The N95 8gb's battery isn't the best, but it isn't the worst either. Damn we haven't seen a solid battery since the Nokia N73 so I wasn't expecting much. I still can't comprehend why Nokia hasn't solved this battery issue. The upcoming Nokia N78 is going to have an awesome battery. But why not the N95. The N95 has a bigger screen and a better camera. Obviously it's going to be used for more multimedia purposes which of course will drain the battery. Who knows?
Heavy Use Is No Bueno (no good)
If you've read my previous post about my trip to Disneyland with the N95 8gb then you already know it didn't last long under heavy use. Only lasted me about 4 or 5 hours but of course I was streaming video, taking and geotagging a crapload of pictures, sending them to Flickr and friends, etc. I expected maybe about 8 hours out of the battery, but as you can see I overestimated.
What About Normal Use?
Well that depends on the user. Normal use for me could be considered light for others, or vice versa. So I'll basically give you my normal use for days during the workweek and let you know the results.
- Wakeup at 6am with a full battery.
- Check email and rss feeds for about 10 minutes in the morning
- Get to work and recieve and send about 10 texts and multimedia messages
- Make about 5 or 6 calls during my 8 hour shift
- Listen to about 2 hours of music over wired headphones over 8 hour shift
- Have email set to check ever 2 hours during work shift
- Browse the web for about 10 minutes on my lunch break at Carls Jr. or Subway
- Leave work and fire up Google Maps for about 20 minutes to check the traffic and see which would be the fastest freeway to take home (California traffic conditions are insane)
- Talk on the phone for about 10 minutes making plans for the evening
- Set my email retrievel to every 30 minutes since I'm away from a computer
- Go to the bar or friends/family's house, maybe shoot 5 or 6 photos
- Make a few more calls in the evening
- Upload the pics to Ovi or Flickr
- Call it a night and put my phone back on the charger
After all that I'm left with about 2 or 3 bars. Mind you this is over North American 3g bands which uses more battery than GSM and Edge. Some people suggested to turn off 3g but why would you do that unless your in extreme need of the last few bars. Heck if your gonna pay $600-$700 dollars for a phone you should be able to use it the way its meant to be used right?
Yay Or Nay
So are those results good? Personally, I don't think they are horrible, but I wish they were better. Sad thing is they blow the N95-1 classic's battery out of the water. Compared to the N82 I think the battery life is about equal despite the bigger battery in the N95 8gb. The NAM 3g and bigger screen use up a lot of power. Like I've mentioned so many times before in other reviews and this one - Nokia says these are Multimedia Computers. If you want use to use these puppies like a real multimedia computer then you gotta give us so more juice. Talking to Al from The Nokia Blog the other day he showed me the Proporta Mobile Charger, a must have accessory for all Nseries users. I don't have a link to the product right now but I'll post one up later today.
What are your thoughts on the battery life? With those results, do you think the battery held up well? Or do you expect more out of your battery as well?
What I try to do is that I leave the phone on EDGE normally, and I have the network selection running in the background. When I want to browse the web (not for e-mail retrieval or google maps), I quickly flick it to UMTS (it's not like the N73 which reboots after you do that), and when I'm done I turn it off. Same goes for tethering and uploading content.