Nokia N95 Tips and Tricks

This tips and tricks section will be split into two halves; 1. Improving battery life, as anyone who owns a N95 will know the battery drains pretty quickly. 2. Other tips and tricks that might be useful.

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.