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Old 02-20-2008, 11:11 AM   #1
Gyi2os
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Default 8100 Pearl Sudden Change in Battery Life.

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Hello,

I've searched and read a handful of threads regarding '8100 battery drain/short battery life' but the threads always seem to consist of people stating their usage and battery life, with very few insights into actually solving the problem. So i decided to ask my own question;

I've had my pearl for just over a month. This is used as a personal phone, not connected with any BES servers or the like. I had been getting, what i considered, wonderful battery life. Two days from 100% down to ~10%. 6am it comes of the charger. i could go all day, leave it off the charger that night, and by around 7-8pm the next night, the battery would start to warn me of low charge. - Totally acceptable in my eyes. after all, i would be considered a 'light' user. I field a handful of phone calls a day, send 5-10 txt's. do not have the data plan or e-mail service - but do have the t-mobile web browsing feature (something like 6$ a month lets me browse the web but not dl anything or use cool progs like googlemaps/email).

Just this last week, i've noticed that my battery cycle is something like this: plug in phone at night before bed, Take off charger at 6am. by about 8-9 that night, phone is at ~15% and shortly after, the battery icon starts to turn red. I have not increased my usage at all, if anything it's declined a bit.

One thing to note is that my office is in the basement of our building where i get 0 reception. I do get 'above ground' 3-5 times throughout the day, where i'll get a few bars and usually receive a few txt's and a vmail notification.

Another note would be that i use T-mobile, and EDGE is always underneath my signal bars. Also, i use the t-mobile browser maybe once a week for approx 10 minutes to find places/get phone numbers/check movie times etc. this has been standard through the time i've owned my phone

Usually i just hit the red button or the 'back' button until i'm back at the home screen and go on doing other things. I've never 'closed' the browser though the menu like has been noted in another post.

So i guess my question is, Can anyone think of a reason my battery life would drop by nearly 50% from one week to the next? Does anyone know of any possible solutions or tests/diags i can do to maybe root out the cause of the drain? Or can anyone say that my bat is just 'effed' and needs to be replaced. If the latter is the case. Does T-mobile/RIM warranty the battery replacement for a given time?

Thanks to all that respond.
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Old 02-20-2008, 12:57 PM   #2
CaseLogic
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For starters, if you don't get service at all, you definitely want to consider powering your phone off or turning off the service. You can change that by going to "Manage Connections" or whatever it's called. Otherwise your phone will be searching for a network the entire time, which will easily drain your battery life.

Secondly, you're going to want to make sure you have as few (preferrably none) applications running in the background as possible. You said yourself that you leave the browser running all the time, but keep in mind that just because it's not on the screen doesn't mean it's not running and using battery life in the background. You want to use Menu->Exit/Close or the Escape button (arrow) to exit completely out of programs to make sure they're not running in the background.

You can hit ALT+ESCAPE (while holding alt) to cycle through all the applications currently running. There should only be 5 in that list (you can check the FAQ for more details on this), but anything else is programs running in the background, and depending on the application, it can be a minor or major impact on your battery life.
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Old 02-20-2008, 01:36 PM   #3
jseah
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If you are in a fringe signal area, your battery life will definitely suffer as the radio will continually transmit trying to lock onto a signal. If your signal has always been that bad, but just that for some reason, your battery life seems to have plummeted lately, you can try a battery pull. I had the same problem with mine. Didn't have an issue with signal, but for some reason, battery life plummeted by about 2/3. Did a battery pull and that must have cleared something up, because my battery life improved.
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Old 02-20-2008, 06:15 PM   #4
Gyi2os
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As far as fringe signal area goes, i live in Minneapolis MN and work in a nearby 'metro-attached' suburb. Outside and on most floors above ground i get full coverage. But i do see how I technically could be on a fringe as i'm in/out of no service area (basement) often. They just love to put Techies in dark holes...

by 'turning off the service', would a similar result be yielded by turning my wireless off" when i'm 'below ground'? I"m assuming that would stop the phone from constantly searching for signal... As far as apps running (ALT+Escape), i have...

Browser
Phone
Home Screen
Black Berry Messenger
Messages


I don't use black berry messenger, but i can't find a place to disable it - Help?
Even when i go to the browser, then menu>close. it pops back up again(same with BBM) I'm assuming these two are linked somehow.

Thanks guys for your insight.
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