Friday 27 April 2012

Review: The One v4.7.1 Battery Life

I like to start this new catergory "Review" on my blog, with my own product:
"The One v4.7.1" CFW for the Nokia N8

Something I get asked a lot about my CFW is battery life.
Many people are not happy with the N8's battery life, so I decided to write a review about the N8's battery life performance with my latest custom firmware v4.7.1 (the results should be similar for all my cfw's (since v4.4.0)).

Of course I already tooked a deeper look at the battery life of my CFW while I was creating/testing it, but I never published details about it... so here are the results of my tests, for everyone to read.

Phone configuration:
-dark theme (d0rsh v2, built in in my CFW)
-dark wallpapers (default wallpapers "the one")
-screensaver "nokia sleeping screen"
  -basic clock only
  -night mode from 20:00-08:00
-50% display brightness
-mobile data on
  -2g mode
-bluetooth off
-wlan on
-sync mails from 08:00 -23:00 every hour

Note: Those are my default settings I use every day, if you want to improve your battery life too, you  may try some of those on your mobile phone.
My best advice is, when you are not using the mobile internet connection, switch to 2g mode. Switching back to 3g when using it, is a matter of seconds thanks to the 3g/2g toggle widget!

Phone usage:
I was trying to keep my phone in standby and not use it, if not necessary.
During the testing period the phone was used for a few text messages and emails only.

I tested the battery life for 24 hours, the results I got are based on informations by "Nokia Battery Monitor v3".

I guess this screenshot pretty much speaks for itself:

As you can see, after one day of low usage I only lost 14% battery life.
Doing the math I get almost 7 days battery life with one full charge!
(24h = 14% = 0.6% per hour = 166h for a full charge (= almost 7 days)) Correct me if I am wrong ;)

Keep in mind that I was almost not using my phone, so this is more or less the "Standby/very low usage" time.

For my personal, regular usage (doing a few calls, email, txt messages and use the webbrowser for small stuff like sport results, tv guide, etc.), I end up charging my phone every second night.
(On regular usage I lose about 20-35% every day)

So compared to the original firmware where I had to charge my phone every night, I clearly see an improvement in my CFW.

But something I cannot change is the high power consumption, when using apps and widgets that require constant internet connection... use those apps with care, or you end up with a dead battery very soon.

I hope you like my first review ;)

Now its your turn:
  -what do you think about battery life of your phone or my CFW?
  -critics on this post are also very welcome (what is missing, what can I do better)?

Let me know via comment!

19 comments:

  1. Thanks for this excellent review.

    I was having some rather major battery issues, and I think that moving to 2G only and removing the weather widget has done wonders from me. I went from a dead phone after only 8-10 hours of use to easily going through a full day with extra battery life to spare!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Fantastic stuff, really good to hear you've been looking at battery life. This was one of the things I noticed when I flashed to the official Belle release while waiting for you to do your CFW based on the official release - battery life wasn't good compared to running on your pre-release based CFWs.

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  3. Vaquero del Teclado28 April 2012 at 02:00

    Honestly since I bought my nokia n8 battery lasts me well.
    With your CFW takes me much longer, I have the wireless internet is always on, the screen at half brightness, I call and always send little messages.
    I charge my phone every 3 days. 4 days there sometimes.
    I have 4 homescreens. if I put the screen brightness to 100% last me 2 days and a half. which I like because my nokia n8 looks beautiful at full color!

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  4. As a twitter/gravity power user I easily use up the battery within a day since 3G/wifi ist basically alwys on :) That happend both on Anna and your CFW, but I bet there's nothing anyone can do about it :D

    I really can recommend the new Nokia DC-16 external battery *btw*. It is small enough to carry around and can be charged via microUSB (it has a microUSB and a USB port). It givse the N8 ~1,5 full charges.
    The DC-11 has more capacity but it's charged via the "old" 2mm noikia charger. Unhandy nowadays..

    ReplyDelete
  5. thanks for your feedback guys, interesting to read ;)

    @Anonymous (Nokia DC-16/DC-11)
    interesting recommendation!
    I ordered an replacement battery ("High Capacity Gold Battery, 2430mAh")

    I ordered it last week, funny thing is, it just arrived by post while I was writing this comment :)

    I will do a short review about that battery too, but I need a few days to test it first of course...

    ReplyDelete
  6. lol, the arrival of the new battery while writing about it distracted me a little bit, I guess I missed my point...

    I was trying to say, that the new battery comes with 2430mAh, which is double the capacity of the default nokia battery (1200mAh).

    If you say the external battery can recharge the phone 1.5 times, the gold battery may be an interesting alternative (and you don't have to carry around an external battery)

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  7. Hi the one
    Ty for your awesome CFW :) I've been following you since your v1.6.8
    I was very worried that my battery life wasn't as good like u.. I tried this weekend your "experiment"..

    Disable 3G w-lan on to 07:00-22:00 then off and the first day was 60%, then on sunday I only had about 24%..

    I've never change my battery... perhaps a new one maybe the solution?

    And what about your new battery? I've search on amazon (US) and I'm not sure if this is the right one
    http://www.amazon.com/Ecell-2430MAH-CAPACITY-BATTERY-ATRIX/dp/B005O8RPB0/ref=sr_1_1?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1335803535&sr=1-1

    I'm looking forward a review of your new battery ;)
    and maybe try that one myself

    Thanks one again for your hard work
    Greetings From El Salvador :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. hi Rmando,
      nice to hear you like my cfw!

      well it could be your battery, because they get old and then become less powerfull. so maybe a replacement would be a nice idea...
      but remember i also lose around 20-35% on regular usage. the seven days are more or less standby/very low usage.

      also remember thanks to the amoled screen, you can save a lot of power by using dark wallpapers/themes.

      the battery on the link you gave us here is not the right one.
      it seems to be from the same store and manufacturer like the one i ordered on ebay, but for a different phone model.

      i will put up a link to the one i bought in the upcoming review...

      Delete
    2. thanks for your quick answer :)

      I'll be looking that review!

      Delete
  8. Hi guys,

    I happen to have the same 2430mA high capacity battery as The One. I was using it with the 4.6.1 firmware for the first 5 days and it lasted exactly that with all the minimum recomendations like 2G, WiFi/bluetooth off (mostly) etc. Since upgrading the firmware to 4.7.1 I've had 3 days before dying on me but as The One suggested in a previous conversation the battery needs to settle with the new firmware before getting into full swing so I'll keep you posted.

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  9. my n8's battery life better than Xeon^4 and delight belle now using your CFW master :):)

    ReplyDelete
  10. u know what i think we need to have an app that
    can change setting of auto brightness to on/off manually..it use a lot of battery consumption..

    it's a problem that i have not seen in all developer discussion article.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. well, i can't give you an app for that.
      but thinking about it, it should be possible to create a mod for the sensitivity of the auto brightness...

      if you are interested in helping me to test this mod, you can send me an email and we'll see what we can do.
      you can find my email adress in the "support tab" of my blog...
      (your phone needs to be hacked, but you wrote in another post you are using the delight cfw, so thats no problem for you)

      if somebody else is interested in this mod, you can offer your help as a tester too, just send me an email ;)

      Delete
  11. sory,cant find ur emel address in the support tab...
    i'll tweet u if dats okay...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. of course contacting me via twitter is ok!
      sorry about the email address, i removed it yesterday evening... i'm redesigning the blog and still working on it.

      i got your tweet and will reply to you via email later this evening ;)

      Delete
  12. Hi, i´m interested in one of this bettery, really is advisable and safe to use it on a N8?? Thank you !!!!!!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. i used it for a little bit more than a year on my n8.
      no problems with that battery.

      the fact, that the manufacturer hides his name and is lying about the real capacity is a reason for concerns however.

      anyway, i didn't have any issues with that battery... but i think the 808 battery (BV-4D) which has slightly more capacity than the original n8 battery is the better choice!

      Delete
  13. Thanks!!!! What ´s the good link to buy now, today, the battery ? Thanks again !

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. i got the gold battery from ebay, the original bv-4d should be available in every good phone store.

      just search for it on the usual places, ebay, amazon, etc...

      Delete