Maximising the Nokia N95 Battery Life.

Now when you first get a Nokia N95 out the box, charge it up, then begin to play with it you notice that after about an hour of play the battery indicator begins to disappear fairly quickly. This seemed strange to me as my previous phone was a Nokia N73 and the battery lasted for absolutely ages, granted there are some features on the N95 that aren’t present on the N73 such as the Wi-Fi and GPS functionality but not enough to warrant such a big battery drain. After much playing around with the phones settings etc I have managed to get my N95’s battery life close to or if not on par with my old N73, nevertheless much improved over the battery life when using the N95 straight out of the box.

Cycle the Battery

The first thing to do to improve the battery life, and the one which I found gave the best battery gain, is to give the battery one complete charge/discharge cycle. When first taking the phone out of the box allow the battery to charge completely before unplugging it from the power adapter. Then do everything you can to drain the battery, turn on the Bluetooth, turn on the Wi-Fi, play music, whatever it takes to drain the battery. Your goal is to drain the battery to the point where it shuts itself off, even when it shuts itself off try and turn it on again and keep draining the battery. Keep doing this till the phone will no longer boot. When this happens take the battery out and wait a few seconds. Replace the battery and attempt to turn it on again, if it turns on then use it till the phone shuts off again. Now place the N95 back on charge and leave until the charging cycle is complete. When using the Nokia N95 now it will seem to last a lot longer on battery before you get warning messages of low battery. I have a theory about how this process seems to increase battery life which may be entirely inaccurate, if so and you know why this has this effect then please share your views via the forum. I believe that this process does not change the battery in any way, rather it serves as a method in which to calibrate the N95 as to how long it can operate with the voltage that remains. Without putting the phone through a complete charge/discharge cycle the N95 has no choice but to refer to its default threshold which may have been set slightly higher when manufactured.

Turn off your Bluetooth.

The next thing to do to increase battery life is to switch the Bluetooth function to off when not in use. This may sound silly but a lot of people forget that their Bluetooth is on throughout the day, this wastes battery power and could also leave you open to an attack on your phone via Bluetooth if left switched on.

Switch off Wi-Fi Scanning.

Wi-Fi much like Bluetooth wastes battery power when in idle use. Make sure you turn this function off when not using it. This then also protects your phone from an attack via Wi-Fi.

Turn off 3G scanning if you don’t use 3G.

Your Nokia N95 by default is set to periodically search for a 3G signal which also contributes to the depletion of the battery, if you don’t use 3G then you can turn 3G scanning off by going to; menu, tools, settings, phone, network – change the network mode setting to ‘GSM’.

The three factors above will greatly increase your battery life, if you wanted to increase the battery life still further than you can perform these tasks as follows;

Adjust the Screen Brightness.

The fact that the screen on your N95 lights up means that it’s wasting energy, You can minimise the waste by turning down the brightness. Go to; menu, tools, settings, general, personalisation, display – change the light sensor from the default position to ‘minimum’.

Adjust the Light Time-Out.

The less time that your screen is lit up for, the more energy you’re going to save.

You can adjust the light time-out by going to; menu, tools, settings, general, personalisation, display – change the light time-out accordingly.

Power Saver Time-Out.

You can also adjust the length of time that the phone waits before going into power save mode. Obviously the sooner the Nokia N95 goes into power save mode, the more battery power you’re going to save.

Go to; menu, tools, settings, general, personalisation, display – reduce the power saver time-out option from 60 seconds to say 30 seconds.

Other Tips and Tricks

Switching Between Silent and General.

Did you know that there was a quick way to switch between the ‘General’ profile and the ‘Silent’ profile on the Nokia N95? With the keypad open just press and hold the ‘#’ key.

Reducing the Time Between Image Captures.

Does it frustrate you that when you want to take photos in fairly quick succession you have to wait for the N95 to display the previously captured image before it will let you progress? Did you know that you can turn this feature off. When in the camera mode press options, settings – change the show captured image option to ‘off’. The time between image captures is greatly reduced.

Go straight to Your Music.

If you press and then keep hold of the multimedia key it will cause you to go straight to your music player.

I hope these tips and tricks help you get the most out of your Nokia N95. If you have any additional tips then please add them to forum

For more tips, tricks, reviews, how-to’s, visit John’s Reviews

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