Yesterday I charged my old Nokia N73 and the new Nokia N78 till the batteries were full. I want to find out the battery life of the N78 compared to the N73. The Nokia N73 has a 1100mah size battery and the N78 has a 1200mah, just like the newer versions of the N95. So of course I'm understanding that the N78 has a slightly larger battery that is also brand spanking new compared to my used and abused N78 battery.

I decided to do a little music playback test through the stereo loudspeakers at the volume setting of 1. I put one 4 minute track on repeat and put the phones in a drawer for the day. Both were in offline mode with all the same settings.

I started the test at 10:45 in the morning. I was hoping the test would last until the next morning, but the N73 crapped out around 7:25pm that same night.

The N78 on the other hand was still kicking till about 11:05pm that night. That's about 4.5 hours longer than it's predecessor the N73 lasted. Nice improvement!

But what happened to the supposed 24 hour music playback time that Nokia has been boasting about the Nokia N78? What are the variables? I'm guessing they tested through a wired headset since it probably takes more energy when using the loudspeaker like I did, even at the lowest volume.

The next battery test I will do on the N78 will be through a wired headset to see if it can really last 24 hours. If anyone knows for sure the variables of testing the battery please let me know.

Just as I figured, the Nokia N78 has great battery life. Packing the same size battery as it's predecessor the Nokia N73, the N78's new S60 Feature Pack 2 sure makes a difference in power consumption. Before I became a N82 owner I was spoiled by amount of usage I can get on one charge with the N73. Using the N78 for a few days now has once again reminded me what it feels like to get through more than a day or two of heavy usage.

Yesterday I put it through a rigorous test. Check out my results...

• 5 hours music playback through wired headphones
• Automatic Email Retrievel every 30 minutes, recieved about 15 emails.
  
• 20 minutes of browsing w/ wifi
• 20 minutes of browsing w/ data
• Uploaded 15 pictures w/ Shozu to Ovi Website
• Took about 6 pictures
• Downloaded 30mb podcast w/ wifi
• Sent/Received around 28 texts & mms
• Voice Calls about 30 minutes
• Played games about 15 minutes
• Installed & tested about 5 new applications & 5 more themes
• Watched 19 minutes of Youtube with the Mobitubia application

All that was in about a 9 hour span. At the end of the night I still had 5 bars left. I even reset the phone to make sure the battery meter was correct. The battery went on to last till about 11pm the next night under moderate to heavy conditions conditions.

If this test was done on my old and trusty Nokia N73 the battery might have just lasted till the next morning or early noon after a little more web browsing and music playback. I really believe that the new S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 firmware got about 3-5 extra hours out of the battery.

In a few days I'll be putting the N73 and the N78 to a head to head test just to see how much better Feature Pack 2 is at conserving battery life.

Stay tuned!

Here are two major factors that I've seen criticized about the Nokia N82. The battery itself is 1050mah, weaker that both the Nokia N73 and newer versions of the N95. The two stereo speakers are both on the right side of the N82, but in my opinion for good reasons. It makes me wonder why the speakers on the N95 are positioned the way they are.

The first thing I'll talk about are the speaker positions. As you can see in the picture above the speakers are on the top and bottom of the right side. I've seen people criticize Nokia for it's odd positioning, but in my honest opinion they nailed it on the head. As we all know the N82 came with built in auto-rotation of the screen, the first phone to do this by Nokia. On the N95 you need 3rd party solutions like RotateMe or Landscape Pro. Because of this new feature I find myself using the phone in landscape mode more and more. Of course for the viewing the internet, but more often now for reading texts and emails, as well as navigating through the Music Player. While watching movies in landscape it makes more sense to have the two stereo speakers above the landscape display coming from the left and right. I find it odd that the N95 would have the sound coming from the top and bottom left, but I'll talk more about that in the next paragraph.

Like I said before with the auto rotation built in I'm always using the music player in landscape mode now. I'll put it down on my desk and keep it in landscape. I think this is how Nokia designers meant the phone to be used. Of course when your typing a text your hand will be covering the bottom speaker in portrait mode, but thats only for a short period of time. Talking to someone on speakerphone is perfect, the sound only comes out of the top speaker, so blocking the bottom speaker doesn't matter. I think Nokia did a great job with the speaker positioning on the N82.

Sorry for getting off topic but this leads me to a little rant about the N95. While listening to music through the stereo speakers I find it odd that the speakers are placed on the left side and right side of the phone. When you open the slider to reveal the music controls, the phone goes to landscape. While using the music player the phone with the controls, the speakers are on the top and bottom left. Doesn't seem logical since stereo sound is considered to be coming from the left and right. Seems like a design flaw to me.

As for the battery life Nokia really dropped the ball here. It's not god awful like the N95-1, but a letdown if your coming from the N73. That's a reason why the N73 was so loved, it had great battery life. A few hours of stereo bluetooth and moderate web browsing really drains your battery on the N82. I find myself not able to get through a full day if I'm going to be using stereo bluetooth for more than 1.5 hours and normal use of the rest of the phone's features. It's a godsend that Nokia gave us the 3.5mm stereo jack cuz I would've really hated using this thing if not. If you don't plan on using stereo bluetooth for long periods of time then you should be able to get through a days use just fine. On a normal day I have my email set to check every 30 minutes, browse the web for about an hour, send and recieve around 20-30 texts, listen to a few hours of music through wired headphones, and talk for maybe a half hour. I still have about 2 bars left when I get home from work. If I plan on going out in the evening and take lots of pictures I make sure to plug in the charger for about a half hour before I leave just to be safe. I find that the xenon flash uses a lot more battery than the N95's LED flash, for obvious reasons.

Of course this all can be improved through firmware updates. The N95-1 now gets acceptable battery life with recent updates. But one thing bugs me still. The highest screen brightness on the N82 is under 3/4 of what the N95's is. Many people including myself are begging Nokia to fix this in a new firmware update. If they do fix the brightness problem they'd better make sure they improve the battery life as well. Overall I'd give the N82's battery life a 6.5 out of 10. Ten being the N73.

How do you feel about the speaker placement and battery life of the Nokia N82?

This article was originally featured over at The Nokia N82 Blog, but I wanted to share it hear as well since these battery tips apply to all S60 handsets including the N95. Here is the article.

The other day I saw an old local metal band play down the street from my house. The band split a few years ago, so it was nice to see them get back together for a reunion show. About 600 heads showed up, keep in mind its a small venue so it was hot, muggy, and packed. I decided I wanted to take pictures of the band and try to capture some video, just to see how the Nokia N82 does in conditions like a hardcore and metal concert. I'll be writing another article soon about my results with some photo samples and maybe a video. In this article however, I will talk about my experience with an extremely low N82 battery, and give tips to get the most you possibly can out of it. Pretty much squeeze as much juice and as many photos and videos imaginable out of your Nokia N82.

When I arrived at the show, dummy me didn't have a fully charged battery. It was down to three bars. After calling and texting a few people to see where everyone was at, I was down to two bars. I started realizing I should save some battery life now, and fast - so that I can get all the media captured I wanted. First thing I did was drop the brightness down to the lowest setting and changed my backlight timeout to 5 seconds. I'm pretty sure that helped significantly. I started thinking of other things I can do. Double checked that I didn't have any unnecessary applications running in the background, turned off my auto retrieval of my email accounts and turned off WLAN search, and just stopped playing with the phone in general.

Once the band finally came on to the stage and startd playing it was time to start snappy away with my N82. I got some great shots with this trusty little camera - I mean phone - I'll show you more later. About 12 shots in I realized I was down to 1 bar and got a battery low alert. Crap! What else can I do to save battery life. Keep in mind I was taking shot after shot, back to back in low light conditions. Not just here and there, contstant. First thing I realized is I didn't need a signal or reception. I wasn't planning on making or taking any calls. So I went to my profiles and set it to Offline Mode. This is pretty much like pulling out your sim card. All other functions work on the phone, just no signal. I made sure to close down Location Tagger as well. If you haven't heard, Nokia has a beta release of Location Tagger that allows you to tag photos with GPS coordinates. This is just until the N82's next firmware update, in which Geo Tagging is supposed to be built in. Anyways, I did one more thing to make the battery life stretch. Went into my camera settings and switched the "show captured image" to off. Doesn't seem like much, but the time it takes for the image to process and then the preview to show is drastic when it comes to hanging onto that last bar. Instead it processes the image you shot and then goes back to the viewfinder, ready for the next capture.

So basically thats all I can think of to save battery life, and sure enough the phone didn't die. I got lots of shots and some great video (although the audio sucks). And no battery low warnings besides that first one. Amazing! After I got that first warning, I took about ten minutes of video and around 30 photos, and again - no more battery warnings. Phone never died on me, and the band's performance lasted about an hour.

Here's a simple rundown of what I did. Maybe some of these battery life tips will help you when you run into this situation on our N82, or any S60 phone for that matter.

• turn off email retrievals
• close any unnecessary applications running in the background
• set your screen brightness all the way down, as well has your light time-out
• don't use any gps
• turn off wlan searching
• don't text or call unless its absolutely necessary
• turn of the "show captured image", or image preview in your camera settings
• in drastic times, set your phone to offline mode under the profiles.

A few more things I could have done is turn off the automatic screen rotation and lowered the power saver timeout settings.

Thats about everything I can think of. Let me know if you guys have any other ideas, the more the better.

To see more photos of the band I watched, click here and check out the article.

I'm sure you've all heard about the new Nokia flagship phone, the N96. If you haven't, read a few posts down and you'll find the specs. The specs are amazing. A true multimedia phone. Huge screen, video playback, built-in stereo speakers, tons of memory. They are begging you to use the crap out of it, and not to talk. Use it as a computer. That's right - emails, web, movies, music, games, tv, maps, video recording with double lcd - the works. Heck, if it had a full qwerty keyboard I wouldn't need a laptop anymore.

But once again, why the small 950mah battery? Didn't they learn the first time with the Nokia N95. Mark Guim from The Nokia Blog got a video with an interview with one of the N96 managers. He tries to explain why they don't need a bigger battery. He basically says the firmware has been optimized to not take a huge toll on the battery. I don't believe it. On a phone like this, my average day would be...

• 3-4 hours of music over bluetooth at work
• IMAP email set to check for new mail every 30 minutes
• about an hour throughout the day of web, rss feeds.
• 5-10 photos, with uploading to Ovi (I'll talk about the new Ovi online service later, it's awesome!)
• about 45 mins of Google Maps and traffic indicator to navigate my way 30 miles to and from work in the lovely Los Angeles traffic
• 15-20 text messages
• 5 multimedia messages recieved or sent (funny pictures, etc.)
• 20-30 minutes of phone calls
• about 15 minutes of video playback (youtube and south park episodes.)

Thats AVERAGE! I'm sure I'm not off from many Nseries users. This is how the phone is meant to be used. I expect that usage to get me from 6am-11pm with a few bars left. Of course I may be asking for a lot, but maybe not. A 1400mah battery should handle that.

But will it? Thats the big question that we won't know until the first reviews of the N96 start rolling in.

For now, check out this video by of a Nokia manager talking about the N96 battery life. (thanks to The Nokia Blog).



What do you think? Do you buy it? Will you take the plunge and be one of the first to get this phone before they release another version with a larger battery 5 months later?

Since Symbian is such a customizable platform, we can always hope for and expect improvements to the software, firmware, and hardware. Nokia is leading the pack in technology on mobile phones, with 5 megapixel cameras, gps, accelerometers, signal performance, and the list goes on. I fully expect Nokia to come out with some great devices this year and Symbian to make strides in the S60 3rd Edition firmware. With that said, I'm going to talk about all the improvements and features that I'd like to see in the harware and firmware. I'll make another post tomorrow about what I'd want most out of 3rd party applications. For now check out my list and leave comments on what you'd want from Nokia & Symbian. I'm sure there is a lot of left out.

The Nokia Side Of Things - Hardware

Well it's no secret that Nokia will be coming out with a touchscreen smartphone this year, it's only a matter of when. With the success of the iPhone, Nokia should be working hard to get this released. I love the idea of touchscreen for applications and menu navigation, but not for text input. I'm hoping they release devices that have a full qwerty keypad as well as touchscreen.

One of the selling points of the iPhone is it's looks. People just see the large screen and slim form factor and are amazed. Nokia's new devices really need to have a screen at least 3 inches wide, with brightness equal to or better than the N95. The thickness of the phone doesn't bother me too much, I'd hope that they don't go thicker than the Nokia N73. I think the N95 is a little too bulky. Of course it needs to have GPS, WiFi, & a 5 megapixel camera with Xenon flash. For me the camera is a crucial part of my phone since I love taking pictures. I won't spend $600-$800 dollars on a phone that doesn't have Xenon flash (which is why I'm saving for a N82). Nokia really needs to make that standard in there high end Nseries devices. The difference in night pictures is just amazing.

I think Nokia learned their lesson on battery life and the original N95. This new phone really needs to have a battery at least 1500mah. The larger screen will take so much more than a smaller screen, obviously. With a larger screen & bigger memory cards, comes more watching movies and tv shows. This will drain the battery more often then on phones with smaller screens, where people aren't likely to spend a lot of time watching movies.

And of course the last thing is US 3g band. Nokia will always release phones for Europe, but I really think Nokia can succeed in the US if they release there phones with US 3g, especially with a touchscreen. Browsing the internet with high speeds and a large screen will be absolutely amazing. I already rarely use my laptop at home, having 3g speeds on my phone will only lesson my laptop use. Downloading music, designing websites and graphics, and browsing flash websites is what I use my computer for. Most of the time I check forums and blogs with my N73, which isn't that much of a pain. Browsing forums and other websites will be great with a 3.2" screen and high data speeds.

The Symbian Side of Things - Firmware

Symbian already has the best smartphone platform available. But like all great things, there is always room for improvement. One thing I'd like to see is a different approach to the standby screen. I would like 3rd party applications to really be able to take advantage of the standby screen, and I would like to control the layout. A small weather dock would be nice, and when I touch it, it takes me to a weather application. I would like a shortcut to show my latest 3 unread emails. I would like a small notification of a new instant message, similar to what the Slick IM application gives you. Maybe a block on the bottom of the screen can have my five latest rss feeds from the built in feed reader that is in the Web application. The possibilities are endless.

A better Task Manager. We already have Handy Taskman to use as a 3rd party task manager. But I would like to see a better built in task manager. One with a quick switch button that allows you to scroll through your open apps, quickly, like the new EQ Alt-Tab 3rd party application. We should already have this functionality built in. I'm talking about a dedicated application switch button, not having to hold down the menu button for two seconds. Actually, I've been reading up on the new Feature Pack 2 which Symbian will have on newer models this year, and it seems as though they are adding a dedicated button for switching applications. I'll talk about this in another post.

Better battery readings. Sometimes I'll be making good use of my phone, and still have 5 bars left, thinking I have plenty to go. Then ten minutes later I look again and I'm down to 2 bars. Totally misleading. It's like the battery meter only checks the battery every 45 minutes or something. Symbian definitely needs to improve this so we don't find ourselves with a dead battery.

I know there is probably I whole bunch I left out so go ahead and leave your wants/suggestions from Nokia and Symbian in 2008.

Battery life is one of the most important factors when it comes to purchasing a cell phone. A phone is no good if it has horrible battery life. There have been many complaints about the battery life of the Nokia N95. Nokia seems to have fixed this issue with their latest firmware update. This issue may not be a problem on other Nokia phones. The Nokia N73 battery life is excellent, which is exactly how a "multimedia computer/phone" should be. Here are a few things you can do to improve your battery life on your Nokia smartphone.

1. Set your Network Mode to GSM Mode.
When your running low on battery life, or you don't get a 3g connection in your area, improve your battery life by changing your network mode to GSM only. This will stop your phone from searching constantly for a 3g signal that might not even exist in your area. This is one of the first things I did when I got my Nokia N73 since it doesn't even have US 3g capabilities. On the Nokia N95 you go to Tools, Settings, Phone, Network. It is similar for the Nokia N73, I'll be posting those exact directions in a few days.

2. Change Your Screen Display Settings.
These Nokia handsets already have bright and beautiful screens. There's no need to keep the light set to the brightest possible setting. That will drain your battery fast! Then again, I don't like my screen dim and dull either. I set my Nokia N95 and N73 to the setting right below the highest. It keeps the screen bright and sharp, and does a lot to save on battery life.

Also, set your light time-out to something lower like 40 seconds. You'd be surprised at how much an extra 20 seconds at a time can drain your battery. Say you touch your phone 200 times throughout the day. Thats an extra 40 minutes your backlight is on if you keep at 60 seconds, as apposed to 40 seconds. Tools, Settings, General, Personalisation, Display.

3. Keep Your Bluetooth Off When Unused.
This is the obvious one. Just make your bluetooth and shortcut, and turn it off when its not being used.

4. Don't Leave Applications Running When Unused.
Keeping applications open in the background when your not using them can be costly to your battery. A lot of times, new S60 owners don't know that if you don't properly close out of the application, it will just get minimized to the background. Check out this post for information on a Task Manager, which allows you to see and close all your open applications, including some that might be hidden and not needed.

5. Turn Off WLAN Scanning if your not using it.
If you don't turn this off, your phone will always be searching for a hotspot and waste battery life.

If you have any other ways you save battery life on your Nokia handset, share your thoughts.

There is finally an application that gives you details of your battery usage. This should come in handy to figure out which applications are draining your battery if left open. It was originally used only by developers, but now is available for the public to check out. The idea is to put more pressure on developers to make applications that don't consume so much battery.

Tommi from the Beta Labs Blog says:
"Yet, I wonder: are 3rd party application developers really motivated to measure and improve their power consumption? After all, if the battery runs out quickly, Nokia gets the blame - not the developer. But what if power users and loud-voiced bloggers started using this app, increasingly giving public pressure for the developers of applications that prove to be the worst power-hogs?"

I should note he's not just talking about third party developers, but also nokia developers. To me, it's kind of confusing, I haven't really tried to figure out how to read the data. I'll look into it more tonight. I know this will come in handy for those who love to make battery comparisons.

Click here to go to the download page and try it out yourself.