[jobaj]

LOL!! hehe ... ooo I chuckled reading that one.. But so true.

The battery on my 9900 was awful the first couple of days, I did a complete wipe and installed Vodafone .296 last night. Today (4:00pm) the battery is at 70% whereas using the original Rogers software v.261, the battery level was down to 40% same time yesterday and was down to 20% by 6pm (same sort of usage as previous days - phone start-up at 7:30am).

I don't know if I cleaned something up by doing a complete wipe or if it's the firmware, but now I'm much happier than I was yesterday. Definitely happier that there was only 30% drop in battery in 8 hrs thus far today.

As a very inexperienced BB user, how would I go about changing the OS on my new bold 9900 ?
How can I find out on my BB which OS is currently running ?
Where can I download a more battery-efficient OS ?

My new Bold9900 is draining to 10% after 6-7 hours of basic use 3 days running.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[OniBerry]

i have .317 as well .. loaded it yesterday...

i posted in another thread this morning that my discharge rate was 2-3%.. but now it's up at 9% with more use, browsing, bbm, installing and deleting some apps..

i'm at 55%.. took it off the charger at 8am.. pretty bad..

but with a new OS it takes about a day or two to settle down.. i'll give it another day and see what happens..

Shao actually warned people to stay away from build .317

I didn't really get a lot of time on the stock OS (.261) that was shipped as I installed .296 (Vodafone) No changes really, I mean my battery life is pretty good, but I don't have anything to compare it to.

[OniBerry]

As a very inexperienced BB user, how would I go about changing the OS on my new bold 9900 ?
How can I find out on my BB which OS is currently running ?
Where can I download a more battery-efficient OS ?

My new Bold9900 is draining to 10% after 6-7 hours of basic use 3 days running.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

Hi jobaj,

You may want to start here
http://crackberry.com/blackberry-101...ting-system-os

I am not sure, the device is too new and results too varied and conflicting. May have to wait for this 'settling' I have been hearing so much about to die down.

Here is the link for the OS I am using.
http://crackberry.com/official-black...ad-vodafone-de

Hope that helps. The guide is wicked easy and very straight forward.

Cheers,

[kevinnugent]

Just a "left field" theory, but when the Playbook had really bad battery drain it was to do with the video camera software and not having accepted the initial screen conditions. Have you guys with bad batteries left that app running or something?

[billybobjones]

Just a "left field" theory, but when the Playbook had really bad battery drain it was to do with the video camera software and not having accepted the initial screen conditions. Have you guys with bad batteries left that app running or something?

theres no front facing camera on the 9900. hence no video chat app.

[FBA]

Battery settling is crap. Li-on batteries do require a few initial charges before they get to full discharge capacity. They do NOT want to go dead, because each time they do, you lose capacity, just like a lead acid battery (automotive battery). Li-on batteries have a life cycle of about 500 full charge/discharges. After 3 cycles, my battery life has improved dramatically. I turn Bluetooth off when not connected, WiFi off when not connected, and have GPS disabled always, as I use a Garmin GPS, which does a much better job than any so called "Smartphone". I keep my screen brightness @ 50-70% with auto dimming turned ON. I'm a heavy user with phone, BBM, text and e-mail. No music or video. Battery life as of now runs at about 75% of my 97xx units, and will get better in time - after a few more charge/discharge cycles and a few more OS updates - I'm sure. I doubt it will ever be where the 97xx devices are. It has a bigger, brighter screen and runs a 1.2 GHZ processor, but it will be close. I have a 2nd battery and will purchase a dual battery charger. The end.

I'd bet that many users who complain about crappy battery life aren't using any type of battery management at all and have virtually everything turned on that the device can handle, or is equipped with. That, and only a few charge/discharge cycles would be enough to eat batteries and cause the negative complaints.