They both use the same battery.

It's because CDMA uses more power than GPRS for a continuously-open connection. CDMA has a bigger inability to 'sleep' during an idle connection than GPRS.

If you want long battery life, you have to switch to GPRS (by switching to Cingular or T-Mobile). But Verizon's reception can be better in many areas.

VeriChat only lasts about 8 to 16 hours on 7250.... but VeriChat can last 75 to 100 hours nonstop on a 7290.

Has anyone else noticed that TeleNav drains your battery life very quickly? I have the 7520 and I keep the bluetooth on all the time. I make about 30mins of calls a day and about 10 emails and the battery barely lasts 12hrs.

But when I use TeleNav your talking about only an hour or two of battery life.

Anyone else notice this?

For the last week, the 7290 T-Mobile unit is giving me great battery life like I reported with the 7280 before, recharging every 3 days. What has changed? Nothing on my side. It must be how the provider (T-Mobile in this case) interfaces with the handheld units. I have not changed the operating system and traffic email/sms/voice has been the same as always. I wish someone couuld explain what's up. Thanks.

I understand, Thank you, done
I wish SMS and BMM are very good long than Verichat. I want AIM add in BBM future?

Sorry if this was addressed, but I didn't see a response in the thread. Mark this is my same scenario...My first BB and have had about a week. could you answer both of the above a questions when you get a chance?

thats pretty good advice, ill start informing customers to discharge when they first buy their bb

Yes, as a deaf person myself, BB is considered as a "cellphone" for the deaf. I brag all the time about the battery longevity... Many deaf people love Sidekick II (Danger) which has a very short battery life, you have to charge it every night!!!!! Not for me and my household! I gave my 11 year old daughter my old 7230 and I use 7290. My son wants 7105 and I plan on giving him one. Blackberry runs in our blood.

Hi,

just got a BB 7290 and would like to know that, too. Would be great if someone could answer that post

Cheers,

CoYoT from Berlin

Does all this apply to the 7130? I'm following Mark's instructions, but am wondering if the 7130 needs the help. Battery life on this device has been very good so far, much better than the 7100g it replaced.

With all due respect to Mark, who's provided a wealth of extremely useful information here and is a great resource, his advice on initial charge/discharge requirements to properly "condition" a lithium-ion battery are incorrect. That used to be important with the older Ni-Cad and NiMh batteries, but does not help at all with lithium-ion, although it really doesn't hurt either. So if you didn't do that in the beginning, no worry, and no need to do it now either.

For more authoritative advice, one good site is Battery University.

I get about 3-4 days battery use out of my 7230. I don't make phone calls on it, and rarely use the backlight. I send and receive a fair number of emails, and do a lot of web surfing via the BB and Opera Mini broswers, and I have it set to shut off automatically at midnight and turn on at 10:00am on the weekdays. I could get better battery life, but I have apps like PicoNews which is an RSS reader that is set to push news and blog articles to me automatically, and that will draw down the battery charge some. I probably should top my battery off more, I tend to let it get down to the point where the radio auto shutoff kicks in before I charge it.

I've heard so many people say that they don't use their backlight. I don't think I'd like my 8700g too much without the backlight. That's one of the best features, the vibrant and colorful screen.

Backlighting set to 10%, 10 seconds, Automatic Backlighting turned On.

As a conditioning measure, I'd agree. But as a method to recalibrate the battery meter it may help. I'm finding my 8700 battery is showing a lesser % life left than it used to, essentially under the same conditions. It used to just go down to 85% during a day - now it gets there after 1/2 a day. I guess the battery may be getting tired after only 3 months (?!) but I'm hoping a discharge cycle will recalibrate the meter. Already tried battery out etc.

A excellent reason to cycle charge lithium ion batteries every now and then.

So the Battery University article talks about the danger of overcharging, from the perspective of heat:

Does the BB cut the voltage when it senses the battery is full, thereby avoiding this problem, i.e. if you charge it overnight? As in this 'standard' feature, not sure if BB has it:

My battery typically only goes down a bar or so at the end of the day but I plug it in every night to top off, so it's charging for at least 6 hours.

I think products with lithium battery technology have to be designed properly. We've all seen the reports of them catching fire when things go wrong!

Even left on charge, they don't get warm in a BB. So no problem in leaving it to charge whenever you get the opportunity - which should give you better overall life from the battery than deliberately letting it discharge more before charging again.

IMO the ONLY thing to avoid is habitually reconnecting the charger without ANY discharge in between. Then you risk, perhaps, damaging the battery a little whilst the charging circuitry 'works out' what to do. Even this is theorhetical and may not in practice be an issue.

For a device like a BB, which is in contant use, just

1. Charge it/top it up when you have the opportunity, and leave it on charge whilst it's convenient to you.

2. Deliberately discharge the battery completely only if you notice it seems to be losing capacity. Full discharges are actually NOT good for lithium cells in the overall scheme of things, but the discharge can have the effect of recalibrating the battery meter, so it more accurately reflects the true state of charge of the battery.

3. Lithium batteries really don't need to be "looked after" in the same way as older battery technologies. Just relax and use your device. Worse case you may wind up replacing the battery a *little* earlier than otherwise, but this will be in exchange for hassle free use of your device - a good compromise.

4. DON'T go buying a spare 'just in case' or for 'stock'. Lithium cells have a shelf life, even if they're not used. Best to get a newly manufactured one when you actually *need* it...

A couple of weeks ago I loaded up w/ games for my kids to play w/....and have noticed that my battery seems to drain a lot quicker -- NOTE: I'm NOT referring to when the games are being played, rather when I'm using the phone for real work -- like this AM. I got home yesterday and my kids had been playing some games on the car ride home. Battery was very low, so I plugged it overnight. I had switched over to the home screen to check the battery life, didn't 'close' any games. My BB also turns off at 11pm, and on again at 7am.

This am, got to work, battery shows 100%. Made 2 calls on it (my office has a signal repeater so I'm at 100% signal strength) and read a few emails, but basically it's been sitting in its case all AM.

Now, at 1pm EST, the battery is down 3 bars. So I went in and looked at the games -- some were in 'suspend' mode, and so I physically closed them thru their menus. Note that for the past 2 mos, the battery has barely moved a bar at the end of the day w/ similar usage at the office, just not all the games (being played)

So my question is do the games that go into "suspend" mode still suck up CPUs and thus, drain the battery? Or are they truly suspended and would not be impacting the battery life?

I'm going to test this tonite/tomorrow as I'm now charging the BB, and will charge overnight again, and then try to use it as minimally.

UPDATE:

Over the past few days I watched my BB carefully and am pleased to report that it's back to 'normal', i.e. at the end of the day the battery has only decreased one 'bar'. This was even with making a few more calls than before. So I'm inclined to believe that the games in suspend mode definately have a negative impact on battery life.

Just FYI the games are: KA-GLOM, Meteorcrusher, Circlepopper, RV, Raging Rivers, Rooster, & Bass Assassin. I believe my kids were mostly playing KA-GLOM and Circlepopper.

I appreciate all the info on this discussion thread, thank you. My dilemma is, I am using a 7250, and today the battery drained itself slowly over a 10-hour period, even with the BB powered off most of that time. This has never happened before. It was fully charged overnight. I did have the auto on/off enabled, but disabled it after waking up. I'm in transit between flights at an airport, without my charger. The BB is dead. Has anyone else experienced this before? I have no idea what has happened. It's a CE battery in a 7250 I've been using for about two months.

Google Local is on it, but not running unless I use one of the browsers.

Any ideas?

Thanks - Randy

Glad I stumbled across this thread. I have yet to charge my BB, and will certainly endeavor to let it drain the first few times as you recommended. My battery has been on for a week so far...this thing lasts forever!

Okay, here's a dumb question. should i turn my blackberry off when i charge it or leave it on?

thanks

Good advice, Thanks!

While it is true that lithium ion batteries do not need frequent deep discharges and that doing so can actually reduce the life of the battery, the electronics in the battery do need occassional deep discharges to reset their fixes on "what is empty" and "what is full". The Battery University article linked from an earlier post says this if you read through the text. The recommendation is once every approximately 30 cycles.

The original post is still worded as if to tell people to never worry about any deep discharges ever again after the initial calibration, but that isn't really accurate.

I would consider editing the original post to recommend an occasional deep discharge about once a month and topping it off every night between those.

The Pearl has a great battery!

How Nice!

Mark

I received a CS1 battery with my 8700 but had a CS2 from a previous model. I used the CS1 battery for 2 recharges but swapped to the CS2 as it seemed to hold more charge. Now when I insert the CS1 battery the device powers up with a dim screen showing a large battery icon in the centre with a red slash through it. Even if I charge the battery for hours it still doesn't disappear nor will the device power up. If I put the CS2 battery in, it powers up as normal.

Any ideas what this icon may represent and why it won't power up??

I bought a charger for a spare on e-bay. Plug it in to the BB and there is no indication it is charging.

Any ideas why it wouldn't work?

very helful infomations thanks a bunch!

Bump - anybody? Will the battery charge even if the BB is 'off'?

I'm pretty sure they charge whether on or off.

I had a 7230 made several 3-5 minute and at leat one 10- 15 minute phone calls a day, Lotus notes email wireless reconcile, had BBtoday and Berry 411 running. I was charging the 7230 every other day.

Now using a 8100... trying to do the same but with out the BBtoday installed.
finding the battery is at 50% by noon, I am really worried that the battery will not last the day, so I am "topping it off" by connecting it to usb/vehicle/wall charger when ever I can.

Any one else seeing similar battery issues with the 8100?

Have you tried at least one deep discharge to calibrate the battery? Lithium batteries need an initial (and occasional maybe once a month) full discharge cycle to find the limits of their charge so they can give accurate readings.

I found that the BB chat application was in use that might have had something to do with it... I removed that application, since I use sametime connect for IM and the battery now seams to be lasting longer...

I will try a deep discharge and see what happens...

Thanks for the tip.

The "deep discharge" seems to have made a differance, The battery is at 75% by noon now. Thanks

What is considered a full discharge? When the low-battery indicator is on? I charge my 8100c every two days in the mornings. The battery is usually at 20-25% when I charge it.

Full discharge I would assume would be to keep the phone was kept on until it shuts itself off from lack of power. I usually just have the phone down to less than 10%. By then I believe it is almost ready to shut off the wireless radio.

Until the phone shuts itself off. Then charge it back up until it says "Charged" (and it couldn't hurt to leave it on charger for an hour or two past that, but probably unnecessary). I don't have my manual handy, but this may be covered in the manual under the "first time use" section.

I would spring for an extended battery, do the deep recharges, and you should notice execllent battery life, as long as you charge at least every 3 to 5 days, my two cents. I love my 8700, but miss my 7290, what great battery life!

Awesome tips, Thanks!