I want to start this post by making sure you all understand that the Nokia N900 I am testing is a pre-production model and now that we have word the N900 is delayed as Nokia refines the software many things that I am having issues with may be resolved and not even present on shipping N900 devices. I imagine that one are where many optimizations will occur is in battery life and efficient resource management. Given this disclaimer, here are some initial battery life figures to consider.
I have not yet run a test of video or music playing constantly and will try to do so over the next week. I conducted this first battery test with real life usage, which is how I use my device. I had the following up and running when I started with a full charged battery:
* Maaku with two Twitter accounts being updated every 5 minutes
* Push email with Mail for Exchange
* IMAP email with 2 accounts updating every 15 minutes
* 45 minutes of active web surfing, Mauku usage, and general device navigation (on the train)
* Active and updating home screen widgets (AP News, Facebook, Mauku)
* Connected via T-Mobile 3G and EDGE with WiFi and Bluetooth turned off
At 4 and a half hours I received the battery low warning. The battery ran out after for 4 hours, 45 minutes and the device shut down. After realizing Maaku was updating every 5 minutes, I went in and changed this to 30 minutes for automatic updating (you can always manually update). I will conduct more tests, but wanted to give you a feel for how things are going so far.