Strange predictions in Battery Saver menu

[rasputintin]

Hi all,

I'm new here, so hi...was a webOS user (well, still am, I still use my Pre 3 and have a Pre- in the cupboard!) and a Nokia Symbian user (yep, have an N8 too) but recently I snagged a Lumia 710 for a very decent price after being interested in WP since its release. What can I say? It's very, very good, and I think it's a crying shame that WP is not more successful, I think this OS (and in particular the Nokia variety) would really appeal to Android and iPhone users alike...and IMHO is superior to both!

Anyway, I'm about 10 days into using my (lovely, especially with the cyan back) Lumia 710 and I'm getting some strange reports from the battery saver menu. When I first charged it (not with the one from the box but a quality official 1000mAh rated Palm Pre charger) the 710 predicted lasting 1 day and 6 hours and I thought "yeah right, that will settle down and end up being less as the battery settles in". Well it wasn't, even with fairly moderate use, and in fact the phone ended up lasting about 2 hours longer! Anyway, I continued with the initial 3-4 charges/discharges and the battery continued being stellar.

However, the other day I charged it up using USB, and the prediction went right down when I took the 710 off of charge at 100%. It predicted 15 hours but ended up being pretty much 21 hours, having not done anything drastically differently with the handset. I took this to be a USB thing so when I next charged it (this morning) I fully charged from empty using the wall charger. Here's the funny thing: it again predicted 15 hours but so far it has been going just over 9 hours and is at 80%, which by my calculation is 2.22% p/hour, far more efficient than predicted. In fact, by the prediction it should be down to nearly a third by now. What it is saying now is 14 hours (and it has said this pretty much all day), but I don't believe it.

Has the calibration somehow gone out? Has anyone else experienced this? If so, any solutions?

 

[foosball]

Yeah its wonky in my experience. If my observations are correct it even factors in average current usage to arrive at predicting battery life. These things tend to even out after a few charges and maybe a hard reset.

Sent from my HTC Arrive using Board Express

 

[rasputintin]

Yeah its wonky in my experience. If my observations are correct it even factors in average current usage to arrive at predicting battery life. These things tend to even out after a few charges and maybe a hard reset.

Sent from my HTC Arrive using Board Express

Yeah it's reeeaally wonky now, 10.5 hours at 78% (I've switched to wifi now), that's less than 1.2% p/hour and it's still saying 13 hours left!

I figured a hard reset would do it but obviously I can't be bothered to go through that just 'cause battery life predictions are off. Guess I'll wait and see if it settles down, I kind of expected a bit of jumping but 30 hours down to 15 is quite a change

 

[jrdatrackstar1223]

Yeah it's reeeaally wonky now, 10.5 hours at 78% (I've switched to wifi now), that's less than 1.2% p/hour and it's still saying 13 hours left!

I figured a hard reset would do it but obviously I can't be bothered to go through that just 'cause battery life predictions are off. Guess I'll wait and see if it settles down, I kind of expected a bit of jumping but 30 hours down to 15 is quite a change

Yea I normally pay no attention to this, as this seems like a very beta feature that is just quirky. Happened on all Windows Phone devices I've used (Arrive, HD7, Samsung focus/focus flash, Radar, Lumia 710). It happened with all these devices, so it's the software that you prolly won't see fixed until the next big update (Apollo).

 

[rasputintin]

Yea I normally pay no attention to this, as this seems like a very beta feature that is just quirky. Happened on all Windows Phone devices I've used (Arrive, HD7, Samsung focus/focus flash, Radar, Lumia 710). It happened with all these devices, so it's the software that you prolly won't see fixed until the next big update (Apollo).

Yeah, I shall ignore it and go by experience then! Seems Nokia is always plagued by this on their phones, my N8 does the same thing with Battery Monitor.

And of course, the next unanswerable question is "will Apollo run on current-gen hardware"? :straight:

 

[blehblehbleh]

Have you checked what kind of background tasks you're running? Cell coverage?

 

[jrdatrackstar1223]

Yeah, I shall ignore it and go by experience then! Seems Nokia is always plagued by this on their phones, my N8 does the same thing with Battery Monitor.

And of course, the next unanswerable question is "will Apollo run on current-gen hardware"? :straight:

My speculation is no for Apollo because of the way they let carriers handle the update process. This is not to say that carriers would be able to block Apollo because I don't think they are allowed to block major OS updates, but the simple fact they gave the carriers ANY power in the update process vs the way Apple does it makes me believe that updating isn't something of a priority on their list...

 

[trickym81]

My guess is that it predicts battery life if you continuing doing what you're doing right now until the battery drains.

ie. If you're running a lot of things and playing a video it will tell you how long you can keep doing that until the battery dies. Once you stop doing those things, it would give you a different prediction (how long the battery will last with the device idle.) As soon as you start using it again (turning on Wifi, etc.) it recalculates.

That's my guess at least.

On a side note, my Lumia 710 had pretty awful battery life when I first got it, but it's much, much better now. I'm not sure if it improved over time or if I play with the phone less now that it's not a "new toy" anymore.

 

[rasputintin]

My guess is that it predicts battery life if you continuing doing what you're doing right now until the battery drains.

ie. If you're running a lot of things and playing a video it will tell you how long you can keep doing that until the battery dies. Once you stop doing those things, it would give you a different prediction (how long the battery will last with the device idle.) As soon as you start using it again (turning on Wifi, etc.) it recalculates.

That's my guess at least.

On a side note, my Lumia 710 had pretty awful battery life when I first got it, but it's much, much better now. I'm not sure if it improved over time or if I play with the phone less now that it's not a "new toy" anymore.

Yeah, I assumed that too but there is something wrong with the dynamic averaging that the phone is doing, ie it isn't dynamic at all and just assumes that you'll be playing YouTube all day. Thankfully my battery actually lasts between 22-32 hours a time depending on what I am doing so it's not so bad. In fact even compared to my N8 (which only has push on between 7am and 5pm) the battery life is probably on balance the best I have ever experienced on a smartphone (and apart from an iPhone I have owned Windows Mobile, Symbian, Android, webOS, BlackBerry), so this is a further WinPhone plus point for me.

In fact, for the price you can get this model at (I paid ?130 but you can get on 24 month contract in the UK for ?13 p/month) I think it is totally mental to see people walking around with those awful, awful low-end HTC phones with nasty little screens, terrible performance/battery life and the general mess of a UI that is Android when they could have one of these. Don't get me wrong, as a Linux user I love hacking about with Android - it's very powerful and customisable - but for a no-hassle, lag-free, easy to use and beautiful UI people could be buying WP7 handsets like the 710, not to mention (to bring this back on topic) looong battery life. Mental, I tell thee.

 

[RockStarNinja]

I've found that the battery predictions are based upon how you're using the phone. I normally don't do much with my phone throughout the day, so after a full charge it'll say I've got anywhere from 3-4.5 days. But if i spend a day playing games or listening to music the next day the charge will say 20hrs-1.5 days. I did this one day and the phone said I had 23 hours left, but after not touching it for 5 or 6 hours the battery read the exact same number and the percentage hadn't changed either, it actually stayed at 96% and 22hrs for almost a day and a half until I plugged it in again.

 

[jrdatrackstar1223]

I've found that the battery predictions are based upon how you're using the phone. I normally don't do much with my phone throughout the day, so after a full charge it'll say I've got anywhere from 3-4.5 days. But if i spend a day playing games or listening to music the next day the charge will say 20hrs-1.5 days. I did this one day and the phone said I had 23 hours left, but after not touching it for 5 or 6 hours the battery read the exact same number and the percentage hadn't changed either, it actually stayed at 96% and 22hrs for almost a day and a half until I plugged it in again.

Do you use live tiles? I wish I could get that kind of battery life. Also, do you use any kind of push email? I too think it reflects real usage after each day of use, but at the same time it will appromixate inaccurate estimates it seems (even after a day of use). For example, sometimes I go a full day without charging, yet it estimates 16 hrs or something after I unplug it