I don't believe 90% of what I'm reading about battery life

[socialcarpet]

Seems like there is a lot of unscientific theories flying around here about battery life and whether or not batteries are defective etc.

Just want to clear the air.

I think there is a very simple explanation.

a.) WP8 simply isn't optimized yet to get the best battery life it can.

AND

b.) The battery meter "learns" what the actual capacity is over time (this we know to be a fact).

That's it.

All of these crazy "fixes" like hard resets and draining your battery etc I think are mostly placebo effect. There's no scientific method being applied there to measure results. I think people's imaginations are running away with them and they are convincing others to do unnecessary crazy things, which at best don't make a real difference and at worst, cause harm, like telling people to do a hard reset which then "bricks" their phone.

This all reminds me of people who install a "tornado" in their cars air intake and swear they got a 20% increase in fuel economy.

HERE'S SOME PRACTICAL ADVICE FOR A CHANGE:

Turn off everything you can.

Turn off all the things.

Things use energy. Your constant weather tile updates, your Wi-Fi, your Bluetooth, your NFC, your background processes, your auto brightness setting, your 4 email accounts checking every 5 minutes.

I don't care who you are, I GUARANTEE you if you turn off all of those things, uninstall Nokia Drive beta and turn on battery saving, you will get MORE than acceptable battery life.

It's not an ideal situation, but I think you will find like I did a long time ago with my 900, that it's really pointless to have everything on all the time anyway. It takes me 0.01 of a second to tap the stupid weather tile to get the current temperature. I don't use NFC and rarely use Bluetooth. When I need to I'll turn them on.

Like I said, it's not a perfect solution, but I have total confidence an update will be coming soon which will improve battery life. Until then, if you follow the simple step of turning off absolutely everything you don't need, your battery life will be excellent. I generally have 70% or more left at the end of my work day even with heavy use.

 

[socialcarpet]

Also Location Services. Turn that off as well. It is really pointless unless you are using maps or local scout and turning it off will give you a noticeable boost in battery life because your phone isn't constantly trying to triangulate your location needlessly.

 

[Brent920]

Praise the Lord, someone talking sense.

 

[Dos101]

HERE'S SOME PRACTICAL ADVICE FOR A CHANGE:

Turn off everything you can.

Turn off all the things.

Things use energy. Your constant weather tile updates, your Wi-Fi, your Bluetooth, your NFC, your background processes, your auto brightness setting, your 4 email accounts checking every 5 minutes.

I don't care who you are, I GUARANTEE you if you turn off all of those things, uninstall Nokia Drive beta and turn on battery saving, you will get MORE than acceptable battery life.

Yup, already done all of those things and I'm still needing to charge it every 5/6 hours. When everything you listed is turned off and the phone is sitting there for 30 minutes and loses 12% there's an issue. Sorry buddy, this is too widespread to be an issue of user error, there's something wonky going on with either the phone, the OS, or both.

Further, if a phone actually requires me to turn off everything you listed, why on earth would I buy that phone when there are alternative phones that have good battery life even though the various services are running in the background?

 

[doublesman3486]

Seems like there is a lot of unscientific theories flying around here about battery life and whether or not batteries are defective etc.

Just want to clear the air.

I think there is a very simple explanation.

a.) WP8 simply isn't optimized yet to get the best battery life it can.

AND

b.) The battery meter "learns" what the actual capacity is over time (this we know to be a fact).

That's it.

All of these crazy "fixes" like hard resets and draining your battery etc I think are mostly placebo effect. There's no scientific method being applied there to measure results. I think people's imaginations are running away with them and they are convincing others to do unnecessary crazy things, which at best don't make a real difference and at worst, cause harm, like telling people to do a hard reset which then "bricks" their phone.

This all reminds me of people who install a "tornado" in their cars air intake and swear they got a 20% increase in fuel economy.

HERE'S SOME PRACTICAL ADVICE FOR A CHANGE:

Turn off everything you can.

Turn off all the things.

Things use energy. Your constant weather tile updates, your Wi-Fi, your Bluetooth, your NFC, your background processes, your auto brightness setting, your 4 email accounts checking every 5 minutes.

I don't care who you are, I GUARANTEE you if you turn off all of those things, uninstall Nokia Drive beta and turn on battery saving, you will get MORE than acceptable battery life.

It's not an ideal situation, but I think you will find like I did a long time ago with my 900, that it's really pointless to have everything on all the time anyway. It takes me 0.01 of a second to tap the stupid weather tile to get the current temperature. I don't use NFC and rarely use Bluetooth. When I need to I'll turn them on.

Like I said, it's not a perfect solution, but I have total confidence an update will be coming soon which will improve battery life. Until then, if you follow the simple step of turning off absolutely everything you don't need, your battery life will be excellent. I generally have 70% or more left at the end of my work day even with heavy use.

One thing everyone on the forums is failing to acknowledge as being one of the main culprits of reduced battery life. The specially upgraded LTE radio chip AT&T put in their version of the Lumia 920. It practically sucks battery life. I have the international version Lumia 920 (unlocked) which of course doesn't have that special AT&T LTE radio chip and my battery life is absolutely amazing. I have everything turned on. I have 9 apps running the background, Bluetooth on, tap to send on, location on, you name it, its on and I am getting 14 hrs battery life easily.

 

[Only Mama Knows]

My original 920 was lucky to get 8 hours in a charge, even after turning everything off that OP mentions. I exchanged it for a new phone and am now getting 20+ hours easily with those same services still on. It's nice that OP doesn't believe there is an issue, but I can think of few things that matter less. You got a phone with a battery that works fine as I imagine is the case with most people. Good for you, but you having one that works properly doesn't mean that others didn't get one with problems. And turning off services is not a solution, it's a coverup for a broken phone.

 

[socialcarpet]

Yup, already done all of those things and I'm still needing to charge it every 5/6 hours. When everything you listed is turned off and the phone is sitting there for 30 minutes and loses 12% there's an issue. Sorry buddy, this is too widespread to be an issue of user error, there's something wonky going on with either the phone, the OS, or both.

If your phone is using 12% of the battery in 30 minutes of just sitting there then there is something running in the background.

But I agree there is something wonky going on with the OS. It's just not optimized to make the most of the battery yet.

 

[socialcarpet]

One thing everyone on the forums is failing to acknowledge as being one of the main culprits of reduced battery life. The specially upgraded LTE radio chip AT&T put in their version of the Lumia 920. It practically sucks battery life. I have the international version Lumia 920 (unlocked) which of course doesn't have that special AT&T LTE radio chip and my battery life is absolutely amazing. I have everything turned on. I have 9 apps running the background, Bluetooth on, tap to send on, location on, you name it, its on and I am getting 14 hrs battery life easily.

 

[doublesman3486]

If your phone is using 12% of the battery in 30 minutes of just sitting there then there is something running in the background.

But I agree there is something wonky going on with the OS. It's just not optimized to make the most of the battery yet.

I think you mean not the genuine windows phone OS untouched, you mean the slightly altered OS installed on the phone by AT&T with their crapware on it.

Reason why I say that , is because looking at the AT&T lumia 920 (920.2) and the International Lumia 920 (920.1) , the options in the settings menu are very different which lead me to believe that AT&T as they have done in the past have slightly altered the software on the phone to suit their needs.

This is the main reason I always buy unlocked phones. Manufacturers specs are not altered in anyway whatsoever.

 

[socialcarpet]

I think you mean not the genuine windows phone OS untouched, you mean the slightly altered OS installed on the phone by AT&T with their crapware on it.

Reason why I say that , is because looking at the AT&T lumia 920 (920.2) and the International Lumia 920 (920.1) , the options in the settings menu are very different which lead me to believe that AT&T as they have done in the past have slightly altered the software on the phone to suit their needs.

This is the main reason I always buy unlocked phones. Manufacturers specs are not altered in anyway whatsoever.

Could be. However, I'm not prepared to make that leap with you without more solid evidence.

 

[doublesman3486]

Not asking you to take that leap with me, I am simply putting forth my opinion based on my past experiences with AT&T and with unlocked international phones that come direct from the manufacturer.

Its the main reason I have bought unlocked phones for over 10 years. Yup 10 years ago was when I last bought a device from AT&T( then cingular). I am fedup of their slightly altered devices away from manufacturing specs , they have crippled enough high end devices over the years.

I have another prediction to make, As soon as nokia releases a major firmware update for the Lumia 920, it will be a while before the AT&T lumia devices get it, why? Simply because AT&T will go through it with a fine tooth comb and strip anything they don't want customers to have from that firmware update and then they will release that firmware update for their lumia devices. Been there experienced it enough times to know.

bookmark this post, it will come to past.

 

[henilp89]

no its not useless.. i take tons of pictures of my family friends n we visit different places and you definitely want to tag your location to your photos when you upload it online/skydrive n also with everything on (expect bluetooth/NFC) i also have drive installed.. im getting around 12 hours of battery so there are defective batteries out there! n you dont want to turn off everything.. you paid for the phone.. it should work just fine.. get it exchanged!

 

[joeynox]

there is a major issue . I was on the phone with nokia for 8 minutes and my battery life went from 93 to 76% and my phone was very hot.

 

[gwip]

"Uninstall Nokia Drive"

There seems to be a lot of hate around here for Drive. Not just here, I've seen it in numerous post. Why is that? Drive is one of the top 3 reasons I bought this phone. It got rid of another device cluttering up my car and it does a much better job than my Garmin did. I'd assume it's high on a lot of new adopters list as well. So why have so many people turned against it?

I have to admit though, I side with most people here in saying that turning off all of these services should never be necessary. I bought the phone for a reason and it wasn't so that I could sit and worry about battery management every time I opened a new app or want to run a certain feature.

 

[azasadny]

I don't have any extra apps installed now so we ll see if my phone goes from 100% battery to less than 20% in an hour or so...

 

[Mystictrust]

I'm wondering if it might have something to do with WP8 or Nokia batteries not shutting off the charge after the battery has been fully charged. My battery was getting 21+ hours over the past week until just this morning when it dropped to 66% from 100% after an hour and a half of not even touching it once. The only thing I had done differently was left the phone charging overnight (for the first time) and failed to unplug it when it was finished charging as I usually do.

 

[jjmurphy]

I leave mine on the pad every night. I've consistently made it through 7am to 8 pm with 1 bar of service and not gone below 50%.

 

[dkp23]

Turn everything off so that your phone battery works properly, sounds like a great solution!


So i bought this phone touting all these features and stuff and i already turn off most of the stuff like nfc bluetooth and background tasks and set it up very similar to my 900 with less apps because i feared some apps may be draining my battery when in use or not in use even with no background tasks and i still dont even get close to what i got with my 900. I can even get LTE on my phone although i always had it with my 900.

My 900 would easily last 730 - midnight with 20% left and this phone cant even lost to 2-3 pm with all my stuff turned off. There is a problem and turning off everything is not a solution, might as well get a flip phone because at this point, nobody is going to want to do anything on their phone besides call, text email without being about draining their battery. I shouldnn't have to monitor my usage to make it past 4 pm, that is ridiculous.

 

[Dos101]

Could be. However, I'm not prepared to make that leap with you without more solid evidence.

There isn't really any solid evidence supporting your point either though. When people are getting roughly the same results for both turning everything off, or leaving everything as is, then it goes beyond user error and into the land of defective hardware/issues with the OS. For me it might be both (I got one of the early phones Rogers sent out, and the return rate of them is rather suspicious) as it appears battery drain is completely random.

 

[Shane]

To put it simply, LTE heats the phone up and drains the battery rapidly. On 4G I get 10 to 12 hours without having to turn everything off (essentially making it a dumb phone).