Librem 5 Battery Life has been Doubled

Hi, what battery lifetime can people here achieve? I have Librem 5 Europe, and find that even with wifi / broadband / bluetooth off, battery life is about 24 hours. Automatic suspend is also on. Phone was updated a couple of days ago when I received it (do I need to check again?). Any other suggestions to improve things?

Hi LHEng,

before it was about 10 Hours. So you have the up to date power saving for experience. What you can do? Just wait up till the Developers improve more.

And in addition, if i am not totally wrong. On new Phones there was something like a battery calibrate time. Its good to have some cycles of nearly complete draining and recharging to 100% (the Red Light will turn off) to train the Powermanager with the right capability.

The First two days i did not enable Automatic Suspend, surfed over Wlan. Done a two hour walk with hearing a podcast and using the Headphones. And later the Day my phone power down, seconds ago showed 20% Battery.

Oh and for the summer season: If you can try to keep your phone not at high temperatures in the sun and charge in cool rooms.

Regards,

Chris

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Thanks Christa. Interesting, and good to know I haven’t been doing things too far wrong!
I do have an indication in the power settings of battery % and time to “run down” - although this morning, it gave me 52% and 2 hours, but later 50% and 4 hours (no settings changed) so maybe a guide rather than an absolute.

It will check automatically according to its schedule.

Thanks irvinewade.

Depends i think i get 5-6 hours with suspend. So the improvement is not universal.

These graphs show that the phone has been used for majority of its runtime, only being suspended a few times for short periods of time. 5-6 hours sound reasonable for such scenario.

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Ok thanks, I think I need to redo these without incessantly waking the phone! The Power graph shows maybe ~10 or more suspend periods but they are rather short compared to use period.

Really? I unplugged Librem 5 (this morning) at 6 am and at 11 am battery is dead. Since this is more akin to a small laptop than a phone, wouldn’t it be helpful to close programs so they are not running 24/7? Having to charge it every 5 hrs, even when powered off renders it unusable. I cannot discover how to shut down programs (apps) that I open!

Which programs continue to run on your L5 after you close them?

“librem 5 tour” should be the first app to run.
also, touch the battery in the notification area, then select automatic suspend (when on battery)

I think it isn’t as aggressive with shutting down app processes as iOS is for instance, but I am pretty sure they stop running when you close them, or when moving the app into the background - though i might be mistaken there. Ideally only the app process should be running for the app you are currently viewing - everything else / even when open, should be frozen somehow (akin to app suspend, instead of phone suspend).

That is what i am typically experiencing too, with using the phone and occasionally having it suspend. So doesn’t seem out of the ordinary. Its running a desktop level OS after all. For me the runtime seems to be the worst when streaming video with Electron apps, or in the FF Browser - it gobbles up a lot of power and maybe related to software encoding being used at 480 resolution (30fps).

Strangely enough i a so sure that used to be able to stream Electron video from Youtube at higher resolution >480 without any issues, but that doesn’t work any longer so something broke in the last year with updates (maybe related to WIFI issues as well since connection doesn’t last). Selecting

I really have to be sure I not only close by swiping up when the app is full screen, but also swipe up when showing in the top part of the screen (running in background?). As long as I remember to do both, and switch off wifi / net when I’m not using them (auto suspend on at 5 mins), I get somewhere between 12 and 24 hours between charges, depending on use.

The apps are only minimized up there, as far as I know, so they should be still running, waiting for you to come back to them. Just like on a desktop computer or laptop.

On Android (a different kind of system, of course), when you leave an app for a different app, they do suspend until next use, I think. (Except for the Google spyware, of which you can’t ever be sure.)

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Yes, amarok, I agree Its different to Android in that respect, perhaps more like iphone - my OH often seems to have to do a similar “second dismiss” on iOS to make sure everything is closed.

In my opinion, 8-11 hours battery life makes the phone useless…

If you use some apps or if you surf at the internet, after 7 hours the battery life is dead. That is even not valid for a day at work :frowning:

That depends if you have the ability to glue your eyes to the screen for 7 hours straight.

A hypothetical scenario:

You are a night shift security guard at a museum. 10-hour shifts. You’ve got your flashlight. Your trusty baton. And your beloved Librem 5. Luckily there are very few trespassers, jewel thieves, or supernatural forces around, so you have the luxury of spending most of the shift at your desk when not on short patrols or restroom breaks.

Your employer understands it’s a boring job so they thankfully allow you to surf the web while on the clock, but there’s no power outlet and power bricks don’t fit well in your pocket. Typical. Well, suspend works, so that’s pretty cool, but where’s the fun in that? You watch a couple cat videos in Firefox, browse the dank memes in Tuba, and check to make sure your paycheck went through in you banking app via WayDroid. It did. Nice.

Low battery alert. F. You still have 3 hours remaining in your shift and are on the last episode of the series in Jellyfin. The last episode was such a cliffhanger, too. OH! Something startles you out of your seat, but it wasn’t an apparition or sudden overamplified commercial about yet another streaming service. No, that was last night. You jumped out of your chair because you remembered that you bought a spare battery for the Librem 5 and even remembered to bring it with you this time!!

You triumphantly turn off the phone, pop the rear cover off, and slip that glorious fresh dose of zappy juice into the phone. Relieved, you settle comfortably back into your chair. 99% charged. You pop up Jellyfin again and smile. Life is good.

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This is very close to what happened to me while working a night shift at my sort-of-a-second-job.
Not much to do there but look at my phone, and there’s no damn USB-C cords at that place for some reason.
But I had another battery!

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