BlackBerry® Tour™

[JSanders Resident Expert]

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blairpalmer wrote:

 not having a true Stand By sucks a ton of battery life.

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No way. I agree, this is pure misinformation based on a poor user habits. See below.

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blairpalmer wrote:

I am constantly having to check that I only have the bare minimum of apps running in the background. With the previous version it didn't matter.  I was a user of the Gmail app in addition to a couple other blackberry email accounts.  Now I can't run the Gmail app and expect to have sufficient battery life.  Not to mention Google Maps, Facebook, or other commonly used apps - which now have to be used and fully closed out each time.  Even with due diligence on my part, I still find myself having to recharge in the middle of the day sometimes (before I could go 2-3 days when going in and out of Stand By)..

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It's all those apps running in the background sucking your battery life. Why are you constantly having to "check"? Do your apps open and start by themselves?

Or you open and don't close/exit them properly?

[John_Clark]

And, yes, if you leave Google Maps open your battery will absolutely drain in a matter of hours.  This is due to the location aiding. 

[zypher11]

Im confused how you have never dialed 911 in your pocket. When you lock the phone there are 3 options. Unlock, Emergency, and Cancel. When its in my pocket the trackball will usually select either Unlock (which brings up the password prompt obviously) or it clicks Emergency. It dialed it 2 times in the first day i had the phone and then i called blackberry and they told me to start using the standby feature since it was the only current work-around for this failure in design. Despite what anyone says on the technical side of things, standby preserves battery life a TON. Ive had the phone on for 2-3 days solid in standby mode and still have half battery life, but on the days that i dont use standby a single time (because its not in my pocket) its drained within a day. And thats without using a single app. Standby essentially put your phone in sleep mode, where as lock simply prevents other users from using the phone without a password

[John_Clark]

Exactly.  And "keypad lock" (used to be called standby) does the same thing.  Simply hit the lock button on the top of the device.  I put my phone in my pocket like this all the time and my battery lasts all day.  I charge it every night regardless of how much battery is left. 

[blairpalmer]

That's fine, the forum advisors and gurus can bash all they want.  I was just trying to share my experience with the community about the new OS and loss of battery life.... that started occurring the day after it was downloaded.  

I think we all get what you're saying in that the new Locked Mode does the same thing as the old Standby Mode and the loss of battery life can be attributed to something else other than the perceived difference between those to modes.  (now that's not to say some still aren't very skeptical of this)

Additionally, I have similar battery life problem when I have NO 3rd party apps running and only the blackberry default apps running.  John, to your credit, I think you hit it on the head in an earlier post when you said something to the effect that the new OS just simply might take more battery power to run on certain devices, plain and simple.

Readers of the forum can take MY experience or leave it.  Users typically don't care about the technical changes of an OS.  They just want to know if it improves the usefulness of their device.  So in MY case, with a 6 month old 9630 Tour on Verizon, it has worsened my user experience.

[JSanders Resident Expert]

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blairpalmer wrote:

That's fine, the forum advisors and gurus can bash all they want. 

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No one's bashing you. Don't take anything personal. Don't make it personal, ok?

I asked a couple questions that 'did' deserve consideration, judging from your user experience.

Let me tell you about my experience a couple weeks ago. I woke, business as usual, checked SocialScope, a news blog and website, CLOSED the browser, nothing unusual running in the backgroujnd. Two hours later my battery is at 20%. I plugged it in my charger for an hour, took the BlackBerry with me to lunch and within an hour, I'm back at 25% battery!

Got back the office, charged it again to 90% and unplugged and went about my business. By 5:00, my battery was almost depleted. There's been no unusual usage. Still nothing in the background, no open browser page, no TeleNav or GoogleMaps.

So, I popped the battery out a minute, replaced it, charged and went home. It stayed at 100-90% until bedtime and in the moning the battery was at like 85%.

So what was it? I know my stuff on BlackBerrys and applications in the background, what to check, etc. Did some rogue application not close completely and properly, but still not show as active on the Application Switcher? I don't know.

And my battery usage has been normal since then.

It just goes to show, it could be anything. And sometimes you never know what it is.

[blairpalmer]

JSanders:  Good post.  Yes, strange things can happen all the time.  Coincidentally I've tried the battery pull too, but I didn't have the same luck.

Sorry I didn't reply to your answers before.  It may be moot point now, but just fyi:

You wrote:

It's all those apps running in the background sucking your battery life. Why are you constantly having to "check"? Do your apps open and start by themselves?  -  I check because the battery drains so fast that I can't help but wonder what app I may have left open.  It makes you wonder, as you put it, if there is a "rogue" app running despite restarts or battery pulls.

Or you open and don't close/exit them properly?  -  I may not have been, but thanks to this thread I do it religiously now, which helps a little, but still run out of battery before days end.

EASY FIX: I bought a few extra charges so I have them wherever I may be; car, house, office, etc.

Oh well....

[RayK]

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MeetJoeAsian wrote:

 After O/S 5.X:

 Top right button: NOTHING

 Top left button: KEYPAD LOCK

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The top right button on my Tour is the Mute key and has worked both before and after the upgrade to v5.0.

Thanks,

Ray K.