How much battery life do you guys get out of your N8. Mine, I think is pretty poor.

On at night?
The alarm rings even if the phone is off.
I can get about a day too, but i'm constantly tinkering and finding out about it's new features so maybe it would last longer, possibly a day and a half.

doesn't last a day for me too, probably about 8 hours or so

running 3 emails, polling at 60 mins each

probably due to bad background processes eating up battery, e.g. WhatsApp, Gravity

May try uninstalling WhatsApp to try and see if it fixes battery issue. Gravity running in background is also disabled, as i exit the app now.

Mine was only lasting about 24hrs until I stopped everything except the basic phone functions. I stopped Wifi, put the home screen widgets offline and put it in to power saving mode.

I did that yesterday. Now it has been running like that for nearly 24hrs and the battery meter app is showing it still at 92%! At this rate I will be able to go possibly 8-10 days between charges!!!

Now that is not at all bad.

I geneuinely do feel that the bad press that the phone is getting for its poor battery life is not justified. OK, when the phone is used normally, that is with email on, home widgets on, wifi and data on, the the battery lasts not much more than a day. But that is not surprising is it? But just use it as a phone and it goes for many days.

Note: There is a bug in the Wifi... even with the wifi off and scanning turned off my phone still kept connecting to the wifi at home. This was hitting the battery hard. I had to remove the wifi access point and readd it before I could get wifi to stay disconnected.

I generally get 24-48 hours which is not bad for a smartphone as far as I can tell. Friends with iPhones (3 and 4) struggle to get through a working day with similar usage patterns to me.

I have wifi at home and work so run it in power saving mode normally using wifi for email (2 accounts). Normally, I just web browse a bit and listen to music. Games and GPS seem to be the battery eaters - the only time I've had a dead battery is after letting the kids play on it.

I haven't see the stuck-on wifi issue though I avoid apps like Gravity and Nimbuzz after excessive power drain experiences on my 5800. Built-in social, while limited (no Linked-in!) seens to be power efficient.

The battery life is pretty poor IMO.

I posted about my experience:
http://discussions.europe.nokia.com/t5/Nseries-and-S60-Smartphones/N8-disappointing-battery-life/td-p/808253

"Running on my N8 - I have BT active, Nimbuzz for IM, 15 minutes email syncing, 30 minutes of web browsing, around 20 text messages and less than 5 minutes of phone calls. I barely get 12 hours. On my E71 I'd get around 24 hours."

There isn't much improvement if I turn off Nimbuzz ( and therefore turn off a persistent 3G connection ).

Of course, I realize the N8 has a far larger screen than E71, but still, I don't know what Nokia were thinking when they put in that 1200mA battery, its just not enough.

I would love to know how AAS got the great battery life they experienced... did Nokia put a higher capacity battery in the reivew units?!

The reason I wonder about the battery life, is that before I bought the N8 I read a few reviews that seemed to indicate a really good battery life of between 2-4 days. And with 24 hours I'm not even close to that. I already turned off Whatsapp and other power hungry widgets. I'm running one email account that I sync once or twice a day.

However, I spoke to Nokia this morning and they suggested I turn off 3G at home to maybe stop the phone from jumping between 3G and GSM. And if that didn't help any, they said to send it in for service as it might be a defective battery. So I think I'm going to send it in to see what they might do with it. I hope it is a defective battery because I really want more hours out of it. I really do like the phone, the feel of it is great, it does what I want it to do and the camera is just fantastic.

I've seen reports of improved battery life after a hard reset. Back up your phone first because you'll lose some files, such as themes, the OVI store and Qt library(ies)

Hoisin wrote:The reason I wonder about the battery life, is that before I bought the N8 I read a few reviews that seemed to indicate a really good battery life of between 2-4 days. And with 24 hours I'm not even close to that. I already turned off Whatsapp and other power hungry widgets. I'm running one email account that I sync once or twice a day.

However, I spoke to Nokia this morning and they suggested I turn off 3G at home to maybe stop the phone from jumping between 3G and GSM. And if that didn't help any, they said to send it in for service as it might be a defective battery. So I think I'm going to send it in to see what they might do with it. I hope it is a defective battery because I really want more hours out of it. I really do like the phone, the feel of it is great, it does what I want it to do and the camera is just fantastic.

I cant say the battery back is poor in nokia n8 as far as being a smartphone is concerned. I get easily more than 48 hrs between charging even after not being in power saving mode and having aroung 65 apps installed.

the only thing i do is to connect to network on a need basis. I keep my home screens in offline mode and update only when I need. and never show WLAN availability, only search if needed. and remove the glowing clock screen saver.

I get 2 days on the weekends very easily - but on a normal day, lucky to get 24 hours. This is because I am in a crappy zone at work where reception is bad. Moreover, I have to turn off the "Auto detect" on the phone network to stop it bouncing from 3G to 2G (as this is the number 1 biggest battery sucker). Does not help with me getting "push" emails from Exchange either.

I am finding the "Power saving" profile of the phone to be very handy as it stops the widgets from constantly being online and forces 2G mode for less battery sucking. In this mode, can extend the battery considerably.

Now into my 3rd day and battery meter is still only 80%

I'm on day 2 of my current charge (29 hours to be precise). 3G has been connected constantly for 7 hours a day and Wifi the rest of the time. My mail has been syncing every half hour on one account and every hour on another from 7am to 11pm. I've also had SPB Weather refreshing every 6 hours and have used Gravity a few times a day as well. Current charge is at 40% which is pretty good going I think given I've not been using power saving mode.

People really need to state their usage patterns. Saying "I've got 70% after 1 day" is pretty meaningless if we don't know how you've used the phone.

If you've had your phone on powersaving, widgets turned off etc. Why did you buy an N8? You may as well buy some $200 cheap touch screen phone instead.

The N8 is a multimedia phone, just begging to be connected to internet, listen to music, etc.

JayTay wrote:I'm on day 2 of my current charge (29 hours to be precise). 3G has been connected constantly for 7 hours a day and Wifi the rest of the time. My mail has been syncing every half hour on one account and every hour on another from 7am to 11pm. I've also had SPB Weather refreshing every 6 hours and have used Gravity a few times a day as well. Current charge is at 40% which is pretty good going I think given I've not been using power saving mode.

How did your phone manage that? That is the sort of battery life and usage I was expecting!! With that sort of usage, my phone is down to 40% after 8 hours.

Mines quite good, but i dont have any connections on auto, i connect when i need to connect, i use it most for music and web, i use web via wifi, i use it around 4 hours per day for web and mines lasting around 2 days, sometimes 1 n half depends what i do with it.

So in the end I got to 45 hours off one charge, I then switched to Power Saving mode when I saw I was down to 10% and stayed on that for another two hours before charging (I couldn't be bothered waiting for it go flat). In addition to my post above I neglected to mention 40 minutes of SportsTracker.

I hate Internet on the small display of a mobilphone. For this reason i use my N8 only in GSM mode as camera navi and phone (phone to talk, not to play 😊 )

My N8 runs with this condition (screensaver off, dark theme) over 14 days.
(20 pictures, 5 SMS, 10 min. Talktime)

My old N86 runs with this condition 9days.

-->Excellent power management @ N8.

Into day 4 now for my N8 since charging... battery monitor reads 51%

I'm finding that, with use, the battery seems to be bedding in rather well. After a couple of weeks, I am now still on 100% after a days use - in power saving (so forced to 2G) and using Wifi for connectivity. 2 mail accounts on hourly updates (and calendar sync for Exchange), widgets online (BBC feed, Social), probably about an hour browsing, gaming, MP3 playing.

Either that, or the calibrations gone crazy 😃

I get about 3 days (72 hours) on average, although I haven't completely run it down before. On an average day my N8 gets the following usage:
- 5 minutes phone calls at most
- 25 TXT messages
- 15 minutes web browsing
- 1 hour Angry Birds 😛
- 30 minutes playing with other various apps

I have 3G and WLAN disabled at all times - so the phone only connects to one of these when an app requires internet access. I did this initially to minimise data consumption on either 3G (100MB/month) or my home ADSL (5GB/month) connections, but I guess it helps with power usage as well.

Someone mentioned that switching between 3G and 2G drains the power. Since I live in a city, I set my network connection to always use 3G. I believe this helps too, as long as you don't live in an area with marginal reception (I imagine at least 90% of people will have 3G where they live or work though).

basically it's down to 3G

if you're in a place where 3G signal is low, the phone will push more juice to pick up more bars, failing that, it will fall back to 2g. that's where the majority of power goes...3G (not to mention the other culprits, e.g. Gravity, WhatsApp)

njefferies wrote:I'm finding that, with use, the battery seems to be bedding in rather well. After a couple of weeks, I am now still on 100% after a days use - in power saving (so forced to 2G) and using Wifi for connectivity. 2 mail accounts on hourly updates (and calendar sync for Exchange), widgets online (BBC feed, Social), probably about an hour browsing, gaming, MP3 playing.

Either that, or the calibrations gone crazy 😃

I think the calibration, at least of the default power gauge is completely crazy. I've got the beta labs power monitor running, and that never agrees with the power meter at the top.

But rather hilariously the beta labs power meter occasionally shows power levels going up (ie. from 10% to 11%), which shows they've either got something wrong, or the battery is magically charging itself from me ....

the battery meter reads voltage from the battery during usage, etc that's why it 'estimates' the time left. once left idle it 'recalibrates'

All new type of Li-Poly battery needs top-up charging. What it means is its circuitry needs to be taught to hold a higher capacity. However , if it is taught wrongly to hold a lower and then lower capacity it can lead to a situation where this re-calibrated mark is just not enough to power high power circuit required by a full screen smart phone.

So I've repeated this following tip many times but since the N8 is so new, it is really very relevant.
1) Go through 1-2 full charge-then-discharge cycle of the new smartphone hence new battery. This will sort of reset the calibration.
2) Then for the next 3-4 days, have a charger handy to charge whenever the battery is used up 10-20%. This is termed top-up charging ie. charging at the top segment of the battery capacity. And the battery will actually grow. Actually what happens is the battery circuitry is remembering a higher holding capacity. You will find that your battery capacity will increase almost upto 30%.

I urge all new N8 owners to do this top-up charging before draining down the battery and taught the battery a lower holding capacity. So before you condition the battery, activities like dual band(2G auto switch to 3G), GPS, online video which require much more power such that your battery capacity can quickly drop to the lowest battery segment without one knowing is best moderated.

I have thoroughly work the N8 like a horse after that. I can testify that although its battery is the same as N97 mini, its power performance is almost twice as good.

SnaxMuppet wrote:Note: There is a bug in the Wifi... even with the wifi off and scanning turned off my phone still kept connecting to the wifi at home. This was hitting the battery hard. I had to remove the wifi access point and readd it before I could get wifi to stay disconnected.

This bug affected me too. It seems very random.

When I first got the phone, I copied over by hand a load of WLAN access points in offices and friends' houses that I visit from time to time.

When I first used the Log application after a few days, I noticed that the phone was trying to connect to one of the WLAN access points every minute regardless of if WLAN scanning was on or off. This was an access point I'd never even visited/used.

The only way to stop it was to delete that access point.

Readding the access point seems to fix the problem.