Is My Lumia 900 Battery Bad?

[jefbeard911]

Need some help figuring out if my Lumia 900 battery is bad or this is the best it gets?

My Lumia is 2 weeks old and I love it. But I get horrible battery life (its not the Honeymoon Effect, I promise). My batt gets to critical level (20%) around 2 or 3pm each day. It even shut down today (powered itself off) about 3 pm after very light usage.

Here's my daily routine:

1. Charged overnight and have a full batt when I get up about 630am
2. At 630am I sign into Skpye and send a couple IM's, browse a couple news stories and leave for work.
3. The phone is in my co car all day. I leave Skpye in the forground as it doesnt run in backgrnd on WP until about 10am. Then I sign out of Skype.
4. I dont make really any calls on it during the day ( I have work phn) and have my screen set at medium brightness. Screen times out after 5 min. I dont browse much during the day.
5. phone goes 'critically low batt' around 3 pm each day.

This doesnt seem like very good battery life. I had an HTC Inspire which is known for its bad batt last longer than this. I dont have a car charger but will get one now.

Is this normal? or a defective battery?

I'd love to hear other Lumia users experiences and thoughts. I don't think my usage is extreme and I really don't want to change my behavior. Its a modern, state-of-the-art phone. Its gotta be better than this..

Thoughts?

 

[emirozmen]

Have you updated your OS

 

[jefbeard911]

Have you updated your OS

Yeah, Its running the most current version of WP and I installed the latest update a couple days ago.

 

[tissotti]

Hard to say. Only thing i can say is that don't use white theme as it will drain the battery a lot faster on AMOLED screen.

I had bad battery life that lasted only 8-10 hours on the first week. After update and 1-2 weeks of use my battery has always lasted whole day for a month now.

 

[jefbeard911]

Good to hear.

I'm not using the white theme. Good tip though. I like the blue. Just updated a couple days ago. Will keep cycling battery and hope it gets better. I checked the battery today after basically no use and it was at 85% after a 12 hr day. I kinda think that Skype is the battery hog. If so, not much I can do (except buying a car charger) until MS figures out how to get Skype to run in the background on a WP.

 

[jimski]

Sounds unusual, but most of the time, poor battery performance with much use is attributed to poor data signal. I assume you are moving around in your co car all day. What kind if signal strengths are you seeing.

Background tasks, email, etc. should only be responsible for 10-15% per day, max. But Skype behind the lockscreen could be wreaking havoc. Maybe you can check battery % (in Battery Saver), set Skype to run behind the lock screen and check back after 60 minutes. Might solve your mystery.

Sent from my Lumia 900 using Board Express Pro

 

[emirozmen]

Skype kills a lot of battery, that is the way it is. Its the same with iOS, don't know Android but guessing it is the same. If you are going to use Skype extensively, go get chargers

And people, how do you set an app to run in the background?

 

[pjs37]

I had a very similar experience. The only way I was able to fix it was a full reset and then carefully went through and installed only the apps I needed. I still have no idea why it was draining so fat but the issue seems fixed now.

 

[cr_buck]

Check your battery status

Ok first start by enabling the diagnostics app. In your phone dialer type ##634# and then call. This will install the Nokia diagnostics. Go to battery status and look at the Current readout. If it is regularly above 200 mA and you are doing nothing you have a problem. The phone may even feel hot sometimes when you are not using it. First check your email accounts sync settings. They should be on push unless you receive tons of email as push uses almost no power until you get an email. Push still might be good even if you receive lots of email. To enable push for an email account you change the setting to "As Items Arrive." Exchange, Hotmail, and Gmail support push but Yahoo free does not. If nothing else increase the time between sync's and see how you do. Keep an eye on your battery usage and see if that helps. If not, check your background tasks and turn them all off. One by one turn them on for a while and see if your battery usage spikes. When it does, you know the app that is causing the problem. Now if that does not work you are left to a hard reset. If that doesn't work, you probably have a bad phone. My wife's 900 had this problem. Unfortunately it turned out to be a phone issue so I had it replaced and she was fine after that.

Good luck!