[Poll]Black Lumia 920s -- Heat & Battery Life Definite Issue

[Muessig]

I really really hope I don't have a defective unit.

I wonder if I'm noticing the heat issue more because this is first phone I'm using without a case and its my first dual core phone. Also its the honeymoon period and I'm using/downloading way more stuff than usual. Crossing my fingers...

I can't speak for everyone but I'm sure that my unit doesn't have a heat issue. My old phone was a HTC Hero and after heavy use or if it'd been charging or I'd been on a phone for a while the backside of the phone was quite hot. Having said this, I've had the phone for 4 years and I can still get 2-3 days out of the thing. I've noticed that when I've been on a phone call or browsing the web or something like that, the back of the phone has been warm but definitely not hot by any definition. This has also cooled down very quickly when I stopped doing anything.


I've been reading up on Lithium batteries and how to charge them properly and I've been trying to do this with my 920. I'm going to let the charge go right down this time just so I can get a figure of what the battery life is like at the moment for the purposes of this thread. Having said this, I've managed to keep my 920 going for a good 12 hours now and it's only down to 44% battery with a reported 1 day and 8 hours left on it now.

 

[anon(5324511)]

I am starting to think it was the drive app on my phone! I uninstalled it because I'd never use it anyway and the battery life has skyrocketed!!! Sent about 20-25 text this morning and also streamed and fooled around with settings and it still shows 99%. Yesterday doing the same thing would've had it in the 80% range!!

 

[zipro]

I am starting to think it was the drive app on my phone!

Instead of uninstalling it, you could have tried just disabling location services

 

[h4ck3d]

Could be the drive app, Mine was running in the background when I got the phone, I turned it off just because I dont use it, and I have not had any heat issues other then when playing a game(which even that wasnt bad), and my battery lasted a good day and a half with every day usage.

its not like the OS is a resource hog, and the way i look at it is if the phone is constently trying to pull your GPS location, and depending on were you are at and you LTE coverage, it could be chewing through your battery just trying to get you location.

I would try turning it off and see if it makes a difference, 10 bucks it will.

Settings -> swipe right -> background tasks -> nokia drive+beta -> click block (which will just turn off the background task, not disable the entire app from working)

 

[leet414]

Okay, so last night I reset my phone and tested it out with only the apps that were installed out-of-the-box. The battery life seemed good at that point where I was only losing 1-3% per hour on very light usage over LTE. Before, I was losing ~15% per hour over LTE.

Then, I did another reset restoring the apps but uninstalled everything I considered non-essential. I also turned off the Location Services. It did seem to take a relatively longer amount of time to charge last night (~2.5 hours from 0% to 100%), at least compared to the android phones I'm coming from, but after running over LTE this morning for 2 hours, the battery has only dropped 3%.

I know this is a horrible approach to testing because there are so many variables I changed from test to test but at least from what I'm initially seeing, battery performance looks much better now. I'll update as I do more testing...

 

[Landsharkk]

I'm going to test out the theory about nokia drive.

I left my phone on the charger all night last night, took it off at 7:15am and then reboot the phone at 7:30am. Drive is still 'enabled' in background tasks. I'll see how long the phone lasts today with drive enabled.

Tonight I'll charge it all night, disable the Nokia Drive background task, and then take it off the charger at 7:15am tomorrow, reboot it at 7:30am.


One thing to note, every time I take it off the charger at 100% charge the battery saver app tells me I have 1 day 15 hours left., I've never seen it higher than that.

 

[VagrantWade]

You see battery complaints with virtually every new smartphone now. Why? People download a ****load and apps and allow all of them to run in the background and use "my location". I blocked Nokia Drive from running in the back within the first 6 minutes of owning the phone.

 

[Landsharkk]

You see battery complaints with virtually every new smartphone now. Why? People download a ****load and apps and allow all of them to run in the background and use "my location".

Some do, some don't. I've only installed about 6 apps. In the background tasks menu only 4 use background tasks (1 of those was pre-installed).

If you read through the whole thread you'll see that a lot of people are experiencing short battery times even when not using the phone or with little to no apps installed.

I agree that it's a bit too early to tell exactly how good/bad the battery life will be over time, but having this thread allows for a base of comparison for when we've had the phones for a week or two.

 

[emergenic]

Blocked Nokia Drive Beta as someone suggested, and have seen an immediate improvement in battery life, and device temperature.
If you are having issues, I highly recommend this as a temp fix, until Nokia can push an update to ressolve this.

Thanks to whoever suggested blocking Nokia Drive! :-]

 

[anon(5339110)]

Blocked Nokia Drive Beta as someone suggested, and have seen an immediate improvement in battery life, and device temperature.
If you are having issues, I highly recommend this as a temp fix, until Nokia can push an update to ressolve this.

Thanks to whoever suggested blocking Nokia Drive! :-]

I just went to settings> applications>background tasks and closed Drive Beta, without blocking it. Seems like it hangs on, if you have used it recently. My battery life has gone way up, and the phone is much cooler. Plus, I still have it available, if I need it. Just need to check that it has, in fact, closed, after you are done using it.

I'm guessing this happened to some of the tech reviewers also, as the battery portion of the various reviews was so mixed.

That being said, at least Nokia does label this a "beta"

 

[emergenic]

I just went to settings> applications>background tasks and closed Drive Beta, without blocking it. Seems like it hangs on, if you have used it recently. My battery life has gone way up, and the phone is much cooler. Plus, I still have it available, if I need it. Just need to check that it has, in fact, closed, after you are done using it.

I'm guessing this happened to some of the tech reviewers also, as the battery portion of the various reviews was so mixed.

That being said, at least Nokia does label this a "beta"

I believe that blocking background tasking on Nokia Drive Beta, only prevents the app from running in the background...so it will still be available for when and if needed.

But yep, I'm guessing Nokia is aware of this already, since this is still in beta release. :happy:

 

[socialcarpet]

No problems at all here.

My phone gets *slightly* warm if I'm playing a game or streaming Netflix for a while, but it's nothing dramatic. Battery life is good, about the same as my 900 I'd say. Maybe a little bit better.

 

[Landsharkk]

Hmm, well on a side note, after charging and restarting my phone it was showing 100% battery (Battery Saver shows 1 day 15 hours of charge left). I then played a game for about 15 minutes and did some random stuff on the phone. Eventually I blocked the "Halo Waypoint" background task, while the phone still showed 100% charge. I then let the phone sit for about 30 minutes (it's been off the charger for a total of 2.5 hours).

Now when I checked the Battery Saver it shows 95% battery life and shows 1 day 19 hours left on this charge.

I'm thinking the background tasks have a LOT to do with the battery life. I'd suggest blocking anything you don't want/need running all the time.

 

[apoc527]

My battery life is definitely not what it should be. I've barely used it today other than for a bunch of texting, and I'm at 72% with five hours left reported by Battery Saver and it's only 11:30 am. Not cool.

 

[whitelightning_sam]

Drive was never on my background tasks, but clicking on "Advanced" gives me a list of apps that can run in the background that I can't block. They are: AT&T U-verse Live TV, extras+info, Nokia Music, Weather Channel and WhatsApp.

One other issue might be the LTE radio being on all the time. AT&T seem to have removed the ability to toggle the "highest connection speed" available on the international versions of the Lumia 920. There are some workarounds on the web to enable this option (http://www.nok4us.com/2012/04/how-to-toggle-lte-onoff-on-your-nokia.html) for the Lumia 900, but Microsoft have changed this. Anybody figured out how to toggle LTE radio off?

 

[anon(5324511)]

Instead of uninstalling it, you could have tried just disabling location services

yea, but I don't use it anyway. I've maybe used navigation once and didn't even have to then. Thanks though!!

 

[cddigi]

Reading and writing on the Baconit and WPCentral apps for about twenty minutes left the top half of my 920 very warm. Only the top though, the bottom half is still cool to the touch.

 

[socialcarpet]

You see battery complaints with virtually every new smartphone now. Why? People download a ****load and apps and allow all of them to run in the background and use "my location". I blocked Nokia Drive from running in the back within the first 6 minutes of owning the phone.

 

[socialcarpet]

has anyone used their mac to charge their 920? I tried using my MBA to charge it tonight and after an hour it barely moved 5 %. 5-6 hours after a 100% charge, I hope after a few days that changes.

I only use USB to "top off" the battery. It's much much slower to charge than AC power.

Now if my damn fatboy charging pillow would just get here. :dry

 

[Grimlock]

Blocked Nokia Drive Beta as someone suggested, and have seen an immediate improvement in battery life, and device temperature.
If you are having issues, I highly recommend this as a temp fix, until Nokia can push an update to ressolve this.

Thanks to whoever suggested blocking Nokia Drive! :-]

I had a similar experience- both battery life and and temperature have improved dramatically. I was on a 90 minute phone call today and felt no where near the amount of heat I felt yesterday when making calls. Big relief!