Monday, May 21, 2007

More about batteries

When my N95 was new I found out a way to increase the battery life. At first the battery was only lasting for one day. I thought I'd try something. One day after charging the phone I used the phone for a couple of minutes (use camera, read emails or whatever) just to reduce the battery charge a little bit. Then I plugged it back in and it started to charge again. I thought it would stop charging very quickly but no - it went on for half an hour or so. After the extra charging treatment the battery lasted for two days instead of one day.
I'm not an expert on batteries. I don't know what happened or why and I don't know if it can damage the battery in some way, so I can't recommend anyone to try the same. Anyway, after doing the "charge - use a couple of minutes - charge" cycle a couple of times within one week it seemed like the battery was taking much more charge and lasted longer. I'm not sure if it was that or if the battery just needs to be charged 5, 10 or 20 times before it reaches its maximum capacity. It worked for me though. Now the battery lasts for at least two days and if I don't use it a lot I get three days out of it.
Oh, and I have bluetooth always on but WLAN off.
One more thing. If you connect your phone to your computer using the USB cable, don't forget to unplug it after you've finished. Having the USB connected seems to draw a lot of juice out of the battery. At first, I thought you might be able to charge the phone using the USB cable. Wrong, it seems to do the exact opposite.
Talking about USB and batteries, there's a handy USB charger from Nokia (CA-100).

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