OK, I fully charged my Sprint Pearl and took it out of the charger when I went to sleep around midnight. I woke up at 7am and noticed the battery was drained to 3/4. I tested out the navigation (which was very nice) on the 20 minute drive to work. And by 12:00pm, just 12 hours after a full charge, my battery is on it's final legs so I just powered down the phone in case I need to make a quick call after work. I didn't even make a single call or use any other application except for the navigation during the 12 hours.

How is that possible? There must be something running in the background?

Press alt+esc and it will show all running programs. You will have 5 main icons showing (home, messages, browser, etc). Close any running application. Also pull that battery, that will clear anything hanging in memory

When the GSM Pearl first came out I was getting 2-3 days of use out of it. I recently purchased the CDMA BlackBerry 8130 and I am getting a day and a half out of it.

CDMA devices generally have less than stellar battery life as compared to GSM devices. This is due to the fact that CDMA devices are constantly searching for the network, even when idle.

I am having the same problem. I would power off then wake up to a half dead battery which was fully charged when I went to sleep. I have narrowed down the issue. When you power off it doesn't shut off all the radios (BT, GPS, Cellular). So 1st night I shut off all radios then powered off. Woke up and battery was still full charge. Next night shut off GPS only and powered off and woke up with half dead battery. I will try some other combinations tonight and tomorrow.

I will also try to narrow it down but this phone has been more of a pain than a joy so far. If it means turning off the cellular reception overnight, there is absolutely no way I am keeping this phone. I get a poor reception at work so I can understand where the phone might be searching for a signal all day and draining the battery. I guess I will just shut off the phone during work although my previous phone was able to get one bar all the time. But at my hosue, I always have 2 or 3 bars (not great for whatever reason b/c all my other sprint phones received 4 or 5 bars) so it absolutely better not be that reason.

I havent even installed any outside applications so it's not like I'm using any software the device should not be accustomed to.

The phone for me is great except the battery issue. My RF is fantastic. Try setting the phone to home only and it may help you at work. It won't roam or try to search for other towers. I also noticed that after about a week of use the battery gets better. They daytime use. My real problem is the overnight draining. Let me know what you find out.

My battery story...

Charged my phone last night (first night w/it). Today I used it all day heavily. It was in my hands doing one thing or another pretty much non-stop:

- BT on all day (I've been leaving it on 24/7, and haven't had any drop-outs yet), used it w/GPS mapping at home playing w/generating routes, and in the car as well. Also used it in the car with a BT hands-free unit for calls. (That's cool...navigating and also taking a call on BT at the same time.)

- Frequent email (receive, read, send)

- Browsing web sites, reading and posting

- Misc. exploring of the device, settings, options, and programs, also installed and played w/Windows Live Search

At about 3:00 PM I checked and was at 40% battery. I decided to get aggressive to run the battery down as quickly as possible.

I started playing music (set it to play all the songs on my 8 GB card) non-stop, while continuing my other use noted above. Except during dinner. (What am I, a savage?)

About 3 hours after I added the full-time music playing, I was at 9% battery. Radio had still not turned off (I was able to dial a number), which surprised me.

I closed all the open apps at that point and put it on the charger to charge it back up.

It charged up very quickly...forgot to time it, but I was pleased by how quickly it was charged up again.

Overall I am happy so far...even with today's unusually heavy (for me) use, it lasted long enough to get me to the end a work day. I expect that with a more normal use level I'll go a couple days, but we'll see.

That's my next test...as soon as I can get myself to stop playing around w/my new toy and just use it normally, rather than compulsively.