[morthawt]

My Blackberry is not a brand spanking new one, but the battery life is rated very well. It is an 8800. I have been complaining about my standby runtime using 3 - 4 % battery per hour. Now I have done tests with it powered off using the power button and it still is using about 2.5 - 3.5 % battery per hour. What is likely the cause of this? I have no third party software running in the background at all and I have even tried disabling the DATA and that has no impact on battery drain.

My phone is made in Hungary, and is known to have problems with v4.5.x OS with bluetooth not working. Could it be that even though the GUI is saying Bluetooth is "disabled" that it could be "enabled" but the GUI is not showing or offering ability to change? What on earth would be causing this kind of battery drain on my BB?

Any ideas would be gratefully received.

EDIT:

Problem fixed - Click Here -

[Branta]

If the phone is shut down with the power button, battery discharge should be less than a few percent per day - enough to power the realtime clock and standby switch.

I suggest you try physically removing the battery for a day or so and check the discharge when it is actually disconnected. This should help you distinguish between a defective battery or a defective phone. My guess is you may find the battery is faulty, getting old and self-discharges due to a failed cell.

[morthawt]

If the phone is shut down with the power button, battery discharge should be less than a few percent per day - enough to power the realtime clock and standby switch.

I suggest you try physically removing the battery for a day or so and check the discharge when it is actually disconnected. This should help you distinguish between a defective battery or a defective phone. My guess is you may find the battery is faulty, getting old and self-discharges due to a failed cell.

Well the phone is a refurb but the batteries are brand spanking new and original branded batteries. There should be no problem with the batteries or the phone really, other than the fact I have been seeing people complain about the BB 8800 that is "made in Hungary" with the newer OS (which my phone had the latest). Would it be worth downgrading to the 4.2.x version and sacrifice some software that would not work with anything under 4.5 ? Plus my phone is a "O2" carrier phone but it is unlocked and I am using "Orange" carrier. If I were to reload the OS to a previous version would I use the orange version or the O2 ? Plus if I were forced to use O2 version of the OS would it become a locked phone again and require unlocking again so I could use it on orange?

[Branta]

It is highly unlikely that origin of the phone or OS version would cause variations in battery discharge when it is shut down. My opinion is unchanged, check the battery-out discharge first, and remember this is a very easy overnight test which doesn't risk anything else while you sleep. Also remember, restarting he phone uses a finite amount of power and is relatively hungry. This will look particularly heavy if you do a short duration test then extrapolate to an hourly rate. You may find the apparent power used (as % per hour) is very high if you do a 10 minute test then multiply by 6, but will appear much lower if you do a 10 hour test then divide by 10. Also remember that the on-screen displayed battery percentage is a number derived by relatively simple software and uncalibrated electronics. It is more reliable to run the phone and see how long the battery lasts on a single charge.

It doesn't matter which carrier approved the software you decide to use. The phone doesn't care if your OS was tested by O2, Orange, AT&T, or any other carrier. If you decide to change the OS it will NOT re-lock your phone, but I suggest investigating other areas first.

You mention software which may not be supported by an older OS. That suggests you may have some third party applications which could be responsible for raid discharge. However this would not impact the "power off" discharge rate which seems rather high.

You will also find big variations in "in use" discharge rate caused by variations in signal strength. Your phone can vary its transmitted power from a few milliwatts up to 1 or 2 watts. When the cellular base station detects that it is receiving a non-optimum signal it will signal the phone to increase or decrease output power, so if you are close to the cell site you will get better life than if you are clinging to the outer limits of reception.

[morthawt]

I have heard that an upgrade in the OS can effect battery life of devices. Could it not be that the OS is the cause? There are numerous complaints online about the "made in Hungary" versions of the 8800 not working with Bluetooth and neither does the interface work to change its options. Could there be a problem causing this battery drain from the clash of the OS and this particular phone?

[morthawt]

Well I downgraded to 4.2.x and the bluetooth works. Also Standby actually means standby and other buttons dont work, where as before on 4.5.x with my "made in hungary" (crappy batch) it was still pressing keys and lighting up with buttons like menu, cancel etc.

Well since I cannot install Blackberry App World to install Tiny Meter and considering 4.2 is less compatible with apps, I had to unlock that service menu to get accurate battery percentage figures instead of the every 5 percent steps you get on the status menu.

Well from my preliminary tests, I think my battery usage has gone down since downgrading. I will test it overnight and see what it goes too. I am hoping and expecting a brilliant and startling result.

[morthawt]

Update: FIXED

As I have been saying about this phone on here, its part of a "bad" batch. Not to say it does not work, but it is not the same as the rest. It works perfectly with 4.2.x but malffunctions with 4.5.x I went to bed after charging the phone and it was at 100%. I woke up about 4 hours later and checked the phone (in standby mode) and the phone was still at 100% until I started to use it a bit then it went down a percent.

Now, you have to remember prior to this on v4.5.x I would be draining 1% battery every 20 minutes, even in standby or turning the phone off. Bluetooth WAS not working either.

Now aside from the limitations of v4.2.x its self... the whole thing is perfectly working now. Even though HTML email is hard to decipher, I can use Gmail app to read it perfectly since it strips out the code for me.

This is my first blackberry (8800) and now I can get a good phone experience and have bonus' that I never could have had with my Sony Ericsson K500i. That is good enough for me.