I received my Librem 5 on Christmas Eve. Charged it all day, then left it idle overnight, and the battery was completely discharged by morning. No SIM card installed, but WiFi was active.
I do not regret being an early supporter of the Librem 5 project. I waited for Evergreen because I wanted the final implementation after initial bugs had been worked out, but I am a little disappointed that it will not replace my current phone. I need a phone that will get through at least a full day of use, and the Librem 5 isn’t it. Toting extra batteries and a charger is not an option for me.
I hope the Librem 5 continues to evolve and some future version will have decent battery life. Until then, I’m stuck on a Google-infected Android phone for “real life”, but I’ll continue to play with the Librem 5 because it’s an amazing accomplishment, poor battery life notwithstanding.
Librem 5 has no sleep mode yet. In other words, it was working the whole night. Taking it into consideration, it has a pretty decent batter life. Not perfect, but good. When sleep is implemented, expect a tremendous improvement immediately.
That would make a huge difference. Good to know; thanks. I look forward to future software updates which will no doubt continuously improve Librem 5’s functionality.
Yeah, you can think of the Librem 5 right now as a laptop that’s on but with the screen blank, whereas most phones essentially suspend whenever the screen is blank. Suspend will come, but we have been prioritizing run time battery life first because we think that’s more important (my laptop can last for days when suspended, but I’d be upset if it only lasted 2-3 hours when running). As a result the Librem 5 actually does have impressive run time battery life, I’d argue equal or even better in some cases than other phones, but the idle time battery life won’t be as competitive until we implement suspend.
I ordered a pre-paid $10/month SIM card from Red Pocket so I can play with the Librem 5 while keeping my “daily driver” Google-infested Android phone active. It’s a lot of fun being on the bleeding edge of something like the Librem 5.
I have been using sudo poweroff and the battery is still dead within 12-18 hours (I do not have an exact time, after charging it to 100%, I try to power on my Librem 5 the next day and it is dead). Does system halt instead go into standby or maybe I have faulty a battery?
It doesn’t seem like a valid review to me. You are an early supporter and therefore I believe you have followed the project and you know that the suspension is not yet functional. So, you get a phone you’ve been waiting for 3 years, you don’t try it (maybe you have a simulator and you already know how it works), you charge it during the day and leave it at night with wifi: how much 8 hours? After about 8 hours it is drained and you say “hey, that’s not good for me”.
Personally I have been waiting for the phone since October 2017 and it is an amazing achievement that it exists and I look forward to it. If necessary, I will carry the charger on me and I will charge it when possible, normally I don’t live in the woods and there is always an electrical outlet.
regards.
Let’s just talk (before you get an adequate/proper answer). I’m using sudo shutdown -hF now for years on my laptop and wouldn’t expect to lose more than 5-10% of my full battery after I put any laptop aside for around 24 hours.
man poweroff and man shutdown are belonging currently to systemd 247. Is there any difference between poweroff and shutdown commands (or is it --halt option the most important one to call)?. Is there any preference we should be aware of (with Librem 5)? How about using (explanation is here): systemctl start poweroff.target --job-mode=replace-irreversibly
Your question is important to me too and further useful reading is here:
The battery currently only lasts between 6 and 14 hours, depending on what you have enabled. Remember that Purism hasn’t yet enabled suspend-to-RAM, so the phone is constantly running and constantly draining the battery. (See the FAQ answer in the link above.)
If you aren’t able to recharge the battery when the phone is plugged in, then you should contact Purism support. Also keep in mind that battery charging is currently limited to 0.5 amps, so it takes about 4 hours to recharge a battery with 0% charge. This should improve soon.
Unplug the USB cable before initiating power off. There is a quirk that makes it discharge when off if you turn it off with USB connected and unplug later.
That said, the rate of discharge should be low and definitely not enough to discharge the whole battery overnight, so I wonder what happened there.
My question for the OP of this thread is why you place value in the phone based on how long it took to discharge over night. I am considering buying a Tesla (an electric battery powered vehicle). I know that I would not be happy with a Tesla if I routinely leave it unplugged in my garage over night. I have read articles about people with Teslas and how they manage their need for additional charging times when compared to a quick refueling of gasoline of most other vehicles. Tesla owners are usually very happy about the added benefits of that kind of vehicle and they find work-arounds for the drawbacks related to more frequent twenty-minute charging stops every 150 miles or so when on long trips. So even long trips are still convenient for them, despite a few small changes in how they need to plan how they use the vehicle in certain cases. And still, people pay significantly more money for a vehicle that has this significant limitation because they really like other features of that vehicle.
At the end of each day, I plug my Android phone in to charge over night. If I use it before going to bed, I use it while plugged-in. In the morning, I start my day with a freshly charged battery. I plan to do the same with my Librem 5. I could charge my phone battery on the drive in to work. I could plug my phone in and set it down next to my PC while I work throughout the day. As long as the battery doesn’t die when I get up to use the bathroom or while eating lunch, I’ll never run out of battery power. Just to be safe, I’ll probably carry a spare battery for my Librem 5. On the drive home I could plug it in. When I get home at the end of the day, I plug my Android phone in now anyway. So like the Tesla, I’ll be willing to make slight modifications to how I accommodate the needs of the Librem 5. Even on a long day away from the office, It’ll present no real loss, just some required planning, the same as you would plan your refueling of a Tesla. My Motorola Droid of ten tears ago had the same limitations. I kept it plugged in a lot.
So I wouldn’t be quick to compare the Librem 5 to your latest Samsung device and dismiss the Librem 5 because of the need to keep it plugged in more of the time, anymore than I would take a pass on a Tesla for that same reason.
For those here who haven’t yet rode in a Tesla, there’s nothing else like it. The best comparison is to that of some rides at an amusement park, the kind that pick you up so fast you’ve never felt that kind of acceleration anywhere else. And when you hit the pedal, you don’t have to wait for a long series of mechanical things to happen before the increased amount of gasoline ignites to eventually speed up the vehicle. The electrons hit those motor windings and picks you up before that pedal even hits the floor. Until you get used to it, the increased power and faster response time can actually be a safety hazard (according to a friend of mine that has one and gave me a ride in it). Maybe some day we’ll have free phones that provide similar amazing performance features.
I think it is again a usage pattern based on personal preferences (tastes). Eg. I’m used to a habit to charge my phone once a week, I was doing it for several years with my Jolla phone (also a linux phone) and when it reached the planned obsolescence (os updates are still provided but the platform is not optimized anymore for this phone) I was choosing other phones with the same criteria in mind (to last for at least 5 days without re-charge). What that means is till the L5 phone hits that bar I won’t be able to use it as a daily driver. But I know it is possible and it has enough potential to reach that point (solid battery capacity and mainline kernel/stack). So to me it is just a matter of time (and effort).
I hope we are able to decide the charging amps. I prefer .5 amps when charging as it is, from my understanding, better for battery longevity. I charge at night anyway so I don’t care how long it takes to charge.
If your comments are directed at me (i.e. the person who started this topic), you are out of line and obviously did not read through all of the thread. I’m happy that carrying a charger around works for you, but it doesn’t work for me. In fact, I did not know that suspend has not been implemented until I posted this and saw the first response. I did not realize that being an early supporter (which I am, and I also have a Librem 13, FYI) required that I follow all the details of the project. If you’d bothered to read the entire thread before posting a flame response, you would have seen that I have ordered a prepaid SIM card to use with the L5 until the software is mature enough for the L5 to be my only phone.
It’s people like you and responses like this that make forums an inhospitable place. Grow up.
Ha ha. Life in the development fast lane! Some days the magic works, some days it doesn’t.
Purism has chosen a difficult path, and I think they are staying true to their vision, as much as they can. Bumps in the road and dead ends are part of the process of figuring out how to implement the vision.
I need a phone that can go at least 24 hours on a charge, that’s why I “place value” on the fact that after a full charge it sat idle and couldn’t make it to the next morning. That doesn’t fit my use model or my needs. I posted my experience here, and within minutes got a kind response saying that suspend is not implemented, which (as I replied at the time) makes a huge difference.
Then the flames started. You know who you are, and you make posting to this forum an unpleasant experience.
This one I already figured out. No, it is dead being left unplugged overnight and executing sudo poweroff. No LCD, no LED. dead. I assumed it was due to something always being on and power management stilling being in development.
A general thing to try in some cases is to unplug the battery for a few seconds and connect it. Sometimes phones get stuck in some twilight zone that only can be fixed that way. It happened once with my L5 that it wouldn’t start even with a full battery.