[Skeevecr]

We have seen a wide variety of battery life values from many people on here with just as many people seeing great battery life as we see complaining about poor battery and obviously plenty in between, so there are clearly plenty of factors that could be influencing the situation and maybe it would be a good thing if we could actually try and get to the bottom of the factors that actually have an impact.

We know that there are people from BB on this board so if we could provide some good feedback that goes beyond squabbling among ourselves it could help them to track down why some people are suffering while others aren't and potentially lead to us all seeing battery life improvements.

We need to try and compile as many factors as possible to try and establish a pattern, especially with those who are seeing bad battery life and my suggestions would be for everyone replying to include the following.

Battery life - x hours
Better or Worse than previous device -
Carrier -
Network connectivity - 2g/3g/4g + Wifi or not
Coverage strength - good/bad/variable (based on main locations you use your device)
Other radios - BT/NFC/MHS etc or not
Display brightness -
Display timeout -
Gestures when locked - yes/no
Amount of accounts in the hub -
Phone use - y hours
Email volume - per hour
IM use - per hour
Social media use - (this could based on messages or browsing)
Multimedia use - (this would include content creation and consumption)
Games - Yes/No and how much
Apps - amount typically left open
Type of apps left open - native, android ports, sideloaded apps etc.
Encryption - device/mediacard/no

Other comments - some people report things like device seeming to heat up or battery life improving over time so anything else that might be relevant could be mentioned here.

If anyone can think of anything else worth including in the list that would be great as the more info we can compile the higher the chance of us finding a pattern.

[Denenatse]

I'm going to tell you from an engineer 's perspective, that the only reason you have the different battery life values, is because people do not charge their batteries correctly. Just charge it all of the way, and use it till the battery is dead. If you can't do this, buy a second battery. There is no magical solutions to the problem, turn off NFC, that's the only other tip. Plus, we are all too lazy to do all that you requested

[der_mit]

I agree with den. I took my z10 of the charger yesterday at midday its now 27+ hours later and still have 30% juice.
Charge the batt to full then run to empty.
If the batt is not working correctly get your carrier / supplier to replace it. No need to do surveys on this forum, that's just a waste of time.

[kbz1960]

I thought lithium batteries didn't like to be run dead?

[der_mit]

You start recharging when the icon goes red. That's what I meant

[BB_Phoenix]

PLEASE do not take this advice to run your battery near dead. That is old battery technology talking. Only let it run near dead about once or twice a month to recalibrate the battery. Other then that short shallow cycles will make your battery have a longer life. The worst enemy of Lithium Ion batteries is heat. Deep discharging and charging generates greater heat which shortens battery life. Like wise don't leave your phone in the sun or charge it while it is hot. Also slow charging is better then fast charging. This information comes from battery technology experts and not just my personal opionion.

[Luke Barrie]

Battery life - between 7 and 16 hours
Better or Worse than previous device - worse than my 9700, but i expected that
Carrier - Rogers
Network connectivity - LTE + wifi
Coverage strength - good LTE, full wifi
Other radios - bluetooth on occasion
Display brightness - 40 or 50%
Display timeout - 30 sec
Gestures when locked - yes
Amount of accounts in the hub - FB, email, linkedin, BBM, text, etc
Phone use - 1hr of calls a day, 2-4hrs of games, hub/email checks every 5-10min
Email volume - 2-4 per hour
IM use - 5-8 messages per hour
Social media use - minimal/moderate
Multimedia use - moderate
Games - Yes, playing beach buggy blitz (kills battery) and ice age village (sips battery VERY well)
Apps - internet, BBM, game, and sometime another running at any time. I close them if not needed for a few hours
Type of apps left open - mostly native
Encryption - maybe a NO?

Other comments - Device gets warm with graphics-intense gaming. If i use the phone like i used my 9700 (data services mainly, minimum games or media), i can go all day. If i play around with it like its my new toy (games, videos, camera), the battery is much less, and i expect that in any device.

I would like to see some OS tweaks bring a bump to battery life, or perhaps a bigger battery for sale. A 20-30% battery life bump would make this phone perfect

[der_mit]

Well I have been using my method and den's method with lithium batteries for over 8 years and my batteries have always performed as they are designed to.
The people who I know who keep recharging half way through always have problems. Just my observations.
Each individual can do what they like, we are just giving our tips and the evidence shows they work.

[The_Original_Modifier]

I thought lithium batteries didn't like to be run dead?

Read up on batteries HERE

[Neely2005]

I'm going to tell you from an engineer 's perspective, that the only reason you have the different battery life values, is because people do not charge their batteries correctly. Just charge it all of the way, and use it till the battery is dead. If you can't do this, buy a second battery. There is no magical solutions to the problem, turn off NFC, that's the only other tip. Plus, we are all too lazy to do all that you requested

Actually that's totally incorrect:

BlackBerry 101: Charging your battery | CrackBerry.com

I come from a time when batteries weren't as smart as they are today. There were all sorts of secret tricks and rules you'd have to know, or you'd kill your battery. You couldn't recharge a battery until it had fully discharged; otherwise, you'd limit the battery's capacity. Later years brought batteries that had to be "trained." Fully discharging and recharging multiple times.

Today's modern BlackBerry batteries are different. There's none of that to worry about. Charge your BlackBerry whenever you want. In the car? Charge it. Sitting at your desk for 10 minutes? Charge it. In fact, the only real trick to remember is to make sure the battery doesn't get too low. A study by Cadex found that many Li-ion batteries fail due to being over-discharged.

Your smartphone battery - like your smartphone itself - performs best when it's charged. There's no need to keep it at 100% all day, every day. But there's no reason to let your battery level fall into the red, either. Giving your BlackBerry a few minutes of power will do more good than harm, so go ahead.

[Skeevecr]

I'm going to tell you from an engineer 's perspective, that the only reason you have the different battery life values, is because people do not charge their batteries correctly. Just charge it all of the way, and use it till the battery is dead. If you can't do this, buy a second battery. There is no magical solutions to the problem, turn off NFC, that's the only other tip. Plus, we are all too lazy to do all that you requested

Well you might be an engineer, but you clearly no nothing about the impact that the various radios or a misbehaving app might have on battery life as you would not come up with such as ludicrous statement that it is just down to how the batteries are charged.

Incidentally, you also jumped to the wrong conclusion about why I started this post, my battery life on my device is great under 5% an hour while I was out and about this afternoon, I was simply trying to do some constructive since we have a vast number of topics on this site about battery life and beyond the usual obvious suggestions there has been no real effort to try to get to the bottom of why people are having problems or to even ascertain that they are seeing problems i.e. if they are getting ****ty battery life but their previous phone was also getting the same then it would seem to imply that it was not their new device that was at fault.

Further to the point that style of charging is not some universal panacea, my great battery life is coming from a battery that is routinely topped up as needed because I see no benefit in running out of battery when I go out just to adhere to some outdated notion of battery charging.

[knighty2112]

Just copied this off the Web from this Web site on Li-ion batteries.

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/a..._ion_batteries

"Li-ion should never be discharged too low, and there are several safeguards to prevent this from happening. The equipment cuts off when the battery discharges to about 3.0V/cell, stopping the current flow. If the discharge continues to about 2.70V/cell or lower, the battery?s protection circuit puts the battery into a sleep mode. This renders the pack unserviceable and a recharge with most chargers is not possible. To prevent a battery from falling asleep, apply a partial charge before a long storage period."

Well, I guess we all learn something new everyday!

Posted via CB10 using my awesome BB Z10

[DannySmurf]

Battery life - 16-18 hours
Better or Worse than previous device - Slightly worse
Carrier - Rogers
Network connectivity - LTE, Wifi on 50% of the time
Coverage strength - good
Other radios - All off
Display brightness - 40%
Display timeout - 1 min
Gestures when locked - no
Amount of accounts in the hub - 1 exchange, 1 EAS, 1 Facebook, 1 Twitter, 1 LinkedIn
Phone use - 1 hours
Device wake use total - 6 hours
Email volume - 10-15 per hour
IM use - 3-4 per hour
Social media use - 2 hours
Multimedia use - 3-4 hours
Games - No
Apps - 1-2 apps
Type of apps left open - native only
Encryption - no

Tends to heat up when the screen is on constantly for more than 15 minutes, not just during games.

[Neely2005]

We should probably say what our previous device was too. Coming from a Bold 9700 I expected my battery life to be worse.

[BJCopes]

In an effort to get to the bottom of the problem, I will answer any questions that I can possibly answer as someone who is having these battery issues. I am, without a doubt, convinced it is some issue with the software or hardware. This was confirmed by BlackBerry support, who received my logs and had a lengthy convo with me last night. I did not fully understand their explanation, but they alluded to some sort of problem surrounding the installation of updates, the order they were installed, etc. etc. They informed me that a software update would be coming and would fix the problem, but provided me with no version number, no time frame, or anything. I promptly uninstalled my OS after this conversation and reinstalled, hoping to solve my issue. Unfortunately it did not work, which is leading me to believe there is more to it. I am quite concerned, but have been trying to figure it out on my own with very little success.

Here is the information you requested:

Battery life - 4-5 hours, drains at about 10-20% an hour despite useage
Better or Worse than previous device - Far worse
Carrier - Telus
Network connectivity - Turned everything off in an attempt to reduce useage. Running on HSPA+/UMTS.
Coverage strength - I have 5 bars 99% of the time
Other radios - All off
Display brightness - Dropped to about 10%
Display timeout - 30 seconds
Gestures when locked - On
Amount of accounts in the hub - Notifications, BBM, SMS, 2 Email, 1 Facebook, 1 Twitter, 1 LinkedIn, Calls
Phone use - 0-5 phone calls, on average, from 100%-0%
Device wake use total - 2 hours? Hard to estimate this as I haven't tracked it so much as I have tracked drain.
Email volume - 3-5 per hour
IM use - I would describe my IM use as the heaviest part of my phone useage.
Social media use - Rare
Multimedia use - None so far
Games - No
Apps - None downloaded since reinstalling OS. Before that, I had theScore installed
Type of apps left open - Have been closing apps in an attempt to reduce battery use
Encryption - I am unsure how to check this. I have not changed any settings regarding this

I am running Software Release 10.0.9.348

[fxiddy]

In a previous forum on battery life I was complaining about the poor battery life. I was getting 4 hours at best whilst not even doing anything. Some people said there was a faulty batch and I would have to agree.
I got mine in london on day 2 after release. I got a replacement on Saturday and it is completely different. No glitches at all and the battery lasts at least 11 hours with normal use age and without using any of the battery saving measures. I've kept nfc on, blue tooth on, wifi on, active frames open, gestures on. No more contacts, or clock in bedside mode lock ups.

Anyone who has poor battery or glitches get a replacement immediately you'll be so glad you did.

Happy z10 and PlayBook owner.

Oh and by the way the battery life is much better than the 9700 I upgraded

Posted via CB10

[BJCopes]

I'm beginning to believe in this faulty batch as well. I have heard enough people quote the 4-5 hour range that I am experiencing to believe it exists. I also am on my 2nd phone, both have had the problem, and both came from the same carrier around the same time. I wish I had recorded the serial number of phone #1, however, I will definitely be requesting a very different serial number between phone #2 and phone #3.

[ibpluto]

Battery life - 15-20 hours
Better or Worse than previous device - Same in heavy use, worse with low to moderate use (Came from a 9810
Carrier - Rogers
Network connectivity - 4G + wifi
Coverage strength - good (never had an issue ....*shrug*
Other radios - BluetoothON, (NFC is OFF)
Display brightness - 50%
Display timeout - 1 minute (but I always use teh sleep button when done, or it goes back in Holster which snoozes it
Gestures when locked - yes
Amount of accounts in the hub - 6
Phone use - 1-3 hours
Email volume - 15-20 per hour
IM use - 10-15 per hour
Social media use - Twitter
Multimedia use - Browsing, CB10 , TML. Youtube, Voice control...etc etc
Games - Yes, but very little
Apps left open - None (close when done)
Type of apps left open - None, I close apps I am not using, or will not use in the near future
Encryption - Device password (exchange requirement)

[dejanh]

One thing that I have noticed after using "Battery Indicator" from BlackBerry World for the past 3 days is that WiFi seems to be on all the time, even though it is technically disabled in the network options. This utility actually has the ability to monitor what is using the battery and no matter if the cell and WiFi radios are on or off they always appear to be draining power. Even after explicitly disabling them, by say turning on airplane mode they still appear to be using the battery the same way. At first I thought that there was a glitch in this tool but after noticing that it is correctly logging screen activity and holster use i am actually pretty convinced that both WiFi and cell radios are on all the time, regardless of whether they are disabled or not.

Posted via CB10

[BJCopes]

Here is an interesting post from the BlackBerry Support forums that seems promising. I don't know how to check this for my own personal phone.

"i am a UK business user with poor battery life,. Followed advice here about turning off everything I don't use but despite trying a new battery I get between 4.5 and 7 hours usage before the battery dies even if I dont use the phone for anything.

Then.... at work, a colleague in IT spotted that my Z10 was making 18000 data requests to the server every day. All other phone users, mainly iPhones and older BBs are making 200-500 a day. My phone has used 950Mb polling the server in the last week. Other users max 50Mb . I'm the only one with a Z10.

So, in the background my phone is working very hard all the time talking to the server and draining the battery.

We think we have found the problem, but not the answer yet."

LINK: Battery life - Page 20 - BlackBerry Support Community Forums

^That thread has a lot of information. Lots of speculation, some people whose problem has been solved, but no definite answer / solution.

[ThaMunsta]

Battery life - 8-14 hours
Better or Worse than previous device - depends on the day
Carrier - Rogers
Network connectivity - LTE + WiFi when available
Coverage strength - variable
Other radios - NFC sometimes BT
Display brightness - max
Display timeout - 1 minute
Gestures when locked - yes
Amount of accounts in the hub - 5 non default accounts + usual BBM SMS Calls Voicemail and Notifications
Phone use - 2 hours
Email volume - average around 3 per hour
IM use - LOL LOTS per hour
Social media use - in and out. Usually check/update 2 or 3 times an hour
Multimedia use - BT audio to the car while driving, taking pictures while im out
Games - Yes probably about an hour the odd day but not consistently
Apps - 3 or 4 left open. usually keep unneeded stuff closed.
Type of apps left open - naitive. phone, calendar, foursquare are my most common 3
Encryption - no

[biznessninja]

Wow! love everyone's very different opinions! us berry owners should harness this drive and energy and solve some real world problems.
my battery has dramatically gotten better over the last week. it is now very acceptable but not amazing. for sure charging once a day, but that is what I expect, which is very different from what I would like. an 1800 battery with a 4.2 inch screen and running a bunch of sync account isnt going to be magic and last 2 days, need a 2500 - 3200mA battery for that for this phone configuration. I also noticed there was too much syncing going on, I have my main email account on push, other 5 accounts every 30 minutes. Google apps are push. that would be 4 google calendars, contacts etc.
as for my find in your questions here it is:

Battery life - 8-14 hours depending on use
Better or Worse than previous device - depends on the day (previous phone bold 9900)
Carrier - Rogers
Network connectivity - moved to max 4G few days ago, made big difference and not much in speed. also WIFI always on.
Coverage strength - full most of the time
Other radios - BT on always, use it in my car and also BT to my home phone system, which is also my office.
Display brightness - 80%
Display timeout - 1 minute
Gestures when locked - yes
Amount of accounts in the hub - 6 email accounts, activesync google app account, Box, Dropbox, Facebook, twitter, bbm, text calls etc
Phone use - calls in a day easily 3 hours
Email volume - average day is 15 - 20, heavy day 50+, always lots of attachments etc
IM use - LOTS
Social media use - Usually check/update 2 or 3 times an hour
Multimedia use - lots of surfing, pictures etc
Games - not yet, just work at this point.
Apps - usually keep unneeded stuff closed.
Type of apps left open - naitive. phone, etc,
Encryption - no

[MGDania]

Battery life - 6 hours
Better or Worse than previous device - Worse (iphone 3gs which wasn't great either)
Carrier - Telus
Network connectivity - moved to 3G , WIFI always on.
Coverage strength - full most of the time
Other radios - Bluetooth only while driving (20 min), NFC off
Display brightness - 50%
Display timeout - 30 sec
Gestures when locked - no
Amount of accounts in the hub - 3 email accounts, exchange activesync, 2 gmail, Facebook, twitter, bbm, text calls etc
Phone use - 15 min
Email volume - 20/hour in, 3/hour out
IM use - rare
Social media use - 5 min max
Multimedia use - 5-10 min browser
Games - Absolutely NONE
Apps - only installed Password Keeper
Type of apps left open - close every app after use
Encryption - no

Notes: Battery shows 100% in the setting/about hardware but the Green LED never comes on. Also Phone drained completely while in Blackberry Leather Holster from 100% to dead (11:30pm - 6:30am) with no use.

Love everything else about the phone.

Have contacted Telus support but no solution yet.