Is poor battery performance enough to drive you away from Windowsphone and the Lumia 920/1020?

[how1ard]

The reason I ask is that I have a 920 which has a mind of it's own when it comes to battery life. It will regularly drop 30% in an hour just from listening to music via Bluetooth, as for surfing the net? Massive drain. It's never decent though, never.
I am really liking the look of the 1020 but not convinced that the power consumption issues present aren't caused by the operating system itself combined with the horrible batteries.

So are you considering leaving Windows/Lumia? Or is it just me?

NB. PLEASE do not start posting your "how to save your battery" tips, I've done them all, yes all, including the one you think ios the answer. It's not.

Wifi off, Bluetooth off, no live tiles, normal screen sensitivity, adjust screen for sunlight off, check for updates off, NFC off, brightness normal, colour scheme normal, GPS off, No Facebook app, No Skype. Glance screen off, tap to wake off, only three background tasks enabled and anything else you can think of is off too! Still won't last 12 hours with light use, If I am going on a day trip it won't last a day even in battery saving mode. All this means I may as well have a phone from 2009. Such a shame.

 

[nitin88]

Try resetting it, I suggest re-flash it.
I am happy with it, getting drop around 5% per hour

 

[how1ard]

Try resetting it, I suggest re-flash it.
I am happy with it, getting drop around 5% per hour

Sorry the ONE thing I didn't put, It's been reset.

 

[BenGutt]

I get 22 hours (sometimes more) out of mine, pretty much everything on (Facebook, NFC, Bluetooth, WiFi, glance etc.).

I'd suspect it's either something screwy which a reset or flash would fix or your battery is duff.

I did have battery and heat problems after I had the portico update, but after a reset they went away.

 

[majortom1981]

have you tried turning of nfc?

 

[Marcus Sanford]

Granted, I have only had my 920 for about a week, but I've noticed that when any battery drain issues arise there is always one misbehaving app causing it. Normally, my battery life has been pretty good - way better than my iPhone 4S was.

 

[Smyrna5]

I do a lot of WiFi streaming of music and videos at night, and I use my 521 constantly (mostly apps not calls) during the day. I average about 12 hours of battery life when I am unplugged, although I am usually at my desk working in the daytime and leave it plugged in. My WiFi is always on. My previous phone was a dumb phone that would go for 3 days without plugging in, but it did almost nothing except make phone calls SMS, and keep my calender. Most of my family have high-end Androids and some of them only get 5 or 6 hours. Since I am usually near a wall socket, the battery life doesn't' bother me much.

 

[Vaco85]

This same here. The worst when i Play game. Discharging rate about 50% per hour. When i plug in the charger, charging rate 0%-1% per hour. The battery is the worst minus this phone . L920

 

[how1ard]

have you tried turning of nfc?

Wifi off, Bluetooth off, no live tiles, normal screen sensitivity, adjust screen for sunlight off, check for updates off, NFC off, brightness normal, colour scheme normal, GPS off, No Facebook app, No Skype. Glance screen off, tap to wake off, only three background tasks enabled and anything else you can think of is off too! Still won't last 12 hours with light use, If I am going on a day trip it won't last a day even in battery saving mode. All this means I may as well have a phone from 2009. Such a shame.

 

[Smyrna5]

Just an addendum from the Battery app. I have only owned this phone about 4 weeks, but here is what the averages are:

Plugged In: 115 times (I usually plug and unplug when I leave my desk during the day)
Discharge Speed: 8.73%/hour
Batter Life: 11:26 hours
Recharge Speed 36.42%/hr
Full Recharge Time: 2 hours, 44 minutes.

 

[o0Nighthawk0o]

Not a battery saving tip per say but something I noticed on my phone. A while back my phone developed a line on the screen. It also had a battery problem. It would drain at an average of about 15% an hour even with most background apps disabled and light usage. I had the phone replace under warranty and when I got my replacement I reinstalled all the apps and even left all my background apps running. I set my start screen up exactly like my original phone. With this phone my battery drain never goes above 6% an hour. The one thing I notice different is that where my old phone had the AT&T Logo and the letters ATT, my new one only has the Logo. The reason I think this is significant is because my wife complains about her battery and she has the phone with the letters. My daughter has a phone with just the Logo and never complains about her battery and she is a typical teenager and uses her phone much more than my wife or I do. I wonder if these phones with just the Logo are a sort of 'second generation' and the battery issue was fixed.

 

[hcrick]

The reason I ask is that I have a 920 which has a mind of it's own when it comes to battery life. It will regularly drop 30% in an hour just from listening to music via Bluetooth, as for surfing the net? Massive drain. It's never decent though, never.
I am really liking the look of the 1020 but not convinced that the power consumption issues present aren't caused by the operating system itself combined with the horrible batteries.

So are you considering leaving Windows/Lumia? Or is it just me?

NB. PLEASE do not start posting your "how to save your battery" tips, I've done them all, yes all, including the one you think ios the answer. It's not.

Wifi off, Bluetooth off, no live tiles, normal screen sensitivity, adjust screen for sunlight off, check for updates off, NFC off, brightness normal, colour scheme normal, GPS off, No Facebook app, No Skype. Glance screen off, tap to wake off, only three background tasks enabled and anything else you can think of is off too! Still won't last 12 hours with light use, If I am going on a day trip it won't last a day even in battery saving mode. All this means I may as well have a phone from 2009. Such a shame.

You have a bad unit, get it replaced if still under warranty.

 

[eugie]

Must off location and tap sent..other connections must be off.. Apps background must be blocked. Internet drain battery faster always charger connected

 

[majortom1981]

I remember. if you do not use it turn off xbox music cloud collection. I turned this off and my battery lasts a lot longer now.

 

[how1ard]

Must off location and tap sent..other connections must be off.. Apps background must be blocked. Internet drain battery faster always charger connected

NFC off, brightness normal, colour scheme normal, GPS off, NFC = Tap to send GPS = Location. Agreed surfing is a battery drainer but not this bad, on any phone I've ever had.

Don't Xbox ever.

 

[Bicpug]

I'd like to see wireless charging dropped in next phone and that space/weight used to increase battery life. We're getting thinner and thinner phones now with stupidly poor battery life.

 

[uselessrobot]

It is a nuisance, but it's a hardware issue more than anything. When the phone drains sitting there doing nothing, that may be something to do with the OS, but when the battery drains playing a game, for example, that's a consequence of the device. The processors get maxed out too easily and drain the battery more rapidly than they should.

A bigger battery might only help marginally. The 920 already has a much larger battery than the iPhone 5 and that phone enjoys better battery life despite more powerful processors. So clearly there are some inherent drawbacks with the hardware Nokia selected for the Lumia 920/1020.

The second factor here is that this isn't unique to Windows Phone as many Android phones suffer similar issues. All that needs to happen is that the next gen Lumias feature better hardware.

 

[jamie johnston]

OK, seeing as no one seems to be answering the actual question with anything other than what he originally asked, I will. No, the battery performance is not enough to drive me away, Although my performance isnt as bad as yours per say, i do charge every day, but i have a wall plug at home, a car charger and a wireless charger for work so i am never really going to be stuck. The 920 is without doubt the best phone i have owned, i had android before (wasn't the best, an xperia mini pro with ICS) and i have no interest in iOS. This phone (in my opinion is way better than both) and a battery life that might not be up to the others, is not enough to drive me away.
i would maybe take the advice of hcrick and try and get a new unit (presuming you are still under warranty or have insurance)

good luck

 

[gsquared]

Wifi off, Bluetooth off, no live tiles, normal screen sensitivity, adjust screen for sunlight off, check for updates off, NFC off, brightness normal, colour scheme normal, GPS off, No Facebook app, No Skype. Glance screen off, tap to wake off, only three background tasks enabled and anything else you can think of is off too! Still won't last 12 hours with light use, If I am going on a day trip it won't last a day even in battery saving mode. All this means I may as well have a phone from 2009. Such a shame.

You likely have an app that is not playing nice with your location services. All of the other items (BT/WiFI/NFC/etc) should not be pulling any power if they are not sedning signal. I have found the best way to tame battery is to keep background tasks to a min and turn off location services.

Question is: What are you going to switch to? I hear Android and IOS users complain all the time about how bad there battery performance is. Truth be told, these devices are at a point where current battery technology cannot keep up. One way or the other your just gonna have to live with it and accept the limitations.

 

[msweig]

Sorta. I had a 920 for about 9 months. Battery life wasn't great, but better than you are describing. Then, it randomly had battery life like yours, if not worse. So I reset the phone, and got stuck on the spinning gears/bricked it. Got it swapped out with a "new" one (almost positive it was actually a refurb), and the battery life on that one has been great. It also doesn't have the front camera dust problem.
About the only thing I do now is turn it off and back on occasionally when I notice it start to get hot without any apparent reason. This seems to occur due to a combo of Facebook and web surfing as far as I can tell (such as clicking on a link in Facebook and reading an article in IE), but even then this isn't consistent, so I'm not positive that is the source.
I rarely use Bluetooth, so I can't tell you if the "new" phone has any problems with that. And battery drain is always bad on certain games.