Battery life of the N95, the facts.

Hi Folks,

The discussion of battery life for the N95 is one of te larger ones on the internet. I collected some testdate of the battery life of the N95 for music play, video play and gps standby from different test all over the internet and will be giving an overview of the results here. I invite you to draw your own conclusions after the facts.

If you are a Geek and want to play with your new toy and all it's features, tv-out, wifi, music and gaming al at once. I am sure the power just seems to evaporate. In fact, having a buggy application running contineous in the background, can really drain you power  seemingly without reason. This was valid for my old P900 and is still the case with the N95. A competent taskmanager to hunt down those badly written programs is regrettable still not a standard part of the Symbian OS. It is very interesting to see the processor capacity some socalled non-active programs use... However let's look at the real facts collected with Google ;-):

Standby and TalkTime:

Specifications of Nokia for the N95:

• Battery: Nokia Battery (BL-5F) 950mAH
• Talk time: up to 160min (WCDMA), up to 240 min (GSM)*
• Stand-by time: up to 200 hours (WCDMA), up to 225 hours (GSM) *

Specifications for the N80i:

• Battery BP-5B 860 mAH
  
• Talk time: upto 180 minutes
• Stand-by time: upto 192 hours

To compare it to the very nice Run-of the-Mill cellphone, the w800i, a camera/music phone without the smart part. The specifications from SonyEricsson:

• Battery BST-37, 900 mAH
• Talk time: 9 hours
• Stand-by time: 400 hours.

Several people on the internet actually mention a talktime between 7.5 to 10 hours talktime. The values seem to be exceptionally high but reliable. The same for the music play time. I'll get back on that later. Let's take a look at the P990i. The phone that should have been the N95, but wasn't. According to SonyEricsson it boasts:

• Battery BST-33, 900 mAH
  
• UMTS talk 3 hours, standby 300 hours
• GSM talk 9 hours, standby 340 hours.

My first observation is the difference between UMTS and GSM looks shocking (P990i). However getting back to the talktime and standby time. The N95 has seemingly far lower standby and talktime values then Sony Ericsson. However it is unknown how SonyEricsson and Nokia test their battery life and if these values are comparable at all.

My first guess to explain the difference would be that the W800i has a tiny efficient cpu, and the P990i comes with ARM9-based processor clocked at 208 MHz. And the N95 has a Dual CPU.  Type: ARM 11 at 332 MHz and a 3D Graphics HW Accelerator. More MHz usually means more power drain! 

However CNet Review tested the N73. The N73 is stated by Nokia to have 4.1 hours of talktime. Bonnie Cha of CNet states their test gives the N73 9.1 hours. More than double the value of Nokia. PC World states they are going to test the N95 talk time. I await the results with confidence and would guess the results to be quite satisfying and competitive to the P990i. It looks like it that the Nokia talktime and standby figures are VERY conservative values. The testing conditions of Nokia are probabely far more demanding than those from SonyEricsson and other producers.

Video Playback:

• Playback until battery dead, 3 hrs 14 min for the N95 versus 4 hrs 4 min. for the iPod 30GB, the N95 had bluetooth and 3G connection switched on during playback. In offline mode it does 3 hrs 35 minutes. All tests were on a PRE-production version. Source :James Burland at The Creative Live Blog

I would say video play power consumption is very acceptable.

Music Playback:

• 5 hours of contineous music from a full charge. No settings or firmware specified. Source: Sandra Vogel at Trusted Reviews. Did she use speakers?
  
• 8.5 hours  at maximum volume settings and random playback with default headphones and remote control used,  source: Eldar Murtazin at Mobile Review.
  
• 10 hours, 20 minutes. Playback until battery dead in offline mode, PRE-production version. Source :James Burland at The Creative Live Blog
• 3 hours of contineous music from a full charge using a bluetooth headset. Lukas Kahwe Smith at Poo-tee-weet.Odd, I would not expect bluetooth to be such a power drain.
  

The W800i: 30 hours of battery life in music mode (i.e. non-phone mode) or 15 hours of battery life if the phone is also being used to receive calls. This is incredible and at far outperforms the N95.  But then again, the W800i is a dedicated musicphone which happens to have a 2MPixel camera with a attachable flash. I think 8-10 hours iwith the  default headphones seems to be  reliable figures. James and Eldar also specified their used settings. As such then the 8-10 hours of the N95 compares well to an iPod (12 hours) or a iPod mini (8 hours) according to Ipod Battery FAQ.

GPS Time:

• 6 hours of battery life with the GPS was on. No further test specifications. Source: Rahul at Yahoo Research Berkeley.

Well my Garmin eTrexx is designed for lightweight and powerefficiency lasts about 12-18 hours with a fresh set of batteries. Using the Garmin for satnav in my car actually drains the batteries a lot faster. There is more display action and on the fly route calculation. In comparison 6 hours for the N95 then seems comparable and very usable. Few people take the N95 GPS for long walks in the outdoors, there I want a waterresistant and shockproof GPS with an altimeter and compas.

CONCLUSIONS:

Each function separately the battery performance seems quite as can be expected.  Up to par with current technology. It is clear the W800i has the circuitry of a real standalone highly efficient mp3 player inside itself. This is supported by the Walkman only mode, where the phone part is simply switched off. Few phones can actually compete with that sound quality and power efficiency lasting (in offline mode) 30 hours. But for the rest I would say the performance seems on par with other devices that deliver comparable functions on a comparable battery capacity.

The same seems to hold for the standby time and the talktime. The CNet test for the N73 seems to indicate a very different vorm of testing between SonyEricsson and Nokia. It seems that the N80i and the N95 are not very different in power usage compared to the competitors. To me the phone seems to not drain the battery when I do not give it a reason. That means, excellent standby and calltime, no significant impact when using it as an organizer during a work day. Powerefficient when I use it wisely.

I can have a connection to a SIP server over Wifi all day at work without actually draining the battery more than a  bar. I am next to the linkup ;-) However when using tv-out to play movies or driving with the GPS navigation for hours from cell area to cell area, with all lights and speakers blazing, I am somewhere where I can and should hook it up to a power out-let to use all those nice powerhungry extra features. However I would say in general the battery life is much better than most laptops ;-) Go Nokia, go!

I would say the figures speak for themselves and suggest you all are going too keep an eye out for the PC World Testlab results. And the best thing is perhaps yet to come. Doubling of the battery capacity!

Wolfgang Gruener at TG Daily wrote at may 8th, 2007:

Researchers of the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory claim to have developed an enhanced approach to building of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries.According to a press release, the technology could be used in virtually all lithium-based rechargeable batteries – and improve the battery life for example in consumer electronics, laptops, medical devices and even hybrid electric vehicles.

It was unclear if and when the technology could go into mass production. But specifications seem to indicate a possible doubling of capacity.