I am getting 17h of battery time on my Librem5. Are you?

[intergalacticllama]

I know, I know, you all know.

But, I just dropped in to share my jaw dropping results. Details:

1. I got my phone earlier this year, maybe March?

2. Could not really start prepping it for daily driving because battery life would be an issue.

3. I picked it up again, updated everything and resat the battery in the device to make sure everything is starting from scratch. The first thing that I wanted to do was turn on the wlan/bluetooth (not modem and not camera), charge it up, put it on the table and see how long it lasts.

4. The results over 3 days of testing are basically 17 hours. Dear lord almighty. This is amazing. Here are the results over the last 3 days:

start: 9:12 am
start power: 95%
end: 1:09 am next day
end power: 13%
Total:15.7h

–

start: 8:40am
end tume: 1:53am
start power: 99%
end power: 6%
Total: 17.13h

–

start: 7:24am
start power: 99%
end time: 0:33am
end power: 0%
Total: 17.15h

This is so impressive to me. I do expect to have issues with phone calls and texting but if it is bearable enough, maybe the L5 can become a daily driver for me. Freedom is worth the price.

I know a bunch of people got hurt during the chyna virus crisis. Knowing about business, I am actually surprised Purism survived. I truly am surprised, this company was in the cross hairs of going bust given the extreme hardware niche they are in. Regardless, I know a bunch of buyers got hurt and I recognise that as a sacrifice for a better tomorrow for all. I hope you guys get some restitution, but in a way that doesn’t tank Puri.sm, whose vision and tenacity is going to be hugely important going forward.

However, was that pain worth it? Right now, YES, absolutely selfishly yes. To have a phone of this quality, this configuration that gets 17h of time sitting on the desk, this means we are entering a whole new era. I also CANNOT believe I have a device that has 3 buttons to turn off the modem / wifi devices. If the L5 can become a daily for me, this is going to be a game changer for me. I need to keep my phone in my pocket and when I do that I need to turn off the microwave emitting devices to minimize exposure. I don’t care what the science says about the dissipation being proportional to the square root of the frequency.

As a side point, I copy pasted the above results via reverse ssh’ing into my L5 over different subnets. FINALLY. A proper computing environment on my device.

Great thanks to the Librem team, to the tenacity of the leadership to do what needed to be done to survive and to all those that either paid the price or are committed to the product line, the vision of freedom for all and to building out a vibrant community of collaborators. Some of you have been building cases for this things, that was a really amazing read as well.

Is everyone else getting long battery life? Any daily drivers here getting 8h of battery life?

[irvinewade]

The obvious question: do you have suspend enabled or disabled?

[intergalacticllama]

Screenshot:

[ASwyD2]

(Just a tip: If you scroll down to the bottom of the power menu, you can turn the battery % on)

[intergalacticllama]

Aha! Done. Thanks. Still learning the mobile environment, much appreciated.

[intergalacticllama]

Maybe it’s time to test what happens on suspend mode. Anyone here want to post their times? Might be a fun competition.

[amarok]

It’s not a competition; it’s a joint [ad]venture.

[FranklyFlawless]

@intergalacticllama

Is everyone else getting long battery life? Any daily drivers here getting 8h of battery life?

Yes, that is normal for me, even when I run Shortwave in the background the entire day. I have not scientifically measured how long it could last using Shortwave or not though; I hardly have the time nor interest.

[OpojOJirYAlG]

I find that a single 1 hour phone call uses around 60-80% of the battery and the phone gets quite warm.

[adamk]

When playing a FHD video with e.g. VLC, the battery lasts ~3:15h and the phone gets very warm.

[FranklyFlawless]

That makes sense: video is always demanding on the CPU and screen.

[Dlonk]

I continue to try to daily drive L5. What holds me back and keeps me going back to Android is the Signal Messenger, which seems like maybe a government psyop app.

I don’t use the suspend mode because I like for the L5 to be able to wake me up in the morning. But what has been working for me is that I bought two extra batteries, then got a Liberty Phone (to get more storage and RAM) but that means now I have 4 batteries if I don’t use the older low-power L5 much.

So whenever I get low on battery, I rip it out and switch to a full battery. I have 3 chargers that are almost always sitting in outlets, so I generally never charge the phone. It’s honestly quite nifty and seems preferable to the alternatives when I get the system going.

[OpojOJirYAlG]

@Dlonk

I have 3 chargers that are almost always sitting in outlets, so I generally never charge the phone.

If I’m reading this correctly, you have battery chargers for the librem 5 batteries themselves? If so do you have a link to where I could acquire such a charger? I see where I can buy more batteries from purism but would need to swap them to charge them in the phone which is less than ideal.

[2disbetter]

I assume this is with nothing open. Are you opening any applications and leaving them running?

Because 17 hours of completely on is very impressive. If just closing things when not using it will help me reach those numbers that isn’t too bad. Currently I am able to get through a whole day at work with it, but this is a combination of use (mild) with a lapdock plugged in and compensating power (but not charging), and the phone in suspend.

I get home with usually around 20-30% on it.

[OpojOJirYAlG]

Running as a wifi hotspot (cycling the modem killswitch as needed to keep the internet connection functional) gets about 5 hours of battery life.

[intergalacticllama]

@OpojOJirYAlG

he phone gets quite war

that is interesting. I will need to test this.

[intergalacticllama]

WOW. Just wow.

I just completed a test with suspend turned on. Results:

1. With suspend turned on battery set to 1 min:

start: 7:16 am
start power: 95%
end time:10:45 am (next day)
end power: 9%
Total: : 27.5 h

I don’t know where to begin with this. Dear lord this is amazing. Can I inline screenshots here:

I started with a 5 minute suspend as follows:

Then I changed it to a 1 minute suspend as follows:

I only had WIFI / BLUETOOTH button on, the MODEM and CAMERA buttons are turned off just like in the original test.

2. Did you guys know that the Librem 5 wakes from suspend immediately?

I checked the progress of the phone every few hours just out of curiosity, then went to sleep. There is literally no difference between suspend and no suspend for me as a user when waking the device. When I was checking the the battery life progress, I would wake the phone instantly and I could see the icon on the login screen connecting to my wifi which seemed to connect successfully every time, including just now so I could download screenshots and the text file with the data.

This is on a completely different level. I have never had an Android device that could do this, and my current android has a difficult time responding to my wake request just from normal power down during daily use.

I have had iPhones but that was many years ago so I don’t know what the situations is like over there.

This kind of device usability and responsiveness is from another world.

Simply unbelievable. 27.5h on suspend.

[intergalacticllama]

@intergalacticllama

sting. I will need to t

I will try this out as well.

[intergalacticllama]

Just to confirm, there are no apps running during the test, correct.

This is Linux so, unless them implement some sort of policy mechanism to suspend apps in the background like on Android, they are going to be running just like they would on a desktop. However, I just completed a test with suspend and I got 27.5 h with 1 min suspend, wifi/blootooth button turned on, the other two buttons turned off and no apps running.

You have 30% left after a full day of basic / low usage? Neat, that is probably good enough for me, thanks for that datapoint.

[intergalacticllama]

Oh, wait a minute. You run a hotspot? Are any client devices able to browse the internet? When I turn on the hotspot, neither my clients nor my clients can browse the internet.

This device is not on a data plan so it might be because it is not configured to be connected to a wifi router and act as an access point at the same time. This is not a feature that I need but I will have to do some troubleshooting. Just curious about the results of your wifi capability.