The Nokia Lumia 920 battery life has surprised me on a few occasions. For instance, a few days ago my battery was dead after 6 hours. I made a few small tweaks to my settings and the next day I was going on 11-12 hours of moderate to heavy use and still had plenty of hours left.
Impressive? Follow my tips to get similar results
The good news is the settings you must tweak to get good battery life out of your Nokia Lumia 920 are not drastic nor do they cut down much on your phone experience. I’m not a fan of dropping the screen brightness to the lowest setting or turning off all connectivity options. I hate when I’m told to make fewer calls or turn off my email. That’s just dumb. Why get a smartphone if you can’t use all of its features? If you play your cards right (optimize your settings) you should easily get through a day or more of moderate to heavy use on the Nokia Lumia 920.
Have a look at these battery saving tips that not only applies to the Nokia Lumia 920 but all Windows Phone 8 devices.
Battery Saving Tips for Nokia Lumia 920 and Windows Phone 8
Screen brightness in Automatic mode is a bit odd.
Turning this setting on will let the phone control the brightness of the display. I’m not telling you to dim your phone to a low setting, so don’t close the page. Here me out!
After testing this out I noticed it goes to extremes when determining how bright and dim the screen will be. This setting makes your display brighter than the highest setting if you controlled it manually. It also dims your screen lower than the lowest setting when in a dark room. You might like the idea of this but I found it to be a huge battery drain. Not only is the phone’s brainpower being used to constantly monitor the surrounding light, but the brightness when in a well-lit room or outside in the sun is brighter than it needs to be — and draining the juice out of your battery.
What to do? Your best option is to set the screen brightness to Medium or High. This will stop the phone from constantly adjusting the brightness and the highest manual brightness setting is great in sunlight. Heck, I use the Medium setting and I can see text just fine in sunny conditions.
If you follow my advice you’ll notice a significant gain in battery life on your Nokia Lumia 920 or HTC 8X.
This tip is officially recommended by Nokia (link at end of the article).
Nokia goofed up and let Nokia Drive run in the background all the time.
This battery-saving tip only pertains to Nokia Lumia devices running the first Windows Phone 8 firmware. I suppose Nokia will fix this issue in an update, but for now this is a crucial step to follow if you’re experiencing battery drain.
Go to Settings > Slide to the Applications page > Select background tasks > Block Nokia Drive+ Beta.
Doing this will not alter your Nokia Drive experience in any way. The driving directions will still run in the background, even when the phone is locked. I’m chalking this up to a bug that Nokia needs to fix asap. Do this and you’ll see a big increase in battery life on the Nokia Lumia 920.
One last thing related to this topic: You might see a few other apps here that don’t need to be running. If you don’t use its live tile and don’t need the notifications “toasts” — block it.
I originally learned this tip at My Nokia Blog.
Back out of the camera application when you’re done.
Here’s another recommendation by Nokia. After you take a picture it’s best to press the Back button before you lock the phone or do something else. The Back button will close the app instead of letting the camera run in the background. If you press the Home button the app is minimized to the background, but still running. Sometimes I purposely leave the camera app running if I modified a setting and know I’ll be taking more photos very soon. But if you’re just one and done – use the Back button instead of the Home button!
By the way… don’t get too paranoid with using the Back button instead of Home. This tip only applies to the camera app. All other apps are “frozen” when minimized and will not consume battery life.
Don’t play games? Disconnect from Xbox LIVE.
If you’re like me there isn’t much time to play games. And when I do it’s a simple game that’s quick and fun. Don’t get me wrong — gaming on the Nokia Lumia 920 is a great experience. But if you don’t do it often then it’s a good idea to turn off the connection to Xbox LIVE syncing.
Go to Settings > Slide to the Applications page > Select games > Turn off “Connect with Xbox.
This feature only works with games marked “Xbox Live” in the Windows Phone Store so if you play one of those regularly you might want to leave this setting turned on.
NFC is great to have… someday.
I don’t have any accessories that use NFC technology — yet. I tested photo and music sharing with my brother’s HTC EVO 4G and the Nokia Lumia 920 is not compatible, or should I say Windows Phone 8 and Android NFC tags are not yet compatible. So basically NFC is useless for me at this time. By default NFC is turned on, so turn it off don’t need it.
Go to Settings > tap+send > and shut it down.
Someday this feature will be a daily use, but that day has yet to come.
Lastly… emergency battery saving “duh” tips.
These are the generic procedures to take for any smartphone. Turn on the Battery Saver Mode under “Battery” in the Settings. This will turn off all app notifications and email. It’s amazing how much extra battery you can get by using this feature. Also turn of WiFi if you’re not using it. Bluetooth. Location. NFC. Mobile data. Oh… and be sure not to use your phone! /sarcasm
Some of these tips came from the official Nokia Troubleshooting Guide for the Nokia Lumia 920 and the Nokia Support Forums.
Let me know if there are any other settings I can tweak that pertain to the Nokia Lumia 920 and Windows Phone 8!
These battery saving tips also work for the Nokia Lumia 820, 822, 810, HTC 8X, 8S, and Samsung ATIV S.
Are you still thinking about purchasing the Nokia Lumia 920. Amazon Wireless has the best prices we’ve found so let us know if you find a better deal!
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has written 457 articles for The Mobile Fanatics.
Mike is the editor-in-chief of The Mobile Fanatics. Contact him via email or at his twitter page.
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