Battery barely lasts 8 hours !

[kentpowley]

When I first got my 8800 the battery life was great.
It has now been about a month and for some reason, it is not holding a charge very well at all now.

Normally, I plug it in to charge when I get home from work, and let it charge overnight - only unplugging it when I leave for work.
It "has" been giving me great battery performance - (almost 3 days of standby/phone usage).

In fact, after a full night's charge - after I unplug it (and don't use it), in about 30 minutes, the battery indicator will have changed to show the battery has drained a notch downward !

Now - for some reason - I don't even have to be "using" it, and it will go dead in about 8 hours !!!

Anyone else have this issue ?

:x

[JSanders]

Make sure you don't have any active applications running in the background (alt + escape). Things like a gps app or an active browser page can kill it quickly, like you are experiencing.

Check here too, for reading:
Maximum Battery Life - BlackBerryFAQ (http://blackberryfaq.com/index.php/Maximum_Battery_Life)

[John Clark]

You don't use a "Today" theme, do you? Those can hit battery life pretty good. I've seen this problem on the 8700 with 4.2.1.

[kentpowley]

No active apps.
No today theme.
Did the discharge - full charge - sequence as in other instructional posts.

In fact, I pulled the battery to reset it and still the same problem.

Funny thing, though - this crappy battery life issue occurred 1 week ago, then went away, and now it is sucking again - so it appears to come and go.

The only thing I can try at this point is a different battery to see if mine is flaky - although this seems to be a long shot.

[CarlGalgano]

I had the same issue too, after about 2 weeks my battery life sucked, and I couldnt figure out why. But pulling the battery out solved my problem. In the meantime I bought the seidio extended battery (the one that fits in the same space as the OEM battery). I have had no battery issues.

[DJChew]

The only other reason I can think of other than the ones listed already is Bluetooth being on all the time.

I have had an 8800, and an 8820, and Wi-Fi always searching and Bluetooth always on were the biggest battery killers.

[BurningBerry]

jep, many of our users have the bluetooth problem.
always they forget to deactivate and are surprised when the bat get empty in a half day.

[bbueding]

I have an 8830 and use the Seidio 1600mh battery most times life is real good, but if I'm in a weaker coverage area it seems to effect battery life.

[chainsawcharlie]

which would be considered the escape button.. is it the one to the right of the ball? and if you had apps running is there a task manager that you can close each one.. if not what would be the correct way of doing so?

[JSanders]

Escape key = immediate right of the trackball

There is no task manager, there us a task bar as I described above. Open the running application and click menu to close or exit.

[kjaslow]

No active apps.
No today theme.
Did the discharge - full charge - sequence as in other instructional posts.


There have to be active apps. Even just mail is an active app that you cannot turn off. BBmessenger, Browser, Phone are others...and if you've installed other apps, you might find them to be on as well, such as SimulScribe or BeamBerry.

Actually, my guess was going to be Google Local. It uses the GPS, and I thought maybe it was gobbling up your battery if you were leaving it running...

[rjansen3]

I know that when my phone sometimes falls into 1X or 1x or even 1xev, my battery will die in a matter of 2 hours or so. Maybe you are falling into roaming without noticing it.

[DJChew]

No/low coverage does hurt battery life.

The device will search for a networking whenever the radio is on. If no network is found, it will 'back off' and wait a while to search again. The longer it does this, the further apart the retrys are.

[rjansen3]

if you have programs running, like jivetalk, they can drain battery life sometimes, if you loose signal, or it gets too low, Jivetalk can sign off and keep trying to sign back on.

[MaxT32]

You may want to try this Options, Screen/Keyboard, and Backlight Brightness. The phone comes set on 100% but I use 40% it seems to save a huge surplus of battery life on my 8800. I also set the backlight time out to 20 Sec.

[DJChew]

Backlight Brightness and Backlight Timeout... Very good suggestions MaxT32.

Also, if you use standby rather than putting in a BlackBerry holster it may take more battery.
A real BlackBerry holster has a magnet in it that tells the device to disable all keys and turn off the screen. I am sure some 3rd party cases do to, but I know some 3rd party ones do not.


Using Auto On/Off at night may be a great way to increase battery life. This is no good for anyone on-call though.


Vibrate generally takes LESS power than alert sounds. I have heard of this a few times from a few different phone makers.
This also means that the Trackball Audible Roll sound takes a bit of unneeded power.


LED Coverage Indicator technically uses power. Turning it ff could help a tiny bit.

[kentpowley]

All good suggestions - thanks everyone, but it is still a mystery.

Back when the BB was performing well, I was giving it heavy usage - (lots of apps open, bluetooth on all the time, phone calls, emails, you name it) - and even with all this, the battery performed extremely well.

My point here is that I don't think it is one thing or another that drains the battery significantly, as my "normal" usage pattern is to leave everything running all the time.
Therefore, in doing so, (and the battery performs well), that eliminates the possibility that any "one or two" of the factors noted would be the culprit.

As an update, for now, my battery is "back" to non-suck mode - i.e, it is functioning well, like it used to.

I will wait it out - and see if the crappy battery life issue comes back again.

Thanks everyone !

[DJChew]

Very weird kentpowley.
I was going to say maybe try an RMA on your battery.... but if it works correctly again I am not sure what to say...

I don't know enough about Li-Ion to know if this is a problem or even possible (to work, start to suck, then work again).

Very odd. Any bettery experts on here?

[illy]

Are you connected to a BES? If yes:

i have seen this on multiple 8700/8300/8800 devices and opened a support call for it which is still in progress.

I have found 2 workarounds:

Method 1
assign an empty policy to the blackberry and disable content protection if enabled. When the policy is applied reset the bb (i use battery but alt+cap+del might work too). Fully load the BB and see what happens.

Method 2
delete the account on BES server and re-create it, wipe the blackberry and re-activate it. Fully load the BB and see what happens. I am not 100% sure if restoring a backup before activating has any impact, but test that if you want to be sure.

At first I renew users batteries when we heard about but that did not resolve the issue. In my cases it seemed not to be a hardware issue...even occurs on brand new 8300/8800's. Doesnt matter is the user account is upgraded from a previous blackberry or newly created on the BES server. Everyone is a potential victim.


very curious what the conclusion of the support call will be. I will try to follow this topic.

[DJChew]

Disable content protection is a good one as well.
Same goes for Content Compression.

Note that some older device software (4.0.0.x) may not correctly Disable Content Protection, even though the device says it does.

[houzhongxu]

My 8820 got the same problem:(

[triniti]

The only other reason I can think of other than the ones listed already is Bluetooth being on all the time.

I have had an 8800, and an 8820, and Wi-Fi always searching and Bluetooth always on were the biggest battery killers.

You may be on to something. I have a PS3 which is BT and my ThinkPad which is BT, plus it could be my BT PS3 remote or controllers flipping out somehow. I will turn mine off and see what happens.

[kentpowley]

**UPDATE**
I got a new battery. Same problem.
I can get my hands on a new/different 8830, so I will try that one and see if perhaps my original 8830 is simply a lemon.

[floz23]

Its also good to remember, Lithium Ion batteries should be kept charged as often as possible. The more you drain the battery to the bottom, the worse your battery will last in the long run. If you're running your phone for 3 days without a charge, for an extended period of time, that could also be a factor in poor battery performance.

[jsntrenkler]

I agree with all the posts regarding coverage. If you are anywhere near a weaker coverage area, your battery definitely gets hit

[kentpowley]

**UPDATE**
I think I found the culprit.
GOOGLE MAPS
"Go to my location" function

I was using it the other day - and "enabled" the "Go to my location" option (where it actively triangulates your location based on signal strengths to cell towers).
I simply hit (end call) to exit the application when I was finished with it.
Apparently - the app was STILL RUNNING in the background - continuously talking to cell towers to triangulate its position.

I believe this is what caused my battery to drain so quickly.

When I used GOOGLE MAPS in this way (and exited the app as per above), my battery went down to about 1/4 strength after about 2 hours or so.

When I did the alt-esc to bring up the running apps, it showed Google Maps as running. I went to that app and noticed that the "Go to my location" was still active.

To CLOSE the app, I hit the menu button and then "Quit" the app to truly shut it off.

After doing this, my battery stopped draining so fast !

So, to sum up - beware the Google Maps application - and make sure you actually "quit" the application via the menu instead of just hitting the "end call" key - (especially if you had activated the "Go to my location" function)

[mrjerome]

**UPDATE**
I think I found the culprit.
GOOGLE MAPS
"Go to my location" function

I was using it the other day - and "enabled" the "Go to my location" option (where it actively triangulates your location based on signal strengths to cell towers).
I simply hit (end call) to exit the application when I was finished with it.
Apparently - the app was STILL RUNNING in the background - continuously talking to cell towers to triangulate its position.

I believe this is what caused my battery to drain so quickly.

When I used GOOGLE MAPS in this way (and exited the app as per above), my battery went down to about 1/4 strength after about 2 hours or so.

When I did the alt-esc to bring up the running apps, it showed Google Maps as running. I went to that app and noticed that the "Go to my location" was still active.

To CLOSE the app, I hit the menu button and then "Quit" the app to truly shut it off.

After doing this, my battery stopped draining so fast !

So, to sum up - beware the Google Maps application - and make sure you actually "quit" the application via the menu instead of just hitting the "end call" key - (especially if you had activated the "Go to my location" function)

Good observation!

[John Clark]

That's actually posted about in the main Google Maps sticky thread in the GPS/Mapping forum.

http://www.blackberryforums.com/gps-mapping/107012-google-maps-2-0-1-a.html

Always use menu >exit method. Most apps will close properly with the escape key (right of trackball) but the new Google Maps doesn't. And the red "end call" key almost always leaves any app running in the background. Closing with the red phone button is not a good habit to get into. Only use it if you WANT to leave the app running.

[irwing]

I had this problem and it was a bad micro SD card. My SD card also was a bit warm. I replaced my SD card and now my battery life is 5 days again

[btaylor1]

i have experienced this battery problem with my 8800 and, just last week, my newer 8820. for many months i would get several days of battery life in normal usage, and then all of a sudden (without any explanation, including google-maps-left-on or anything else) the oem battery would not keep me functioning for more than about 8 hours. in each instance (for my 8820, earlier this week), at&t replaced the battery under warranty and the problem was resolved (at least for short term).

i have been debating ordering one of the higher capacity batteries from seido but i have a car phone set up that probably will not accommodate any larger back door on the 8820 handheld. i am hopeful seido or someone else will come up with a good extra-life battery for 8820 that will be no larger than the oem battery. i understand that may not be physically possible!