I've owned a Lumia 900 over a year and don't want to upgrade but it has problems that need fixing

[violentsharts]

Hey guys, I've owned the nokia lumia for over a year now (like the title says) and I need some help with it. In order of most bothersome to least bothersome, let me compile my list:

1) Horrible battery life. I leave for work in the AM with a fully charged battery and will have it read 50% battery life less then 4 hours later. I don't know if its because I have programs running that need to be closed or if it's the battery, but this needs to be corrected.

2) Using phone and the "speak" command turns itself on. I have to wait for it to stop because you can't cancel it once it starts. How can I disable this feature from even turning on?

3) Bing loads at random times. Same as #2, I'll be using my phone and all of a sudden Bing will load and I have no intention of using it. How can I disable this feature as well?

Other then these nagging issues, it's a great phone and I really want to stick with it. Does anyone own a 1020? How's the battery life?

 

[francisasingh]

I was using 900 for a year before screen shattered. If your phone is in and out of network coverage battery consumption is bad. My battery was 50% only by 3pm.


Sent from Lumia 920 using Tapatalk

 

[TechAbstract]

Lol, Bing loads at random time and speak command turns on by itself. Sounds like bad capacitive buttons, which a few people had. I had it myself on my first Lumia 900. I replaced a new one and no more of those issues. Bad battery life could be a bad app running in background. Check background apps in Settings.

 

[Simon Hinton]

Hiya, i've had all your problems and have managed to fix them They're quite common with the 900 it seems, probably something to do with Nokia rushing it off the production line without as much quality control testing before WP8 came out. I dunno.

For the battery, try checking its discharge rate first, so we know that something isn't draining it. Open the dialer and punch in ##634#. A hardware diagnostic app will download, and within it you'll find a "Battery Status" submenu. Open it and have a look what the discharge rates are. My 900, with one gmail account syncing, screen on low, and minimal background tasks, discharges at 110mA on average. If I'm prudent i can get this down to around 90mA by forcibly disabling the backlights on the capacitive buttons and turning on battery saver. With lowish use i can get about 35 hours out of a single charge (it often finishes charging as i go to bed, so it pretty much has 8 or 10 hours when it is barely used overnight).

If your discharge rates look abnormal, like 300mA+ without anything running in the background, poke around in the phones settings. A good place to start is turning off Bluetooth, turning off your wifi when you're out and about (it'll constantly be looking for hotspots), lowering your cellular data connection speed to 3G, turning your brightness down (which you should do regardless, i'm beginning to notice screen burn in because ive had mine up pretty high), changing your theme to dark with red, yellow, or orange tiles (warmer colours use less power, and as an added bonus, will make your screen last longer, blue subpixels have half the life span of green and red).

Swipe over to application settings and check how much is running in background tasks, disable app background processes you know you can live without. I only have my weather application on here. Try disabling Skydrive photo uploads too if you haven't already, the low res makes them useless anyway and if you're taking a lot of photos, that's a constant stream of data leaving your phone.

Riiiight, and your Bing and Speak (TellMe) issues? They're caused by the phones speaker interfering with the capacitive buttons when audio is playing. Unfortunately the only way to fix this is to pry off your screen and install some shielding underneath the buttons. I used a small strip from an anti-static hard drive\ram bag (Antistatic bag - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) stuck down with double sided tape on the inner guts of the phone where the buttons would touch, and snapped the screen back on. Best to check if it works before closing the phone up again, though.

I put a few nicks in the polycarbonate getting the screen off with a butter knife (its actually quite soft); and because the 900 isn't really meant to be serviced, the clips that hold the screen on there could break too, if you're rough. A really good video on how to disassemble it safetly is here Nokia Lumia 900 Disassembly & Assembly - YouTube

Good luck, let me know if anything helps The 1020 looks amazing but i'm personally holding out for the second iteration. There are a few production batches out there with bad lenses :|

 

[jefbeard911]

Idea agree with the bad buttons response. My 900 did the same. I sent it back to Nokia under warranty and I got another that never had that problem again. I'd say you have some background apps draining your battery. Skype, which has to stay open to run on a 900, kills the batt, as well as FB, and others.

 

[violentsharts]

Wow, this was one of the most helpful posts I've ever read. Thanks so much sir, I will try what you recommend but im getting to the point where I just want yo upgrade to the 1020. Do you have a 1020?

 

[violentsharts]

Im not running any kind of social apps, the only things ibuse my phone for are internet, texting and phone calls.

 

[violentsharts]

Thanks for the great responses guys, but lately I've been bitten by the 1020 bug and now that they've lowered the price to $200 with an upgrade, I might have to take them up on it. Does anyone in here own a 1020?

 

[Muessig]

For Lumia 1020 users, check out this forum.

 

[Simon Hinton]

No worries, happy to have helped anyway. I'd still take into account the screen info; the 1020 has an amoled panel like the 900 and is likely to wear down its blue subpixels the same way over a few years.

I probably won't be getting a 1020 (or a variant) any time soon, living at the bottom of the world kinda means our smartphones arrive years behind the US or Europe :|

And I won't be importing again, that's for sure. My 900 cost me an arm and a leg in import duties, exchange rates, small print and government taxes.