[dejanh]

Hi everyone,

After owning my Z10 for approximately two full weeks now I am extremely happy with the device as a whole, and the OS on it. I am not really bothered by the lack of certain apps and I do believe that they will come. What I am however very much concerned about is the battery life of the device. I realize that there have been comparisons done on review sites that stated that the battery life is "comparable to any modern smartphone", "good compared to iPhone 5", etc. Nobody really quantifies what that is and I have to admit that in my opinion the battery life on the Z10 is not just bad, it's abysmal. Compared to my Bold 9900 which I already thought had bad battery life, the Z10 really takes the cake for having outright awful battery life, at least in my books.

I would also like to point out that I do not believe this to be the fault of the battery itself, or the hardware. I think that the problem is in the firmware running on the device. So...where is all this going you might ask? Is this another one of those complaining threads? Let me assure you that it is not and that the thread actually has a concrete purpose - I want to test how long a brand new Z10 battery can really last. To do this, I will be doing a few things.

First, I will be installing a brand new battery into the device, a battery that was first charged to 100% without any use. Next, I will be restoring the device settings to the exact state that the device is in the first time it is initialized. This means that WiFi will be enabled and connected to a network. I will ensure that the WiFi network strength is constant at full bars (I am putting the device in very close proximity to my RT-N66U router). NFC will also be enabled. Screen brightness will be set at the default 50%. I will have pre-loaded (before the test starts) a high-definition movie to the device to use for the test. The movie will be preloaded to a 64GB UHS-1 micro SD card. To run the test itself, there will be no other applications running on the device except for the video player which will be set on repeat playback and the audio will be set at a reasonable 67%. The playback of audio will be through a pair of headphones, so as to avoid annoying everyone else at home. The battery life will be monitored by the Battery Indicator Android application available through the BlackBerry World (I have chosen this application based on the number of positive reviews and the fact that it is free and that it offers the most extensive array of monitoring abilities, including an ability to graph the battery drain). I will take two screen captures just before the playback starts showing the battery at 100% and two screen captures near the end of the battery life. I will also be timing how long it has taken the battery to drain. The test will be run after a battery pull (hard reset) just to ensure that there is absolutely nothing else interfering with the test.

I'll be posting an update here in just a few minutes with the starting information. Please keep in mind that all information will be posted in form of edits to this post (I will not be reserving any subsequent posts) so you may need to refresh this post in a few minutes to see the updates...

Edit 1: It appears that I cannot use my 64GB card with exFAT file system. This is a known issue right now KB33530-SD Cards larger than 32GB are not recognized by BlackBerry 10 OS. This throws a bit of a curve-ball into my plans since now I have to resort to a lesser file, something in the 720p format instead of 1080p.

Edit 2: Alright, here we go. At the time this edit was started, it was exactly 11:53am PST. I have just started the movie playback and made sure that it is set on continuous. Here are the two screenshots at the start of the run (please note the IMEI and ICCID are redacted)...



Edit 3: RESULTS WITH NEW BATTERY

As I have posted in one of the posts below, I am now down to 4% battery and it is time to stop the first part of the test with the new battery. The total play time to drain exactly 96% of the battery is 8h 42m. Translated to minutes per 1% of battery that works out to be approximately 5m 26s of play time per 1% of battery or 9h 3m of active playtime for a 720p encoded MKV file assuming a new battery charged to 100%. The battery drain works out to approximately 10.9% per hour.

Here are the screenshots...



This actually looks pretty good. The slope is steady, nice and linear, no strange variations. Exactly what you would expect if the battery was healthy and draining properly. From this I would say that with this new battery there is no problem with the battery life, at least not when dealing with the video playback. I will be repeating the same test with the original battery and see if the behavior is the same. I am now thinking that there may be an issue with the original battery.

Edit 4: Here we go, test #2 using the original battery. The test setup is identical and here are the starting screenshots. Note the boot time from when the device was restarted with the new battery. Playback has already started, about 7-10 minutes ago.

[Nigelbrown]

Hey so if you put in a fresh 64gb SD card and format it in the z10, you will be able to use it just fine. I know this as I have one in here working fine.

Posted via CB10

[dejanh]

Hey so if you put in a fresh 64gb SD card and format it in the z10, you will be able to use it just fine. I know this as I have one in here working fine.

Posted via CB10

I know that it works, but it only work with the FAT32 file system. Currently it does not work with exFAT file system which is required to support files larger than 4GB. The default format formats to FAT32 which means that single files loaded to the device cannot be larger than 4GB per file (too small for most even poorly encoded 1080p MKV files). Anyway, I loaded a 720p clip on to the device so I will be starting the test soon. I just rebooted the device and I want to let it top up the lost charge from the reboot.

[dejanh]

Alright, I've started the test. Two initial screenshots are posted. Battery was charged to the full 100% (1st screenshot in edit 2) and there has been 0 seconds on battery (2nd screenshot in edit 2) at the start of the test. I made sure to unplug the cable just before I pressed play on the video player.

[project_x]

I'm very interested to see the results of your test.

Posted via CB10

[Mzen Hamid]

Me too. Can't wait.

Posted via CB10

[dejanh]

I'm very interested to see the results of your test.
Posted via CB10

Me too. Can't wait.
Posted via CB10

Trust me, I am just as curious what the result will be. I just checked on things, and after a quick calculation I am getting about 4.6 minutes of playback per 1% of battery life. That is about 7.5 hours of continuous playback of 720p content on this battery if nothing changes, which is not bad at all. Remember also that I assumed in my original premise that it is the software and not the battery itself and that I was getting what I consider abysmal battery life with my original battery (for example, this morning after charging the battery fully overnight I used the device off of the original battery continuously for browsing, opening various content and apps, playing back 720p Flash content for about 50 minutes, and in about 2.5 hours the battery was down to 10%...at least as reported by the OS). We will see what happens by the end of this test though with a brand new battery

I will also be repeating the same test with my other battery (the one that came with the Z10 originally) and see how it behaves under the exact same test parameters. I sure am looking forward to both sets of results.

Edit: I do also kind of wish I could test my 1080p BluRay copy of Avatar with no compression on this device vs. just your average 720p flick. Not sure though how I would even make a digital copy of it that would work on the Z10 without any compression. Oh well, just thinking out-loud. One test at a time

[InvalidUser0510]

This test is kind of unfair, to be honest. The battery measurement you're using is running in the Android runtime. You should get a native battery measuring app from BlackBerry world. There is one with a graph.

By the way, CNET reported talk time on the Z10 is 2 hours more than the iPhone 5, but I don't think they did a video playback test. Maybe I just didn't see it...

[Highbeta]

I look forward forward to the results as well. Having had my z10 for less than a week, the shortish battery life is literally the only negative reference I would make to the experience.

I have never had a modern touchscreen device, so it's hard to tell how the battery performance of the z10 is on a relative basis. My previous phone was a bold 9700, so my frame of reference is skewed (I remember getting between 2 and 3 DAYS on a full charge when that battery was new, with moderate usage being 50 emails received per day and about 1 hour of talk time).

I feel the z10 battery is probably fairly avg in terms of modern touchscreens but will ultimately make it through a work day for most users... which is surely the design goal.




Posted via CB10

[dejanh]

This test is kind of unfair, to be honest. The battery measurement you're using is running in the Android runtime. You should get a native battery measuring app from BlackBerry world. There is one with a graph.

By the way, CNET reported talk time on the Z10 is 2 hours more than the iPhone 5, but I don't think they did a video playback test. Maybe I just didn't see it...

Can you tell me which app you are referring to? At the very minimum the app must be able to tell the charge, when the device started using the battery, graph the usage (I found one native app that did this but the graph sucked in my opinion), and ideally report on both the battery health (in %) and what was actually using the battery. This aside, I don't really think that anything here makes the test unfair. While the Android runtime will contribute a bit to the battery drain this extra drain is insignificant in regards to the overall test. Further to this, I would always keep the test parameters consistent so in this case after I am done testing the new battery and go back to testing the old battery, I will still use the same monitor tool.

[dejanh]

Alright, one more update before I go out to finish some other stuff. I have just finished the first playback loop. After approximately 100 minutes of playback I have used up 20% of the battery. This works out to approximately 5 minutes of 720p MKV playback per 1% of battery, or approximately 8 hours of continuous playback of 720p content. If this holds up this will be quite a good test for the Z10 battery life in respect to video playback, at least on this new battery.

Here is a BlackBerry protect battery life report from the website (states 79% since I took this just now where as the previous 80% measurement was done about 5 minutes ago). PIN and email were redacted.



I will leave the test running while I am away.

[samuelwhatshisface]

Just wondering if I can see the headphone ohm rating, per chance? Looks like you've set the test up well and the results are working out alright.

[dejanh]

Just wondering if I can see the headphone ohm rating, per chance? Looks like you've set the test up well and the results are working out alright.

I would not know to be honest. The headphones I am using for this test are just the stock ear-buds that ship with the phone. In actuality I would probably use my large over the ear JVC headphones when listening to any content, but to be fair to the test and the battery life this should not have any bearing.

Battery Drain - Headphones vs Earbuds - iLounge Forums

All that aside, we are now at 4% battery and almost out of power. I will probably stop the test here as I believe that I have sufficient data at hand. The total play time to drain exactly 96% of the battery is 8h 42m. Translated to minutes per 1% of battery that works out to be approximately 5m 26s of play time per 1% of battery or 9h 3m of active playtime for a 720p encoded MKV file assuming a new battery charged to 100%. The battery drain works out to approximately 10.9% per hour.

Here are the screenshots...

[dejanh]

Here is a test #2 update (off to bed soon). I am not sure whether I will be able to complete this entire test (the phone may run out of battery by the time I wake up). However, it looks like the old battery is also performing alright when playing back video. It seems to be a tad worse than the new battery. The average drain of this battery is 11.6% per hour which means that the total run time for this battery is approximately 8h 30m vs. the brand new battery that can run for 9h 3m (about 30 minutes less playback time on the old battery).



I did however come across some interesting information in another thread tonight. The thread can be found here http://forums.crackberry.com/blackbe...-event-775562/ but to summarize, I observed the behavior described in that thread on my battery as well. What that thread points to is actually a miss-calibration of the battery/OS how it sees the battery and it is something that I observed as well. I am re-posting my summary here...

Last night I turned the device off with the original battery installed and left it to charge overnight. I turned it on this morning (Feb. 24th) and the battery indicator showed full but the battery charge showed at 55%. I tried topping up the battery with the device turned on and it stopped again at 55% "full". I then rebooted the phone and the icon changed back to 100%. I used the device heavily (straight browsing and launching/installing/deleting multiple apps for about 1h - 1.5h continuous and then another 50m of continuous YouTube 720p streaming and the battery was down to 10%. The drain was incredibly fast. I have a feeling that something got screwed up with the battery calibration. This also makes me wonder if some of the individuals that are seeing ****ty battery life are actually running into calibration issues. Maybe they think that the battery is full but in actuality it is not even close to being full. After all, following the "55% full" incident and a reboot my battery did show 100% full, but it certainly did not last even near that...not even remote near.

[samuelwhatshisface]

That's fine, thank you. My main concern would be if you had some monstrously large overears that would drain the battery quickly, but the small in-ears that are included require less power, in my experience.

Thanks for the info, good results =]

[dejanh]

That's fine, thank you. My main concern would be if you had some monstrously large overears that would drain the battery quickly, but the small in-ears that are included require less power, in my experience.

Thanks for the info, good results =]

Thanks. I am still convinced though that certain apps or features (such as WiFi) are not correctly shut down/disabled and cause excessive battery drain. I have now moved to 10.0.10.648 and I am currently observing the battery life for that OS and will likely perform some more tests soon.