Edd Mills’s Blog

I got my Nokia 6300 about 2 months ago now because I lost my old Samsung D500 while clubbing in London. I made the mistake of wearing jeans with very shallow pockets and it managed to fall out. That or this guy who was harassing me for much of the night stole it. I prefer the latter excuse because it makes me seem less stupid.

Anyway, as much as I adore my new phone (let’s face it, that screen is just gorgeous), the battery life on it is just not good enough. Many people report having to charge nightly, which is just not acceptable for any phone. It’s a waste of power and just an inconvenience if you ever needed to go for more than a day without having access to a power supply. Due to this, I’ve done some research and found out why the battery life is so poor and some solutions to help prolong the battery life.

The main reason for the poor battery life is due to the battery being insufficient for the specification of the phone. It appears to keep the phone as slim as it is, Nokia have put in a relatively old battery; one that they were using in phones that had just 4096 colour screens and the screen itself was perhaps half the size of the 6300’s. Due to this, it is hardly surprising that the 16 million colour screen that graces the 6300 is a power hungry monster.

Before I begin with the solutions you should remember that the battery life will never go beyond 2 or perhaps 3 days. It simply lacks the power. Perhaps if you didn’t use it once, it may stretch beyond 3 days, but even that is doubtful. These tips are just general points to be more power conscious; don’t expect any miracles, the battery is purely insufficient.

Here are my top tips to help prolong the battery life on the phone.:

1. Allow the phone to completely discharge before recharging.
   When it reaches full, take it off the power. Complete this cycle a few times and you may find that the battery life does increase somewhat. Some people have reported being  able to get an extra day or so out of the battery following this procedure.
2. Turn off the screen saver.
   When the screen saver is enabled, the screen stays lit up for quite a while after you have locked the keypad. This drains power needlessly so I recommend you turn this off.
3. Turn sleep mode off.
   Yes, I know what you’re thinking but you can save your battery by turning this feature off. If you have sleep mode on, the screen goes completely blank when the phone isn’t being used. This means that if you want to check the time, see if you have a new text message or anything else, you need to get the screen to come on in its entirety. If you keep sleep mode off, you can quickly look at your phone to check these things without enabling the screen every time. This should help reduce battery life because you won’t have the screen on and off all the time.
4. Press the red soft key (the button you use to hang up) after you have locked the keypad.
   This forces the phone’s screen to turn off much more rapidly than if left to its own devices.
5. Don’t leave the bluetooth or GPRS on.
   Only enable bluetooth when you need it and set your GPRS settings so that it only comes on when it is required. Leaving it on constantly is pointless and a waste of your precious battery life.
6. Send a text instead of calling where possible.
   Sadly, calling is one of the worst things to affect your battery on this phone so where possible, send a text instead. Bit of a tenuous solution, but nevertheless something to bear in mind.

If anyone else has any top tips to helping  improve the battery life, please leave them as a comment and I’ll add them on to this list.