A Day With The N95's Battery

There's been news floating around about the lack of battery life on the Nokia N95.  I usually have the bad habit of always keeping my devices plugged up while at home.  So I couldn't really comment much on a full days usage.  On Saturday I attended my cousins wedding and decided to make mental notes of my usage.

Saturday morning:  charged the N95 to its fullest.

12:00 Noon:  Hit the highway from where I live to Laurinburg, NC which is about a good 2 hour drive.  During that time I turned on bluetooth, l listened to 2 songs.  Played a lengthy 15 minute game of Scrabble, Twittered a bit.  After an hour I turned the device off so that I would have enough power left for taking pics and recording videos.

2:45pm:  Arrived at the Hall and powered the N95 back on.  The power had only deminished by 1 bar. 

3:00pm - 5:00pm:  The wedding started at 3 and from that period I was taking pics and videos.  Mind you, I forgot to turn off the Twitter messaging, not that messaging might not have a factor in battery life, but who knows.

5:00pm - 7:00pm:  Dinner and Social hours.  Took a few more pics and uploaded what I could to Flickr.  I realized that Shozu didn't upload all of the images as I took them.  Before leaving I bluetoothed images that I had to other family members and sent some via MMS.  At this time I had about 4 bars left.

7:45pm:  Back on the road heading home.  Decided to finish up that game of Scrabble that I had started earlier.  2 bars left.  20 minutes of playing Scrabble with some text messaging in between is when I received the first flash that the battery was running low.  When the N95 finally powered off it was around 8:30pm.

Battery usage totally depends on how to utilize your device.  In my honest opinion, I can't really blame anything on the device itself, and I don't find it fair to say that the battery isn't good if people use their devices differently.  I wouldn't really call myself a power-user, then again I'm never too far away from a back-up charger of some sort whether it be my car charger or a spare charger in my purse.  But in this case I totally forgot to bring one and was able to do all of that without it.

   

Comments

[ProyectHunter]

Which is the battery power? My N91 has a 850mAh battery and I think it isn't enough. My brother has a PocketPC (Dell Axim X50) with a 1100mAh battery and still isn't enough. A more powerful battery maybe a good solution :D

[tnkgrl]

I wrote about my Nokia N95 battery life experiences here: http://tnkgrl.wordpress.com/2007/04/10/nokia-n95-battery-life/

[Chris Davies]

I've not played with an N95 myself, so my opinion on battery life (or lack of) is going on what I've read in blogs and reviews. Purely from what you've described, Darla, I have severe doubts that in its present form I could live with it.

I wouldn't call myself a power user either - a few calls, a little more texting, the occassional photo and basic game is my daily lot. What I would insist on, however, is that the phone could manage a full day of that without needing to be turned off! Nokia must be mad to release a handset in this state; there's little point in having all the whiz-bang features that make the N95 so attractive if you can't use them because is off, whether that's a) to preserve the battery, or b) because the battery has died. Is it not reasonable to assume that the average N95 owner will also make use of GPS, of internet access and more? Don't get me wrong, I really do want the N95 to be successful and I'm still excited by it, but I fear the public will be put off by bad reports and bad experiences.

[Frangino]

The line "After an hour I turned the device off" surprised me...is the battery consumption while the phone is in standby an issue? or is just while using the super features?

[Rajesh]

Try to disable WiFI WLAN power consumption and turn off auto scanning for wireless networks. Makes a difference.

http://thinkabdul.com/2007/04/21/save-increase-battery-life-of-nokia-n95-by-reducing-power-consumption-turning-off-wifi-wlan-scanning/

[Rhodri]

Darla, the battery is rubbish.

Im sorry but the majority of your critique is sooooo obviously leaning towards not wanting to upset Nokia and the chances of another pink phone.

Its not a case of bias, but more of a case of non impartial critique.

Whenever I read your blog it just seems your sucking up to Nokia and not really commenting on the good and bad - The Nokia N95 battery has not hit the mark, why not just say it instead of wimping out on that score !!!!!

[Darla]

@Rhodri,

I apologize that you feel that way, but that really isn't the case. If you read the post I never mentioned whether it was good or bad. The post was just describing my usage for that day. I also mentioned that battery consumption is totally dependent on how people use their devices. I for one turn my phone off at night when I go to sleep. I also keep the phone off in the car sometimes until I need it. Lol, regardless of what you think, I am not "brown-nosing" Nokia so to speak, for the sake of a "pink phone". In the past, I've gotten more notice from Nokia by being honest on the bad points, such as the US Warranty Issue... or maybe you missed that. I can't agree with the majority of people complaining about the bad battery issue if that isn't what I experienced... that wouldn't be very honest. Should you chose not to read my blog again because you feel that I'm being impartial, then my apologies, but thank you for your comment.

I also want to point out in regards to MY usage... another example... I took the N95 off the charger at 11:20am. I've been in McDonald's since then using their WiFi and haven't had my N95 plugged up since I got here. I've had the device connected via BT to my BH-501 headset and have listened to an hours worth of music. It's now 4:34pm and my battery indicator hasn't moved, however, this is the only thing that I've done. Maybe 2 or 3 text messages, but thats it.... so you see... the only point I'm trying to prove is that its solely up to the usage of the consumer.

[snoyt]

Hi, I collected some facts from all over the internet to give an overview of all the battery lifetime of the N95. Have a look.

http://snoyt.vox.com/library/post/battery-power-of-the-n95-the-facts.html

[Rich]

Hi,

I just stumbled on your blog whilst looking for reviews of the N95. I use a mobile phone fairly intensively for work. I would like to say that I find it unfair the way that people judge the battery life of this type of phone.

I have at the moment an HTC TyTN. This got completely slated when it came out for it's (lack of) battery life. But the thing is, once you've had a device for a couple of weeks you stop testing it and showing it off to your colleagues and you use it as... a telephone... occasionally downloading emails, taking pictures etc. but nothing like when you first got it. So, as a result, the 8 hours life that the TyTN had when I got it, has increased to around 48. For a device with a 400Mhz processor running WINDOWS..... I take my hat off to HTC.

With the Nokia N95, Battery consumption doesn't seem to be a major issue because this is clearly dependant on how you use the phone. Lets be fair... these are pretty powerful minature computers.. How long does your laptop battery last? ;-)

best regards

Rich

[Tori]

I just recently bought a Nokia N95, and love my phone to death. I am not complaining about the battery ( i just want to buy a more powerful one) but after 2hrs of use with the GPS, battery goes dead. The battery is lucky to last a full day for me, even without using the GPS. It is a major issue, and someone needs to bring out a 1200+ battery

[Thomas]

I have had my N95 for 2 months, even when im not using UMTS, GPS, Photo, Mp3 ...but only for plain talking, and a few text-messages, my battery time is 16 hours MAX. This sunday i charged the battery thru the night, got up at 7, and phone was "low on battery" at 12.30.

My N95 is for sale ;-)