Max The Battery Life Of Your New BlackBerry

Battery life is known to be excellent on many BlackBerry models, such as the model 7280. However, other models such as the 7750 and 7100 often have shorter battery life. There are some scattered reports of new 7250 users having extremely short battery life, including one person who sent me a PM message.

Try this if you are a new BlackBerry owner.

1. You need to break in the BlackBerry battery. Charge-discharge it fully about 3 times. This will max the battery life of a fresh, new Lithium ion.
   Note: once you do that, don't get in the habit of fully discharging the battery everytime -- to prevent wearing it out -- lithium batteries can be damaged with excessive deep discharges like a car battery can be.... When breaking in the battery, make sure you keep it plugged in long after the battery says it is fully charged (i.e. overnight), you really want to trickle-charge your BlackBerry to top-off your battery.
   
   
2. Lithium batteries LOVE to be topped-off. In regular use (After initial first-use conditioning), plug it in whenever you have the opportunity. This will also help keep the battery life maxed out for those days you really need long battery life.
   
   
3. If you are constantly starved for battery power, avoid continuously realtime software such as BBToday software; it uses a lot of battery power.
   
   
4. Keep your Bluetooth turned off when not in use.
   
   
5. If you use Verichat or other instant messaging software, leave it running in the background or quit it when not in use. Also, stay logged off the networks you do not use much.
   Keep Verichat running in the background when it is not in use. This puts the software in a low-power state by reducing the frequency of contact-list refreshes (signoffs/signons/away mode/etc) Using fewer instant messaging networks also saves battery power. For example, if mainly use MSN and AIM, log off the ICQ and Yahoo networks.
   
   
6. When using your BlackBerry, make sure you keep the backlight turned low or off whenever possible (rather than bright mode).
   Most BlackBerry screens (except 7100) is very readable with the backlight turned off, especially in bright office lighting and outdoor lighting.
   
   
7. Some BlackBerries have an extended battery available, such as the Nextel 7510. There may be an extended battery product for your specific BlackBerry product.
   
   
8. There's the novelty factor of using a BlackBerry for the first time; we tend to play with them much more heavily at first. So your usage may normallize after you get used to it.
   
   
9. If you haven't bought a BlackBerry yet, you should be aware that the GSM/GPRS BlackBerries have the longest battery life. Battery life is longer on GPRS BlackBerries than the CDMA and iDEN BlackBerries.
   
   
10. Phone calls made on your BlackBerry is the biggest consumer of battery life. If you make lots of phone calls for hours, then your battery life can be extremely short. Making phone calls in areas of weak reception will also use up more battery power.
    
    
11. Consider a car power kit, or an office charger/cable. That way, you have more opportunities to top-off your BlackBerry battery.
    As noted earlier, it's always a good idea to top-off the battery in a BlackBerry anyway, even if it's not almost dead. It is not necessary to follow the age-old advice of using up the battery before charging, and can wear out modern lithium-ion batteries if done on a constant basis.
    
    
12. Your battery may be defective or worn out. Compare your battery life to other people using the same model of BlackBerry.
    If you have been using your BlackBerry for a long time, it may be time to replace your battery. If you purchased your BlackBerry as used, you may want to replace the battery with a new one. For best battery life, it is generally best to use genuine brand-name batteries rather than inexpensive aftermarket batteries.
    
    
13. Occasionally, it may be a BlackBerryOS issue if you are having unusually short battery life all the time. Early versions of BlackBerryOS on the 7100 tended to use a lot more battery life than newer versions of BlackBerryOS. Upgrade to a newer version of BlackBerryOS.

See if all of these works. For me, I am able to run the newest Verichat for about 72 hours nonstop, or running WebMessenger for 100 hours nonstop. I am using a model 7280, which is well known to have a very good battery life (albiet with a very dim backlight).

I did the complete charge/discharge cycle when i first got my BB, and ever since i've had no issues with battery life. Actually, the battery life may be better than my cell phones. It also helps that I don't use the phone part as much as the data part.

awesome advice

just doing everything to use up the battery like full brightness and bt, or is there a utility to load the battery?

i'm used to ipaqs and smartphones re memory when battery goes dead. when bb (am using 7250) battery discharges fully, what data is lost/when?

>>just doing everything to use up the battery like full brightness and bt, or is there a utility to load the battery?

Play a very graphical videogame :D


>>when bb (am using 7250) battery discharges fully, what data is lost/when?

Never. You're safe. Everything is in flash ROM. Emails, addressbook, calendar. It's all stored in flash ROM on the fly. Even your saved email drafts too! You can yank the battery out, leave the BlackBerry aside for 2 months, put the battery back in, and all the data is still there!

That's a big advantage of BlackBerry over PocketPC and Smartphones. For other advantages, see the "Why BlackBerry?" article. Eventually, this will become a standard feature in even PocketPC and SmartPhone -- the new Treo650 and the Tungsten T3, now use a non-volatile filesystem, so it behaves like a BlackBerry in "never losing data".

The advice about "avoiding discharging" refers to something else: Preserving the health of the battery (i.e. your battery life will typically shorten to about 50-75% of its original, if you repeatedly fully discharge the battery every single time you use the BlackBerry for many months. So top off your BlackBerry whenever you can, especially when you go to bed.)

Mark,

First of all, great site I really like all the great info I've found here. I'm a new Blackberry user after having gone through the trials and tribulations of various cell phone, smartphone, pocket PC, palm combinations and I can't believe how great this Blackberry 7230 is. I love it!

Quick questions on battery usage/life. I didn't do the inital discharge/rechange, but I've only had the device for a week or so. Is it a good idea to do it now, or just forget it and forge ahead? The device was at 55% when I first got it and I've been charging it each night.

Second question, I see references all over the place to "topping it off". I usually plug it in at my bedside at night and unplug it in the morning. Is this a bad practice? Should I only charge it for 10-20 minutes in the morning and that's it? Will charging it overnight degrade the battery life?

Thanks.

Shawn

well as much as i love my 7520 the battery sucks so far. it s about a week old. i took it forr the charger today at about 630 am, did about 100 emails today, verichat is allways on... and made about 20 minutes in phone calls and it was dead at 10 pm. thank god im not a huge talker but i would expect it to get me thru the day.

Damn! 100 emails with Verichat on. You gave your Berry quite a whirl. I don't know that I would complain about the battery life.

I'm able to run Verichat 24/7 nonstop for about 75 hours on my Rogers BlackBerry 7280. The GSM/GPRS BlackBerries are much longer lasting.

What about Bluetooth? Does it do much to conserve battery life if you turn it on only when in use?

The 7280 has no Bluetooth.

Yes, turning off Bluetooth conserves battery.

Hey -- finally pulled me out of the woodwork! Just got my Bell Mobility 7250.

This unit -- as is typical with others -- arrived with a partial charge. Should the battery conditioning begin by discharging this partial charge? Or by trickle-charging to completion and then running a couple of deep discharge cycles?

Cheers.

Since I am about to get my 7250... I would like to know if anyone can answer this question.... Looking for the expert to provide us with his feedback!

Thanks!

Just give you my battery story:

7100t (new...4 days old). Running Verichat (3 mediums). Read about 15 emails. Talked for about 3.5 hours (Bluetooth). Left Verichat and Bluetooth running all day.

Unplugged phone at 7:00 AM and around 4 PM I got the Beep telling me my battery was low. Don't know if this is good battery performance or not. I will be buying the Standalone Battery charger and spare battery to swap them out I think.

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TRaymond

I have seen a significant reduction in battery life since the BES 4.0 upgrade. It seems like I have to recharge it every 24 hours. Has anyone experienced the same thing?

This is great advice. I was not aware that you needed to do the charge/discharge thing at the beginning.

Thanks.

With BES 4 and OS 4, the phone can do wireless syncs. That will take a lot of juice.

[quote=Mark Rejhon]Max The Battery Life Of Your New BlackBerry

Battery life is longer on GPRS BlackBerries than the CDMA and iDEN BlackBerries.


Why would that make a difference?

It takes more power to do the CDMA and iDEN transmissions than GSM/GPRS transmissions.

Verizon is CDMA?

Yes, that is correct. The CDMA providers in North America are Verizon, Sprint, Bell Canada, and Telus.

The major GSM providers in North America are Rogers(+Fido), Cingular(+AT&T), and T-Mobile.

The iDEN providers are Nextel and Telus. (Yes, Telus does both CDMA and iDEN)

Thanks Mark, you are superb!