920 Battery Survey/Experiment

[MDak280]

Hello! I just installed the WP Bench app. Here are the settings I will be running the app under:

WiFi On
Data off (I have no data plan, so it shouldn't make a difference with it on. Please correct me if I'm wrong.)
Flight Mode off
NFC off
Bluetooth off
Brightness High (usually set it to low, but after my battery got better I changed it to high because it looks so much better!)
Sensitivity High

I just need to find a fan to keep that phone cool, I don't want to mess up the battery. I'll quote this post with my results.

 

[jdhooghe]

This is without cooling

 

[MDak280]

Oh. I didn't think cooling would have an effect on the results. Well, I'll still contribute, I don't think my battery will get messed up

 

[Kooosh]

I don't think it's a big deal to keep your phone cool while running the test. On my first test I set it in the window exposing it to cool air. Second test, I ran a fan with cool outside air. The test does heat up the phone, but probably not enough to be concerned about. I just didn't think it was worth unnecessarily stressing out the phone.

I wouldn't expect ambient temperature to influence the result.

 

[MDak280]

I see that your second result is about 30 minutes longer, maybe it was because of the fan. But yeah, I'll leave the phone near a window.

 

[Kooosh]

I see that your second result is about 30 minutes longer, maybe it was because of the fan. But yeah, I'll leave the phone near a window.

The second test was on an entirely different phone. I guess it's possible, but I don't understand how blowing some cold air on the phone is going to influence the results of this test.

That 2:38 result was a real head-scratcher for me. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am getting seemingly worse battery life from the new phone. I may test it again in the near future and see if I can replicate it.

 

[MDak280]

Hello! I just installed the WP Bench app. Here are the settings I will be running the app under:

WiFi On
Data off (I have no data plan, so it shouldn't make a difference with it on. Please correct me if I'm wrong.)
Flight Mode off
NFC off
Bluetooth off
Brightness High (usually set it to low, but after my battery got better I changed it to high because it looks so much better!)
Sensitivity High

I just need to find a fan to keep that phone cool, I don't want to mess up the battery. I'll quote this post with my results.

Alright, so with these settings my phone lasted for 01:54:18!

 

[Kooosh]

Thanks dude. Added your result to our tally. You're within 5% of normal, so I wouldn't sweat that result.

Full bright is just too intense on my retinas. You're going to burn through your battery quite a bit faster with brightness on high, but I'm sure you're aware of that. I don't think it affected your test time much though.

 

[Dangief]

Hello! Signed up just to post my results here as I have also been wondering if my battery life is below what I am supposed to be getting.

I got 2:11 with Wifi off, 3G data on, brightness on low, and the only apps running in background were Whatsapp and Battery level for WP8.

This seems to be in line with the average here, but I should note that my 920 experiences large battery drains overnight when idle with 3G data on--losing up to 50% battery life over 9 hours. With data off the phone only loses 2% overnight. I'm still trying to pinpoint the culprit and so far it doesn't seem to be Whatsapp as even uninstalling it doesn't seem to stop the large overnight drain.

 

[Kooosh]

Thanks Dangief, and welcome! Added your result to our tally. Really appreciate the effort.

Let us know if you solve what's draining your battery.

 

[SevenDead1ySinz]

If Nokia decides not to release this update to everyone they are shooting themselves in the foot. The rest of the world is a much bigger market then the USA.

Portico was released by Rogers in Canada already. Anyways, I did the battery test the other day, got somewhere around the 2 and a half hour mark, will do it again later and post results. Overall I haven't had a chance to get a good impression on battery. I find that the battery level indicator is crap, I can restart my phone 3 or 4 times and get different numbers, the time remaining doesn't update as fast as it should, so it is usually incorrect. I have found that Draw Something really kills my battery, after using it the time remaining will show something like 2 hours or so, a while later it will have switched to say 10-12 hours at around 50-60% left. Overnight I seem to only go through about 4%, at least that is the amount reduced in the battery info screen. If I restart it drops a bit more. Last night I went to sleep with it at 94%, woke up this morning 8 hours later with it at 91%, did a bit if texting and WPCentral app browsing for a few minutes and it dropped to 87%.

The amount of battery I use, or have remaining seems to jump around alot, and I think that is part of the problem. Under normal usage for me (texting throughout the day, music on through headphones for a hour or so a day, some browsing, some calls, etc) I think I could easily get through a day and charge before bed with battery left over. Certain apps kill the battery really fast and I think those are the real culprits.

Should probably state that I have what I believe to be optimal settings for battery performance:
WiFi on, set to always on.
Bluetooth off
NFC off
Locations on.
Cellular set to LTE (but phone is usually connected via WiFi)
Brightness at Low, auto brightness dims to far for me, and jumps around alot.
Connect to Xbox Live On
Connect to Xbox Music On
Most background tasks disabled except for Amazing Weather HD, WeatherFlow, WPCentral (at least for what I can disable that is)
Most apps have toast/push notifications turned off, especially the MP games I have.

 

[MDak280]

Thanks dude. Added your result to our tally. You're within 5% of normal, so I wouldn't sweat that result.

Full bright is just too intense on my retinas. You're going to burn through your battery quite a bit faster with brightness on high, but I'm sure you're aware of that. I don't think it affected your test time much though.

Yeah, high brightness seems to drain the battery a little bit more than normal, but I love it Plus, my phone still lasts a fill day so it's no problem for me.

 

[Kooosh]

I find that the battery level indicator is crap, I can restart my phone 3 or 4 times and get different numbers, the time remaining doesn't update as fast as it should, so it is usually incorrect.

I agree with what you're saying. I just restarted my phone and went from 63 to 71%. A couple days ago, a restart caused my battery to magically jump from 5 to 20%. Defo some problem here.

I don't pay attention to that time remaining thing. I think it's entirely meaningless.

Let us know when you have a hard result on the test. Thanks.

 

[SevenDead1ySinz]

charging to full right now, will run the WPBench test when I head to bed, will post result in the morning

 

[Yudy Herwibowo]

my result for the battery test is 2:11:46
with 3g on, nfc off, location off, wifi off, nfc off

 

[SevenDead1ySinz]

charging to full right now, will run the WPBench test when I head to bed, will post result in the morning

 

[generalsu]

Did a second test on my NL920 and the results:

 

[Kooosh]

Thanks a lot guys. I think we've got sufficient results now to see what the range of "normal" is. Good community we have here that so many would go to the trouble.

I've come to the conclusion that we've got some buggy software rather than bad hardware inside the 920, at least where the battery is concerned.