Wirelessly posted

I just got the 8900 off someone on craigslist and the phone is in great conditon and I wiped it and it works great.

But I'm not sure if the battery is damaged or not. But it doesn't seem to last long enough.

For example, its charged all night, and it was 100% when I took it off the charger 4 hours ago. I've surfed the web using opera mini a bit. I've chatted a good amount on google talk and windows messenger (about 1 and half hour). I listened to my mp3s for about half hour. I made two phone calls, one 12 minutes, and one 30 minutes. And the battery at this point is 55%.
I mean maybe this is normal, but my 8120's battery life was able to do all the above and it would still be at 75-80% by now.

What do you guys think?

What OS System are you running?

Wirelessly posted

The os is 4.6.1.114 (185)

i hear people complain about that OS has very bad battery life. i would upgrade to .250 and see if that helps. which it should.
the oem OS seems to be the worst, which sucks becuase thats what everyone bases there opinion of the phone on when they first get it/

Yes upgrade to at least .206....

My phone came with .114 installed on my phone and the battery life was atrocious.... I noticed marked improvement once upgrading to .206....

Keep in mind too that certain applications on your phone will use more battery life than others... I've found that using the mp3 player drains the battery more than most other functions/applications/programs...

Yea upgrading will make the battery life better, but using web and anything with data will lower your battery life quite a bit. I typically kill mine from 730a to 330p on my typical work day and that's using the web quite some bit and sms/bbm/email....lol

I'm in the same boat. Just bought an 8900 direct from T-mobile two days ago. Mine also has v4.61.114. I went to the t-mobile website and this appears to be the only version available. Am I missing something? How do we obtain/download later revisions?

Thanks!

Visit this link which is sticky'd at the top of the forum:

http://www.blackberryforums.com/gene...ilanguage.html

It's the latest OS version. You'll need to connect your blackberry to your computer with the included data cable... The update itself is pretty straightforward and most people are able to do it without any problems.

After this much use (surfing web, google talk, listening MP3, windows messenger, 42-minute phone call) of four hours, you still have 55%. That seems to be normal (actually not bad).

Turn off GPS (when not using) and Wi-Fi (when not using) and you wont question battery life anymore.

Ok the battery HAS to be bad.

Check this out.

I was home last night, I had just checked the battery level, it was 75%. I got a phone call, and I talked for 1 hour 18 minutes. It was hooked to my router via the WIFI, so the call was over UMA. After the call, my battery level was 10%.

That *has* to be a bad battery right? I mean that is just....insane.

my battery on a bold can drop by 10-15% on a long call.
as its also going through wi-fi, this is likely causing another 20% drop.
so it may be a little extreme, but seems roughly normal.

I see what you're saying, but this was a 65% drop. In just 1 hour 18 minutes.

like I said, it seems a little extreme.
Have we ruled out the OS? I see someone above suggests upgrading to .206
Have you upgraded?

I agree. 55% is about right for what you used it for. Changing the OS won't help IMO. Give it a week before you mess with that and see how it shapes up.

Using a call through wifi will drain your battery faster as well since it is going through your router and not the network...

its been said that upgrading the OS can improve the battery life significantly for many people.
i would say he should upgrade the OS first to see if it is more livable with, before he tries to get a new battery

I will try upgrading the OS, though from what I've read so far it was going from the one before 113 and 114 to those, that really helped most people, no? I mean from what I gather from reading all the forum posts I can about this, it seems that 113 and 114 were to have fixed the battery life issue.

Nevertheless, I will give upgrading a shot, but it seems like such a pain because the I have one of those clear cases which I'll have to pry open (and every time I open it I wonder if it's getting looser), and then take out the Media card (because that's still advised right? to take out the media card before upgrading the OS?), and then upgrade. *Grunts*

Oh and I bought Documents to Go Premium edition...will it get overwritten by the new OS's standard edition?

I never take out my media card when upgrading, and never had a problem.

Erm, docstogo may get overwritten. going to the OS folder on the pc and changing documentstogo.alx to .old will then definately not downgrade it.

no all the improved battery life came from people coming from 114. the tmobile phone came with 114. so not many people had a pre .114 version. check out the beta forums for discussions.
and the for docs to go all you have to do is re activate with the key you were given and everything will be fine, best of luck

edit-
you dont have to take out the media, i never have before either.

First point: I have OS 4.6.1.250 and I find the battery life quite poor compared to the 8320, given the same usage patterns. I just posted a message about this in the thread on OS 4.6.1.250 in the "Beta You Than Me" section, in fact.

Second: I had Wi-Fi on the 8320 and never had to turn it off when not using, and I had excellent battery life. I didn't have GPS though. Is GPS actually "working" in the background when no app is using it?

Ubizmo

No OS will make your battery last forever. That technology does not exist yet. By changing your OS, you will not increase your battery life significantly more than what you have reported. Nobody lives 300 years because they eat healthy now (or change their heart by a surgery). That is the way it is now, we don't know the future yet.

To update you guys on my experiments with the battery life...

Upgrading the OS has seemed to help only slightly. Very, very slightly, almost negligible.

Turning off WIFI doesn't seem to have made any difference. (I'm not willing to turn off BlueTooth)

The biggest difference has come from this: I cut 2 little squares from the adhesive part of a post-it note, and put them on top of the LED light/sensor on the blackberry. So the screen doesn't get as bright, as easily. That has led to the largest battery life savings so far.

And I guess that's gonna have to do.

PS, someone mentioned that the GPS should be turned off...is that even on when no GPS using application is open? I wouldn't think so, but maybe I'm wrong.

Or you go change the option to automatically dim screen.
this is controlled by the sensor by the LED.
i.e. the thing you are covering.

or even, change the screen brightness!

these things, including the timeout for screen->black are KNOWN to help improve battery life.

Battery life is my biggest disappointment with the 8900 so far. The battery on my 8320 was almost never used up when I'd go to bed at night, at 11:00 or so. Often there was over 50% left, but even on days of heavy use, it seldom got as low as 20%. My usage patterns and location haven't changed, but the battery on the 8900 is often exhausted several hours before I go to bed. It's hard to understand since, as I say, I'm not doing anything different.

Ubizmo

So are you using the newest OS or not? I noticed a substantial improvement. I use my phone a lot and generally get two days before I get a dead battery. (But I generally charge it daily anyway when I go to bed).

Make sure screen brightness is down to 20% and dimming time is 20 seconds. You'll notice a major improvement in battery life with negligible decrease in performance.

Yes, I am using 4.6.1.250. Yesterday again I had a dead battery (from a full charge in the morning) by 9:00 pm. With no phone calls; just some emails and web browsing.

@simulator: I'll try reducing screen brightness. I had it at 80%, same as I used to on my 8320. I can understand that powering the higher res screen could cause increased battery drain, although I didn't think it should be this bad.

Ubizmo

Ok, I'm new to BB and have the 8900 on AT&T. I've noticed the battery life really just sucks (to put it bluntly). Case in point: Left the house last night with a full charge to go to a concert. Took pics, uploaded to FB, made a few short calls, and sent some SMS messages. When I returned home 7 hours later, my battery was about dead.

I have upgraded the OS to .250 with no major improvement. I initially had WiFi on but turned it off after 3 days. I haven't been using a BB case with the built in Standby strip, but started placing it in the pouch until my OtterBox arrives. I try to use the 'Close' option when leaving an app (is this the correct way?). I'm not running GPS (that I know of). I just applied the tips above (reducing back light to 20% and on time to 20 seconds). I have also set auto on/off to shut down from 2300 to 0500.

Will using a case with the Standby strip really help? Any other suggestions?

Check the "battery stamina" thread. I don't know if you have Live Search installed on your 8900 (It's not a pre-installed program). I do, but what I didn't know was that every time I'd reset the device, it would load Live Search, and Live Search is configured to use GPS. So even though I wasn't actively using Live Search, it was apparently draining the battery by periodic GPS calls. Once I became aware of this, I manually closed Live Search (I still don't know why it loads on startup), and got much better battery life. If you don't have Live Search installed, this won't help, unless you have some other program going that is using GPS. Geotagging on photos, maybe?

Ubizmo

I'm not running Live Search and I checked the GPS settings. I just turned off Geotagging and completely disabled GPS functions. Maybe that was it? All I know is if this thing doesn't start lasting more than a few hours, it's going back to AT&T for a different model. I'm not giving up on BB, but want decent battery life.

Could be the GPS functions. I just know that when I stopped Live Search, the difference in battery life was huge, because I wasn't making it through a day on a single charge before. And I wasn't even using Live Search. I don't know for certain that it was the GPS that was doing it, but it seems like a reasonable bet. So if your device is using GPS in the background for something or other, that could be the trouble.

Ubizmo

I think I may have solved (or greatly improved) the battery situation. With completely disabling the GPS functions and using my new OtterBox case, my battery is at 55% after being off the charger for over 20 hours and used a bit less than when I'm On Duty.

I don't receive the best cell signal where I live, so I'm wondering if my phone is burning battery looking for signal? I try to keep it where it receives 1-2 signal bars. I hope when I go back in to work, this will improve.

How do you disable GPS functions? I thought if you don't have any program like blackberry maps, or google maps open, the GPS isn't working anyway?

Thank you, Ubizmo

That did it for me. It was driving me crazy, since my battery all of a sudden was draining much faster than before, so I read your comments and I deleted Live Search (don't really use it) and wow, battery life has improved drastically!

Thanks! I love this forum!