920 Battery Survey/Experiment

[Kooosh]

Hi guys. Longtime iPhone user here who finally jumped ship and bought a Lumia 920. I love the damn thing, but the battery life thing is a bit worrisome. That's a polite way of saying that it sucks.

What I'm proposing is that anyone who wants to participate do the following:

1) Install the free WP Bench app
2) Fully charge your phone
3) Run the WP Bench battery test
4) Post to this thread your result (screen grab or text.)
5) It would also be useful to say something about how you feel about your battery life generally.

The purpose of this, obviously, is to establish some baseline on battery performance for the Lumia 920 community that is having battery issues.

This will only be useful if a fair number of users take part, both those who are perfectly happy with their battery life, as well as those who feel that it's terrible.

Important: the test will likely run for between 1.5 and 2.5 hours. You can't use the phone or exit the app in any way. I learned this the hard way by accidentally hitting the search button after an hour of testing. I suspect that a phone call may also ruin the test, so perhaps best to put it in airplane mode. Your battery will be completely discharged following the test. I leave it up to you how to approach this.

Many thanks in advance to those who choose to participate.
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Running tally of results:

Bengutt: 1:57
Kooosh: 2:06
Kooosh phone #2: 2:38
jdhooghe: 2:15
jammerltu: 2:12
Keith Wallace 2:07
generalsu 2:06
generalsu #2 2:15
shivamk012 2:06
MDak280 1:54
Dangief 2:11
Yudy Herwibowo 2:12
SevenDead1ySinz 2:10

engadget.com 2:15 http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/12/nokia-lumia-920-for-att-review/
hothardware.com: 2:05 http://hothardware.com/Reviews/Nokia-Lumia-920-Review1/?page=4
legitreviews.com: 2:35 http://www.legitreviews.com/article/2086/6/

 

[miki20021]

before you commence any testing- Have you turned off the Drive+ background task?
And unneeded other background tasks? It's has been proven all around to be a ball-buster for the battery.

 

[Kooosh]

Yes and yes. I've run the gamut of proposed solutions to the battery problem, with the exception of a bunch of discharges/recharges. That's why it would be nice to have some kind of baseline to measure my battery performance against.

 

[WPenvy]

Good idea

 

[BenGutt]

1:56:52

I generally get 30+ hours between charges, with a few calls some browsing on the web and around 7 hours of music. Everything turned on.

 

[Kooosh]

My result: 2:06

Thank you for posting your result BenGutt. I'm really surprised that you are getting 30 hours. May I ask what carrier you are using, and also whether or not you are using WiFi.

 

[mechashen]

I don't have wpbench results, but I can tell you that my battery was also terrible for about the first five days or so. I've had my 920 for about a month and battery life has improved greatly. For instance, I'm at 30% remaining after 18 hours off charger. I've used it throughout the day with maybe 30-45 minutes of phone calls as well as around an hour to hour and a half of web surfing, a few text messages, and a bit of angry birds thrown in as well. I don't worry about battery life so much with this phone as I always end up charging at the end of the day with no less than 20% battery remaining. Very rarely do I go under 20%. Don't know if this helps or not, but just wanted to share my experience.

 

[realityeye]

The game Carcassonne drains the battery in no time flat. Makes the phone unbearably hot as well. It's annoying because I like the game.

 

[BenGutt]

My result:

Thank you for posting your result BenGutt. I'm really surprised that you are getting 30 hours. May I ask what carrier you are using, and also whether or not you are using WiFi.

I'm on Orange, I've had the phone since the 8th November. Initially the battery was pretty poor, although I couldn't keep my hands off it so that may not have helped.

Wifi is on, NFC is on. 30+ hours was with Bluetooth off, I've now switched that on. Most apps are blocked from being background tasks, and I never use Drive+. I've installed many apps, but I always remove ones I don't like.

 

[Mirachen]

If you feel something is wrong with your battery, you can go for a change. I also heard some news about writing to Stephen Elop. BTW I always believe in Nokia's excellent quality. Good luck.

 

[BenGutt]

Oh one thing worth mentioning - i used to get lock ups and restarts when playing some games.

I did a couple of soft resets, and one hard reset.

Some people have been reporting that battery life increased after doing them. Before you rush to try it though some have found that doing this bricks the phone.There is a work around for this that may or may not work if this happens to you.

 

[azasadny]

NFC and Nokia Drive were both draining my battery.

 

[BenGutt]

With bluetooth on I only get 22 hours.

I'll leave that on, and turn off nfc next. See what I get with that combo.

 

[peachy001]

I don't hammer my phone too much. I rarely use it through my work day and only play with it and make a few cals on my dinner hour. Afterwork I make a few calls and texts, but I do use the internet via WiFi and play games, but don't spend hours on it. Email updates hourly. I also have Bluetooth, NFC, GPS,mobile web etc all turned off unless I need them.

When I first got the phone I noticed the battery was not the strongest, so I let it drain then did a full recharge. I tend to do this most of the time as I don't like to partially charge it. The battery life keeps getting better. Currently at 2 days 12 hours since last charge, at 21% and estimated 7 hours left. I will be home in approx 5 hours, so I can charge it up then, I always like to let it get real low.

 

[Kooosh]

@BenGutt: thanks for your replies. Is your phone using LTE with Orange? I have NFC and BT off, so that's not the problem.
@mechashen: your comment does help in the respect that it gives me some confidence that the battery may improve over time.
@realityeye: wordament has a similar effect on my battery. I lose at least a % of charge for every 2 minutes in the game.
@peachy001: 60 hours and 21% left! Wow, that's really something. What carrier are you on, and are you connecting to an LTE network?

So anyway, I let my battery charge to 100% right before bed last night. I woke up 8 hours later to a 100% charge. That's very good, there is no standby drain. I guess I'm used to being able to get 4-5 hours of use on my phone per day without charging, and this phone is more like 2.5-4 hours. I guess it's something I'll learn to live with in the next week, or consider a return.

I wish I could get more people to run the battery test. I guess maybe it's too much to ask.

 

[sudakoma]

My battery has improved a lot since first getting the phone, but I have always managed to get a full day without a top up. I have the following settings:

2 email accounts set to sync as they arrive, 1 of them is my company email which receives over 100 emails each day.
WiFi always on, Mobile data 4G
Bluetooth always on as I use my phone to connect to my Bose portable speaker for music playback quite a lot and also BT works perfectly with my car (BMW X5)
Weatherflow,BBC News, Package Tracker and WP Central live tiles.
Locksider lockscreen updates every 4 hours.

NFC Off
Nokia Drive blocked.

Recently, I have noticed that my battery is lasting even longer than normal. The only thing I have done differently is to start using the charger supplied with the phone, previously I had been using my old Lumia 800 charger. I have attached a screenshot of my battery screen taken yesterday.



As you can see, its not all doom and gloom with these phones, some of us are getting pretty impressive battery life!

 

[jdhooghe]

2 hours and 15 min here. What is considered "normal?"

 

[Kooosh]

When you ask what is normal, I assume you mean on the 920?

Bengutt: 1:56
Me: 2:05
You: 2:15
One online reviewer: ~2:05
Another online reviewer: ~2:30

So, I guess the answer is between two and two and a half hours. It would be great if the guy who runs the WP Bench website would publish results.

My understanding is that this is an unimpressive amount of time to run down the battery, with WP7 phones getting double or better these times. Not sure where exactly I read that, so don't quote me.

Thanks a lot for running the test.

 

[BenGutt]

My understanding is that this is an unimpressive amount of time to run down the battery, with WP7 phones getting double or better these times. Not sure where exactly I read that, so don't quote me.

Are the WP7 single core only, and does the battery test use both cores on the 920? If so, potentially, a direct comparison isn't 100% fair.

Having BT but NFC off makes no difference to my battery life BTW, still only 22 hours. I think I'll leave BT off and see if I can get back to my 36 hour lifespan.

(I'm on Orange)

 

[Kooosh]

Are the WP7 single core only, and does the battery test use both cores on the 920? If so, potentially, a direct comparison isn't 100% fair.

Having BT but NFC off makes no difference to my battery life BTW, still only 22 hours. I think I'll leave BT off and see if I can get back to my 36 hour lifespan.

(I'm on Orange)

Yeah, the WP7 phones are single core (as far as I know,) and I'm uncertain if the battery test exercises both cores in the test. It's a completely legit question you ask, as far as the WP7 vs WP8 battery comparisons. It would be nice to get some WP Bench scores from HTC 8X owners, although this is the wrong sub-forum for that.

Is Orange in your area 3G, 4G or 4G LTE? I only ask b/c LTE is a known battery vampire. My carrier uses LTE and was I wondering if that is where some of our differences are coming into play.