Connecting geeks

How long is the battery?

November 23rd, 2005

The Nokia specifications say the battery to be 3 hours long while browsing, and 7 days while in standby mode.

I noticed that my battery seems to be some longer than that, some yesterday I tested it.

I began at 5 am, just running out of battery; I charged it until 8 am (I got sleep, so it charged for more than the recommended time), and closed it with lid (that is, it was in standby mode).

About 3 pm I started to browse until 7 pm. I was in the University, while my girlfriend was attending her classes, and I started to browse, using the WLAN, in the University’s WPA protected wireless network.

I read my email, some news using the RSS reader, the web, I played some chess games, some marble games as well, and some things more that I don’t remember now. While I was reading the web, my email or the news for some minutes (without connecting to the Internet I mean), the wireless card got disconnected, I suppose for saving battery. So it was not actually four hours of browsing. The brightness was at minimum level, and the sound was off.

About 7 pm battery had lost 50% of energy. I closed the lid again, and the gadget went stand by.

About 10 pm I took a bus and I was listening to MP3 music with the Audio Player. I closed the lid, and the Audio Player still was playing. After three hours listening to music, I played some marble games for about one hour, and finally I closed everything and the device went stand by. In these test, the brightness was minimum, and the volume was maximum.

This morning I checked the news, browsed the web and read my email for about half an hour.

Now (4 1/2 pm), the battery is about 25% remaining.

So I spent about six hours with the device on, using it, browsing some times, other however with WLAN and Bluetooth not working, and about three hours listening to music, at maximum volume, with the lid closed. And there is still battery for I presume about 2 more hours.

So it seems that the Nokia’s specifications are too pessimistic, and that three hours is browsing time (WLAN on all the time), with maximum brightness and sound on.