Hello all,

Recently my employer gave the entire company new Blackberry 8830s on a Sprint plan. The problem is we are located in Canada but because our plans are ridiculously expensive up here it made sense for them (read -cheaper) to buy an American plan and let the phones roam.

The problem is that the battery life on the 8830 is terrible for everyone. If you leave the phone on overnight its dead by morning. Thats without any activity!

Im trying to figure out if its the BB itself that offers the poor battery life or is it because of the roaming that the phone is dead within a day?

This is a real inconvenience due to the fact that I have to charge this phone every night, if not its completely dead.

Any help would be appreciated.

Peter

If the phone keeps looking for a signal, the battery is going to take a big hit. That is probably the issue.

^^ Exactly

Yeah, the phone is going to keep trying to find a Sprint signal every minute or so I would guess. All that searching is going to suck the battery dry rather quickly.

What were you using prior to the 8830? What network were you on then. I wouldn't blame the battery life so much on the device as I would on the network. Any device on CDMA will have significantly less battery life.

It has to be the roaming because my battery will last 3 days without a charge. I do not talk on it much and use it mostly for emails. I am with Verizon.

Not to be a smart axx but why does it seem to such a big deal for people to charge their phones evry night. Whem I go to bed I just charge it.

I suspect that it is roaming as well. I am on Sprint with the 8830, and I get several days with lots of use -- far better than the a900 I was using prior to acquiring this.

Amen!

It has a lot to do with location. In Michigan I get 2-3 days of use out of my BB. Under the same conditions, in New Jersey, I get 1 and a half days tops. In NJ I must charge my BB everynight. (VZW)

Erik

Because dumb reps tell the customers that you should only charge the battery when its near dead or you'll weaken the battery. I can't tell you how many times I've heard VZW tell customers this while I waited on line to FRU my phone.

Erik

I have an 8830 World on Bell here in Ontario and my battery lasts 3 days, it's definately got to be the whole roaming thing.

I recently saw my entire battery eaten up in 3/4 of a day while roaming in Ontario (VZW 8830). The culprit actually appeared to be Google Maps, as I was seeing ALOT of TX/RX activity for a few hours on end until I terminated the Application. In the same location today, I have 40% of my battery left, and no google maps usage.

As a point of note, I'm not on the most current (1.6) version, as it doesn't appear to be installed by the Google Pack application.

You will obviously have to be selective as to when you have your device on.

Wirelessly posted (8830: BlackBerry8830/4.2.2 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

Well I know when vz had networks prob one day the phone in 10 hrs drained 2/3 of the batter. When vz fixed their network it goes about 3 days with heavy usage

That sux, my 8830 lasts a couple days w/ heavy use.

As a general rule, CDMA devices use more battery power than their GSM counterparts.

forgive me if I didn't catch this earlier-- I know if you're on Verizon you can press *228 send to update roaming capabilities. Worked for me in Los Angeles when I moved. Not sure if it works in Canada, or if you are even on Verizon. Good luck- ask your employer to go local when the contract is up!

Won't help the OP because they are always roaming since their employer bought them Sprint phones to use in Canada.

You can't do a *228 on Sprint, but even if you could, you couldn't do it while you were roaming.

My battery normally lasts 5-6 days on my VZW 8830. But when I go down to Mexico and roaming, if I don't charge it at night, it's dead or very close to it by morning. In fact, I just got back this morning from Mexico. Didn't charge it last night and it was blinking low battery this morning. That's after fully charging it early the day before.

To further substantiate this, my old phone was a Motorola e815. Battery behaved exactly the same when roaming, but was a champ when not roaming. Actually, I think the 8830's battery is better than my old Moto e815.

i get about a day maybe two if im lucky on my 8830

Thanks for all the input guys. You are all right its the damn roaming that is killing the battery life. I was in Ohio this weekend and sure enough the phone lasted all weekend without a charge. The signal i had was amazing compared to what we get in Toronto. I rarely see all the bars but even in a remote place like Norwalk Ohio I was able to get better signal than at home!

And I do make it a habit of charging the phone every night but when I take it to work (9am) and take it out with me after work its usually near dead. It definitely wont last more than 8 hours.

Im just going to have to be more selective when to have it on and off. I bet my employer didnt even look into this when they bought the phones.

1x = very long battery life -- longest you will get on an 8830, but no data services.
1X = very poor battery life, especially with a weak signal (Data services, but not 1XEV)
1XEV with strong signal = much better battery life than 1X, but not even close to 1x battery life