Nokia Releases Official Statement On Power Consumption Issues In Lumia 800 Devices

We all know that few early Nokia Lumia 800 devices has some issues with battery firmware that led to less batterylife. Few weeks ago, Nokia promised software updates that will improve the battery performance on Lumia 800 devices and even Stephen Elop himself replied to an email stating the same. Today in Nokia Support Discussions page, Nokia released its detailed statement on this issue,

On Monday 12th December some of our customers started to comment in various social media that the preloaded diagnostics tool in some of the Nokia Lumia 800 phones was showing lower battery capacity than expected. We immediately started to investigate these reports and can now confirm that while the battery itself is fine, a software problem on certain variants is limiting the phone’s ability to access the full battery capacity. We want to stress that this issue has not been found to affect the recently introduced Nokia Lumia 710.

The good news is that as this is a software problem it can be easily resolved.  The planned software update in early 2012, as well as including many performance enhancements, will also include a fix that will enable the affected phones to access the total battery capacity.  For anyone who does not want to wait for the software update, Nokia can arrange for a replacement phone.  Anyone who requires any further clarification should contact Nokia Care (Care contact details and locations can be found at www.Nokia.com/support).

Anyone who wants to know if their phone is affected can run the battery status test from the diagnostics tool already installed on their phone. (The tool is designed for service use and only displays approximate values.) Dialling ##634# opens the diagnostics tool. By accepting the disclaimer and then selecting ‘Battery Status’ from the list of options, anyone will be able to see their available battery charge capacity.  If your full charge capacity reads less than 1000 mAh then your phone is affected with this specific issue and you may find it is necessary to charge your phone more frequently than normal.  Once the software update has been applied, you should experience much better battery life. In the meantime here are some tips on how to increase your battery performance and you should also make sure you are using the charger that came with the phone, as older chargers may not be as effective at charging the new Nokia Lumia 800. 

Nokia also confirmed that new production model of Lumia 800 devices such as the ones shipping in India, Singapore, etc, are free from this issue and if any customer faces this issue can contact Nokia Care for further support.

Source: Nokia