+- PINE64 (https://forum.pine64.org)
+-- Forum: PinePhone (https://forum.pine64.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=120)
+--- Forum: PinePhone Software (https://forum.pine64.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=121)
+---- Forum: Mobian on PinePhone (https://forum.pine64.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=139)
+---- Thread: Possible solutions to the battery draining issue? (/showthread.php?tid=17498)
Possible solutions to the battery draining issue? - 3x5co - 10-21-2022
I went for a bike ride this morning, with my fully-charged phone. I had it in my pocket, playing music through my headphones. The modem is switched off at the hardware level. Wifi was off, bluetooth was off, the screen itself was off, and the phone was doing nothing but playing mp3s. When I got home, 45 minutes later, my battery was down to 47%.
I bought a second battery, and I will charge that when it's out of the phone. even so, if the battery goes dead in less than 2 hours, that's not even enough time for the other one to charge on the wall. I could start carrying around 3 or 4 batteries, but that seems a bit ridiculous.
I'm guessing that the phone itself just consumes a lot of power, and that no update to Mobian is really going to fix this problem. If I'm wrong about that, let me know. But if the PinePhone is always going to have this issue, it seems my options are:
- To find a ridiculously high-capacity battery that will fit in my phone;
- To find some kind of low-profile charger that I can attach to the phone, artificially extending the battery life. I currently have a charger about the size of the phone, but three times as deep, which I can keep in my pocket. It's a little clunky, though.
- Upgrade to a PinePhone Pro, if that device has a better battery life;
- Figure out some software hacks/tweaks to improve battery life.
I will also point out that I set 'power saver' mode in the power settings. However, when I start gnome-control-center from CLI, over ssh, I get this warning:
```
(gnome-control-center:2870): power-cc-panel-WARNING **: 12:36:26.027: Could not set active profile: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.AccessDenied: Not Authorized: net.hadess.PowerProfiles.switch-profile
```
Which makes me think power saver mode isn't actually working. Some people here are saying they're getting 24 hour battery life on their PinePhone now, but I ran a dist-upgrade to the newest version, and it's still at least as bad as ever. It seems like it might even be worse now.
RE: Possible solutions to the battery draining issue? - Rob_F - 10-21-2022
The preloaded app "Powersupply" should tell you how many watts the system is using.
At idle, my PinePhone V1.2 consumes about 2.4 - 2.6W. When busy, it can rise dramatically. How much power does your device consume at idle? Does it get warm when nothing is running?
Some older versions of mobian are not very efficient - I found that gnome-software in particular seemed to use a lot of power.
RE: Possible solutions to the battery draining issue? - arno_nuehm - 10-24-2022
Found myself with a similar problem of a rapidly drained battery. In my case, Phosh crashed unnoticed and did not go into suspend after restart. It seems, I need a successful login to go into suspend.
I hope, that helps a bit.
Cheeers.
RE: Possible solutions to the battery draining issue? - Ferriah - 11-07-2022
not sure if this will help you, but keepin the wifi and bluetooth off seems to help save power (the phone will go into airplane mode, but if you turn that off and turn the bluetooth off again it will keep the phone service enabled)
I bought one of these https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09BT6SWJK/ref=twister_B09LRB115B?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1 and I get about three charges off of that.
RE: Possible solutions to the battery draining issue? - xnopasaranx - 11-24-2022
(10-21-2022, 11:34 AM)3x5co Wrote: *snip**snip*
- Upgrade to a PinePhone Pro, if that device has a better battery life;
That would just be a waste of money at the moment, the PPPs battery life is absolutely abysmal compared to the normal Pinephone. Screen on time is like an hour. 10 minutes of webbrowsing will drop the battery by like 15%
Have you tried the community modem firmware already? It also improves power usage quite a bit!
https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk
RE: Possible solutions to the battery draining issue? - 3x5co - 11-28-2022
Thanks for the reply. I can try the community modem firmware, but I do not have a SIM card in my phone at all. In fact, I have switched off the Modem with the physical hardware switch, but I have noticed that when I turn off my phone, open up the back, and touch the modem, it is warm to the touch.
It seems like it would be most energy efficient for me to remove any running service related to the modem. If you have any tips for this, I would appreciate the info.
Too bad about the PinePhone Pro users. When I get fed up with my Pine Phone, I try to remind myself that it was a majorly discounted phone because it's experimental. I don't know what the PPP people must be thinking, after dropping 400 bucks or whatever the PPP costs.