Expert: Werner "Menneisyys" Ruotsalainen

It was almost two years ago that I’ve published an article in the paper version of Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine on increasing the battery life on Windows Mobile devices. (Note that, should you be interested in the whole series of similar tips and later (again, Windows Mobile-only) articles, this article is only one of the several. See for example THIS blog category for some more.) Now that I’ve, thanks to "Beck" from the sprites & bites blog, become a proud owner of a N95, I thought I would write an article on how you can do the same on the Nokia. (A shameless plug: I heartily recommend the sprites & bites blog if you're interested in desktop console gaming (currently, it officially discusses the MS Xbox 360, the Nintendo Wii and the PS3))

I not only shed lights on the secrets of extending the battery life of the N95, but also scrutinize how the just-released V20 firmware version behaves and review the brand new Nokia Energy Profiler (runnable on all S60v3 FP1 models) too. Finally, while doing the latter, I’ll also compare Energy Profiler to acbTaskMan, the, currently, best Windows Mobile profiling tool to do the same. By this, I help both Windows Mobile and Symbian users and developers, most importantly, those of acbTaskMan and Energy Profiler, respectively. All this in order to make their products even better – after all, both these apps have unmatched features and goodies not available in the other. Let me point out, for example, that in my previous combined WinMo & Symbian review of Palringo was also much more useful for Windows Mobile users than a single-operating system review because, as was noticed, the Symbian version of the same program supported a rudimentary logging (history), as opposed to the Windows Mobile version. Emphasizing this and, consequently, pushing the developer to implement the same on Windows Mobile is very important. These two-operating system reviews are, therefore, very useful in this respect. Tw… many birds with one stone, yeah

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In Part I of this series, I’ve elaborated on how quickly switching the 3G and GSM modes to prolong battery life. In this article, I discuss an equally important question: forcing the connection to be closed after a predefined time.

Note that the two situations (and solutions) are radically different:

Switching between 3G and GSM bands is highly recommended even if you don’t use data connections, “only” phone calls. This is because the radio module of the phone needs a lot more power to maintain a connection with the higher-frequency 3G towers. Again, this has nothing to do with data connections being used or not.

Switching back to GSM, of course, can’t be utilized on non-3G-capable handsets like all TI OMAP-based Windows Mobile phones. The reason for this is that phones of the latter type don’t have access to 3G networks at all and are all operating in GSM networks.

Terminating data connections, on the other hand, is absolutely independent of the band you use and can (should), therefore, be used in both 3G and GSM (pre-3G) modes. This also means terminating a data connection is usable on non-3G-capable handsets too. Remember that switching back to the GSM band don’t work on these handsets as they can’t even use 3G bands.

1.1 Why no auto-disconnect when I exit the program using the connection?

First, some theory, which will be of extreme importance to people coming from other operating systems. Windows Mobile uses the following approach: “when you establish a data connection, it’ll stay on unless you manually disconnect it”. (Fortunately, it also offers a built-in and, by default, inactive timer that does allow for disconnecting and, therefore, preserving battery life. More on this later.)

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I’ve, in all Windows Mobile forums, very often posted on the fact that Lithium-Ion / Polymer batteries should always be recharged whenever possible. That is, you should put your handheld / handset on the charger whenever possible. NEVER EVER wait before the handheld shuts down because even after only 4 months, your battery will only hold about a third (!) of its original charge holding capacity and, as opposed to what several people say, putting the device on the charger only once a day (or two-three days with devices with better battery life – mostly, TI OMAP-based handsets) on a regular basis (not waiting for the battery to completely deplete) will also have an adverse effect on the battery life.

Now, Groucho's pretty cool Nokia N95 blog has published a remarkable article, which is of extreme interest to anyone having a device with a Lithium Ion or Polymer-based rechargeable battery (not only Nokia N95 users – again, this info applies to ALL current Windows Mobile handsets, and a lot more other gadgets like digital cameras etc.). The figures he shows certainly prove I’ve been right when I recommended recharging your device whenever possible.

Groucho has purchased three N95’s (again and again, don’t think this discussion only applies to the N95 – it does apply to ANY device out there!) at the same time and used them in a pretty similar way. He, however, made absolutely sure he charged the device in three consistent (not mixing up the devices) and radically different ways: the first was charged only once a day (every night), not during the day; the second was charged when it has completely shut down because of the battery’s going flat and the third was almost always on charger whenever possible. The difference in the battery capacity, based on the different ways of recharging, turned out to be astonishing: the second battery (which was always let go flat, and only after that was it put on a charger) could only hold slightly more than a third of the battery that was always on charger whenever possible. The latter battery, in addition, fared considerably (about 16%) better than the battery only regularly (every night) recharged.

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In the microsoft.public.pocketpc newsgroup, I’ve promised to look into the problem of the Dell Axim X50(v)/ X51(v) cradles frying up motherboards you can read more of here (a highly recommended thread – you may want to read at least the first post in there. Note that there are a lot of posts in there that are uncertain; therefore, it’s better to read my article first. In here, I tried to clean up and summarize everything worth knowing.). Note that there are two other, but older and less specific threads discussing the same question here and here. Note that there is another sticky AximSite thread here on a similar matter. It, however, only discusses third-party sync/charge cables and NOT the standard cradle coming with the PDA. Therefore, I only recommend the last thread if you’d like to purchase a third-party cable. If you don't, you won't need to read it.

First, all the (to my knowledge - if you have a newer cradle revision, let me know) three cradle revisions (the initial A00, A01, which started to ship around December 2004 and A02, which started to ship in July/August 2005) seem to have this problem – again, even the last (and, to my knowledge, still current) A02. (As far as the latest, A02 revision is concerned, see d00567’s posts on 09-25-05 and 09-26-05 here).

Dell states it’s a manufacturing defect. It’s pretty sad to see their quality control does not check for this problem.

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I’ve constantly been receiving requests (see for example this thread) to publish more and more power consumption measurements of current Pocket PC devices. Here you are

First, please read at least this article (if you haven’t already done so) to understand what this article is all about. I also highly recommend the other articles I’ve linked in from the Recommended links section.

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