Returned my 1020

[sdc1]

I returned my 1020 to O2 today after experiencing terrible battery life.

After hard resetting the phone and shutting down everything possible to conserve battery life I was again down from 100% at 7am to 28% at lunchtime. This was with some light use. I?ve packaged it up and returned it to O2 today as it was still within the 7 day cooling off period.

Perhaps mine was a faulty unit, but it seems that there are quite a few complaints about the 1020s battery life. I?m now back using my 925 which is set up in a way that should in theory use more battery power than the 1020 and it?s discharging at less than 2% per hour. My brief adventure with the 1020 was pretty disappointing. The camera is superb but it?s no use to me if the battery is dead.

I wanted this phone to be good, I was really looking forward to it and it was the first phone I pre-ordered. A bit of a shame...

 

[jeetu4444]

Oh...how many days old was yr fone... ?...coz it take few cycles of discharging and charging for real battery power...

 

[gsquared]

There are a lot of complaints about every phone on the market and battery life. Though I'm not saying the OP doesn't know what they are talking about or is being dishonest there are so many posts on how to conserve battery and get background tasks, etc under control; and the fact I've never had any serious battery issues I take these posts with a grain of salt.

 

[sdc1]

At this stage I have a fair bit of experience with Lumias and I'm a committed Windows Phone user so the idea that I am in some way being dishonest is laughable. My previous phone was a Lumia 925 and that is the phone I am now using again. I know all about background apps, etc, etc, etc but this was different. My 520, 920 and 925 all had/have significantly better battery life than the 1020. The fact that I couldn't get through a 9-5 working day without running out of battery is remarkable.

Besides, my 925 has glance screen enabled, 5 background apps working, the touchscreen at high sensitivity and the screen at maximum brightness, despite all this it breezes through the day and only needs charged overnight.

Having read the numerous complaints about the battery life of the 1020 I am convinced there is a wider issue here. I have no agenda or vested interest in posting this, if you prefer we can all bury our heads in the sand and pretend that all is well.

 

[Ultimateone]

If I take my phone off the charger at 6am, I usually have about 5-60% at midnight with regular usage, which is a smidgen better than what I used to get with my 920. I really don't think people know all of the best settings to attain great battery life.

 

[tgr42]

Personally I think you just had a defective unit. Whether there is a wider issue... it's hard to say. There are many issues related to battery life. Many can occur with any WP8 phone, others are specific to the 1020. It's hard to tell whether the various people reporting serious battery drain problems actually made sure there wasn't some app, setting, or physical problem (like a loose SIM) causing it.

What I can say for sure is that not all 1020s behave like yours. I've been regularly getting 2-3 days on a charge with light usage. I'm currently on a test run with double tap to wake disabled and projecting 4-5 days, although I'm only 23 hours in (showing a level of 81%) and need to continue for another day or two to see for sure what happens.

 

[sdc1]

If I take my phone off the charger at 6am, I usually have about 5-60% at midnight with regular usage, which is a smidgen better than what I used to get with my 920. I really don't think people know all of the best settings to attain great battery life.

Ok, so I disabled the background apps. Set my one email address to sync every hour. Turned off glance screen. Turned the touchscreen sensitivity to low. Turned screen brightness to low. Set Connect with XBox to off. Disabled location services. Disabled Wi-fi. Set my highest connection speed to 3G. Deleted all apps that I thought might cause an issue.

Tell me what more I could have done? Maybe my unit was faulty, but believe me, I know my way around a Windows Phone.

 

[martinmc78]

Im getting 10 hours from mine at the moment and that's with above average usage. Im not convinced its running at full capacity yet as its only been 4 days and I have only done 1 complete discharge to recharge.

I did have a shock on Monday when it went from 90% to 27% in 1 hour - realised I hadn't changed it to 3g only and was using the internet non stop on my commute. Not had any massive drains since then though.

 

[Jazmac]

Conditioning the battery is important first step for cell phones. If you did that and battery is still bad, its probably a faulty handset. You should get through an entire day with the 1020.

 

[Abe Vinjamuri]

Mine works fine... get about 12 hrs with pretty decent use (multiple emails getting pushed/synced, browse the web for about 2-3 hours, FB, 6tag, newser, use the camera etc.0

 

[martinmc78]

Ok, so I disabled the background apps. Set my one email address to sync every hour. Turned off glance screen. Turned the touchscreen sensitivity to low. Turned screen brightness to low. Set Connect with XBox to off. Disabled location services. Disabled Wi-fi. Set my highest connection speed to 3G. Deleted all apps that I thought might cause an issue.

Tell me what more I could have done? Maybe my unit was faulty, but believe me, I know my way around a Windows Phone.

It does sound like a faulty unit - shame you had to send it back especially after all the issues we had with O2 and UKMail.

 

[sdc1]

I'm on to O2 currently about getting a replacement.

 

[gsquared]

Ok, so I disabled the background apps. Set my one email address to sync every hour. Turned off glance screen. Turned the touchscreen sensitivity to low. Turned screen brightness to low. Set Connect with XBox to off. Disabled location services. Disabled Wi-fi. Set my highest connection speed to 3G. Deleted all apps that I thought might cause an issue.

Tell me what more I could have done? Maybe my unit was faulty, but believe me, I know my way around a Windows Phone.

SD. No need to get defensive. Nobody is calling you out specifically.

This is just the one issue that doesn't go away and given the number of people that do not have battery issues and the amount of existing content that exists to help with battery issues, I just don't find it all believeable anymore.

Nokia and MSFT I bet has tested the hell out of their phones and OS on this subject. If there was something obviously wrong they would have corrected it y now. Of course we all have our own opinions on the root cause. I always push to turn off Location Services. There are just some apps out there that do not play nicely with it.

 

[immyperez]

I bought an ATT 1020 from ebay (live in the UK). Took it to the Nokia shop to collect my 920. They told me that my 1020 was not covered in the Europe warranty.

So I bought another 1020 from phones4u last night...the battery life is 100 times better than the ATT one I had. The vibration was also not as good - had this problem on all 3 of my 920s (yellow) where as my brother's red one had a very strong vibration.

What's my point? In less than a year I am on my 5th WP8 Lumia and imo, there is a serious quality control issue. The strongest vibration I've felt was on my mates' recently bought 520!

Something has to be wrong if the low end is beating the high end for vibration strength!

My new 1020 gets a full day medium-heavy usage...my previous one was a full day with light-medium usage.

Get a new one mate...you might get lucky and avoid my bad luck.

 

[tgr42]

Interesting, I thought the extremely weak vibration in my 1020 was just a poor design decision but it sounds like it might be a QC problem. I don't think anyone can dispute that Nokia has done a poor job of QC with the Lumias. I almost didn't go with Nokia based on what I read about the 920s but I seem to have gotten partially lucky with my 1020. Weak vibration but good battery.

 

[stephen_az]

Interesting, I thought the extremely weak vibration in my 1020 was just a poor design decision but it sounds like it might be a QC problem. I don't think anyone can dispute that Nokia has done a poor job of QC with the Lumias. I almost didn't go with Nokia based on what I read about the 920s but I seem to have gotten partially lucky with my 1020. Weak vibration but good battery.

So what does extremely weak vibration have to do with someone's battery problem? I also must say I am tired of people saying "I don't think anyone can deny...." on any subject here. You are ascribing your opinion as a universal experience for everyone. You think they have QC issues, not everyone. Personally, I think the rate for defects for Nokia's phones is no better or worse than any of the major players. I did have major problems with a 822 which I should have returned for a refund rather than hold and trouble shoot (it now collects dust in favor of a 928). Even that phone's issues though paled in comparison to the number of QC problems with previous HTC and Samsung units. I will not buy HTC or Samsung products as a result, but I would never claim that everyone would agree that the companies have major QC problems. Basing universals on either forum responses or personal experience is simply trying to convert one's personal subjective opinion into empirical fact. No matter how hard you wish it to be otherwise, you are still just giving an opinion.

 

[immyperez]

Maybe the weaker vibrating phones have better battery life for that reason, lol.

 

[Graphic_Delusions]

I'd like to know whether my 1020 is defective because I too get poor battery performance. I start with 100% and by the time I finish work its like 20%.

I have turned all background apps except Whatsapp. I have turned off Xbox Live features, double tap, and everything else to help improve battery life.
I also check FB and Twitter regularly throughout the day but nothing else.

If I turn off the network / Wi-Fi connection my battery lasts a lot better (as expected).

 

[Connie Litrenta]

I'd go for defective as well. My phone will generally last from about 5:00 am til sometime into the evening. That's with the screen brightness up at MAX (tired old eyes) and wifi and bluetooth running all the time as well. My actual usage is relatively moderate/average but I read that the screen is the biggest issue and since I have mine up to full brightness, I think I do pretty well. :wink: Oh and i do on occasion turn on the hotspot besides.

 

[tgr42]

So what does extremely weak vibration have to do with someone's battery problem? I also must say I am tired of people saying "I don't think anyone can deny...." on any subject here. You are ascribing your opinion as a universal experience for everyone. You think they have QC issues, not everyone. Personally, I think the rate for defects for Nokia's phones is no better or worse than any of the major players. I did have major problems with a 822 which I should have returned for a refund rather than hold and trouble shoot (it now collects dust in favor of a 928). Even that phone's issues though paled in comparison to the number of QC problems with previous HTC and Samsung units. I will not buy HTC or Samsung products as a result, but I would never claim that everyone would agree that the companies have major QC problems. Basing universals on either forum responses or personal experience is simply trying to convert one's personal subjective opinion into empirical fact. No matter how hard you wish it to be otherwise, you are still just giving an opinion.

Weak vibration has nothing to do with battery problems and I never said it did. And yes, I think Nokia has QC problems with the Lumias, not just based on my experience (which has been good overall) but what I've seen on the forum. When someone goes through 5 phones to get one that isn't defective, that suggests to me that they may have QC issues. When people receive phones with that horrible shake problem when recording video, that seems like a QC issue. And many other problems. And I didn't say anything about other companies. Maybe they all have major QC problems, maybe not, I don't know.

Maybe I've got the wrong impression looking at too many people on the forums having issues that can be chalked up to poor QC. Maybe Nokia has shipped 100 or 10000 phones for every dud. So I'll take it back - sure, people can deny that Nokia has done a poor job of QC. You're welcome to your opinion. I'll restate my observation as "plenty of people on this forum have reported issues that don't seem like they should've made it through QC". Is that ok with you?