Source Of Battery Drain: NFC Always On *Temporary + Permanent Fix* 2ND UPDATE

Source Of Battery Drain: NFC Always On Temporary + Permanent Fix 2ND UPDATE

December 23, 2013 by JollaTides

Running On Sailfish Version: 1.0.2.5

Our friend and fellow co-writer Simo as you probably know has been doing some great work to try and address current battery drain issues reported by some new Jolla owners.

To see the full report by Simo, you can visit the following link: http://reviewjolla.blogspot.ro/2013/12/jolla-battery-life-power-consumption.html

From all the battery usage raw data you guys sent in (thanks!), Simo concluded that the NFC always on status was one of the main causes of battery drain. The main problem it seems is the NFC connection that exists between the Jolla and other half.

To alleviate this issue, one user has already decided to remove the NFC chip to see if it makes a difference, while our other co-writer Jukka, has put some tin foil on the NFC chip to limit the connection.

However, we don’t expect you to perform either of those solution as Jolla’s Chief Engineer Harri Hakulinen has been on the case and has already endorsed the following solution via twitter:

Deactivation of TOH via command line (devel-su; systemctl stop tohd.service) seems to stop the bat. drain for me ! #jolla thx @simoruoho

— okerampa (@okerampa) December 23, 2013

Okerampa reports a temporary stop to the battery drain issues by typing the following code into terminal:

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devel-su
systemctl stop tohd.service

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After you are prompted for a password, you need to type the password set in the developer tools screen by adding a password in the ‘remote connection’ section.

We’ve just run this code in terminal on our Jolla and will report here if there is an improvement to battery consumption if you would prefer to wait for the results. ;-) EDIT: There definitely seems to be so far…

This is only a temporary fix and will need to be inputed each time in terminal after a reboot. At least by running this code you could see if temporarily disabling NFC does indeed help improve your battery life.

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If you would like a more permanent fix once you’ve tested the temporary solution to see if it makes a difference, you can use the following code typed into terminal (as directed by Simo – thanks!):

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devel-su <- you command your terminal to enter developer superuser mode
(your password) <- note: invisible writing. Jolla confirms that you are the superuser
systemctl mask tohd.service <- you put a mask to a buggy service commanding NFC chip
systemctl stop tohd.service <- you stop the service
exit <- you leave the devel-su mode
exit <- you leave the terminal (it closes)

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If you ever want to restore to original settings, you can use the following code:

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devel-su <- you command your terminal to enter developer superuser mode
(your password) <- note: invisible writing. Jolla confirms that you are the developer.
systemctl unmask tohd.service <- you take the mask away, so the system can find the service again
systemctl start tohd.service <- you start the service
exit <- you leave the devel-su mode
exit <- you leave the terminal (it closes)

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NB. I have personally tested both temporary and permanent fixes and they do seem to have made a difference (after only short observation time).

Finally, here is the official statement from Harri;

Obviously, NFC is NOT intended to be on all the time, in fact it should be on only when TOH is not attached to main unit. So there is clear bug somewhere in TOH daemon or drivers delow.

If you solve this yourself by removing NFC tag from TOH, most likely you will loose that tag forever, because the glue used on that is so strong that it is difficult to remove it without breaking it.

So if possible, wait until we can provide fix for this problem. Now the challenge is that we are supposed to be on Christmas holiday on this week, after very busy fall with long hours for everybody. So at least I would not like to push anyone to fix this in a week or so. Maybe we can do hotfix for this in January, lets see.

Agan, thank you Simo and everyone that has provided input data for this exercise. We can do this #together !