My 8700g won't even last the day at work due to power consumption or battery problems. It's brand new, a month old, and I keep it on my belt in the leather-type holster all day. But by 4-5 PM each day at the office the thing is so low on battery power that it says the radio won't work so can't make calls. I work deep in a building where I only have intermittent connectivity. I have BB Weather on the machine, which I thought I deleted through the advance options/applications menu (its not listed there any more but the icon is still there and it seems to be working), and also Google Maps installed. Is there something I should turn off, or do I have a bad battery (seems unlikely after only a month, but maybe not?). Any helpful suggestions appreciated, thanks.

no bbweather and google maps has nothing to do with this issue...its seems to me like you got a bad battery because you should be able to use those two applications multiple times and get use out of your bb and still have the battery last atleast two days
you either need to buy a new battery or send it back to where ever you got it

This is a possible problem if the holster does not have a sleeper magnet.

ding ding ding!!! We have a winner!!! When you loose signal the BlackBerry tries to reconnect every few minutes. This is very rough on the battery and will drain it fast. If you can't move you may need to turn the radio off when in areas of no signal.

oh dang d_fish i didnt even think of that but even if his holster doesnt have a magnet it shouldnt have drained the battery that fast

My team discovered that the defaults for screen brightness and time that the back light stays on is a big drain on the battery. Most of us had 7290 with extended battery and could go days without charging. We're all charging our 8700g at the end of the day. Back down the backlight brightness to 30 or so, then when you need additional light, you can hit the light (power) button on the top of the blackberry. Also change the backlight timeout down 10-20 seconds. This is annoying, but it really helps in battery conservation.

The "Automatic Backlight" feature will determine if the light around it justifies turning it up to max brightness or not. I turned this off, I can push the button if I need the extra light. Hope to see extended life batteries soon. I saw the UK post, hope it leads somewhere.

As far as I recall, the transmit power is adjusted in accordance with the signal level that the phone is receiving. i.e if you are receiving a poor signal, the phone will automatically ramp up the output power of the transmitter as it knows you are in a poor coverage area.

When you receive a strong signal the outpout power is dropped to save battery life.

I certainly notice my battery lasts much less when I am in a poor coverage area for several hours.

As a slight aside, I recently noticed my battery draining much quicker than normal. I'm not 100% sure but the only app I had running in the background which was not normal was Opera. I had a page loaded on the screen with a animated gif, although the gif was not animated!
I quit Opera and the battery drain seemed to return to its normal rate.


Mike