Battery draining quickly on new
pinephone
Batterylife is one of the weaknesses of the Pinephone.
For me, the battery lasts about one hour during active use. In standby mode, the battery lasts about 8 hours.
Believe me, it was much worse two years ago.
It is advisable to always take a power bank with you when you leave the house.
Also, some activities particularly drain the battery, e.g., scanning for WiFi networks.
Sometimes, I have also run into a bug where the earpiece would not silence completely, but produce some noise, draining the battery quickly. Put your ear next to the earpiece and check if you can hear any noise, and if yes, try playing with the audio settings (switching the output back and forth) until the noise goes away. Though that bug might have been fixed months ago, I have not run into it recently.
But yes, the battery life could be longer.
The battery life is a joke. The charging has gotten better since the beginning but the battery usage is still as bad.
Recently the phone was sitting next to me and was connected to the charger. Suddenly it reported a notification that the battery was low. The battery was completely drained by an idle phone that was charging. I didn’t really look into what was causing it since nobody cares about any bug reports anyway.
If the pinephone is discharging while connected to the charger, the adapter is probably not supplying enough energy. You need an adapter with 5V 3A to charge.
An stated it’s the official one I used for ages. A reboot fixed the issue.
But it seems the latest round of updates have messed with the battery usage/charging in a big way. I have serious issues getting the phone charged up and it keeps draining the battery even while connected.
The phone is either idle or I have a single open App in Waydroid. The same thing I have been doing for weeks/months now (mostly) without any issues.
I have it connected to the charger and the local network via the dock. It seems removing the dock and using the charger directly improves the charging situation albeit just slightly.
powertop doesn’t work so I cannot tell what is draining it. Based on top there’s nothing running out of the ordinary with much CPU usage but I have no data from before the update to compare with.
I just realized I still had the Wi-Fi activated (it was not connected though) although I have not been using it at all and that improved things a lot. But that had been the status quo for weeks/months now, so it’s weird it suddenly is an issue.
Nonsense. My 5V 2A adapter is definitely sufficient, and as far as I know, the PinePhone does not even support fast charging with 3A.
And most definitely not with the USB C-A cable and a USB A power adapter. Fast charging can only possibly work with USB Power Delivery, which only works on USB C. Any fast charging protocols for USB A are proprietary and vendor-specific. (But as far as I know, USB Power Delivery fast charging is not currently supported by the kernel either, and it might not even be supported by the hardware.)
So I doubt the PinePhone will actually draw 3A from your 3A adapter and I doubt it will charge any faster than with a 2A one. In any case, it is not required.
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Has it gotten any better?
I’m planning to use the pinephone as my daily phone.
I had to buy a better charger, because my old one couldn’t even handle it.
It’s now permanently in the charger, everything turned off and it’s still under 90%.
What DE are you using? Might be that it reports charge compared to absolute maximum, even when default settings usually limit the charge voltage below maximum.
I read him state 8 hours of standby time, that i can at least report being fixed and it manages well over 24hrs.
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Manjaro Plasma.
I’m planning to use Phosh.
Phosh is the more mature release for sure, plasma had way too many bugs last time i tried. Next time i will try it when plasma6 is released to see if there is noticeable increase in code quality.
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