[photojunky]

Verizon's website says that the Storm should give you upto 270 minutes of talk time OR 372 hrs of standby. I find myself having to charge it every night - since the battery icon turns to yellow.

Here are my usage details...

- I am on the phone for less than 60 minutes combined in a day
- I use the browser for less than 30 minutes total in a day - reading feeds at - Google Reader
- LED indicator is off for all events
- Vibration mode is off for all events
- Cell Broadcasting Service is OFF
- GPS Service is set to E911 only
- Location Aiding is DISABLED

- One email at work via BES
- Yahoo mail via BIS
- Google Sync - set to manual sync. Which I sync once a day

As far as history - when I got the STORM, I was travelling abroad and did not activate it right away. However, in my excitement, I started playing around with it before letting it charge fully. This I did a couple times while I was abroad. But since activating, I charge it regularly using either the USB charger connected to my PC or the wall charger. I charge it up to 100% and remove it off the charger. I usually let it go down all the way until the battery indicator turns yellow before putting it back on the charger.

Why such a difference between what Verizon claims and what I am experiencing. Is this simply a bad battery issue?

[andrew1229]

Sometimes I get better battery performance after giving it some really long charges (16 hours). Really you are supposed to give it a couple of charges like that when you first get the phone. Don't stop charging it just because the LED goes solid - keep charging it past 'full'.


Some storms did ship with bad batteries, but I think you need to charge yours past '100%' and otherwise its not all that unusual for it to only last a day. Usually I have similar usage though and am at 2/5 bars at days end and always have GPS turned on.

Also, make sure when you exit applications that you close them. Hold down the blackberry key to see what apps you have running. Make sure your radio is set to 1XEV and not Global.

[jjcampnr]

Welcome to Battery University

With lithium-ion batteries it's best to charge them when they run down to about 30% or 40% instead of running them all the way down and doing a deep discharge. The only time I typically do this is after upgrading to a new OS, which I find helps the OS calibrate the meter to the actual charge left in the battery.

I usually have GPS to E911, am on a BES getting a lot of email all day, have 2 internet email accounts configured, and use a bluetooth headset for calling a total of probably an hour a day, plus non-bluetooth calls of another 30 minutes (bluetooth is off when not in use). I also browse the web or use Google maps (now with GPS!) for at least a little bit every day. I charge my Storm every other day, after one day it's tipically down 20% - 30%.

[ecosse]

HAHA... Welcome... Ur not alone in your plight about the Blackberry Storm battery! Being a business oriented company, you would think their batteries would last a long time considering the amount of e-mails and data that people need to transmit! But alas!!!

[X.armitage]

I've cut the brightness of my screen down to 50 and cut the backlight time out to 20 secs. You may miss the brightness for the 1st 5 minutes, then you'll forget all about it. Small price to pay to be able to use your phone for a full day easy.

[Jodiuh]

I'm iffy about my new Storm's battery and thinking about taking it back for another as my usage/battery length doesn't track w/ y'alls.

[ever1ast]

I'm iffy about my new Storm's battery and thinking about taking it back for another as my usage/battery length doesn't track w/ y'alls.

You'll find a lot of tips and settings on this site to help maximize your battery life. But the one that I (and many others) have found that plays a huge factor is time. My battery life has more than doubled since it was new. I can easily get 2 days on a charge with moderate use including watching a full movie. If I'm using the heck out of it and playing with the GPS alot I'll get less. But for the most part after the battery's been "wore-in" it will perform much better than when new.

[TheChampJT]

Mine last for a good time, I streamed slacker last night for about 4 hours and lost about 30% battery. May seem like a lot lost, but it was a constant stream.

[whoz_who]

i have the same problem with my battery life

[FISH4RUDY]

So the light will stay solid lit whenthe batt is full. mine flashes and then eventually goes out?

[ykc0196]

Ever1est
How log was it to "wore-in" your batterie?

[maguiz]

guys every one missing the point here or root cause we call it @ work. This phone battery sucks. Why I need to turn off all th applications. Is this they packed with it. We paid good amount for the phone (premium) over other phones. So they need to fix it rather than we nee dto fiddle out other things.

[hoofingbloke]

I agree, if we need to disable functions to get a day out of the battery then the phone as a package is compromised.

[hoofingbloke]

However mine is on BES and 100 plus emails 3+ hours of phone calls, bluetooth/GPS always on.

Sat in a syncpod on my desk or on charge in my car so I dont really know how long my battery will last

Will all this charging 'overcharge' my battery and do it harm???

[PhantomS10]

My battery has yet to go below 30 percent. I have the dock for it sitting on my night stand and charge it every night. I don't wee why I would complain unless I were to start getting less than a full day out of the bettery.
I am running .75, backlight at 70%, about 30 minutes of talk time per day and one to one and a half hours on the internet.

[snork]

this battery works wonderfully, you just have to calibrate it like any other battery. other thing to check is if your phone is in 'global mode' or just 1XEV. if you leave it in global, both radios will be on and anytime you dont have verizon service for whatever reason, it will start searching for a GSM signal. unless you're out of the country there is no reason for that.

another thing is giving it a full charge. the first 2-3 days i had my storm i was lucky to get 6 hours out of it, but after changing a couple settings around, it does just fine.

i can easily get 3 days with decent usage out of the phone.

-i close out apps, although not for battery issues, just for performance.
-close out applications that use the gps when im not using them
-i leave the location based gps on, i havent had my phone drain anymore with that option set to e911 only.
-i turn off bluetooth when im not using it.

the real key is giving the battery a full charge and doing so everyone once in while (and charging it when it hits 30-40% when you can help it).

[ghbishop]

I started using a sleeper case (one with a magnet to put the phone in sleep mode) and found that instead of 40% at the end of the day I was at 70%.

[Jfredrix]

I'm not sure I buy all these theories on how to calibrate the battery. I get about a day's worth and have screen set to 10 and get 100's of emails a day on BES and spend quite a bit of time on the browser, so a day seems about right. As long as it lasts the day, I'm happy because I'm not using it while I'm sleeping and it's charging at night.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[urbs]

I had the same problem. Turn the backlight down.

[photojunky]

Sometimes I get better battery performance after giving it some really long charges (16 hours). Really you are supposed to give it a couple of charges like that when you first get the phone. Don't stop charging it just because the LED goes solid - keep charging it past 'full'.

Also, make sure when you exit applications that you close them. Hold down the blackberry key to see what apps you have running. Make sure your radio is set to 1XEV and not Global.

I do close all applications while exiting, instead of hitting the escape key. Radio has always been set on 1XEV. Backlight has been set to 10, timeout to 1min

Based on the responses, I am going to try the following,
- Will keep it on the charger past 100%.
- Re-charge when it is down to about 30% rather than wait till it gets completely low

@ever1ast - I hope the charge retention capacity grows with time, like your experience.

When I got the phone - I remember the LED going green when the charge was 100%, however after I tinkered around with the Custom Profiles - I don't see that happening. How do I get that back?

My biggest peeve is the huge discrepancy between what Verizon / Blackberry claim and the reality. It would be like GM stating Hummer gave 70mi/gallon. The fine print would read that the specs were without driver weight, chassis weight, tires etc... Blackberry could not possibly expect us to turn off all the functions that the phone was made for and then achieve their ideal case battery life.

I am going to try all your suggestions and shall re-post my findings.

[StormObsessed]

I have had serious battery drain problems since I got my replacement phone. without even using it, it loses more than 1/2 it's charge in 3-4 hours. It also gets extremely hot and just shuts off. Some days I charge it up to 3 times.

I just brought it back to the store and they switched my battery out.

[nyrgraves9]

I'm suddenly having the same problem. I'm starting to think that once I installed poynt onto my phone, the screen stopped timing out. I closed the program out and have the GPS off. So I dont understand. Help! Thanks!

[chrisnz]

I have heard the later versions of the software improve performance. I run .78 I heat the .90 greatly improves battery can anyone confirm

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[ever1ast]

Ever1est
How log was it to "wore-in" your batterie?

I'd say over a month at least till I started getting the best results. I've had the battery since release date and the longer I've had it the better it seems to perform so far.

[nightfishing]

BT is a battery killer with the storm.

That being said, the phone is a brick w/o bt (IMHO), so I have it on 24/7.

With the 1600 I can usually make it until dinner (when I swap in my spare to make it the rest of the way.)

I am an abuser, though (50+ emails, 3+ hours of talk time etc).

There is a ton of misinformation about batteries being posted, so I wouldn't try too many of the suggestions (LOL).