Battery life status: now, and future prospects?

[displacefish]

I really want a pinephone, to use as a daily driver. I don't have extensive needs: right now, they're perfectly met by a 2008 era Nokia phone. The pinephone would then be an upgrade intended to let me perform basic online tasks, such as check email, basic browsing, and similar. It does not bother me if the camera quality is terrible, it does not bother me if the UI isn't fancy (I've already seen Sxmo and it looks right up my alley), and so on. In short, I don't have high standards for what's working, as long as it can serve at least as a dumbphone replacement.

However, I have one big concern, and that is battery life, which leads me to asking these two questions. Firstly, what has been people's experience with battery life on current OS images? Can it go a full day idle? 24hr? I've looked around briefly and found anecdotal evidence ranging from 3hr idle to 20+hr, but it's not always clear whether it's a recent image or whether the user is experiencing an issue etc.

Secondly: could someone with knowledge of the development status give a summary, what is the potential for future battery life improvements on the software side? From skimming the blog posts, it sounds like some significant achievements have been made in power state control, leading to potentially close to 24hr idle. But is that the current ceiling? I've also heard claims (with no supporting evidence) that there's no "proper suspend yet" and that implementing a true deep sleep state would significantly extend battery life; how true is that?
In short, let's say in 1-2 years, could we have maybe 3-4 days idle battery life? Or is that completely out of the window?

I'd be very grateful with any insight into these issues. This really would be the dealbreaker for me; as fantastic and enticing as the project seems, if it can barely last a day and has little prospect of improving that then I'd have to pass. On the other hand, if there's any potential for over a day of charge, I'd happily overlook many, many other rough edges.

[bcnaz]

I have not kept as close of track of battery life as I had planned.
While I have several newer Pine phones, my original Brave Heart is still the one phone with my main phone number.
It still has a operating system from October, 05 I believe.

It has been on since 8am this morning, now 10:02pm, it says it has 48% charge, I did maybe 30 sms texts outgoing today, and one 10 minute phone call.

The newer Pine phones and new operating systems will probably do better, but I have not verified that as yet.

OF important note, the battery is easy to swap out and a replacement battery is available for about $10 on Ebay and Amazon.
and Pine64 sells an external battery charger pretty cheap at their store.

[kern707]

OF important note, the battery is easy to swap out and a replacement battery is available for about $10 on Ebay and Amazon.
  and Pine64 sells an external battery charger pretty cheap at their store.

Which is one of many reasons why I like this design! battery is dead ? just get a new compatible one and replace it...

no fancy procedures that has to be done by "certified con men" using proprietary tooling that is not available to the public.

like in the good old days, when a Nokia, Motorola or a Samsung battery was replaceable.

[displacefish]

It has been on since 8am this morning, now 10:02pm, it says it has 48% charge, I did maybe 30 sms texts outgoing today, and one 10 minute phone call.
The newer Pine phones and new operating systems will probably do better, but I have not verified that as yet.

That's reassuring. Still a daily charge, but of course nothing will actually compare to an old feature phone's 1-2 weeks.

OF important note, the battery is easy to swap out and a replacement battery is available for about $10 on Ebay and Amazon.
and Pine64 sells an external battery charger pretty cheap at their store.

Which is one of many reasons why I like this design! battery is dead ? just get a new compatible one and replace it...

As great as this is, personally it's less about longevity on the go, and more about reducing hassle. The more often I have to recharge it, the more I will ask myself "why not just use the Nokia then".
Although I suppose the wireless charging addon would actually be helpful here, especially since the replaceable batteries mean reducing their service life is not a big concern.

[kern707]

It has been on since 8am this morning, now 10:02pm, it says it has 48% charge,  I  did maybe 30 sms texts outgoing today, and one 10 minute phone call.
The newer Pine phones and new operating systems will probably do better, but I have not verified that as yet.

That's reassuring. Still a daily charge, but of course nothing will actually compare to an old feature phone's 1-2 weeks.

OF important note, the battery is easy to swap out and a replacement battery is available for about $10 on Ebay and Amazon.
  and Pine64 sells an external battery charger pretty cheap at their store.

Which is one of many reasons why I like this design! battery is dead ? just get a new compatible one and replace it...

As great as this is, personally it's less about longevity on the go, and more about reducing hassle. The more often I have to recharge it, the more I will ask myself "why not just use the Nokia then".
Although I suppose the wireless charging addon would actually be helpful here, especially since the replaceable batteries mean reducing their service life is not a big concern.

Well look, the Nokia brick phones (or any of their semi-smart phones) will always take any modern day smartphone with regarding to how long you can hold a charge on the battery, mainly because the smaller lower spec screens,  the relatively lower spec hardware, lack of additional sensors, GPS modules etc.. in them make them some serious energy savers. I still remember the days where my Nokia brick phone (BW screen, no WLAN, no GPS etc..) would get a full charge on Sunday, and then would survive until Saturday without much effort  on the other hand there wasn't much do with on that phone so It was used primarily for making  (short) calls and a sending a few maybe 3-5 short SMS texts per week.

Being able to replace the battery as easy as popping the faulty battery out and popping a new one in, without the need for any specialty service by an expensive "certified repair center" is a huge bonus in today's markets (where companies try to make their products impossible to service by their owners in order to push the customers to pay big bucks at their own repair centers), the right to repair is very important IMHO.

I also agree with you about wanting to reduce the hassle of having to charge your phone 3 times a day, but with any smartphone, no matter what brand or battery size - it depends on your usage. for an example: if my PinePhone is left alone with minimal usage it would last many hours before I need to plug it into a charger, but if I was fiddling with it for an hour, browsing the internet, downloading applications, opening various applications and fiddling with them etc.. the battery level would rather quickly go down from like say %84 down to %54 in less than two hours - but that is the same performance you get with most smartphones, since big back-lite screens and strong hardware will consume more power if you are a heavy user.

I would also ask, what Nokia phone do you exactly have? and what is your average usage profile ? and how many hours of usage are you getting from a single charge? that would be useful to try evaluate your question and give you more precise feedback.

[displacefish]

Well look, the Nokia brick phones (or any of their semi-smart phones) will always take any modern day smartphone with regarding to how long you can hold a charge on the battery, mainly because the smaller lower spec screens,  the relatively lower spec hardware, lack of additional sensors, GPS modules etc.. in them make them some serious energy savers. I still remember the days where my Nokia brick phone (BW screen, no WLAN, no GPS etc..) would get a full charge on Sunday, and then would survive until Saturday without much effort  on the other hand there wasn't much do with on that phone so It was used primarily for making  (short) calls and a sending a few maybe 3-5 short SMS texts per week.
[...]
I would also ask, what Nokia phone do you exactly have? and what is your average usage profile ? and how many hours of usage are you getting from a single charge? that would be useful to try evaluate your question and give you more precise feedback.

Oh yes, of course, I'm not expecting feature phone levels of battery. I'm very aware that any kind of extra functionality will necessarily come with a downgrade in battery life.
I haven't really measured the battery life on my nokia, but it's on the order of 1-2 weeks. But since this is obviously not a useful comparison, instead let me mention a 2014 Moto G which I primarily use for TOTP and some occasional browsing; LTE is turned off. On that, I get about ~3-4 days idle (and my usage profile can be summarised as "idle"). Essentially, this would be a benchmark which I'd love to be "feasible" in the future, hence my question on future development: if I just forget my phone on my desk and don't touch it, can I come back two days later and have it be not dead?

Of course right now the pinephone is obviously not nearly there yet (and so my question there is more, does anyone know if it will ever be there?). For current use, I'd be content with just having it idle for a day, without having to think about plugging it in every single evening.

Maybe my usecase is a bit unusual, because, especially with the pandemic resulting in remote work etc., I barely need to carry around and use my phone(s) much: this is nice for battery life, but in turn, since I'm not constantly using my phone, it's less of a routine to plug it in all the time. (In contrast, when I was using my smartphone every day while commuting etc., I'd never forget to plug it in in the evening.) Which is why I'm so concerned with the idle battery life, more than anything else: I'm not worried about, say, the battery running out while I'm on the go (in that case, a spare battery is indeed the (excellent) solution); I'm worried about, if I leave my phone on my desk, how often will I have to pick it up just to plug it in, without using it for anything else.

A 24 hour idle charge would be enough to satisfy me, which sounds like it is realistic nowadays? I would still be curious about the prospects for future improvements though, but I suppose I'll have to go ask the devs who are involved with that directly.

[fsflover]

See also:
"Bigger batteries for the Pinephone?"
https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?...7#pid67877

[megous]

Pinephone should be able to do 3 day continuous standby (with modem being able to receive calls/sms) in suspend to RAM state, right now. At least going by the power consumption numbers that I measured directly on the battery pins in suspend.

The reason it can't is probably that autosuspend story in distributions is not that great. They don't suspend the system to RAM soon and often enough.

[displacefish]

Pinephone should be able to do 3 day continuous standby (with modem being able to receive calls/sms) in suspend to RAM state, right now. At least going by the power consumption numbers that I measured directly on the battery pins in suspend.

The reason it can't is probably that autosuspend story in distributions is not that great. They don't suspend the system to RAM soon and often enough.

Seriously? That sounds way more optimistic than anyone is claiming. Given people are throwing out numbers like "20-24 hour idle", and I'm assuming you wouldn't wake up from RAM very often when "idle", it seems weird that that would literally third the battery life.

On the other hand if true, and 3 days is achievable in the (near?) future with some further work on optimising suspend, then that would basically instantly resolve all my doubts.

[Veraendert]

I´ve seen Manjaro running for about 3 days on Twitter somewhere.

Edit: Here it is
https://twitter.com/ManjaroLinux/status/...7265410055