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.

-------------
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!

I can't get my battery to run down. I got the 7290 two days ago and it was at 40%. I leave the bluetooth on, phone transmitter on, web browser open spent two days testing my pages and emails and this thing is like the eveready rabbit, it just keeps ticket. I was on a call earlier and got dicoe'd, I looked and the battery indicator was red, I turned on the light and it gave me to blue bars. Now it's been running all afternoon.

What do you guys suggest as a super drain mode? At this pace, 3 charges and discharges and the new toys will be out...

Also, does it charge when you hook up the USB cable? I haven't connected it yet cause i've been waiting for a complete discharge.

>>Also, does it charge when you hook up the USB cable?

Yep, it does.

>>I was on a call earlier and got dicoe'd, I looked and the battery indicator was red, I turned on the light and it gave me to blue bars. Now it's been running all afternoon.

That sometimes happens if you push the battery very hard very fast. (Simultaneous Bluetooth+Phone call is the fastest way to eat the battery) Then after the battery has nearly drained, it disconnects the call. But then now the battery cools down a bit, the battery bar bounces back. As long as you're not pushing it too hard, the battery bar can sometimes bounce back from 0 battery bars all the way back to 2-3 battery bars after the battery has "cooled down" from a very intensive phone call. But then if you try to press it a second time, it may bounce back to only 1 battery bar next time or just automatically shut off.

You already gave your battery a super drain. But now your battery can no longer handle a super drain for long (it disconnected during a phone call at zero power bars), but you can finish off your battery simply by leaving the backlight always-on such as using the BBLight utility, or just doing emails. Sometimes, a BlackBerry with a battery too weak to be able to do long phone calls reliably, may still be able to squeeze a few more hours of email reception, assuming the battery is cooled off.

That's what I figured, thanks for the help...

I've had my BB a couple of weeks. I charged it the first time for five or six hours but didn't do the charge/dischareg/charge thing. If I did that now would it help? or is it too late to do any good?
Thanks.

Yes. Charge-Discharge is good for all BlackBerries done on an occasional basis. Top-off should be a regular habit, but it's not a good idea to "never discharge" your BlackBerry. It varies from battery to battery, but an occasional full discharge is actually good for the battery.

Most people will end up discharging their BlackBerry occasionally during regular use, to condition the battery, but lithium batteries do not need much conditioning often at all. For me, it happens about once or twice a month just because I forgot my charger or similiar.

There are new lithium technologies that can retain 98% of power even after 1000 full cycles. Within a few years, it will probably no longer really matter if you frequently deep-cycle your lithium battery or just topping it off, or a mix of both.

At the moment, the best is a mix of two, in order to get the best lifetime usage out of the battery. Err on the side of topping it off, with just an occasional full discharge (to auto shutoff) to recondition the battery.

I just got a new 7290 and charged it overnight. I woke up and it was at 85% charged . . . through the last hour it has increased to 95% - weird!

Me too. I went from 6-7 days on a charge to 48 hours max. I thought it was just me, but my boss confirms he has noticed the same as well since our company upgraded the BES. I have a 7230 (tmo) and he has a 7280 (att).

I have always done wireless syncs, even before the BES was upgraded, so I don't think that's the issue itself. (And I've had OS 4.0 for a long time now.) Or, by "wireless syncs", do you mean something else besides downloading email, calendars, notes, etc using the GPRS connection?

My speakers at home pick up some interference from the GPRS radio, and I've noticed it is a lot more frequent lately. Could BES 4.0 be sending/receiving more data or communicating much more frequently? Is there anything that I can have our admins configure on the BES to change this?

I recently got moved from a 7510 to 7520. What an improvement in battery life - I get 2 full days (sometimes an extra half day) versus less than a full day.

Wow. First time I've heard something positive about the battery life of a Nextel.

The most I've ever seen is 1.5 days, and that's w/ no phone calls, no DC... and perhaps 200 emails (the primary use of my Blackberry.) The shortest I've ever seen was 8 hrs.

Mark - I continue to be amazed by the wealth of helpful information you share will all of us. Thank you!

One thing I didn't see in the FAQ or replies (unless I missed it)... what about holstering the BB or using cases that have "the magnet?" I only learned about this trick from a friend who wondered why I *never* holstered my new 7520 - he asked if it was killing my battery life, and then explained that the RIM cases and good aftermarkets have a magnet to sleep the screen.

Should we add that one?

Thanks again!

when I was on vacation last week my bb went four days with out a charge granted I had turned my work email off but ramble was left on the whole week and lots of bb messages

Any more experiences with this anyone??

The methods listed in Mark's technotes seem to work well..

After reading the below I had questions and was wondering if others had good experience with the Mark suggested methods.

The below seems to couter it a bit, but, BB & device specific in some ways it seems would be more applicable, than Lithium Ion in general, and for laptops as mentioned several times.

Thank you,
jc

http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm

Avoid frequent full discharges because this puts additional strain on the battery. Several partial discharges with frequent recharges are better for lithium-ion than one deep one. Recharging a partially charged lithium-ion does not cause harm because there is no memory. (In this respect, lithium-ion differs from nickel-based batteries.) Short battery life in a laptop is mainly cause by heat rather than charge / discharge patterns.


A lithium-ion battery provides 300-500 discharge/charge cycles. The battery prefers a partial rather than a full discharge. Frequent full discharges should be avoided when possible. Instead, charge the battery more often or use a larger battery. There is no concern of memory when applying unscheduled charges.

This doesn't counter my post at all.

My post is just worded in a way that occasional full discharge is okay, but frequent full discharge is not a good idea. It's fully compatible with this, and this is another way of saying it - it says nothing about occasional full discharges.

Avoiding full discharges completely is also a bad idea; lithium batteries do perform their best when they are "occasionally fully discharged", best if done slowly to avoid overheating the battery. Heat is less of an issue with BlackBerries since they use a lot less power than a laptop; and lithium batteries are more easily worn down by high heat like when playing 3D games until the laptop suddenly dies with a heated-up battery. Full discharges on a BlackBerry won't do as much wear-and-tear as a BlackBerry doesn't heat up nearly as much in normal usage.

Cycles are typically cumilative. Four 25% charging cycles is roughly equal to one 100% charging cycle. (More or less - unless the act of going to 100% overheats the battery, then it'll do more damage). So nobody needs to feel guilty about "topping off" their lithium-ion battery.

During ongoing use, just do partial discharges more often than a full discharge and the battery, and you'll be OK.

I used a 7280 with ATT as the provider for over a year with great battery life (recharged on average every 3 days). Two months ago a switched to T-Mobile and a 7290 and battery life is awful (most times I have to recharge twice a day). Voice, SMS and email traffic has not changed. I have used two different new batteries (used on the 7280 before) so I can say that it is not a battery problem. I keep Bluetooth off since I don't use it. I know T-Mobile does not have as good a coverage as ATT/Cingular and there may be greater "search" time. Any suggestions? Do I need to preset something to be more efficient? like a different Message Service etc.? Thanks.

my old blackberry 7290 is gone becuase my work I.T. have problem Cingular's and quit it, another Verizon, replace 7250 now... I am not feeling fast low battery. I delete BBToday, BBWeather, GMapviewer. I keep IP-Replay, BBM and VErichat, I turn on power at 6am, I saw 1% left at 5pm. I test i turn off Verichat, start 5:30am, and I saw 100% at 3:10pm now, weird! problem Verichat?

RHR

mark i've got 7230. in the last few days it has started to give me some problems. it reboots by itself for no reason. the battery indicator shows 80-90% full. i charge it daily at work on my desk and at home by my bed - i use as an alarm clock. i was just wondering if maybe the battery is not telling me the true or is going faulty. i bought it used on ebay a year ago and this is the same battery.
as i have stated elsewhere in the fourms my wife thinks i love my bb more than her. i don't know about that so much but what i do know is that until this started i really had no problems or disageements with my bb. it is with me 24/7. i love my wife but i would be lost without my blackberry.
thanks for any help you can give

rcb3 - my Verizon 7250 did the same thing about two weeks ago (kept rebooting) however, it hasn't done it since. I was wondering if it was system issue.

I don't understand my 9250 fast low battery
I test

(All) Standard OS, BB Messenger,AvaantGo, Berry411, MidpSSH, MGMMaps, GMapViewer, IP-Relay = 6am to 5pm = 100% !!!

(All) + BBToday + BBWeather + Verichat (no chat yet) = 6am to 3pm 0%
(All) + BBToday only 6am to 7pm, I saw 2% left
(All) + Rambile (no chat yet) is on, 6am to 5pm = 20% left
(All) + Verichat (no chat yet) is on, 6am to 5pm = 40% left

I don't understand about 7250, but I like 7290 long battery

RHR