[mr_vpw]

Sorry to bring up another battery thing, but I'm 100% sure that the incredible battery drain on my Blackberry is related to some kind of software bug causing excessive data usage. I've just had my bill through, and a typical day with my Z10 is using 1.5-3.5GB (yes GB) *a day* - in some cases as much as 4.5GB.

The total for this month is 67GB

There is absolutely no way on earth this is reasonable or correct. It's not the data report being wrong, I absolutely agree that this is the phones consumption. What's wrong is the phone consuming this much.

I have *no* tethering in use, I am not streaming any audio or video. This phone has:

- Linked In (not sync'd all the time - manual)
- Facebook (opened rarely, no contact sync etc)
- Twitter (rarely opened/used)
- 1 POP-3 mail account on a 30 minute check
- 2 active sync accounts (one checks contacts/cal only, no email on a 2 hour basis, the other e-mail only, no cont/cal on a 24 hour basis).

The only app I leave running in the background is "phone" and "password keeper". That's pretty much the sum total - I don't use or have setup anything else as I really only wanted this phone for e-mail.

I have all the stuff like NFC off, Bluetooth off, wifi off, gestures when locked off, etc etc, but I doubt this makes much odds to battery life.

Yet by comparison my Galaxy Note 2 is tethered daily, has Netflix streamed both on the note and via hotspot to my laptop, is used for streaming audio when I'm driving and so on and manages about 37GB a month - also never used with WiFi.

At peak of just under 4.5GB, that means a usage on the Z10 of 187.5MB every hour. That's pretty unlikely - assuming I sleep for a 6 hour period, that's 250MB an hour that I'm awake. With that I'm not really too surprised that the BB Z10 lasts 4-5 hours without needing a charge. Actually I'm technically impressed it lasts as long as it does given the tiny battery and the usage.

Incidentally on 2-3 of the days last month I was actually ill. I was therefore at home, the phone stayed on the charger and I didn't use it - so the only usage would be background mail sync (and given I wasn't sending any, the amount I receive would be considerably less) - yet it registered 3.1GB on one of those days. There are also 4 days in a row of usage of 68MB, 12MB, 14MB and 13MB - 60=-70MB a day would be about normal for my other phones (and those of people in my office on a quick check) and certainly this wouldn't bother me at all. Clearly several GB a day is absolutely bonkers for this usage type.

Does anyone else have itemised daily data billing from the network they're on that also has incredibly poor battery life and have a similar bizarrely high usage pattern? And does anyone have any idea of a way I can monitor which app is consuming data - like you get on say Android? I can only see one app that looks vaguely credible in appworld and I'm not sure it does "per app" breakdown.

I'm convinced the severe poor battery life seen is caused by excessive usage and I'm wondering if there is a bug in the ActiveSync or POP-3 side perhaps (would seem most likely for me). Given you can't run lots of stuff in the background the candidates for sucking data have to be pretty limited right?

[Branta]

Without casting doubt on your report, that indicates an almost unbelievable data transfer rate. Taking 2.5GBytes/day as the middle figure, nominal 10 bits/byte, and flat rate 24 hour day (1440 seconds) my calculation is:

((2.5 * 10^9) *10)/1440 = 17361111 bits/second = 17.36 Megabit/second (average over 24 hours)

I see your profile suggesting Vodafone (UK) so you are likely to be on (at best) a 3G cellular signal. I simply don't believe Vodafone 3G would support a continuous 17 megabit data rate for that period, nor would I expect your bank account to support the resulting invoice. That seems to be about the typical maximum rate provisioned by most networks for 3G under ideal conditions, and it is about double the most frequent domestic ADSL broadband service maximum here in UK

[mr_vpw]

Without casting doubt on your report, that indicates an almost unbelievable data transfer rate. Taking 2.5GBytes/day as the middle figure, nominal 10 bits/byte, and flat rate 24 hour day (1440 seconds) my calculation is:

((2.5 * 10^9) *10)/1440 = 17361111 bits/second = 17.36 Megabit/second (average over 24 hours)

I see your profile suggesting Vodafone (UK) so you are likely to be on (at best) a 3G cellular signal. I simply don't believe Vodafone 3G would support a continuous 17 megabit data rate for that period, nor would I expect your bank account to support the resulting invoice. That seems to be about the typical maximum rate provisioned by most networks for 3G under ideal conditions, and it is about double the most frequent domestic ADSL broadband service maximum here in UK

As it happens we're actually talking about 3, and not Vodafone, and on 3, I'm predominantly using the phone in an area that has DC available, and actually, the speed available is typically in the 12-20 meg download, and up to 3-4 meg upload (2.5 seems to be typical - it's considerably faster to use 3 to upload than my home broadband). The resulting cost of that usage is in fact �36, because I'm on the One Plan, which *does* support that kind of usage without an insane bill - and three openly allow this type of usage (as I say, on my Note 2 used for tethering, I use 30GB+ each month). That said I'm actually from an era where I used to pay for HSCSD at 40 odd pence a minute on Orange for a whopping 28,000bps.

The 3 bill in front of me is actually consistent with the days (most of them sadly) where I find the phone needs constant charging, and the days where the battery is absolutely fine are the days with "normal" usage.

Your calculation seems somewhat flawed though. Assuming the day where my bill clearly shows 3,505.606 Mbytes usage, if I allow 10% protocol overhead, it would only require a 512Kbps speed for 16 hours to download that much. At 10Mbps, we'd be talking less than an hour.

Hell, if I did all 67GB, a 256Kbps connection could grab that in about 640 hours, or less than 720 in a nominal 30 day month. 3 themselves suggest over 1000GB is possible somewhere on the web site (I can't recall where right now, but it is there).

Anyhow, calculations aside, the real purpose here is to find out what usage other people are seeing - I've seen a few threads of people finding they've had warnings of going through allowances very quickly. Either 3 are randomly getting my bill wrong but amazingly consistently with the days I get good battery life vs bad (yet manage to get all my other bills for other accounts perfectly correct), or this is related.

I'm well aware there are lots of reasons a battery has fast drain, but I don't believe the battery is faulty, nor do I believe the Z10 is supposed to have such poor life, I've not got any rubbish apps installed and the BB Z10 doesn't allow lots of background stuff to hammer it, and I have a fairly precise purpose for my Z10, so I know what I do/don't ask it to do (and it connects to my POP3 and Exchange servers so I have also the ability to view the logs to see what is going on - and will be reviewing more intensively to see if there is some odd issue).

A few weeks back, there was actually a known issue with iPhone and Vodafone (and possible 3 Australia IIRC) where some update on that had some ActiveSync bug that was causing insane usage on the network (to the point where it was network affecting), so it does happen and I'm not 100% convinced *some* people have these issues, so it would be good to see if anyone else sees this same issue, has a network bill/usage to show the same, and can see any commonality in my setup vs them to see if we can find the cause - I doubt everyone has this issue, but suspect it might be the cause for some.

[jdcfinisher]

Try turning off data diagnostic in the settings. It was burning data on my girlfriends phone. I think it's a bug, in some phones ,she went from 40 to 50 mb a day to 2mb after turning it off

Posted via CB10

[iamnadroj]

Which os version are you at? And yeah try turning off diagnostics.

Posted via CB10

[mr_vpw]

Hi

The data diagnostics are off already sadly.

I've got 10.0.10.90

Cheers
Vince



Posted via CB10

[Branta]

I've just had my bill through, and a typical day with my Z10 is using 1.5-3.5GB (yes GB) *a day* - in some cases as much as 4.5GB.

Assuming the day where my bill clearly shows 3,505.606 Mbytes usage, if I allow 10% protocol overhead, it would only require a 512Kbps speed for 16 hours to download that much. At 10Mbps, we'd be talking less than an hour.

One (or both) of us is certainly getting confused by the scale factors and bytes/bits conversions, but it may be irrelevant as you can read what is on the invoice and something is emptying the battery faster than a dog raids the larder.

Anyhow, calculations aside, the real purpose here is to find out what usage other people are seeing - I've seen a few threads of people finding they've had warnings of going through allowances very quickly. Either 3 are randomly getting my bill wrong but amazingly consistently with the days I get good battery life vs bad (yet manage to get all my other bills for other accounts perfectly correct), or this is related.

I'm well aware there are lots of reasons a battery has fast drain, but I don't believe the battery is faulty, nor do I believe the Z10 is supposed to have such poor life, I've not got any rubbish apps installed and the BB Z10 doesn't allow lots of background stuff to hammer it, and I have a fairly precise purpose for my Z10, so I know what I do/don't ask it to do (and it connects to my POP3 and Exchange servers so I have also the ability to view the logs to see what is going on - and will be reviewing more intensively to see if there is some odd issue).

Concur, it seems too much to be coincidence that the battery drains AND you get very heavy usage.

A few weeks back, there was actually a known issue with iPhone and Vodafone (and possible 3 Australia IIRC) where some update on that had some ActiveSync bug that was causing insane usage on the network (to the point where it was network affecting), so it does happen and I'm not 100% convinced *some* people have these issues, so it would be good to see if anyone else sees this same issue, has a network bill/usage to show the same, and can see any commonality in my setup vs them to see if we can find the cause - I doubt everyone has this issue, but suspect it might be the cause for some.

iPhone had a serious excess data bug, related to OS software rather than network. Apple was supposed to fix with a patch so I wouldn't link it to your data problem. However a friend with Z10 are suggests that data volume averaging around 30Mbytes/day may be normal with moderate - heavy use on email and social networks, and some access to CB (Z10 app) and other websites. We have also seen some members suspecting that one or more (unnamed) apps downloaded from Appworld may be buggy and running wild with data - did you add any third party apps beyond what came in the box?

[mr_vpw]

One (or both) of us is certainly getting confused by the scale factors and bytes/bits conversions, but it may be irrelevant as you can read what is on the invoice and something is emptying the battery faster than a dog raids the larder.

Concur, it seems too much to be coincidence that the battery drains AND you get very heavy usage.

iPhone had a serious excess data bug, related to OS software rather than network. Apple was supposed to fix with a patch so I wouldn't link it to your data problem. However a friend with Z10 are suggests that data volume averaging around 30Mbytes/day may be normal with moderate - heavy use on email and social networks, and some access to CB (Z10 app) and other websites. We have also seen some members suspecting that one or more (unnamed) apps downloaded from Appworld may be buggy and running wild with data - did you add any third party apps beyond what came in the box?

Quite - the issue is Blackberry Z10, and not 3. I just don't know what bit since there is sod all useful information on the new Blackberry - on Android I've got the battery usage system (the app you can buy on Z10 is only half useful), the data usage shows per app (nothing on blackberry afaik to do that), and so on...

I've got very few extra apps, and I'm pretty careful about that sort of thing - and this has been like it since the day I got the Z10 (my first bill on 3 shows silly usage too for the 5 days before they issue that initial bill), I'd expect the first couple days usage to be abnormally high as everything is sync'd up, but still, I don't have GB's of contacts or e-mail :-)

I thought it might be the Crackberry app at one point, but I removed it and nothing changed, I have the BBC News app, Guardian, Tube Map and that's it beyond what the phone comes with and those apps are not used every day (and they won't be running in the background of course).

Today, is a good day, phone off charge at 08:15, it's now 15:30, and we're at 47%, with me sending 2 texts, reading 5-10 e-mails, a couple very brief (sub 2 minute) web browsing moments, and one quick look on facebook). Still not good enough, but far more liveable than when I have to plug it at more like 12:00 - sadly there's no real time data usage on the 3 One Plan so I can't see how it's fairing in real time and the only data app I've seen on appworld looks next to useless so I can't easily monitor the usage.

[mr_vpw]

I figured I'd share this as I know a lot of people are having issues with Z10 battery life - so my future posts on this will be a mini-diary as I try and get to the bottom of the insane battery draw...

So having finally had enough of this, I spent the last few days removing one app at a time, monitoring for a couple hours, repeat. I even removed any of the hub integrated stuff like facebook, twitter etc to make sure it couldn't hurt. I then had nothing, not even e-mail anymore.

Nothing changed.

So I gave up, and did a security wipe. I couldn't backup either as it always failed. So I lost a bunch of stuff but that's life.

Post wipe, I did the setup wizard, but didn't configure wifi or any accounts. All I did was go on Blackberry app World and download Battery Guru again. So nothing is configured, just that running.

Approx 6 hours later, I had 92% battery left. Since the day I bought my Z10, bar a couple of strange "freak days", 6 hours would mean I'd be down by 40-50% battery.

I enabled one e-mail account, IMAP, push enabled, sync last 7 days.

A further 6 hours later, battery now at 83%

That is much more like it.

I shall continue to install and configure items ONE at a time until I find out what's causing the very obvious power draw.

[doubleuc]

I'm also on unlimited Web with Three, wish it would track usage though.

Are you saying they don't mind tethering? I've tried it to test a couple of times with no charge, but I'm to scared to really use it lol

Posted via CB10

[kill_9]

The data usage is definitely due to a software bug likely introduced by your wireless carrier. Is your wireless carrier network set to LTE, 4G, or 3G? There have been similar reports from users in Canada on the Telus network.

[Tony Margiotta]

Set active sync to every 15 minutes instead of push. It worked for me


Posted via CB10

[belfastdispatcher]

Set active sync to every 15 minutes instead of push. It worked for me


Posted via CB10

So the solution is no more push email on a BlackBerry?

[willowbeast]

Did the op try a security wipe and restore?


Posted via CB10

[mr_vpw]

@doubleuc

If you're on the "One Plan" with 3, or you have the other plans and pay for the "Tethering Add On" - then yes, you can Tether. If you're not on that plan or have the extra tethering paid option, you may not tether.

@kill_9

It's not a software bug introduced by my carrier as far as I can see - I don't see how as I've still got exactly the same software, same carrier, same sim, same places of usage, same usage pattern.

@tony margiotta

It didn't make any difference if I had e-mail completely disabled (eg manual) - the battery drain remained. But it's fixed now - see below.

@willowbeast -- and everyone else.

OK so, following from my previous post, I added my normal IMAP account, left push enabled, and sync at 30 days last night as per my previous post. This morning, my phone was still absolutely fine. It's now 24 hours since it was reset (willowbeast - yes I have security wiped it - annoyed I had to and lost some data to do that but the backup just would not work, try as I did).

I have 50% battery left, after 24 hours. I've had IMAP mail with push working for a full business day and then some, I've received around 400 e-mails (admittedly lower than usual - but it was dying wayyy before I could receive that many before), , I've sent 18 e-mails, I've deleted 40, I've sent around 50 text messages, made around 45 minutes of calls, and this morning around 10am, I added an ActiveSync account to ONLY sync my calendar and contacts (because not having them was really annoying).

I still don't know what app or system could have been causing the previous incredible battery drain (which is mostly because of data usage) as I've pretty much got the same setup I now had before the wipe, but the phone is now entirely respectable - if it can do a full day on a charge, I'm happy - that it's now 24 hours in and I've still got half the battery is excellent. Prior to the full security wipe and reset, I would have charged probably 3 times by now. I certainly wouldn't have dared leave the phone overnight without having it on charge!

I am going to enable Twitter next, wait a while and see if it changes, then Facebook etc although having previously removed them before the reset, nothing changed.

I'm determined to find out what has caused the drain because there are so many people complaining of very similar problems (and I have seen so many battery guru screengrabs that look identical to my bizarre power consumption pattern, it smacks of being related.

That aside though, to finally have a phone that is lasting a good day+ with my normal usage volumes is the difference between keeping the Z10 and sending it back as not fit for purpose.

[asherwiin]

Set active sync to every 15 minutes instead of push. It worked for me


Posted via CB10

Also check to see if you are syncing your email archive or deleted folders. I did, and then discovered that I had 10 years of old emails, many gigs of content, that appeared to be syncing to my phone.

My initial data usage was huge, but now it's down to levels similar to my old 9800 after I changed my sync settings.

If you are syncing and it's not completing, it may be trying to sync over and over again from scratch, which might explain the high data usage.

Posted via CB10

[D.Vader]

Sorry to bring up another battery thing, but I'm 100% sure that the incredible battery drain on my Blackberry is related to some kind of software bug causing excessive data usage. I've just had my bill through, and a typical day with my Z10 is using 1.5-3.5GB (yes GB) *a day* - in some cases as much as 4.5GB. ...

Did you transfer from an older Blackberry? If so check out this thread...

http://forums.crackberry.com/blackbe...lution-796608/

[mr_vpw]

Did you transfer from an older Blackberry? If so check out this thread...

http://forums.crackberry.com/blackbe...lution-796608/

No, I didn't transfer from another blackberry. It's a clean setup from the outset - there clearly was some issue - I now have 90% the same software installed as before. I've been very careful to put things back one at a time - and I'm still going, even though I didn't have much as I want to be absolutely sure I know what causes the drain if/when it reappears.

Despite this, it's now 38 hours since I charged this phone, it's got 32% left, and it's still receiving e-mails/texts/calls like a champ. I cannot state how much of an improvement that is. That's way more than I need it to last, so if it keeps this up, and it certainly seems to be then I'll be more than happy (instead of pretty unimpressed).

[mr_vpw]

So, 47 hours since the last charge. I have 14% battery left so think I might charge it now.

But this proves that the BB Z10 *can* have EXCELLENT battery life.

So if you are finding it dies within 6-7 hours as I was, it's almost certainly worth security wiping and starting over - one app at a time until you find the cause - after which you can expect a much better phone.

[willowbeast]

Glad to hear it worked for you. It wasn't until I did a full wipe that my battery life lasted. Removed ebay turned all locations off. Now I too get a full day. I also thought it could have been from an old backup.
As for password keeper, I was so happy when I logged in after the wipe and there were all my passwords.

Z10 on Rogers

[mr_vpw]

Interestingly it's now been some time since the wipe and this Z10 has awesome battery life - despite having everything back on it, including having e-mail on push, and so on, so the wipe did it.

I'm still a little confused though willowbeast, are you saying that the security wipe did not destroy the passwords in password keeper?!?

[willowbeast]

That's right. I was so gung Ho about getting my phone to work properly I did a full wipe. Then I thought about my passwords when I reinstalled everything they were all there

Z10 on Rogers

[whatsever]

I checked my data and every day at 8 h 20h and 0:00h i cost me a lot of data sometimes 32Mb/52 Mb/23Mb No idea what this is maar i stopped facebook so i hope this is the problem. I will reply

[b.mike]

It sounds like you have fixed the problems.
I wanted to let you know regarding the backup...I was having trouble with BB link not wanting to back up for me. What I eventually did was remove my device, then add it again, and was finally able to back it up. Too late for you now, but helpful in the future I hope.

Posted via CB10

[mr_vpw]

A few weeks on and I have found what I think is conclusively the cause of my data consumption and poor battery life.

After I reset the phone, everything was excellent and I slowly reinstalled apps one by one. I figured I had everything installed again and all was still well, but I still had no idea what caused my issues.

Until this weekend...

I went to look for a note I had made, which is stored in Evernote. I had installed this on my z10 before the reset but had overlooked this since it is kind of hidden away inside the reminders notes app that comes with the phone. As I normally use Evernote and skitch together on my Galaxy Note 2 I hasn't realised it was missing.

Anyhow I put it back on and my battery life suddenly sucked. 2 days in and I was back to the 4-6 hour battery needing charge issue.

Removed Evernote and the problem is solved. Battery that was at 20% after 4 hours then made the last 20% run for over 10 hours before I stuck it on charge.

My guess is that there's some note the app gets stuck on and just keeps trying to fetch again and again, and I do have some reasonably large notes stored.

Figured I would share I'm case other people have ever more, high data use and very low battery life as it might be a culprit you overlooked like I did.