Got a battery drain and I've pulled out the big guns to fix it

[eicca]

I kind of detailed this in another post but here goes again.

I bought a used Pearl 8220 just five days ago. So far I have LOVED it except for the fact that the battery is struggling. I've gotten a day's worth of light use out of it, which I figure is respectable, but my real concern has been at night, when the phone is "off." By "off" I mean powered down by holding the End Call key. The battery drains anywhere from 20-50% overnight while the phone is "off."

Now, of course I've started with the basics. Make sure all apps are closed, check for buggy third-party apps, disable Wifi, etc etc. Nothing helped.

I wiped the phone and upgraded to OS 4.6.0.305, which has been great, except it still hasn't fixed the battery drain issue.

So I started digging in deep. At this point, all third-party apps are gone, I've deleted all sorts of unneeded modules like Voice Dialing, T-Mobile's Favorite Five, Voice Notes Recorder, extra apps like Password Keeper, I removed all games except BrickBreaker (because I love it), disabled Memory Cleaning, GPS and Location Services, turned the backlight to 70 and time to 20 seconds and even gone as far as reformatting my SD card and deleting all the existing BBThumbs.dat files in case Media Manager was staying up at night trying to organize thumbnails and stuff.

I even went through my even log, trying to determine if something was happening while the phone was "off," but nothing was logged after "system power off" or whatever it says when that happens. Maybe it didn't correctly log because the battery died in the middle of the night...?

While doing all of this, I ordered a new battery. During the meeting before I bought the phone, the very nice lady who sold it to me was more than happy to let me use it to see how well it worked. But the battery was dead. I remember her saying "that's weird, it had a charge when I left. It's never just died like that before." She told me she had been on vacation for a week prior and the phone had been left in her desk at her house. I figured the old battery could have discharged to the point of damage, and that could be causing it to drain itself overnight.

My new battery arrived just today, so I haven't had the chance to see if the old one is the culprit yet.

BUT.

My last theory is (and I'm hoping I have it nailed) that the typical Broken Bluetooth is causing my problems.

Before thirty minutes ago, I had not once enabled my Bluetooth. Ever. I just have no need for it. But, after reading about how 82xx BBs commonly have problems, I decided to try mine. Sure enough, I check the "Enable Bluetooth" check box, and it unchecks itself seconds later.

On a hunch, I immediately check the event log again. Hey, I've seen that cluster of Bluetooth-related events before. Several times, actually.

Nailed it. This morning, when my phone was charging on my desk, it seems the Bluetooth had tried to turn itself on and failed several times. And, if this is an abnormal occurrence, what's keeping it from happening when the phone is "off?"

Now. My challenge. I need to completely remove any and all Bluetooth capabilities from my device. I'm guessing, short of removing the hardware, I can delete certain modules. But I don't know which ones to delete, and I would rather like to not bork my phone and have to restore the OS again because that takes FOR-FREAKING-EVER.

So. If you could provide your knowledge for the benefit of me and other Pearl Flip users, that would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

[hubermania]

There's "Off" and there's "Off". If you click the Power Off icon, it will say merely "Turn Off". This will put the phone in standby, same as holding down the End Call button. Open the Clock app and add an alarm. Now go back and click the Power Off icon, and you'll see two options for "Turn Off" and "Full Power Off". The latter saves much more battery, and prevents daily alarms from going off at awkward times.

As for bluetooth, you're the first person I've ever heard suggest a Bluetoothectomy. While I don't have a definitive answer for which modules to remove while maintaining a working phone, net_rim_bb_bluetooth.cod sounds promising. Rename the BT cod in your OS folder (8200v-v4.6.0.whatever/Java) and run App Loader. It should remove the cod from your phone; I seem to recall doing this with the TMo Fav 5 file. If the phone won't boot or throws an error, change back the BT cod name and run App Loader. As a last resort you can always use BBSAK to load the BT cod back onto the phone, even if it won't boot.

[ruebyi]

Were you able to fix the issue? I have the same problem

[RedGreenBlue]

In my experience (three straight 8220s with hardware failures), noticeably more rapid battery drain, especially when turned off, is a sign the phone is circling the drain, apparently like RIM itself (with hindsight, one could argue that the poor reliability of the 8220 was an omen of RIM's mounting troubles). Setting up the phone so that the full-power off option is available and using it makes no difference in the battery drain while the phone is off makes no difference, whether the phone is healthy or not. (It is true that if you leave the phone's auto-on function enabled, it will use more power when 'off' than if the auto-on options are disabled—or if you shut the phone down using the full-power off option. But if you don't want to use the auto-on function, go into Options (the icon with the wrench), select Auto On/Off, and disable the weekday and weekend auto-on options. Unless you then specifically set an alarm, this is the equivalent of using full-power off except that you can simply shut the phone off using the red-telephone button. In fact, the full-power off function no longer appears because it's not needed.)

In other words, it's probably time to start shopping for a more reliable phone.