[ttabbal]

I recently bought an 8320 and switched to T-Mobile. I got 2 lines with 8320s. My wife and I are sharing a family plan. I had good battery life for a few days, then it got crappy. So I swapped the unit out (the T-Mobile guy wouldn't just swap batteries, but BBs backup well so I didn't lose anything). It worked great over the weekend, at home. Now first day back to work and the battery is at 20% 3/4 of the way through the day. I haven't even used the thing, it's been sitting in my pocket. No missed calls or messages either.

I'm getting very good GSM signal, so the radio shouldn't be working too hard. I have GMail and Viigo running in the background, but they were running all weekend too and I only got down to about 40% after 2 days and a fair bit of data and voice use. I actually read email and articles from Viigo over the weekend, I haven't done that at all today.

I do have wifi at home, and the Curves do connect to it for data and voice using T-Mobile's UMA. But my wife's phone is showing no sign of trouble, so it doesn't seem to be just that I'm not in wifi range. She has GMail and uses it, but not Viigo. I have Viigo set to update every 2 hours.

Could there be something about the office that messes up my battery life? I have BT and wifi on, but there's nothing to connect to here at the office. They have a wifi network, but won't let outside devices connect to it. There are some "open" wifi networks that I can sometimes see from a laptop, but I never could get them to work from that laptop. Could the Curve be attempting to connect to them even though I haven't asked it to?

Any help would be great, I'd love to get decent battery life at the office as well as at home.

[matt.weum]

I had the same problem when I switched to a new employer who did not allow my BB to connect to their WiFi network. Leaving your wifi on will cause the BB to attempt to connect to available networks regardless if you have them added or not. Its always scanning. The same is true for bluertooth. Also if you are in a building and have a goos signal in one location it may not be good in all places. Elevators and stairwells in my office drop the signal all together and there is a cost to scan and reconnect. For me turning off wifo and bluetooth has greatly improved my battery life. Its not as good as at home given the other items I mentioned but its much better. Hope that helps.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[mofomikemunoz]

Hmmm, you have any apps and/or widgets running that are sucking the life outta it? Make sure you close out of apps properly and not just by hitting the red button.........exit through the menu..........


Does your wife's phone have the same impairment? After 8 hours I am STILL at 90% battery on mine.........


Good Luck!!!

[br16uy]

Wifi significantly reduces battery life if not connected. It works the same way radio signal does... It will always be searching for an access point. Try turning off wifi at work

[ttabbal]

You guys are fast.

My wife's BB is doing fine. I do close apps out when I'm not using them. I really wish I could set it up so that the red "hangup" key closes the apps and the back button keeps them running. Having to go to the menu and scroll to "close" to get them closed sucks.

It sounds like the wifi scanning thing is a likely problem. I'll try disabling wifi tomorrow. That's really irritating though, is there no way to disable this behavior and have it only attempt to connect to networks I specify? Or ignore particular networks?

[AbeFrohman]

Having to go to the menu and scroll to "close" to get them closed sucks.

Not much of shortcut, but if you hit the menu button and then "C", it will jump down the menu to the next item that starts with C. Some apps only have "Close" and you can do a quick three-step app close (Menu-C-trackball). Others take a couple of C's to get to the bottom Close. (i.e. Messages - you have to hit C 5 times to get past Compose email, Compose PIN, Compose SMS, Compose MMS, then Close.)

Or you just get a well-developed thumb from the downward trackball flick...

[missnina03]

I was having the same problems. I called tmobile and they sent me a new battery and charger. With the new battery, my battery last all day with continous use.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[my_handle]

My battery was good today, I talked for close to 50 mins, sent about 50 texts, on the net for over an hour off and on AND watched about 5 Simpsons episodes and a Sanford & Son episode and battery was around 30-40%

[ttabbal]

Argh. Disabling wifi this morning has my battery doing quite well. It looks like there is an irritating bug here. At the very least, it should attempt to connect to each AP once in say, 24hrs and just ignore them if it can't get online. Unless I tell it to connect of course. Wasting battery power chatting up APs that don't want to talk to it is a silly waste of power. Thanks for the info though.

[ttabbal]

Update:

I installed 4.5.0.52 from Orange and the battery is working much better when at work while leaving wifi on. It still drains a little faster than with wifi off, but it's good enough that I don't feel the need to turn it on/off manually 2x/day. That alone was worth the hassle to install the new OS.

[Selly]

Same thing happened to me......ONLY AT WORK. I went to MANAGE CONNECTIONS, turned off WiFi. Problem solved! Battery back to normal. I concluded my BB 8320 was constantly seeking WiFi at the office thereby draining my battery abnormally rapidly. My battery is now functioning fine.

[ttabbal]

If you're up to it, install the 4.5.0.52 OS. They have links in the Curve and T-Mobile forums. It's a legit OS released through Orange in the UK. It works great on our T-Mobile phones. I can now leave wifi on so that when I go home, the phone connects to UMA automatically so I get free calls without having to remember to turn it on manually.

[jidx]

[QUOTE=ttabbal;530959]If you're up to it, install the 4.5.0.52 OS. They have links in the Curve and T-Mobile forums. It's a legit OS released through Orange in the UK. It works great on our T-Mobile phones. I can now leave wifi on so that when I go home, the phone connects to UMA automatically so I get free calls without having to remember to turn it on manually.[/QUOTE

I have heard god things about this release

[oxfdblue]

I have an 8320 with battery that was new last October.

I've never had problem with battery life until this weekend. From 100% at 9:30am to all but dead at 6:00pm. Usually, the battery could go without a charge for almost two days.

The only thing I could thing of is that I'm away from home and in an area where service goes in and out, also the wifi is on. I assume that the phone is constantly looking for service- whether the T-Mobile network or a WiFi network.

I'll know tomorrow when I get home if this is right.

While I'm at it... anyone have ANY clue at all when they- RIM and/or T-Mobile is going to officially release the new OS? I'd rather not play games with a beta.

Thanks.