Lumia 920 battery - Your opinions

[sleewok]

I had a Dell Inspiron 6400. My roommate bought one 6 months after me. I "religiously" removed the battery when my device was plugged in. I also "fully" discharged it once a month. My roommate left his plugged in all the time. Guess what happened? His battery failed 8 months before mine.

I started plugging mine in all the time, and the battery lost a lot of capacity (75%) 3 months later.

Sure, not scientific, but definitely shows positive results for not constantly charging.

Yes.. they loose capacity over time if you keep draining to "zero"

Here is a good paper on it:

http://www.che.sc.edu/faculty/popov/drbnp/website/Publications_PDFs/Web33.pdf

"A typical chart from industry studies, in this case from the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of South Carolina, Columbia (PDF link). The amount of theory behind the topic and the number of variables are somewhat very scary, but you can take from the chart above that as the number of battery charge cycles goes up, the voltage, capacity and performance all decrease dramatically - starting at 1800mAh, the tested battery was down to 1350mAh after (roughly) a year of simulated use."

Click to view quoted image


So keep it plugged in at all times if you have to, but don't drain it out every day... that is if you are actually keeping the phone, since the battery is sealed there is no way for an easy replacement. And.. even if you are exchanging it, I don't know if Nokia replaces the batteries when they refurbish the phones.. so, someone else might end up with your tortured battery.

 

[dkp23]

I turned those two (NFC and Sensitive Touch) off and i'm at 50% after 9 hours of moderate-heavy use. BIG DIFFERENCE.

I have those off, bluetooth off only weather running in background

8 hours in i am at 32% with about 20 minutes of whatsapping, 1 minute phone call, 1 minute of uno that i got for 99 cents, about an hour worth of surfing and four app updates. Pretty crappy performance.

 

[Bataar]

Yeah, I'm thinking there's a problem with my phone. After letting it finally charge all the way down, I'm trying to recharge it. It steadily climed up to about 27% and then stayed there for a long time, quite a bit longer than it did in any previous advancement. I just checked it again and it showed only a 25% charge. Somehow, it lost charge while charging . . .

 

[irvin792]

Re: lumia 920 Battery Issues

I took my 920 I rcvd from att.com on the 13th back to a corporate store and the new 920 I recieved I hard reset as it had some video from whoever in china made the phone LOL. It bricked the handset, took it back again, thank god they had one more, this one is so far so good, got everything back up and running pretty simply, just had to redo a few passwords andset up my start screen again.

Will report on battery life tomorrow.

Not getting nearly as hot as the first 920 I had. Im gonna go on a limb and say that there are a few faulty batches of lumias out there with the faulty hard resets and the heating up issues.

crazy

 

[sandman]

RE: lumia 920 Battery Issues

Had mine replaced yesterday. Full charge last night and today it went 14 hours and still had 30% left and this was with moderate-heavy usage.

We shall see what tomorrow brings.

 

[mikewp]

Re: lumia 920 Battery Issues

After running the phone for 36 hours with modest usage.. few minutes talking, sending some texts, couple hours surfing, 8 updates installed, 30 min game, etc.. I had 15% left. Threw it on the wireless charger at 6pm and by 10pm it was fully charged. I'm happy with my Nokia phone.. as usual.

 

[igoramadas]

Re: lumia 920 Battery Issues

So after all these complaints about the Lumia 920 battery, I decided to test my theory that background tasks and LTE are 100% responsible for all battery issues. Not sure which one, maybe both.

Charged the phone overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday. Unplugged at 9AM, and left the phone on standby, didn't use it at all till last night 11PM - that's around 38 hours - and it still had 36% battery life. Had 3 accounts syncing every 1 hour, no background tasks, set to 3G only. It would easily go for another day especially after the battery saver mode kicks in.

So I charged last night, turned some background tasks on (Nokia Drive, Nextgen Reader and Groupon), put it on 4G even if I don't have 4G, and after only 4 hours it has now 80% battery left. Just by "leaving" the phone on standby, I didn't browse or send emails, calls, nothing. On this pace it will need a recharge before the end of the day.

Short answer: if you don't need apps to get updated on the background, turn their bg tasks off. If you usually have WiFi around, turn 4G off.
Long answer: Nokia issued 4 firmware updates in less than 6 months after they released the Lumia 800. So we can expect them to improve the radio stack and their own apps sooner than later. But for other apps (weather, 3rd party maps, news reader...) please ask the developers to have a look on their background tasks implementation, this is not Nokia's or Microsoft's job.

 

[downhillrider]

Re: lumia 920 Battery Issues

Ok so I disabled NFC a couple of days ago as some suggested and today I got 13 hours of battery life. With semi heavy use and a couple of 4G hours. Maybe my draining the battery for a week that I've had the phone worked. Who knows.

 

[pjs37]

Re: lumia 920 Battery Issues

I tried turning of NFC I haven't seen much improvement not anything that would lead me to suspect the NFC including the fact my phone still randomly heats up when I surf the internet.

 

[joeynox]

Re: lumia 920 Battery Issues

I did the factory reset by going to setting and didn't see any improvement. I cant seem to do a hard reset. Is it done with the phone off or on? I tried off because I read make sure the phone is off.

 

[guyverl]

Re: lumia 920 Battery Issues

FWIW, when I block Nokia Drive+ Beta in background tasks and tick the 'Turn background tasks back on for this app the next time I open it'; Nokia Drive+ seems to instantly unblock itself. At this point I have just reset the phone and NOT started Nokia Drive+. This suggests to me that Nokia Drive+ is doing something in the background when it shouldn't be, given that I've not even started the app.

 

[Tonystarks81]

Re: lumia 920 Battery Issues

Whats up everyone, long time lurker, first time poster. I finally made an account to address some battery problems.

Full Disclosure: Coming from iPhone 4 which I had to charge sometimes twice a day.

I got my phone at lunch Friday: After going through Honey moon period I will post only my last few days stats....

Tuesday: off the charger at 3:30 am (i woke up in middle of the night) to shutting down at 530pm Tuesday (14 hours)
Wednesday: off the charger at 9pm, dead again around 4pm Thursday (19 hours)

I usually followed the philosphy of running from 100% to fully discharged. However, i ran accross an article on lifehacker about smartphones that said fully discharging accelerates the battery life death process and you should usually keep it in the 80%-40% rule and recharge then.

So last night I charged to 95% at about 8pm. When I went to bed at 10 i put the phone in AIRPLANE mode, when I woke up at 530 i was at 89% (loss of 6% in standby).

Now on to my commute, 1 hour of streaming nokia music while simultaneously browsing the web. Wifi off, NFC off, brightness at medium, only Background task is weather channel app. No apps running in background. 2 email accounts syncing every 15 minutes. When i got to work, my phone was at 65%. Minus 24% for an hour of what I would consider heavy usage, thoughts? Streaming over LTE, browsing IE10, facebook and twitter. Thoughts?

I love the phone, and its better battery life than my iphone 4, but that was a 2.5 yr old phone, am I short changing myself? Should I return this thing.

 

[Grenzeloos]

Re: lumia 920 Battery Issues

**First off -- Columbus Ohio LTE for AT&T is Live as of last night. 28Mb's down and 19Mb's up speed test average (10 test)**

The above matters because this morning i'm at work and I have 4 bars LTE. Before I had 1 to no bars in 4G. I work inside a steel -20 degree freezer warehouse, with an enclosed office inside that. My phone has been off the charger for 4 hours I'm at 88% with 20 hours (Now states 87% with 1 day 5 hours as of 9:41 am Est.) remaining per native battery monitor. I had ~1 hour phone call on way to work, and downloaded 4 Bob Dylan all the Black Keys, Beastie Boys albums from Xbox Music while on phone. Yesterday I was charging my almost dead phone at this time of day. Is it possible that more then one radio is running at the same time? I also uninstalled the Nokia Drive Beta app completly. I have 6 apps permitted to run in background.

 

[anon(5348413)]

Re: lumia 920 Battery Issues

My battery drained in 5 hrs today. I attribute it to the radios. It was in a parking garage with 1 bar of signal. I usually put it in airplane mode and it does well but I forgot today. Went out at lunch and it was almost totally dead.

Welp, scratch that theory. I set it with Airplane mode on and left it in the car. It was dead in about 6 hrs of NO USE.

 

[cbrunn2]

Re: lumia 920 Battery Issues

Listen everybody if your not happy ... take it back and try to get an exchange device ...

I to was having battery problems ... I took my phone back and get an exchange (because of freezing not the battery but you can try worst they can say is no) ... and with this new phone the battery life has been amazing yesterday and seems to be on par today

I did not install the Battery Lvl app ... and I left off bluetooth and NFC as i don't need these things ... when I do i can easily switch them on

Background everything turned off but for Weather (Microsoft Weather)

Yesterday text and Whatsapp all day, a few short calls, and like 30 min Web Browsing , and like 30 minute MetroTube ... and went to bed at like 2am with 24% with estimated 24 hrs left...off the Charger since 8am

Today Text and Whatsapp . a 30 min phone call ... been off charger for like 1hr 30 min and still have 95% left ...with estimated 15hr (but that'll go up as I just ended my phone call)

 

[Dos101]

Re: lumia 920 Battery Issues

Woke up this morning, took the phone off the charger, turned wifi off, brightness to lowest, and sound/vibrate off. Got to work, and after checking into Foursquare a couple times the battery, which was at 100% when I woke up, was sitting at 84%. I'm definitely going to be dropping by a Rogers store after work today to see if they have any units in stock so I can exchange it. This is my personal/work phone and I need the battery to last, I'm tired of trying to deal with this issue.

 

[Only Mama Knows]

Re: lumia 920 Battery Issues

So after all these complaints about the Lumia 920 battery, I decided to test my theory that background tasks and LTE are 100% responsible for all battery issues. Not sure which one, maybe both.

Charged the phone overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday. Unplugged at 9AM, and left the phone on standby, didn't use it at all till last night 11PM - that's around 38 hours - and it still had 36% battery life. Had 3 accounts syncing every 1 hour, no background tasks, set to 3G only. It would easily go for another day especially after the battery saver mode kicks in.

So I charged last night, turned some background tasks on (Nokia Drive, Nextgen Reader and Groupon), put it on 4G even if I don't have 4G, and after only 4 hours it has now 80% battery left. Just by "leaving" the phone on standby, I didn't browse or send emails, calls, nothing. On this pace it will need a recharge before the end of the day.

Short answer: if you don't need apps to get updated on the background, turn their bg tasks off. If you usually have WiFi around, turn 4G off.
Long answer: Nokia issued 4 firmware updates in less than 6 months after they released the Lumia 800. So we can expect them to improve the radio stack and their own apps sooner than later. But for other apps (weather, 3rd party maps, news reader...) please ask the developers to have a look on their background tasks implementation, this is not Nokia's or Microsoft's job.

I can't believe how many suggestions there are on this thread to turn various things off. If turning off features of a phone is the only way to make the phone useful, then I don't really want that phone. If I didn't want LTE, I would have stuck with my old 3G phone. If I didn't want live tiles, I would've gotten an iPhone. And on and on.

My battery life appears to be getting better after 2 full battery dicharge/charge cycles, but turning all of the features off is not a solution.

 

[kebnt]

Re: lumia 920 Battery Issues

With all of the talk about battery issues people are having with their phone, was just wondering if there was ever any information posted about what the actual battery life expectations are for "heavy-use" or LTE internet use.

I've had my Lumia 920 since Sat. I was noticing that the battery was draining fairly quickly on my commute to and from work, where I would experience 20-25% battery drain in about an hour, which consisted of about 30-40 mins of LTE internet use, music playing for the entire time, and checking news apps, facebook updates. The background tasks I had were weave, weather and stocks and had my mail accounts syncing every 30 mins. NFC/BT/Wifi all off, screen brightness was on Med (auto off). I had already performed a factory reset and let the battery drain all the way through the first night and have let it get a full charge for about 3-4 nights after. Each day it seemed to improve the battery life, but then one morning my battery seemed to drain 30% on my commute, with the same settings and activities that I normally do. I decided to take it in to exchange and am going through the same issue with my next phone (though this newly exchanged phone has frozen on my about 5x in the last 2 days - which I never experienced on my old one).

Initially, I thought it might just be my phone and I needed to "break-in" the battery. After almost a week now, I'm starting to think that the battery life just isn't that great. I tried to do a few searches for what the expected battery life is for LTE internet use but couldn't seem to find anything other than anecdotes. Even the Nokia website doesn't seem to say anything about LTE internet use: [h=3]Power Management[SUP]3[/SUP][/h][h=4]Battery model[/h]BP-4GW
[h=4]Battery capacity[/h]2000 mAh
[h=4]Battery voltage[/h]3.7 V
[h=4]Removable battery[/h]No
[h=4]Standby time (2G)[/h]320 h
[h=4]Talk time (2G)[/h]7.5 h
[h=4]Standby time (3G)[/h]320 h
[h=4]Talk time (3G)[/h]9 h
[h=4]Music playback time[/h]52 h
[h=4]Video playback time[/h]5 h
[h=4]Video recording time[/h]2.6 h

Based on my experience, it looks LTE internet use seems to be around the video playback time, ~5h. I'm coming from an Iphone 5, which claims 8 hr LTE internet use (granted, I don't think I was getting that either). Someone else made a comment that some of the issues (not all) were probably not really "issues" but more unrealistic expectations for the battery. Has anyone found any information about the expected battery life for LTE interne use?

 

[erock150]

Re: lumia 920 Battery Issues

Battery greatly improved after I turned off NTC and Nokia Drive. I let it run down to 5% then put on charger. It charged to 100% in just 2 hours. Used it for about 15 min of web ,emails, text, video and a phone call or 2 Left it off the charger and went to bed at 9:30. woke up around 4am and spent about 15 min using it. At 6:30am checked and it was at 90%. 10% in 9 hours with moderate use. Way better then my first few days.

 

[dkp23]

Re: lumia 920 Battery Issues

I know for sure whatsapp drains your batter when in use, not sure much in standby unless you are receiving texts.

I am doing a test and removing whatsapp the whole day and see how improvements will be.