Firmware + poor battery survey

Good idea...my versions are -

Software version - I8510XXHH7
Custom version - I8510L08XEUHH8
16GB version, battery currently lasting 1 day or less

I URGE EVERYONE WHO HAS A POOR BATTERY TO DO THIS...at least we can try to find the common denominator and spot a trend. my guess is that certain firmware versions are causing problems with the battery i.e. there are too many processes running in the background which is killing the battery...other firmwares probably dont run as much and therefore battery lasts longer.

If you want to know what's running in the background, you can try JBak taskmanager. I only have 'screencapture' running (although I did not install it).

I run XXHH99, 29/08/2008

Custom version L04XENHHc

Battery life seems to be getting better here. I don't know whether it is because:
- the battery is getting better
- I switched WLAN scanning to 10 minutes THEN to off
- I seem to remember there not being a symbol for "not active data connection" onder the signal quality-bar, whilst now there is... I might be mistaken tho.

agreed, i have jbak taskman installed and i can see what processes are running....theres loads of them, however, i dont know what most of them do...for example, i terminated one process and it restarted my phone.....i really hope the firmware update addresses this issue.

Firmware: XXHH7

Custom: L08XEUHH8
Date: 20/08/08

Battery Life - 2 Days Normal usage (few phone calls, lots of messages, a few pictures, the odd flash/java game).

rpwarwood wrote:Firmware: XXHH7

Custom: L08XEUHH8
Date: 20/08/08

Battery Life - 2 Days Normal usage (few phone calls, lots of messages, a few pictures, the odd flash/java game).

interesting....exactly the same phone firmware wise, yet a days difference in battery life. i let my battery drain the other day and charged it for 16 hours....made absolutely zero difference.

i think some batteries are faulty...its the only conclusion at the moment (i have done a hard restart on my phone and still makes no difference). i really am struggling to get a days battery, even with minimal use.

rp1001 - I must say I've not been disappointed with my battery life at all. It is better than my original nokia n95 that it replaced.

When I first got my N95 it required a nightly charge. After nokia released the v21 firmware it lasted two days before needing a charge (much like my current i8510 with exactly the same usage). Then after a few months of use it went back to needing a nightly charge (classic cr@p nokia battery quality).

I've not noticed any decrease in effectiveness of my i8510 battery yet. Its lasted two days pretty much ever since i had it. Occasionally 3 days with very little use, and one day if its a saturday and I've taken 100+ photos.

Battery life is NOT being affected by which firmware people are running. What is affecting it is what services people have active on their phone.

I've noticed that the INNOV8 has attracted a lot of buyers (and some are on these forums) who have not had a S60 phone before; or have traded up from another feature phone, such as a lesser Samsung.

The battery life on the INNOV8 is very good - much better than that achieved by Nokia on the N95, N95 8GB or even the N96.

To everyone who's experiencing "poor" battery life, check the following:

Is your phone making 3G / GPRS connections on it's own? (many applications do this if left open)
Do you have GPS tagging enabled on pictures taken with the camera?
Do you have Wireless scanning enabled or set to a timed scan?
Do you have Bluetooth turned on?
Are you leaving any applications open for a long period of time? (for example the camera)
Do you have any applications auto-launching on startup? (like Shozu, which not only auto-starts, but also uses a LOT of 3G data connectivity)

Once all these things are turned off (definitely turned off) then see what the battery life is like.

Dear stuclark,

I've had S60 phones since the 7650, including the N95 8Gb. And my record uptime with the i8510 has been a measely 36 hrs. With the N95 8Gb, I almost always had more then 48 hrs, and more often then not I managed 3 days. That seems utterly impossible with the i8510.

I can answer a definate NO to all the questions you pose, except for ShoZu. I never even started it until just now, to check whether or not there was an autostart-option. I didn't find any.

I did find shozu, and two other processes with shozu in the name, under processes using jbak taskmanager. I have them auto-killed at startup now. Let's see if that makes the battery run longer!

Does anyone have any idea what 'screencapture' does? It doesn't destabelise the phone when I kill it.

I have 76,6 mb free after booting now.

Edit: it's also funny that an app named screensaver is running, while the i8510 does not support screensavers!

Battery life is little more even taking into account the manufacturer's specifications.

For all your questions, the answer is NO. Unless one application does not appear to run and hide. With the taskman me appear very much ongoing, but did not know which one to tell me consumes the battery.

Today, with moderate use, multiple calls, multiple photos, some video, minutes of connection to 3G and even got a 40% enough pots ..... for me. I do not think that endure another day.

Even so I bought on ebay a battery made in china and a car charger.

I am convinced that the low battery can be partly solved with a new firmware ..... although I do not think the thing that much variety.

Greetings.

I regularly get between 48 and 72 hours standby time, and I use my phone a *LOT*. For example, I have it checking my emails every 15 minutes (which is GPRS / HSDPA access) and I use the GPS quite regularly.

If you're seeing battery life under 48 hours, it's OBVIOUS that some process on the phone is using up more battery than it should, and seeing as everyone on these forums has one of three firmware versions (and I'm NOT on the latest) then blaming firmware is currently not an option.

stuclark wrote:
If you're seeing battery life under 48 hours, it's OBVIOUS that some process on the phone is using up more battery than it should, and seeing as everyone on these forums has one of three firmware versions (and I'm NOT on the latest) then blaming firmware is currently not an option.

Its not at all OBVIOUS. Do you not even consider that he just might have a poor battery ?

My personal experience is that I get longer battery life than I did from the N95

Well, my battery didn't even last 24 hours, with the processes associated with Shozu disabled. No surpirse really, because I'd notice if there would be a data-connection now and then. That's because I'm on GSM, not 3G, to save battery. So i'd see a seperate GPRS-connection being set up.

Luckily it's "OBVIOUS" there's some process draining my battery. If you have any hints on what that might be, and why it doesn't show up in jbak taskmanager, I'd be very grateful to hear about it. I can live with a phone that needs a charge every single day, but if it can be avoided, that would be nice.

To avoid any unnessesary comments: the answer to all the questions stuclark posed above is NO. After having had the Nokia 7650, the NGage, 6600, 6630, N70, N80, N93, N95 and N95 8Gb, I know how to save battery with a Symbian phone.

stuclark wrote:I regularly get between 48 and 72 hours standby time, and I use my phone a *LOT*. For example, I have it checking my emails every 15 minutes (which is GPRS / HSDPA access) and I use the GPS quite regularly.

If you're seeing battery life under 48 hours, it's OBVIOUS that some process on the phone is using up more battery than it should, and seeing as everyone on these forums has one of three firmware versions (and I'm NOT on the latest) then blaming firmware is currently not an option.

Today when you turn the phone has been using the task manager running an application called "screencapture "..... curious truth? I have completed the process, but the battery still lasted too little too .... I think that some unknown process is draining the battery. Let's see if we can all find the solution.

It is clear that some are lasts 3 days ..... hopefully I lasted so much to me.

I used to get at least 1-2 days out of my i8510 but I must have done something to it because now I dont even get 1/2 a day with virtually NO use. I charge it at work from my PC during the day and disconnect from my PC at about 5pm. The only thing I use it for at the moment is the odd text at night and my alarm in the morning.

When I wake up my battery is at 2 bars only so I have to recharge it again as soon as I get into work.

Something is seriously not right with it. I have checked there are no running programs, all settings are set to off (bluetooth, wifi etc).

Its crazy. Would a factory reset help clear any erronous setting or hidden app? I use taskman to see whats running and there does not appear to be anything but I am new to Symbian and am not sure what the running processes are.

Do you ever turn it off? Rebooting helps clear the memory of processes that have gone wild.

I have turned it off many times, removed shozu accounts and deactivated it, done pretty much everything I can think of but nothing seems to help.

FIREWARE
I8510XXHH7

CUSTOM
I8510L08XEUHH8

Only just started to get bad battery life, lucky if it makes it 24 hours before needing a recharge, work ok till sometime last week

Long time S60 user - Got my i8510 during release week

I only really use it for texting and not many calls but I get between 3-5 days - Bluetooth and WiFi are obviously turned off

So far it's the best Symbian phone I've had - Battery or otherwise 😊

Firmware:- I8510XXHH7

Custom Firmware:- I8510L08XEUHH8

Without trying to 'boast' im getting around 5-7 days out of my battery. Always leave it to drain to almost nothing and give it a full charge.

Last charge was overnight on thurs 20th, normal usage over fri, sat (few pictures messages etc), recorded around 28 minutes of video on sun which made a dent but after 3.5 days now its still on half battery and will probably last another couple of days....

All in all one of the best batteries ive had on any phone.:icon14:

Buztafen wrote:Firmware:- I8510XXHH7

Custom Firmware:- I8510L08XEUHH8

Without trying to 'boast' im getting around 5-7 days out of my battery. Always leave it to drain to almost nothing and give it a full charge.

Last charge was overnight on thurs 20th, normal usage over fri, sat (few pictures messages etc), recorded around 28 minutes of video on sun which made a dent but after 3.5 days now its still on half battery and will probably last another couple of days....

All in all one of the best batteries ive had on any phone.:icon14:

That's simply incredible to me... Mine seems to be getting worse, I didn't even make 24 hrs today =/

I always try to drain it to the last drop then fully charge it too, but that hardly ever happens because of the phone automatically charging when transferring data. I wish I could turn that off, it's not good for the battery.

But still really amazing, that there can be such a huge difference. I wish you and I could swap batteries to see if it's a battery problem or something else.

Our mod said it was OBVIOUS that it's some process, but he obviously has no idea which one... I have the same programs running on my i8510 as I had on my N95 8Gb, none of which auto-start. All other program's, like Shozu or even Google Maps, are built-in the firmware, so if there's a problem with those, it's a firmware problem (contrary to what stuclark said about that). But I suspect it's a hardware problem =\

I read somewhere that the screen tilting might be the problem. Will test that today.

I got to the point my battery was lasting me less than 12 hours with no usage whatsoever.... After reading all possible forums I set every single option to off and then removed Garmin....

Now I have had the phone on stand by for over 24 hours and the battery still shows full...

My phone is the UK version running HH7.

There must definitely be a runaway process or more that cause the fast drainage.. I just wish Samsung would get their act in gear and released some sort of support for this phone.

It is kind of sad of having such a beautiful and powerful device afflicted with such a problem.

Hmmm well good to hear that at least it is possible... I wonder which setting it was that did the trick! Could you elaborate please on what you did?

Turning screen rotation off does not look all to promising. I'm down 25% on my battery since fully charging it this afternoon already =/

According to all the Info I gathered,

I disabled the Video sharing option.
Set the default theme.
Turn auto pivot off.
Turn optical joystick off.
Removed Garmin.
Wifi to never.
Turn automatic light sensor on.

These were pretty much all the 'suspects' I read about on other and this forum. So far the battery is still going and just to make sure, I restarted the phone and it still showed full. I enabled the gps, Route66, for about 10 minutes and finally it dropped one bar... So at least I know it is not stuck...

We'll keep monitoring.

Buztafen wrote:Firmware:- I8510XXHH7

Custom Firmware:- I8510L08XEUHH8

Without trying to 'boast' im getting around 5-7 days out of my battery. Always leave it to drain to almost nothing and give it a full charge.

Last charge was overnight on thurs 20th, normal usage over fri, sat (few pictures messages etc), recorded around 28 minutes of video on sun which made a dent but after 3.5 days now its still on half battery and will probably last another couple of days....

All in all one of the best batteries ive had on any phone.:icon14:

That cannot be achived in no way!!!
Because battery of 1200mah is not able to do such long days even If you dont touch the phone!!! Dont know why are you telling this people that you manage to achive 6 days of "normal" use and 30min of video!!! I Have secound i8510,I bought it because I wanted to see are there any differences betwen markets!!! NO,there are no differents in battery,software...Every anomaly that has my first one has the secound...WiFi always on,even if it is in options NEVER,very,very poor battery...I was recording for 5 min 2 days ago with my first i8510 and battery level from full charge went to 3bars...So! The thing about the battery you are telling is NOT,I repeat NOT POSSIBLE with Samsung I8510 or how many others call it INNOV8!!!

Jules_N93 wrote: I always try to drain it to the last drop then fully charge it too, but that hardly ever happens because of the phone automatically charging when transferring data. I wish I could turn that off, it's not good for the battery.

You have that the wrong way around. You should definatly not drain the battery.

The modern batteries prefer to be charged whenever you can, draining them to empty each time will reduce lifespan and capacity.

Falco47 wrote:According to all the Info I gathered,

I disabled the Video sharing option.
Set the default theme.
Turn auto pivot off.
Turn optical joystick off.
Removed Garmin.
Wifi to never.
Turn automatic light sensor on.

These were pretty much all the 'suspects' I read about on other and this forum. So far the battery is still going and just to make sure, I restarted the phone and it still showed full. I enabled the gps, Route66, for about 10 minutes and finally it dropped one bar... So at least I know it is not stuck...

We'll keep monitoring.

Also removed GarminXT from mine after poor battery life (24 hours as mentioned elsewhere) and only 1 bar gone overnight (3 bars before), so has anyone else with problems installed Garmin?
Still to test but before Garmin installed 94 processes running and 95 after installation so will have to find which one, maybe that's the one on my phone causing the problems.
Though having said that the phones info does say 270 hours (11 days) standby, so where does this number come from?
I assume by standby they mean switched on but not used, can't see that somehow as the best reported is about 7 days (average seems 4 days from other reports).

I installed Garmin only yesterday, and had battery problems before that. It doesn't seem to be the problem.

Turning off automatic screen rotation doesn't help either.

Does anybody know what the "power saving" option under the disaply options actually does?