How to increase the battery life of your N series ...

Question

What I am about to post here is valid for any 3G phone or device regardless of model but it is particularly focused towards the N series devices and their power hogging features.
Your battery life is dependant on many many things. How often you take calls on the device, the condition of your battery, the features you use on the device and so on and on. Therefore it is impossible to say that by following the information in this post you will get x amount of days battery life, but it will get you more time out of the battery than you otherwise would have got.
So with that out the way, if your looking to increase your battery life then follow these tips and your battery should start looking a lot healthier.
First of all lets start with THE big one. The one that is going to save you the most juice. Switching 3G off.
Yep, you heard me right. Just by switching the 3G capability of your phone off you will add hours and hours to your battery life. How is this so? Allow me to explain...
Due to the rather poor delivery of 3G in the UK by the network operators, it is rare for any 3G phone to maintain a constant 3G signal. Instead you will find that the phone constantly flips between 3G and GSM mode (Keep an eye on your signal one day). Even those of you on Vodafone who probably have the best 3G network coverage will find this is the case.
Unfortunately, this constant flipping between the two modes sucks power from the battery like a vampire as it alters its reception state for the different modes and the constant flipping is..well...causing it do this constantly! It can sometimes even make your phone unavailable for calls for very brief periods as it trips from GSM to 3G and vice versa.
If you need to use 3G for video calls or whatever then I'm afraid your just going to have to live with this but if you don't (And lets face it few of us do) then you can switch 3G off and increase your battery life considerably.
To do this, go into the "Settings" application (Found in the menu somewhere, by default Nokia normally stick it in "Tools"), and then to the "Phone" tab. In there you will see an option that says "Network mode" and you have a choice of "GSM" or "Dual Mode" (I.e. UMTS and GSM). Set it to GSM and your phone will restart. Once it restarts it will be working in GSM with GPRS speeds only but really for most purposes this is fine.
You have now just extended your battery capability considerably. You can further extend it by going to the "Connection" tab, going into "Packet data" and changing it to "When needed" so it is not constantly checking for a data connection.
The second big change you can make is to turn your phones wifi scanning capability off. The last time I looked not all Nokia's phones that have wifi capability can have their wifi cards switched off entirely but if you can, turn it off except for when you need to use it. Wifi is a power hog.
The next big change you can make is to lower the screen brightness settings on your phone. The less bright your screen is the less power is being used to light it up. Nokia by default leave the screen brightness at something like 50%. Lowering this a bit more will conserve more juice. Before you do this though please consider the fact that lowering the brightness setting will have a big impact on your ability to see the screen clearly in sunny conditions although you will be fine in the dark as you can't lower the brightness that far.
To lower the brightness, go to the settings tool in your phone and into the display option (Hidden in a subcategory called "Personalisation" on the N95). It won't hurt to set the power saving time out to 1 minute and the backlight time out to 10 seconds while your here (Although these are the Nokia default so they should already be set to this).
Finally in regards to the screen, although they may look pretty, animated screensavers use more battery power than the standard blank screen with time and date so avoid them if you can.
It also helps to keep Bluetooth switched off until you need it although the power savings are minimal in comparison to the other changes but every little milliamp counts!
Using the above methods I generally get about 3 to 4 days with about 3 hours talktime on my N95 without using Bluetooth, GPS or anything like that (I might be able to get more but so far I have not paid attention to the battery state before I put it on charge). If I am on a long train journey I can get about 4 hours worth of full screen video and about 2 hours talktime over the period of about 24 hours before it needs a recharge. As I said at the start of the post your mileage will vary greatly depending on how you use your device.
Hope this helps.
Useful links: Phone firmware update | Nokia support site

Answer 1

02-May-200701:14 PM
bixby wrote:
no keffa it is a cop out from nokia
its not unfai as its a premium device with a premium price
the n95 battery is atrocious
dont change the post content as the title is 'How to increase the battery life of your N series device'
your talking about nokia phones specifically
the networks are not to blame
they do not make the handsets : Nokia do !!!!!!!!!!
I'm going to choose my words carefully here...
I would never deny the battery on the N95 is not really up to the job of powering the N95 with its power hungry features. To put the same battery into a phone that has WiFi, GPS and a large 320x240 screen, the same one that goes into the E65 which has comparatively nothing compared to it is a bit pants.
However at no point was I criticising them for the band hopping problem. I labelled the post as how to increase the battery life of your N series device because this is a board for the N series devices. It was a simple choice of wording and not intended to be cutting in any way and I did make a remark that the details would be true of any 3G device at the top of the post.
What I was trying to point out in my second post is that the constant band hopping the phone is being forced to do that is draining its battery so much more quicker than it would if it had a constant signal of one kind or another isn't quite Nokia's fault.
They build it to conform to a laid out specification for 3G. However if the network operators cannot be bothered to roll out their 3G infrastructure adequately enough that the phone can find and remain locked onto a 3G signal that is usable then what are Nokia to do other than offer you the capability to turn 3G off until you need it (Although note to Nokia: That **bleep** reboot the phone does when you do this is entirely unneeded and you know it).
Blaming Nokia for this would be like blaming the manufacturer of your radio for failing to pick up radio because the radio station does not have any transmitters within range of your radio's receiver.
Finally...this band hopping is exhibited by all 3G phones built by Samsung, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, etc, from their most budget 3G model to their priciest piece and is the reason that all phones with 3G capabilities have batteries that do not last for any respectable length of time because these phones are also having to band hop between 3G and GSM.
Finally the proof is in the pudding. Turn 3G off for a few days. See your battery improve. Then (Although admittedly this will be harder to do...mcuh harder) find an area where you get a fairly decent 3G signal constantly. Again, see your battery improve. Try it with a different 3G phone...different manufacturer even. The same will be true.
So I stand by my comment, the network operators and their woeful 3G rollout are the villains costing you a fair chunk of your battery and Nokia cannot be expected to mitigate this....but a better battery would be nice all the same...
Useful links: Phone firmware update | Nokia support site