[raymond]

What's everyone getting for average battery life? I've had my playbook for over a year and it's around 7 hours. It's about half of the the life of what it used to be. Is there a option to have the battery changed out from rim? Is it easier to just purchase a new one? Thanks for your time

[Crisdean]

Good question. What's your screen brightness setting for battery and is Wifi and BT and bridge always on? Maybe you can try and let it run dry and then if that fails maybe a restore?

[Chaddface]

Battery life varys so much depending on use so its difficult to compare.
The best way to test the battery life would be a drain test using the same method the author of the app Battery Guru used. I think its in a thread called drain test.

[Chaddface]

Here is the link:
Battery health

Post #10 if it doesn't direct you.

[WakyEggs]

Tip: Delete all email accounts from your playbook. Yielded great results in standby time for me. And really delete those email accounts (they are on your BB already anyway) because I have found out that even though syncing is on "manual" the playbook still automatically syncs all the time, wasting precious battery time.

[Chaddface]

There was or maybe still is a bug related to manual sync and native email. Some people were having excessive battery drain. Setting the sync interval to anything but manual fixed it.

[dmlis]

What's everyone getting for average battery life? I've had my playbook for over a year and it's around 7 hours. It's about half of the the life of what it used to be. Is there a option to have the battery changed out from rim? Is it easier to just purchase a new one? Thanks for your time

Do you mean that your PB's battery life used to be 14 hours? This is unusually long for this tablet. What was typical usage scenario?

[johnfenno]

I get bout 5 hours 'normal' usage ie browsing etc...less if I play flash based games (surprise surprise) but, surprisingly, battery life doesn't seem to drop considerably playing HD vids connected to telly with HDMI lead...which I thought would cause bit more drain... all in all not too bad considering.....
oh, 64 gig playbook 6 months old btw but used (very) extensively every day

[xamdam]

For normal use browsing i can get at least 10 hrs np's, but if i play games and such i get maybe 5_6hrs depends on how long i play. I have the LTE version bought it in dec 2012.

[raymond]

Good question. What's your screen brightness setting for battery and is Wifi and BT and bridge always on? Maybe you can try and let it run dry and then if that fails maybe a restore?

Brightness is between halfway and zero. Mostly zero. BT almost never on and wifi is always on.

[raymond]

Do you mean that your PB's battery life used to be 14 hours? This is unusually long for this tablet. What was typical usage scenario?

not typical usage but a charge would last at least 24 hours. Now if I use it during the day I need to charge it to use it at night time. Maybe 14 is pushing it but it lasted a heck of a lot longer than it does now.

[randomroyalty]

My battery health after 1 year varies between 88-90%. With Wifi Bluetooth on, and Bridge running, and approx. 30% brightness, I lose 10% per hour and can go about 10 hours of mainly browsing. This is the same if I am tethered or on wifi. I do not use native email due to battery drain issues. Some apps increase drain if running in the background, especially Facebook or some Android ports. This has been consistent from day 1.

[raymond]

Gonna dl guru in a day or two and see if I have an issue or just the average usage drain. Thx guys. I'm just worried about how the "hub" will effect the battery life.

[raymond]

My battery health after 1 year varies between 88-90%. With Wifi Bluetooth on, and Bridge running, and approx. 30% brightness, I lose 10% per hour and can go about 10 hours of mainly browsing. This is the same if I am tethered or on wifi. I do not use native email due to battery drain issues. Some apps increase drain if running in the background, especially Facebook or some Android ports. This has been consistent from day 1.

Cool, I'll probably delete the email accounts. That seems to be the general consensus around here

[rjkolo]

I bought my PlayBook day one, It lasts me about 36 hours of decent use. Always connected to WiFi, bridged sometimes. Notes in class, web surfing between, with a video or 2 here or there...on days with heavy use I sill make it from when I leave the house in the morning (8:30) to when I make it home (7:30) with enough juice to browse the web (of course CrackBerry) before needing a charge before bed.

[spencerdl]

For me it really depend on that particular day of usage. I find on my heavy days about 7hrs and on my not so heavy days about 10hrs and I've had my PlayBook since May 2011. I guess thats okay, I use my PlayBook everyday since I got it.

[nappp]

I turned my screen brightness down to around 25% to 30% and I get a lot more life than I used to. easily 5/6 hours of simple use. a little less for games or movie streaming

[raymond]

I turned my screen brightness down to around 25% to 30% and I get a lot more life than I used to. easily 5/6 hours of simple use. a little less for games or movie streaming

I'm right there with you. This typifies my day with the playbook

[joshua_sx1]

A good practice also to lengthen the life of your PB's battery is to put it on "Standby" mode when not in use... this will help you save battery... a lot...

[nappp]

A good practice also to lengthen the life of your PB's battery is to put it on "Standby" mode when not in use... this will help you save battery... a lot...

I agree. airplane mode even helps more if you don't need alerts at the time

[AndrewMBaines]

I have a PB, an iPad 2 and a Google Nexus 7. All running the latest OS.
From a hardware/OS perspective, the only area where the PB loses badly is in battery life. In general use, it's fine. The problem is standby time. If I leave the iPad or Nexus for a week on a shelf without any use, I'll see drain of maybe 10-15% of the battery.
The PB would wake me in the middle of the second night with its stupid low battery warning.

Ignoring the stupidity of a battery warning noise at 2am, it shouldn't be up to me to disable half the functionality when I'm not using a device. My BB Bold turns off overnight, the iPad and Nexus just get it right.
The one change I'd like to see in the next release is decent battery management. We shouldn't need forum posts telling us to disable this or that - it should be automatic. I use a Blackberry phone because of the excellent battery life, so RIM know this stuff.

[jpash549]

Don't think my nexus 7 is all that great in battery life as compared to the Playbook. And there are complaints on the N7 forum about battery life and charging problems. With both the N7 and the PB i have adopted the practice of going into airplane mode before going into standby with the PB or sleep mode with the N7 using the magnetic cover. Agree that it could be convenient to have the option of automatically selecting this without having to go through the gear.

[PTZ]

Four to five hours of browsing ,maybe a youtube video or two. Definitely not as long as I had hoped. I don't play games or watch movies with it. I use it for writing proposals and invoices with Docs to Go and checking contracts.
This is my second PlayBook and the battery life is similar to the first. The wifi is on most of the time. If I don't surf the internet and it sits obviously it will sit for a couple days- I like it so I use it alot.

[Crisdean]

I think I got 8 hours of it yesterday. Wifi and BT for bridge on. Standard standby times on. Was at 505 the evening so wasn't too disappointed with it. Loving it. If I can spare time can be a more precise and try to run a few real life situations to see how quickly the battery drains on mine.

[dmlis]

My battery test for several Playbooks I owned:
RIM retail demo 3 - played unstopped, volume 100% through headphones, full brightness, WiFi on. From 4 hrs 50 min to 5 hrs 30 min until auto turn off (depends on tablet, 7% to 11% charge).

Typical scenarios:
- emails, documents, Internet, up to 30 min of music, auto brightness, WiFi on .... battery drain 12%-15% per hour.
- video online (webinars), emails regular check, volume 100% in headphones, auto brightness, WiFi on .... battery drain 18%-19% per hour.
Standby with WiFi on: 0.7% / hour.
Airplane mode: 0.4% / hour.

I used one of Playbooks extensively in high temperatures (over 30C) and noticed that it survived in standby mode longer than other tablets in the family: Sony Tablet S and first iPad. All tablets were carried in the same backpack.