which required even the very very basic phones to recharge every night (and typically most of the night). And it was recommended to drain them before charging - a very difficult task. Now we have adopted Li-on as the standard. The only advancement I see right now is batteries moving from say 1000mah to 1500mah or so. Its these batteries that are making the cell phones bigger and heavier. Its because of the bigger battery that the n95-3 and the n95 8Gb needed a bigger case. My phone's weight comes down to nearly half if I remove the battery. We need a new technology now that can make slimmer, lighter, faster and more powerful batteries...

There are new battery technologies under development, but it will takes years until they are on the market.

Nanowire battery, Link:
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2008/january9/nanowire-010908.html

I got a Nokia 2310 as a spare last week... charged it once and it's still working 8 days later... made a few calls each day. sweet.