Improving the Battery Life on a Blackberry
I run a number of applications on my Blackberry Bold 9000 that not only run in the background but also communicate with the network. This causes the battery life on my blackberry to be very very short. I would unplug it about 9am and it would need to be recharged again at about 9pm. This was roughly 12 hours of regular use.
A few of the applications I use include Socialscope (for twitter, refreshes every 2 hours), BeejiveIM (for 4 different IM accounts, always connected but in a standby mode), Google Sync (to sync my calendar/contacts and sync’s almost every 4 hours), SmartWiFi (enables/disables WiFi based on location) and WhatsApp Messenger (always connected).
These applications are pretty much required for me and I have made adjustments to them to try minimize how much power they require but I needed to find something more to help me out.
I read an article last week on BlackBerryCoool.com about how to increase the battery life on my Blackberry. To summarize the tips without going into much details (you can read it for yourself) here are the main points.
- Close all the apps you aren’t using.
- Reduce your screen brightness from 100 down to 10.
- Put your device into standby mode.
- Manage your connections.
- Limit phone usage, features.
I actually decided to do some of my own testing to see what I could do to increase it and attacked each of the above items.
1. I actually did better than that. I upgraded to the latest OS 5.0 for my device (5.0.0.509) and wiped out all applications on it to start fresh. I then installed each application one by one and ran it for a day while I monitored the battery life and memory usage. As I installed more applications the memory usage went up and the battery life went down. This is expected. What we are trying to do is reduce the amount.
2. I did this and actually was shocked that I did not notice a difference. I now run it at 10 just fine.
3. This was the game changer for me. I always just used my keyboard lock to lock my device. I always hated to press the standby button on the top as it was a pain in the ass. However the standby mode trick probably made the biggest difference. I also use an application called AddOnis, one of the features in this application is to auto lock or automatically put the phone into standby mode. This in conjunction with the ‘A’ hotkey on my Blackberry to put into standby (only on OS5) will ensure my phone is locked and in standby every time. One thing to note from what I have read is that the phone is also put into standby when you use a holster made for the Blackberry. These holsters have a magnet on them to trigger the change.
4. I didn’t notice any big changes when disabling Bluetooth when I did not require it. I usually just leave it on. However disabling WiFi added little improvement. The app SmartWiFi does this for me automatically, however I am wondering if the power it uses to scan for my location uses battery life.
5. This is more of a habit. But if you need to use your phone you need to use it.
One extra tip I have shared with a number of people, on a Blackberry that has 3G on it I would set it back to 2G. 3G uses up a lot more power and if you don’t need things such as the speed for surfing or a data connection while on a call then why keep it on? I always have it turned off and this is a big improvement to me.
One thing I also noticed is that when data coverage was minimal or non existant, certain applications seemed to trip out and start eating up my battery. I think they were just trying to connect over and over and over again. In these situations I just made sure I logged out and closed them off totally.
I guess to sum it all up I have my on set of tip’s to increasing battery life.
- Change the screen brightness from 100 to 10.
- Use standby mode whenever possible.
- Keep it plugged in whenever possible. (Car, desk, home)
- If your phone has 3G and you don’t need it, force it to 2G.
- Turn off Bluetooth and WiFi if you are not using them.
- If you are in areas of spotty data coverage or have no data coverage then exit or log out of those data apps to prevent them from trying to reconnect.
- Uninstall any apps you don’t need. This includes theme’s. Free up memory and space if you can.
- Change your IM programs to something that has a idle mode. For example the default MSN client is always connected, where BeeJiveIM will go into idle mode and wake up when you receive a message.
That is pretty much it. If you have a tip send it along and I will update the list.
