I'm wondering if anyone else experiencing poor battery life. I charged my telephone to full during the night and took it off the charger this morning. It's now almost 4 o'clock and the battery is empty. Thats really terrible! I did not do anything special :S

Mine's started doing the same, haven't changed any settings and I had been getting 4 days, now not even a day!

Grahame

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/forum/showpost.php?p=393378&postcount=7

The company where i got the phone from has ordered a new battery for me to try with.

i checked and gps+ is off, yet still don't get a day out of it, even when i don't use it????

the specs says 13 days on standby?

btw, how can i upgrade to the newer H8 firmware?

thanks

Have any of you guys, experiencing poor battery life, installed new themes?
I know it sounds daft but if I use a third party theme, battery life is less than one day; if I use one of the bundled themes, I get two days! It does look as though the phone is running two copies of the desk top, when backing out from menu's I see the desktop which after a second moves away revealing another, identical desktop. Any thoughts?

my battery is ok,when im at work its out of pocket in the cab but when not at work its in my pocket and sometimes battery goes down real quick,i think the camera button is culprit only a real sensitive button and if it keeps getting pressed in pocket the screen light is always on.update might sort this as n95 only lit up with top power button pressed.

Reset mine to factory defaults and set up 'internet' or 'wan' connections (just messaging) and the battery seems OK so far - 3 days low/minimal usage.
Have also bought a replacement battery to try, charging it just now so will see how it goes tomorrow.

Grahame

It seems odd.. i had a theme on today and battery lasted about 7 hours.. it had dropped 3 bar within the first 2 hours of a full charge!

Ive changed back to default theme, will see how that gets on tomorrow

Hi cally78,
I thought it was the camera button at first, so made a point of keeping it out of pockets and case; no difference. I'm as sure as I can be, that its down to the theme, just don't understand why.

I noticed an improvement in my battery life when I reverted back to the default theme. What theme was it you tried?

I've tried several themes from mobile9.com, including a couple that I ran on my N93 without issue. Very strange!!!

For some reason my battery now lasts about 3 days with some use of GPS/Wifi/HSDPA, calling, texting and making fotos etc.

Well its lunchtime after being off-charge for about 4 hours and battery is still reading full.. only change was going back to the default theme.... same time yesterday would have seen over half the battery gone!

I was using some themes from Pizero that are classed as FP2 compatible.

Wow, does themes have that much of an effect? Must be buggy themes...

I can't think that its the themes, more likely the way the phone handles them. Hopefully some of the clever people on this forum will take an interest, I'm sure we would all be prepared to upload the themes we have used for analysis.
Just a thought, which I may try tomorrow, I always install themes to "mass storage", perhaps they should be installed to "phone memory"?

Another update.. phone been off-charge for 9 hours now and its dropped by just 1 bar on the battery... this is with my normal use... dozen txt messages, and a few checks of facebook...
also note that the battery meter on this seems more accurate than nokias "habit" of reporting full for a long time then dropping quickly.


The theme i was using before was Abstraction (http://www.pizero.net/archives/449#more-449) by PiZero - and it was installed to the C:

Poor Battery life could easily be caused by themes.

infact an application that you install can ruin battery life. battery life on phones like this is complex, because the developers all implement things a little differently, so while an app might work well on an n95 the same app can cause battery life problems on another phone.

In my past life i saw that things like animated icons, or using certain file formats could cause problems. I'd play about with things, like ensuring system sounds are wav for example
Also, keeping the theme on the phone memory ( c: drive ) may improve things. But really its specualtion, without hooking the phone up to a device that measures current drain its difficult to see quickly whether you;ve resolved the problem without leaving the phone for 6-7 hours to see if tha bttery goes down, so finding out by trial an error could take a long time :(

As for whose fault it is? well, phone manufacturers blame the 3rd party developers, and 3rd parties generally point the finger back to the phone companies not all doing things the same way. So take your pick :)

Its a minefield.

Well another update.. phone has now been off-charge for about 18 hours, and its still showing 5 bars.. have made about 1.5 hours of calls, 20 txt messages and downloaded a couple of mb on 3g

And another update... its now approacting 40 hours without a charge... still showing 3 bars battery left... have made about a half-dozen calls today, so say another hour of calls in total.

Two days now; plenty of phone calls & texts, even an hour of SatNav. No doubt about it, its themes that were causing the crap battery life; other than that, what a great phone:icon14:

It was a Pizero theme that I was using too... having said that other themes seem to be just as battery greedy - the default themes far better with regard to battery consumption.

@Judderman

Hello there just wondering ,I too am having battery difficulties . I have seen an improvement somewhat as the phone has been used more but nothing like the usage you are getting out of the phone . What are the EXACT settings you have on your theme please could you upload a screen shot perhaps ? do you have a home screen image (a pic you took with the phone) ? Do you have the side bar displayed ? Do you have bluetooth on at all ? Do you use the internet much if at all . Do you use sat nav ?

Sorry for all the Q's but I am quickly loosing faith in this phone . As you may have read I still have packet data connection issues , and I bought the phone because it was series 60 so I could tinker with different apps . The phone is that new though that nothing works as far as software goes (well that I've found that I want to use anyway )

And as far as sat nav goes I refuse to pay for another sat nav software when I recently purchased TomTom . WHICH DOESN'T WORK !!!!! I can safely say if I still had a working N95 I would be going back to that . Yeah the phone looks great an all that but whats the point in having a FERRARI if the fuel tank only holds a gallon and you have to push it back everytime you went out in it ??

I just can't understand why Samsung have released so many different firmwares over the last month yet not provided a firmware update soloution yet ? All the nuts and bolts are there complete with instructions (even pc suite is nokia's rehashed ) it just needs putting together . Perhaps Samsung are too busy counting all the money their making from the sales of this over hyped phone to be bothered to provide the basics of customer care and service ?

Why release a phone to the masses which they know has firmware issues without the infrastructure in place to support it ? Paricularly when the company th licensed it from already has a similar infrastructure up and running and has for quite some time !!!!

An analogy might be for a company to release a new electric vehicle with all the bells and whistles , even the lead to plug it in to charge it . But the lead has a special connector for the power point and the car requires a unique voltage to charge it anyway . Hence no means to run the vehicle. And the company still sells the vehicle ,with excellent sales due to how pollution free and efficient it is . Rubbing their greasy little palms all the way to the bank !

Climbs down off the soapbox .....................Sorry

AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH !!!!!!!!!!!

Samsung get yer !"£$%^&* finger out purrleeeaaaassse and relaese a firware update or two !

Hope you feel better having got that off your chest;¬)
I do use internet, over wifi. As above I do use satnav, so far I have managed an hour on satnav without recharging, and still had plenty of life left then (it works great, what are your problems?). Blue tooth I use very rarely (can't get it to pair with my car stereo) but when I forgot it once, it was on for hours with no ill effect.

I don't share your opinion of this phone, I think its brilliant, the best S60 I've had, by far and certainly better than any FIRST release by Nokia, stick with it, I'm sure the clever bods on this forum will get you through.

For once and all - the battery life on the 8510 is MUCH BETTER than the Nokia N95!

Samsung have done a great job with this phone, and once we get some firmware updates to fix the niggly little bugs, it will be truely excellent.

how many hours of video can that phone take on a full charge? And how many photos with flash?

Having no problems with my phone with regards to battery, i mean i get over 7 days battery quite easily every charge. Low to medium use, and with third party themes installed to the memory card....:con?

Its been on for 7 days now and ive got 2 bars left....

I just been to CPW, there are going to swap my battery over for a new one as i charged last night, and from 6am-3pm it went down to 2 bars.

Whats the 4 squareish icon in the top on the standby screen at the top right?

http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/9596/screenshot0002yb1.jpg

The four squares icon is the WiFi icon - do you have the phone constantly connected to / searching for WiFi connections?

... that's a sure fire way to kill you battery!

I never changed the setting, but yea the setting was to scan every minute so now ive turned it off!

Thanks for that, hopefully shud see some improvment!

No improvement left it at home today and wen i got back it had 3 bars. No battery swap but getting new one from CPW tomorow for exchange! :)

This phone is better, i think theres some dodgy batterys going around.

Charged my phone for the first time Friday at 3pm, and its still got 3 bars left at 7m sunday. Ive made about 60 mins of calls, 50 texts, about 3 hours of heavy web browsing and played couple games of Fifa 08!

Unfortunately battery sucks... try using the video camera... gotta recharge it now and then if u wanna be safe..., not a big deal if there was a car charger or a spare battery to be bought... but there´s not.

I charged yesterdays morning at 9AM to full. After 3h of web browsing, taking 50 photos, some msg and 60 min of talking at 10.30 today two bars left. I uesd to have E65 Nokia and it last the same when the battery was new.

Update.

Since sunday when i charged it, ive taken 30 photos, 7 hours of calls, 247 texts about 3 hours of gps and ive got one bar left!

hey Crigsha i think ur right about the weird batteries out ther cos my battery only has like half a day usage before it goes and im not really pushing it, can u tell me how u got the cpw to replace ur 1, as i just also got my phone from a company (mobilesco.uk) thats bigger brother is cpw,

Hey Guys, Finally got my battery in working order,

I thought its because I use custom themes,

By the way I am using the I8510 Firmware : I8510XXHJ3
Go to Menu, Settings, Settings, Phone, Network, Network Mode

Use GSM or UMTS, dont use Dual

previously, it was on Dual and the battery would only last me a day, where as in now it stays up for about 2,5 days while also using Route 66

Tell me if this works for anyone:)

Hi All

I've just bought a new battery from Ebay for £4.49 free P&P. I charged it for the first time for 16 hours and now it gives me about four times more life than the original battery that came with the phone!!!

I have Dual Mode switched on - but it still lasts a long time. I also have JbakTaskMgr installed so I can close the Screen Capture app which starts up eveytime you turn the phone on. If you close this backgroup app - you will save battery power.

Get your new battery on eBay here - they seem 100% genuine Samsung:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/SAMSUNG-i8510-INNOV8-GENUINE-MOBILE-PHONE-BATTERY_W0QQitemZ150323594753QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK _MobilePhones_MobilePhoneAccessories_MobilePhoneBa tteries?hash=item150323594753&_trksid=p3911.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1690%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C 240%3A1318

Just ordered mine, after trying every trick in the book this is worth a punt!
Thanks for the info, will report back with results when it arrives.

Don't know how important it is - but I read somewhere that the initial charge should be 16 hours (even though these batteries shouldn't suffer from memory effect). So to be safe I charged mine for 16 hours (with the phone switched off initially overnight) the first time. Since then I have been trying to run it completely dead and then giving it a full charge as much as possible(rather than top it up via USB when I'm at my computer - which is what I was doing with the old battery). I keep my old battery charged up and in my bag for emergencies! So far it's been dramatically better!

I hope you have a similar experience!

Well my battery wasn't getting through a day even with fairly minimal use, and I ended up carrying a spare battery with me. I installed Jbak Taskman and used it to shut off the TSRAutostart app and got some improvement, but have now deleted the Cardrunner.dll file - massive improvement!!! Charged the phone overnight from empty, it's been on all day since 6.30 this morning has made plenty of calls, taken loads of photos and some video too and is still showing 5 bars at 11.15 at night! Will try using the Garmin tomorrow and see how it does then - looks good at the moment though!;)

Hi

Quick update to my posts above, I charged my new battery overnight on Friday - and this morning (Tues) it still has two bars!!! I haven't used it massively but have done a fair bit of web browsing, taken a few pictures, listened to 30 mins of music and made a few calls. Can't believe how much better this new battery is!!! The last one wasn't even making it through the night!!!! Also, I have Packet Data set to 'When Needed' rather than 'When Available' - which could well have helped a bit too!

Cheers

Dan

dunno bout anyone else, but my battery def loses couple more bars when my memory card is in, and there`s only couple of vids on it

Well my battery wasn't getting through a day even with fairly minimal use, and I ended up carrying a spare battery with me. I installed Jbak Taskman and used it to shut off the TSRAutostart app and got some improvement, but have now deleted the Cardrunner.dll file - massive improvement!!! Charged the phone overnight from empty, it's been on all day since 6.30 this morning has made plenty of calls, taken loads of photos and some video too and is still showing 5 bars at 11.15 at night! Will try using the Garmin tomorrow and see how it does then - looks good at the moment though!;)

Can you tell me where the Cardrunner.dll file is located ?

Ricardo99
Can you tell me where the Cardrunner.dll file is located ?

I wish I could - I looked all over the place for it but had no luck, so tried the FreeCommander download anyway and that seemed to find it ok!(but I didn't think to note where the file was located - sorry!) Once the CardRunner.dll file was deleted, I found an instant and VERY noticeable increase in battery duration. As a matter of fact, I have just put the phone back on charge for the first time since firing it up at 6.30am yesterday morning and its been switched on ever since. I have taken around 40 photos, shot 10 video clips, used the Garmin sat nav for an hour and made/received dozens of calls and texts. For a phone as powerful as ours and with having done all those things I reckon 36+ hours on one charge isn't too bad at all! I am also running a third party theme and a clock screensaver application (overnight) which also eats battery power - normally!!! :):icon14:

Just ordered mine, after trying every trick in the book this is worth a punt!
Thanks for the info, will report back with results when it arrives.

OK so I got the new battery, fully charged it overnight.....and.....no difference!

After sending six text messages, one 6meg email, an hours web browing via wi-fi, and about half an hours music playing, it died after around 14 hours and 8 of those were overnight doing nothing!

Damn this is so frustrating !

I can only imagine it is now one of two things :

1. A rogue program that is constantly running in the background zapping the battery.

2. A hardware fault.

After reading all the post's on this subject it seems different things work for different people. I'm gonna try the cardrunnner.dll file next and maybe whip the memory card out for a day or so to see if that makes any difference.

Failing that I may have to accept that this is just the way it is, shame because I like the phone ! :frown:

Hi Ricardo

Sorry the battery tip didn't work for you - it has made a huge difference to me - but maybe your original battery wasn't duff like mine! I noticed the new one had a wheeliebin symbol on it - whereas the orig one didn't - dunno if this means it's a newer batch?!?!?
Have you got the JbakTaskMgr installed? This should show any background processes...I always use it to kill the ScreenCapture task every time I switch on the phone - as this drains the battery apparently. Also, have you set Brightness to min, power saving mode on, dim time to short interval etc..... Also, are you using the HJ3 firmware? Also, are you using the default Elegance Noir? That's all I can think of that I did to improve the battery life!

PS> From what I understand - the cardrunner.dll thing is only relevant if you have installed Garmin XT?!?!?!?!?

PPS> I have a 16gb phone with a 16GB card all pretty much full up with music and videos - so I doubt that's the problem!!!

Thanks for the info and help Danway, tried all the known battery fixes for months now and nothing seems to work (jbak task manager etc). I did try taking the memory card out yesterday, but that made no difference. The only thing I havent tried is going back to the elegance noir theme, I will try that next and see what happens.

I have Garmin installed but couldnt find the cardrunner.dll file, there are a couple of other files named cardrunner but not a dll file.

I have got HJ3 f/ware and was hopeful that update might fix it, but it didnt. Suppose I'll just plod on and keep trying. At least I have two batterys now so I wont get caught out when Im out and about !!

Thanks for all your help.....

It's Garmin that's killing the battery. Remove it and it should last for days.

Right, Garmin has gone, i got 5 bars and jbak is saying 90% battery, fingers crossed this time!

Thanks for the tip, beers all round if this works!:tongue:

I have Garmin installed but couldnt find the cardrunner.dll file, there are a couple of other files named cardrunner but not a dll file.



Shame you got rid of Garmin - I couldn't find the CardRunner.dll file either until I downloaded FreeCommander to my pc. Used it to search and the file turned up, and once it was deleted my battery has been vastly better.
I'm still running 3rd party themes/wallpapers etc. but getting at least 2 days out of the battery now that that file has been sent packing!

Thanks glanma, I tried looking for the cardrunner.dll with Y browser and could not find it all, but with Garmin gone the battery has shown massive improvement! :icon14:

After a full charge Friday night the battery still has 45% on it now, after moderate use (few calls, sms's, 10 pictures, an hours web browsing & email checking every half an hour) on Saturday. At 13:30 on Sunday it has been up 27 hours, with battery level at 45%.

I'm gonna keep going with it as long as I can, and keep using it like normal, so I can gauge some kind of average useage from the battery.

Many thanks to all those that have helped with this, now I've just gotta figure how to get Garmin back on without it zapping my battery. If anyone can point me in the direction of the cardrunner.dll file it would be most appreciated. :)

hey how do u find CardRunner.dll using free commander as it will only sereach my pc files, do i connect the phone as pc studio or mass storage??? and any other hints will be helful

Well, YMMV, but for me it is the presence of a SD card that kills battery.

1. "screencap" - doesn't seem to make a difference for me.

2. it's not network, although I get about 20% better battery life if I choose GSM only or UMTS only

3. For a bit, I thought it was 802.11 wireless, jury still out on that one.

4. auto screen flip - battery life effect lower than variance over single control week variance, assuming minimal effect.

5. optical mouse - battery life effect lower than variance over single control week variance, assuming minimal effect.

6. SD card, without it installed I get around 4 - 5 days "normal" use. (low to medium use of phone/texts/mp3/radio). With SD card, I get at most 24 hours before it shuts down !

7. tried SD and SDHC cards, 512MB through to 8G, all the same results (within 10% or so)

I've waited a month or so before these conclusions, so the battery has had good conditioning / charge cycles before this analysis (hmm, perhaps not that scientific ;-)

I love the phone, just p*ssed that I could only find the 8G variety, and assumed that SD card would be a suitable alternative. Clearly not. Let's hope the onboard flash doesn't run out of read/write cycles before I want to get a new phone.

just my 2p,
Dave

8G i8510 -
*#0000# = S/W i8510XXHJ3, DATE=07/10/2008, Custom ver=I8510L08XEUHJ1, Custom date=01/10/2008
*#1234# = S/W [BP] I8510XXHI1, BP compile date=Sep 19 2008, AP code=I8510XXHJ3, AP CSC=I8510L08XEUHJ1

hello,

hope this will help i tried it and its was better 3 days of phone usage music/video and calls :)

what you have to do is charge the phone while in shut-down fully, then turn on the phone again and it will charge again while the phone is On, i think this happen because not all the bettery cells are waken up :) and the battery in that state doesn't give you the full power of it .

hope this help just like me ;)

Righty, the cardrunner.dll file is located in E:\sys\bin which you can only access by hacking your phone or using freecommander, I did the former. A quick google will reveal what the file actually does (why didn't I think of this sooner!), which isn't that much to be fair.

My phone now stays alive for a good 36 to 48 hours with moderate usage , which i'm alot happier with.

Well I had my phone for a couple of months now, and the battery life has always sucked, lasting at most a 14hrs.

Well I bought a battery of ebay, one of those original ones. While I was waiting for it to arrive, I charged my old battery and without doing anything special it lasted 3 entire days. Then I tried the new battery which I got from ebay, and today is the 4th day. Having only 1 bar left.

Not sure what happened, but 3 or 4 days is much better then before :D

hey Ricardo99 thanks for telling me where the file is, ive gotten rid of it now, but i noticed an improvment when i removed my memory card from 12 hours to 24hours so at least its aceptable. ive also noticed that the battery life seems to be getting better the more im using the phone not sure y that is, lets hope now with the carrunnder.dll file gone things will run much better, thanks for all the help every1

my phone was fine getting between 3 to 4 days until i installed garminxt onto the phones hard drive not an sd card tried disabling the gps on garmin when not using but the battery only lasts about 14hours now and thats not using anything. i had 3 bars and used garmin for about 5mins before the phone cut off
guess this will need to be uninstalled

You need to delete the cardrunner.dll file as per the previous posts.

Install Garmin Mobile XT for Symbian S60 3rd Edition Ver. 5.00.30 and in Tools -> Settings -> System -> Launch Background Service turn OFF - fix problem with batery and tsrautostart.exe :icon4: run!!!