battery life problem

Pietro "m0nt0" Montorfano monto84 at gmail.com
Sun Sep 28 21:27:34 CEST 2008


Al Johnson ha scritto:
> On Wednesday 24 September 2008, Robert Norton wrote:
>> 2008/9/24 Al Johnson <openmoko at mazikeen.demon.co.uk>:
>>> On Wednesday 24 September 2008, Gothnet wrote:
>>>> Pietro &quot;m0nt0&quot; Montorfano wrote:
>>>>> Robert Norton ha scritto:
>>>>>> I observed the same problem with my newly arrived freerunner running
>>>>>> om2008.8 update. I fiddled with the wifi then did ifdown eth0 and
>>>>>> suspend. Bluetooth, wifi and GPS all set to off in settings. Less
>>>>>> than 24h later the neo would not turn on (thankfully there was enough
>>>>>> charge left to boot and start charging when I returned home).
>>>>> Yeah, anyone know anything to see which of the many things on the FR
>>>>> is draining my battery?
>>>> I'd like to add my voice to this lot, I've been getting in the order of
>>>> 8-12 hours of battery life with minimal conversation or testing and
>>>> everything switched to off. I even looked to see if there was a higher
>>>> capacity battery available (there isn't).
>>>>
>>>> It seems to be a little better with up to date Om2008.08, but not a hell
>>>> of a lot.
>>>>
>>>> Any tips on diagnostics to run?
>>> My money's on the GSM module. I switched the GSM off because there was no
>>> SIM in, suspended the phone on a Friday afternoon and powered it up on
>>> Monday to find ~70% battery remaining. With GSM enabled and SIM inserted
>>> battery life is variable; sometimes it'll make it through the night with
>>> a fair bit of charge left, and other times it's dead by morning. I know
>>> that I sometimes get persistent, frequent GSM reregistration, and from
>>> the interference it generates on the PC speakers I know this is probably
>>> drawing a fair bit of current. The reregistration is a persistent,
>>> intermittent (for me) and as yet unexplained problem:
>>>        http://docs.openmoko.org/trac/ticket/1024
>> That's interesting! I didn't have a SIM card inserted so perhaps that
>> is part of it. Perhaps the GSM module is upping the power in order to
>> try and register but never succeeds because obviously it can't without
>> a SIM (just hand waving here, I know nothing about how this all
>> works)?
>>
>> How did you turn off the GSM module?
> 
> This is with a 2007.2 based image, so the gsm icon could be used to turn it 
> off. I wouldn't expect it to try registering with no SIM, but you never know. 
> I didn't have the SIM in so I thought I would turn gsm off. I was expecting 
> it to be dead on the monday.
> 

Second time that battery last for 28hours and the phones work correctly, 
just another test and it's going to be the main phone, just flashed last 
FDOM (don't think this could affect battery life) and flashed an old 
uBoot, could this be the solution?
The main cause is of course the gsm modem, leaving the phone near a 
cheap speaker powered up it was making the tipical modem registration 
noise every 3-4 minutes.

Pietro



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