Lumia 920 battery - Your opinions

[Keith Wallace]

Umm...turning your phone off is a lot faster than waiting for a firmware update. He's talking about ways to temporarily alleviate the issue.

 

[pjs37]

Firstly, I believe the overheat and battery problem is one problem but not two.

Secondly, I believe it's the software problem but not the hardware problem.

Two possible ways to solve this:

1. Each time when you feel your phone get warmer in your pocket (stand-by), the battery must drain quickly at this time. Just try to restart it, it will get cool again and battery will also be fine.
(There must be something running in the background we can not see.)

2. Set the Battery saver to "Always" till an update coming from Microsoft or Nokia. This is really helpful. (Remember to restart your phone after you change the setting)

Good advice and I found similar experiences. Though I wouldn't set my Battery Saver to always it seems to defeat the point of me having a smart phone with live tiles. But I agree on the heat issue. I honestly think there is some background process or an app that crashes and it just throttles the CPU's. Rebooting my phone is similar to having to reboot my PC when I have an issue.

 

[sunnyp1227]

Try block the Nokia Drive app in background task.
This solve a lot people's problem. (If you had ever open it)
It stays in background task even if you quit the program.

mine can last 2 days now with normal use.

 

[DrThete]

Having used Mugen batteries (most recently in my Trophy), they recommend the folowing and I have always have good results with this:

Charging Instructions and Battery Care
To fully enjoy the enhanced hi-power capabilities, You should initialize the battery. To do so, please follow 3 easy steps:


1) CHARGE BATTERY FOR 8-12 HOURS

For the first 4-5 charges, please charge the battery in the device for 8-12 hours using the mains power adapter and with device turned on (Important: For first 4-5 charges You should charge the battery for 8-12 hours, even if Your phone is showing it is fully charged already!).


2) USE DEVICE AS NORMAL

After each charge, please use the device as normal, until the device tells you the battery is very low, then recharge.


3) REPEAT 4-5 TIMES

Repeat this process for 4-5 times.

After that you can recharge the battery whenever is suitable for You, and just until Your device showing it is fully charged.

Important: We recommend not to try to switch on your phone if you reached 0% charge. This harms the battery, exhausts it's resource and decreases it's life cycle.

When using your device for longer periods of time (week or more) continuously on the mains power supply, please remove the battery or use the device on battery power until recharge is necessary once in 2 weeks.

The above is also important in cases when you are changing the size of the battery in the device so the charging software can sort out the larger capacity.

All sound advice for a Li-ion battery. Fully charging it for 8 hours+ (even past the point it says it is at 100%) will help ensure the phone reads the battery capacity/drainage properly. But doing so only a couple of times will be fine for the battery that comes with your phone.

Fully discharging a Li-ion battery will harm it, but the automatic low battery standby is designed to prevent that, by switching off while the battery still has some capacity. The best thing to do is to put the phone on to charge as soon as you can after you get the 'low battery' warning (though people shouldn't wait for that - even if you have 80% left at night, putting it onto charge anyway is a good thing to do for your battery), as starting to recharge with the higher remaining charge the battery has at that point (than the auto switch off point) is healthier for the battery, and will lead to a longer life and keeping greater capacity for longer.

 

[DrThete]

I fully discharged my battery last night till it said 'goodbye' and began charging till it was 100%, leaving it plugged in till I woke up this morning for work. Since then, I've been streaming Nokia music for the past 3 hours straight, sent a good amount of text messages back & forth and checked my email/instagram/fb/twitter. My battery level is currently at 78% per the Battery Level app. The only background tasks running are:

Battery Level
MSN Stocks
NextGen Reader

My battery life seemed to have improved drastically after the discharge and leaving it plugged in overnight. Hope this helps some of you.

Generally you should try not to discharge to that point (yes it's a safety feature to protect the battery, but still best to avoid going that low). It is a good idea to do so, however, if you suspect your battery levels/capacity isn't being read correctly. Which may be what your issue actually was.

Discharging the battery to the point of auto shutdown will not, however, condition a battery, improve its capacity or do anything to improve the battery itself (the reverse in fact) - only help improve how the phone reads the battery.

 

[ishredthecello]

Also try disabling "Battery Level" if you have that app. It seems to not update properly, and that may be causing issues.

 

[sandman]

Don't know what to tell you. I had questionable battery life so after reading other users experience I ran my battery out.. Then I let it charge for 10 hours or so as I usually do. It has been 10 hours since I pulled it off the charger with moderate usage and I still have 48% left.

the full discharge seems to have helped.

and this isn't the first lith-ion battery that most of us have used. Yet I have never had to tinker and worry about one as much as everybody has on the 920.

 

[DrThete]

My battery "seemed" to be doing really weird things (for example, from 70% to 40% during a one hour jog)--until I ran the battery down to zero and did a full recharge. Now, much, much (much) better. No worries about running out in one day...

I think there's a theme developing from reading people's posts - the phones are arriving with poor battery capacity/usage reading, which is why a (one off) full discharge (which should only happen after first giving them a full 8 hour plus charge before first use) is working, because it fixes that issue.

 

[dkp23]

Battery saver all the time is not a solution, it just covers up a bad battery. The covering up isnt that great either.

We should be able to use our phones and have good performance, not find ways to make a crap battery work a little better.

 

[wp8nyc]

Try block the Nokia Drive app in background task.
This solve a lot people's problem. (If you had ever open it)
It stays in background task even if you quit the program.

mine can last 2 days now with normal use.

Correct. I disabled the app, and after a few charge cycles its working great. At first I also thought I had a faulty battery with very quick drain but now its going like a champ.

 

[F2a]

Yep, when my phone is warm I just restart it. I really hope that gets fixed, whatever it is.

 

[RossJG]

I think there's a theme developing from reading people's posts - the phones are arriving with poor battery capacity/usage reading, which is why a (one off) full discharge (which should only happen after first giving them a full 8 hour plus charge before first use) is working, because it fixes that issue.

In the testing I've done, I really think there's a software component to the problem. When I took Nokia Drive+ Beta and Weather Channel and blocked them from background execution, then rebooted, I saw a dramatic difference (went from the battery draining 8% per hour in standby to maybe 0-1% per hour). Testing re-allowing them background execution tonight, I saw maybe a slight uptick in battery drain rate after allowing the Weather channel app, and appear to be back around 6% battery being drained per hour after I added and executed the Drive+ beta. My suspicion still is it's the drive+ beta executing in the background, but I'll continue to fiddle with it. If it's not the Drive+ beta, then it's something else in Windows Phone that doesn't trigger right away after the phone is booted.

 

[elangovan_s]

i had over heating issue whdn i set up my yahoo mail to complete sync. My yahoo mail has too many emails i then deleted the account and set up sync for one month.
which obviously is onetime issud
When your phone is getting heated check your mailboxes whether it is showing sync...
i feel that sometime sync is running for long...

blocking few background apps has helped to save battery. Imo battery and over heating are related.

 

[Panu16]

I think that Nokia Drive+ is problematic. I could still hear the speed limit warning ding after pressing the "Stop Navigation" button and choosing "Yes." The ability to run in background is essential for voice navigation with the screen turned off. Perhaps it is time that Microsoft implements a "close/kill app" feature or Nokia to add an on-screen button to easily turn location service on/off.

 

[DrThete]

In the testing I've done, I really think there's a software component to the problem. When I took Nokia Drive+ Beta and Weather Channel and blocked them from background execution, then rebooted, I saw a dramatic difference (went from the battery draining 8% per hour in standby to maybe 0-1% per hour). Testing re-allowing them background execution tonight, I saw maybe a slight uptick in battery drain rate after allowing the Weather channel app, and appear to be back around 6% battery being drained per hour after I added and executed the Drive+ beta. My suspicion still is it's the drive+ beta executing in the background, but I'll continue to fiddle with it. If it's not the Drive+ beta, then it's something else in Windows Phone that doesn't trigger right away after the phone is booted.

I think there might be two separate issues being experienced by users. The first being processor intensive software, like Drive+, remaining active in the background, and so using up the battery faster. The second an issue with the phone not reading the battery correctly (misreading capacity and/or drainage).

The first seems to be solved by making sure to exit out of the software or by changing settings. The second is solved by a (one time) full drain/full charge. Both simple fixes.

As both cause (or, in the second case, appear to cause) fast battery drainage, they are both being reported in this thread, but a read through does make it appear that they aren't the same problem.

Of course some will just have a bad battery, which is irritating but does happen, and can only be fixed by getting a replacement phone.

 

[DrThete]

I think that Nokia Drive+ is problematic. I could still hear the speed limit warning ding after pressing the "Stop Navigation" button and choosing "Yes." The ability to run in background is essential for voice navigation with the screen turned off. Perhaps it is time that Microsoft implements a "close/kill app" feature or Nokia to add an on-screen button to easily turn location service on/off.

Yes - with something that needs to run in the background, but is processor intensive, there should be an option to exit that background service.

 

[irrationaljay]

UPDATE: I managed to pull this off two days in a row, with Wi-Fi constantly on and a bit of Bluetooth. I'm pretty happy.

[/IMG]

 

[wangsega]

Yes, I also noticed that my Yahoo mail is showing sync all the time. And I just deleted the account this afternoon and set the battery saver back to off. And the battery just drop about 5% after 5 hours.
I will update the post.

i had over heating issue whdn i set up my yahoo mail to complete sync. My yahoo mail has too many emails i then deleted the account and set up sync for one month.
which obviously is onetime issud
When your phone is getting heated check your mailboxes whether it is showing sync...
i feel that sometime sync is running for long...

blocking few background apps has helped to save battery. Imo battery and over heating are related.

 

[Odog4ever]

Don't know what to tell you. I had questionable battery life so after reading other users experience I ran my battery out.. Then I let it charge for 10 hours or so as I usually do. It has been 10 hours since I pulled it off the charger with moderate usage and I still have 48% left.

the full discharge seems to have helped.

and this isn't the first lith-ion battery that most of us have used. Yet I have never had to tinker and worry about one as much as everybody has on the 920.

Yeah I feel you. People assume that anyone having problems with the 920 is a phone noob. Wasn't even downloading off the charger or tinkering as much as I wanted too during the first 2 days because I noticed the battery issues right away. Figured out the Nokia Drive background task issue on day one too. Still had a poor day 1 and 2 with the device.

I always do a full drain/recharge on a new phone. I actually did it twice because the first one didn't really improve things that much (plus I was getting some 6hr recharge to full times). Now after 4 days "break-in" I'm getting decent battery life. Didn't need 4 days to break in my iPhone 3G or Samsung Focus. Still loving my 920 while deciding what to do about the heat issue that still persists...

 

[LazyLemming]

Yesterday my phone got hot as all **** and I managed to pull about 6 hours with 30-35 minutes of video and 10 minutes of calling. I blocked the Nokia Drive app, uninstalled the crackle app (it was a direct cause) and let the battery run down until the phone shut off. Then charged it for 12 hours straight.

Today I'm at 15 hours with a half hour of charging at lunch. I've done about 30-35 minutes of talk, some web surfing, and over 5 hours of video with netflix and I have a 40% charge left. This phone is spectacular when apps aren't buggering it.