Also got my Chestnut yesterday but struggling with battery life

Hardware Librem 5
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Since this is my first post and still early in the new year i will start with a hello and a happy new year to all of you (well at least to all who read this post :slight_smile: )

I got my Librem 5 yesterday after i had to wait another day because of customs/delivery issues.

Since i could not wait any longer i took it out of the box and switched it on. As i found out later the manual said i should have charged it for at least an hour before switching it on. I was quite surprised that the battery indicator showed 3 bars (full). I browsed through the settings menu for a few minutes and the phone got quite hot but having read about these issues in the blog post i thought is was ok. A few minutes later i got the notification that the battery is running low an not long afterwards a second on that the phone is shutting down.

So i connected it to the charger and it seemed to charge fine (red led was on). I went away for a few hours and when i came back the led was off so i assume it was fully charged. I tried to switch it on (with the charger connected) but nothing happened. I unplugged the charger and tried it again, then the phone booted up. The battery indicator just showed a ‘?’. I looked around in the terminal and under /sys/class/power_supply i only had the entry for the TI chip. I shutdown the phone, removed the battery and put it back in (the phone booted up directly, i did not have to press any button). This time the battery indicator showed 2 bars and i got more entries under /sys/class/power_supply.

Up until now i toyed around some more and have fully charged it three or four times and having the issue with the ‘?’ in the battery indicator one more time. The phone is shutting down after about 10-20 minutes because of low power even if i have the charger connected (red LED in on) while using it.

Am i the only one with this problem or is the runtime of the phone generally this bad?
Reading posts from Todd and i think is was Kyle saying they are or will soon be using this as their daily driver i expected a bit more.

Does anyone have hints on where to look to fix the problem or check if maybe the battery is broken?

And since i don’t want this first post to sound only negative… When its running the phone is quite cool, the keyboard is good and easy to type on (only switching between the maps (characters/numbers etc) i often have to press the button twice. And i’m missing some keys for working in the terminal e.g. Tab, Control etc. but i’m sure there is a solution for that i just didn’t have the time yet to work on it since my bluetooth keyboard worked great.

I really do appreciate any help and hope you will all have a nice weekend. Regards,

Jan

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On reddit someone wrote that the battery in their Chestnut phone lasted for “roughly 2 1/2 hours of active use”: https://www.reddit.com/r/Purism/comments/ejuoei/chestnut_review_initial_impressions/

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I also received my Chestnut yesterday night and my short experience is that battery lasts around 2-3 hours.

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There might be solution for your problem. Check this page:

https://docs.puri.sm/Librem_5/Troubleshooting.html#recharging-procedure

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Just to be sure that you are not hitting the same issue that I am, mine is crashed when it goes to suspend mode I had to disable auto suspend in power settings.

I initially tough that the battery was faster than the 1-2 hours of other people, but it was caused by the suspend crash.

And on the phone that I have it always crash I always have to press power button for 15 seconds to boot up the phone.

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If the problem is not solved within the next days, send it back since you have only 14 days warranty on this batch.

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Gallig if you return it do you have to pay the VAT again, being international shipping I’m guessing that’s not going to be cheap?

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I guess i have to pay the VAT for a new phone but there is a way to get the VAT back but i have to proof that i returned it. Like with everthing in Germany there might be a lot of bureaucracy around it :slight_smile:

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Fixed it for you. :rofl:

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Right now i am trying to “recalibrate” the battery maybe this will fix the problem. When the phone shut down automatically after the notification that the battery is low. I removed the battery and put it back in. The phone booted up and i left it at the initial lock screen. It kept running for over an hour so the battery was definitely not empty when the phone told me so. I tried to switch it on again but it showed the yellow led… So now the battery was really empty.
Currently it is charging for over 1,5 hours. I will wait until the red led goes out and see how it runs then.

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Happy new year to you too :slight_smile: As far as I understand it, the pureos is like a rolling release distro in that upgrades (and to power management too) will be pushed to you as updates as they are ready (so your phone will grow into the same phone software wise as later versions)