Hi,

I got this new 8900 and I can't believe how short the battery life is. Has anyone experienced similar problems?

The battery life indicator goes red (no bars, the upper right light starts flashing) after 1 day of very light use (UMA/Wifi on, 10 short calls, about 5 e-mails).

The phone is on Rogers
v.4.6.1.94

Thanks

sounds like a defective battery... bring it back to the store

Thanks Cory.

yea that is way to short... mine, after HEAVY use... 100s of emails, 100s of SMS, calls totaling 2 hours, multiple constant conversations on BBM and MSN, along with all my apps that self update (viigo, weather channel etc etc) and i still have 70% at the end of the day... i dont think i have yet to see my battery fall under 50% yet in one day of usage

Has you experimented with the screen brightness? I normal always keep brightness at 100% and never let it dim on my old 8320. Now on my 8900 I am burning through the battery pretty quick I found with it like that when using it a good portion of the day.

Wow, that is a truly remarkable battery life. I bet you would never be able to do anything like that with an iPhone...

my screen brightness is at 50%, auto DIM is off... i turn off wifi and BT if i am not using it... thats about all i do or have done to the device to save battery life

oh and i forgot to add that i tether about 2 hours out of a day as well... but i guess i really cant say much for battery life as it kinda charges as i am tethering...

Believe me, and as Cory has also confirmed, Wifi and Bluetooth are battery killers
Wifi will literally EAT your battery if left turned on constantly
I have used Nokias with Wifi, an iPhone with Wifi and my Bold with Wifi and if I forget to switch it off, all of them, regardless of the brand, will practically drain in one day
In the last few days I have been using my Bold at home most of the day and have turned Wifi on and I am charging the phone before the day is even out!!!
Knock off the Wifi when you aren't using it and try it for a couple of days and post back
I'm betting you will notice a huge difference

thefonedoc

thats wierd... normally if you are just connected to wifi and edge its fine... i actually get better battery life with wifi on at home... as it had less distance to travel to get data so therefore doesnt need to boost the radio to get to the tower... i noticed this on my 8820, bold and 8900... battery life increased for me when connect to both rogers and wifi, and staying at home and just using wifi for the day... thats odd that yours is draining faster...

BUT if you have wifi on and its not connected its constantly looking for a network which will drain your battery... and plain and simple bluetooth is a battery killer... especially when you are using it to talk on the phone... wow does it ever... doesnt matter how big your battery is... it will drain

Hmm, I have my phone running on EDGE all the time. UMA/WiFi is on whenever I am home or at work (and just idling whenever I'm elsewhere; i.e. Its never off) and I leave my bluetooth on all the time, and it's paired whenever I'm in the car.

I can go nearly 3 days on a full charge.

I'd say its your Battery.

It so depends on where you are, how you use the phone, etc...

I never could get one full day on ANY of my Blackberries (or any other phone for that matter), unless I did severly less than I usually do.

You people talk of "days" of battery, and, I just figure my body must suck the life out of these batteries, because 12 hours is about the best i can get on a normal business day. And, that susually includes no WiFi, and, limited Bluetooth usage.

That all being said, my 8320 was the best, I could clear a full 16 hour day some of the time (no Wifi, maybe 1-2 hours of bluetooth). The Bold, maybe a 10-12 hour day (no 3g), and the 8900, is seemingly like a barely 12 hour - at the moment, more like 10 hours, I'm down to 20% or less, but, I still am playing and configuring a bit on my new toy.

And, PS - I get the worst life when I'm in New York (Manhattan). L.A. is better life, Europe is even better.

try changing your display brightness, and turn off auto DIM that will help ALOT!

I put my brightness to 10%, and auto dim off, but I just made one phone call yesterday and browsed on the net 5 minutes and my battery went to 75% by the end of the day.. pretty weak.

sounds like a defective battery... that is bad... doing anything else with it? watching vids? music? anything of the sort?

i would bring that back (the battery) there is no way it should do that... not even on the bold...

Thanks guys and thanks Cory.

I changed the brightness, turned off Wi-fi and set off the auto dim (what's this?). I'll upgrade the OS right now and I'll report back in a couple of days.

I have the same problem with my battery too on my 8900! I turned off the wifi and that helped a little bit but I still have to charge it everyday. Don't think its the brightness cause i just leave me phone sit and the battery goes down. I have read some other people have the same issue.

With 4.6.1.101 and after making the changes suggested here, I'm getting a bit over 2 days out of it. For now, I would say that this is significant improvement. It's still way below what I can get from my Bold but... it's better. Looking forward to the new OS

hmmm you guys are getting a lot of battery life!

mine isn;t as bad as the OP, but after one day i am at 1 bar of battery!

not nearly as much usage as some of you.. but basic usage:

about 20 calls a day
sms here and there
bb msg usage
music player usage about 2 hrs each day
browsing
black berry alerts

after one day it's at 1 bar.. it was like this before i got the bb alerts installed..

but i charge my phone everyday anyway so no big deal

Ok, but I still don't understand how come the battery life from the 8900 is shorter than the curve? The 8900 come with a 1400 mAh battery and the curve was 1100 mAh!!
So where is the impressive power autonomy??
Don't get me wrong, I have the 8900 and for me, it's the best device ever after the curve, but come on, the battery suck and I'm really curious if an update (after .101) will solve this problem.

It has a CPU that's more than twice as fast, screen that has more than double the resolution, and 4 times more internal memory.

Add to the fact that the Curve is based on the platform first introduced 3 years ago on the 8700, which means they had all the bugs worked out. Compare to the brand new platform on the 8900 first introduced with the Bold 6 months ago, you should be damn glad that the battery doesn't last quadruple as short.

Ok you are absolutely right I agree with you but every year we get better display, strongest CPU and more memory but then R&D in batteries like in Nanotechnology must follow in quiet same time because we will arrive maybe in situation where we have super poweful HD devices but that not last more than a day!

Anyway so much possibility can happen...

Happy New year to all of you!

I get about 1 day on a charge. I have WiFi on and screen brightness at 10%. I surf some and have about 3-10 calls plus SMS and PINs

I tried without WiFi and I get about a day and a half

I had a similar experience with my out-of-the-box Rogers 8900, the battery wouldn't even last a day. No unusual configs on it, the battery life was just poor.

I was about to switch back to my Bold when I found OS 101. It has drastically improved my battery life. I wouldn't be able to go 2 full days, but I can certainly squeeze a day and a half out of the battery even with WiFi and Bluetooth enabled.

I seem to be having the same problem with mine..... I feel like I'm constantly charging it and I've been barely using it so far.

I'm actually getting a full replacement on Monday, which I'm surprise because I thought they would just replace the battery but the guy said it could also be an issue with the device so instead a full replacement will be done.

Oh, and I'm with Rogers as well....

Try the newest OS thats at the top of this forum. I installed it on the 29th and I haven't had to charge my phone since. It currently shows that I have 1.5 bars of battery left.

Does anyone else notice a significant improvement with the battery life using .101 firmware?

Also does anyone know what the major differences are between the .94 and .101 firmware?

defective battery

I found turning off "Automatically Dim Brightness" significantly helped the battery life on the 8900. Also, setting the brightness to 10, unless you have some sight issues, seems to be more than bright enough, and, also helps battery life.

My 8900 discharges with very light use after only 36 hours.

I tried the following things but to no avail:

I bought a new battery - no difference
I reduced the screen brightness to 50%
I turned off the LED indicator, the ringer and vibrator.
I do not use wifi or bluetooth.
I do not even use the phone.

And since I bought this device on eBay and am using it in the US w/ ATT - I can't even return it.

My wife's old Curve (w/ light use) takes 5+ days to discharge....

i'm on .101 dont seem to have a battery issue either.
i didn't use .76 that long though to know if it i was FW.
tomorrow will be the real test as where i sit in my office building is hell on edge devices. depending on the device it will flip flop in and out of service. the bold worked great i hope the 8900 will do just as good. esp with the news about ATT moving the edge phones out of the 850 frequency range..

Drew, you need to upgrade the OS to the most recent one at the top of the forums. It will solve your battery problem. My phone was doing the same thing and since upgrading six days ago I've only had to charge my phone once.

Ok so i loaded the .101 firmware last night and used it for an entire day today with heavy usage and i can gladly say that the battery drainage problem has been solved. I only used 30% of my battery today with heavy usage. For all those who are having a battery issue download the .101 firmware, it works flawlessly!

I've updated to .101 firmware. I hope it fixes the problem.

However, now WordToGo, SheetToGo and SlideShowToGo apps are no longer working, any suggestions?

cheers.

Hmmm, mine are working perfectly fine. Maybe there was an error in your installation. I would try reinstalling the OS and then trying again. Before doing that though you might want to pull the battery out for 15 seconds and put it back in if you haven't done so already.

I dont want to turn off WiFi everytime I dont use it, this would annoy me actually. I´d rather use it as much as possible with everything activated and then see how long my battery lasts. If it is more than 1 day I´ll be happy, I can test it tommorrow when my 8900 arrives :-D

The firmware update made a HUGE difference in the battery life.

Thank you!

Has anyone noticed that the battery drains faster when you keep it in the leather pouch it came with as opposed to not?

True, I noticed also this strange thing, maybe because when it's in the leather pouch, it autolock and not autostandby wich consume more battery I think.

I think you have a very valid point. I asked my wife (she uses the 8900) and it turns out that while in the original pouch, the phone acts strangely. The screen lights up by itself... while no one touches the phone, so no wonder the battery goes down. I am not sure if this is due to a buggy OS or to having a pouch which is simply too small (putting pressure on the side keys). I took it out of the pouch, we'll see how it does over the next few days.