[Jono Brain]

I got a Lumia 1020 a few days ago, previously was using an iPhone 5 and a Nexus 4. Battery life after a few charges on Lumia 1020 is far better than the other 2. I think the thing with phones is it all comes down to your usage, different phones have better battery life at different things... but got to say so far so good with 1020.

[buxz777]

mines been about what id expect for a 2000mah battery running this spec phone and my useage patterns , defo sounds like a rogue app or faulty phone mate , better luck with the next one ;-)

[daniel_sherlock]

Well Im having mixed results, i seem to be having to give it a little top up in the middle of the day. Must be something that drains it. I've put it down to being new and that I am playing with it more.

My previous phone was really good I had a Huawei ascend w1 now that was really good for battery.

Ill give mine a few more days

[houkoholic]

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).

You have Whatsapp - which is known to drain batteries regardless of OS. I have Whatsapp AND Line on my 920/1020, on days when I don't use these apps much, I get 60% battery at 7pm (goes off charger at 7 am). But if I use these apps, battery drains like Homer Simpson going through a box of dounuts. Yesterday I finished work at 6 with 50% and started a Line conversation with a friend and within 1 hour my battery is down to 20%. I really hate these poorly coded IM apps but too many people use them so I have to use them, I used to get way better battery life with things like Messenger/Gtalk on Android heck even Skype.

[metalchick719]

Might have been a mistake to return it. When I first got my 920, it would last me maybe 10 hours. Battery life improved greatly after about a month. I can usually get through an entire day with my battery, and there are times when I can see 70% after 12 or more hours. To the OP, I really think you should have given it more time.

[bawboh86]

I'm sorry you had an issue. I'd say, it was a faulty unit. I got my 1020 on release day here in the States, and I haven't had a single issue with my phone's battery, and I'm a moderate to heavy user (multiple syncing emails, streaming music, LOTS of browsing and tethering while at work, etc). I'm not going to fault you, though, as I wouldn't be happy if I'd had the same experience. At least you have a phone with which you're happy. :)

[david90531]

That does not sound like a normal unit. Hope you'll get a good replacement. My 920 still runs with pretty good battery life compared to and iphone 4s and samsung S3.

[AngryNil]

My take: conditioning your battery is not needed. Jumping through a million hurdles to use your device throughout the day is not either. People need to take a step back and consider what they are saying in these battery threads once in a while. No company builds a mass market phone expecting users to do those things. You shouldn't have to and you don't have to.

I've personally never done any of that conditioning or switching off everything that makes your smartphone a smartphone. I've never had a major issue with battery life. If you find yourself running out of juice way too early on a device, there are pretty much two reasons:

1. Your usage is far more intensive than the "average" user.
   (Related: honeymoon period when you first get a device, where you end up using the device more than usual.)
2. Your device is defective.

I'd bet on 2, considering the 925 and 1020 are extremely similar.

[sdc1]

Might have been a mistake to return it. When I first got my 920, it would last me maybe 10 hours. Battery life improved greatly after about a month. I can usually get through an entire day with my battery, and there are times when I can see 70% after 12 or more hours. To the OP, I really think you should have given it more time.

I had a 7 day cooling off period to make my decision which expired today, it was so bad that I didn't really have much choice. It would have been a gamble.

[Ed Boland]

The battery life on my 1020 has been on par or better than my previous phone (920). I'd say your 1020 was definitely faulty. Too bad you didn't just take it back and exchange it... the 1020 is awesome!

[Jaripi]

Lumia 1020 battery should be great, clearly better as Lumia 920 (based on a battery test of GSMarena)

The Nokia Lumia 1020 battery test - GSMArena Blog

[Dave Blake]

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?

Some things to consider before making lump sum accusations. If Joe Blow has a bad day and forget to wash his hands before he enters the clean room at the computer chip factory. He then contaminates the chip causing it to overheat. Is that bad quality control on Nokia's part. At what point do you stop the inspection of the device. There are a lot of factors involved here. Let's don't forget infant mortality new things break it's a fact of life. I am the quality control guy for my company. We build and install conveyor systems. If I install a system today and tomorrow a motor breaks is that bad quality control. It was working yesterday just fine but today it is broken. No that's not bad quality control it's just a fact of life something we all have to live with. I am NOT making excuses for anyone here everyone should do their job correctly. Unfortunately we are all human which means we make mistakes and things happen. Now I would like to point out that this(WPC) is where people come to get help. You should expect to see a lot of complaints from people who post here. You need to keep in mind that this is a small cross section of the people who have actually purchased these devices. I would take those things into consideration before making lump sum accusations.

[ryanv12]

My girlfriend's was having the same issue. As soon as she changed Gmail sync to manual, battery life skyrocketed. Has anyone else seen that?

[tgr42]

Naturally mistakes happen. However, I would expect quality control (or quality assurance if you want to get technical?) to ensure that flawed products don't make it into the hands of customers. I realize it's impossible for that to be 100% effective, and sometimes problems are unavoidable due to poor design choices or unforeseen circumstances. They don't say "hardware is hard" for nothing. But Nokia sure does have a lot of experience and expertise to draw from.

Let's consider the inconsistent vibration strength as an example. It's certainly within the realm of possibility to have an automated test that measures the vibration strength of every phone coming off the line. If it's wildly inconsistent, that's a problem in my opinion. This variation either went undetected or someone made an executive decision to ship the flawed product anyway and hope that people would accept it - as I have with my 1020. That's poor. I paid as much as the next guy for a brand new product. Now the burden is on me to figure out whether what I think is a problem is their intended design decision or the result of a flaw in manufacturing. As a customer, I'm not in a very good position to do that, and it shouldn't be my responsibility.

And yes, I realize that a forum is a small cross section of people who come looking for help. But that works both ways. Not everyone who has a problem bothers to seek out this particular forum - far from it, I would expect.

[Dave Blake]

Naturally mistakes happen. However, I would expect quality control (or quality assurance if you want to get technical?) to ensure that flawed products don't make it into the hands of customers. I realize it's impossible for that to be 100% effective, and sometimes problems are unavoidable due to poor design choices or unforeseen circumstances. They don't say "hardware is hard" for nothing. But Nokia sure does have a lot of experience and expertise to draw from.

Let's consider the inconsistent vibration strength asnan example. It's certainly within the realm of possibility to have an automated test that measures the vibration strength of every phone coming off the line. If it's wildly inconsistent, that's a problem in my opinion. This variation either went undetected or someone made an executive decision to ship the flawed product anyway and hope that people would accept it - as I have with my 1020. That's poor. I paid as much as the next guy for a brand new product. Now the burden is on me to figure out whether what I think is a problem is their intended design decision or the result of a flaw in manufacturing. As a customer, I'm not in a very good position to do that, and it shouldn't be my responsibility.

And yes, I realize that a forum is a small cross section of people who come looking for help. But that works both ways. Not everyone who has a problem bothers to seek out this particular forum - far from it, I would expect.

Well QC always takes it on the chin when things go wrong. Its the nature of the business.

I understand what you are saying one thing that is not clear. Do you thing Nokia has a bigger more viable quality control issue than other companies?

I always tell my people, it's not if we make a mistake it's how we handle the aftermath.

To your issue I would say give Nokia a chance to make it right. I think it's the right thing to do for you and Nokia.

[tgr42]

I understand what you are saying one thing that is not clear. Do you thing Nokia has a bigger more viable quality control issue than other companies?

I'm not sure why this is unclear. I've already said I don't know how they compare to other companies in this respect. It's very hard to make such comparisons with any degree of confidence. And even if other companies have the same or worse problems, this area especially is not one where I see parity with the competition as desirable. A company should always be striving to do the best they can for their customers, not just avoid being worse than their competitors.

I always tell my people, it's not if we make a mistake it's how we handle the aftermath.

To your issue I would say give Nokia a chance to make it right. I think it's the right thing to do for you and Nokia.

That is a fair point. Unfortunately my personality is such that if at all possible, I will make do. I hate to return/exchange anything. I won't do it unless I'm left with no choice. I get fixated on all the things that could possibly go wrong with an exchange and don't see the risk/reward ratio as being worth the attempt. In this case, I don't use vibration much anyway. I used to use it on my old Nokia feature phones when it was very easy to switch between silent/vibrate/ring, but the UI in Windows Phone put an end to that.

[sdc1]

After a bit of toing and froing with O2 I was able to pick up my new 64gb 1020 today from an O2 store. I've also been assured, after making a complaint about the transaction, that my accessories kit will be here over the next couple of days. On top of that I got a credit of £34 applied to my account due to the hassle with the pre-order and subsequent problems. Hopefully this one will be good.

[tweedie]

My girlfriend's was having the same issue. As soon as she changed Gmail sync to manual, battery life skyrocketed. Has anyone else seen that?

yeah, I am currently doing some 24 hr testing turning on/off certain features, and first thing I noticed when I removed 2 x google account syncs was that the discharge rate dropped from 3.7%/hr to 1.3%/hr battery.

Sadly still not hitting the magic 0.8% discharge rate that some people say they getting despite playing video, texting, etc, etc, whereas my test was completely idle only to check battery status every hour. hmmm

[liin]

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 believable anymore

So you would find one report of bad battery to be believable, but when multiple owners have the same bad experience, that makes it not believable anymore? Shouldn't that make it more believable?

I can totally understand if you have a good unit and you think battery is fine. But that does not mean there's no quality control issues. I got a brand new unit from local MS retail store and the battery is bad. I still haven't do an exchange and probably won't, because I'd rather suck it up and work around it than go through the process of looking like a jerk. So, I had minimize consumption to a point where there's nothing more left to do. And it's very easy for me to minimize usage because I got this for the camera, and I'm used to iOS, so most of my mobile load is on my iPad.

My settings:
Cellular Data always off ( but I have data plans that's required for this phone )
Wifi on only when needed, which is maybe twice a week
Power Saving always on
No double tapping to wake the phone
Screen brightness set to low, then auto
No live tiles
No email account was set up.

My usage:
Phone is on on standby from 1pm to 9pm, shut down on other times.
3 texts plus 2 calls max per day, so far, all calls lasts less than 3 min
That's it. 20%+ drain per day
When I use it to take photos, it would be around a dozen shots, and I would edit about 4 of the shots on the phone. All within 2 hrs, and I'm not constantly shooting. On those days, my drain would be 80%+, so, an additional 60% from my normal 20% a day.

So yes, I never have to worry about running out of juice for my daily use, but, the way you guys are using it, would never last through the day if used on mine. However, when I take this on vacation, my phone would be dead fast.

Nokia Battery Pro+ indicates I'm draining 1% on standby, 5% when using it to make calls and texts. All seem normal, even though the math doesn't add up. And when I use apps like ProCam or Creative Studio, it would indicate I'm draining 20% to 25% per hour. Which, is still fine by me because that's 4 to 5 hrs of constantly working on photos. But again, the math doesn't add up.

Don't assume questioning quality control means owners blaming Nokia's fault or calling 1020 crap. Parts suppliers can still slip in faulty units. Of course, if caught, that trust would be broken, and Nokia would move to a different supplier which would run that faulty supplier out of business. So it's the battery suppliers' best interest to meet Nokia's standards. And so on. This is not reports of 1020 falling apart after a month of use, or moving parts of camera getting stuck, or screen started to have discoloration, or reception problem, etc. Those, would be unbelievable. This is just battery. I'm pretty sure if I could open it up and swap a good battery, mine would be like yours. Not a big problem. But a big deal only because short battery life is a bummer and asking for replacement is a hassle.

We are not dumb. Nokia figured out this piece of engineering marvel. There's no way they didn't figure out battery life to run this thing. And no low-quality low-cost mentality would put in the ridiculous effort required to build such a camera. It must be something else. I'm guessing their battery supplier had bad units that somehow ran past Nokia. And it might even be a situation where even the supplier is unaware of it.

[liin]

My girlfriend's was having the same issue. As soon as she changed Gmail sync to manual, battery life skyrocketed. Has anyone else seen that?

I have no email set up on my phone and cellular data is always off. Wifi on only when I need it.

[liin]

yeah, I am currently doing some 24 hr testing turning on/off certain features, and first thing I noticed when I removed 2 x google account syncs was that the discharge rate dropped from 3.7%/hr to 1.3%/hr battery. Sadly still not hitting the magic 0.8% discharge rate that some people say they getting despite playing video, texting, etc, etc, whereas my test was completely idle only to check battery status every hour. hmmm

My discharge rate:
1% standby
5% talk/text
20%+ ProCam, Creative Studio

But that's just what it indicates, if I use ProCam or Creative Studio for an hour and check Battery Pro+, I'm pretty sure I would have lost closer to 40%, as I had lost 20% in one use for half an hour as I clocked the time because it was when I picked up my daughter till we left her dance class.