Inside BlackBerry » battery life

Ten ways to extend your BlackBerry Z10 battery life

Ty Williams — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 19:48:22 +0000

How much battery life you consume may vary, depending on how you use your BlackBerry Z10 smartphone. To help your battery last longer, try any of the following tips:

Check for BlackBerry 10 OS Updates

Whenever a new BlackBerry 10 OS update is released, make sure to install it on your smartphone so that you can take advantage of any available optimizations which can help improve your battery life. Typically, you’ll receive a notification of a new update, but to check for updates manually, open Settings, tap Software Updates followed by Check for Updates.

Tip: To access your BlackBerry Z10 Settings, swipe down from top of the screen while viewing your Home screen and tap Settings.

Connections

The radios on your smartphone are designed with efficiency in mind, so turning off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or NFC as well as changing your cellular connection to use a different network technology may not improve battery life. We recommend using Wi-Fi whenever possible because it offers substantial power savings, so make sure you are actively adding Wi-Fi networks and hotspots to your smartphone as you come across them.

5 Ways to Stop Battery Zombies from Drinking Your Juice

Donny Halliwell — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 15:02:05 +0000

By Tommy Ellis (Own work) [CC], via Flickr Creative Commons

In the wake of rolling out the battery-saving Application Resource Monitor™ app that monitors your BlackBerry ® smartphone’s applications, I wanted to discuss another problem that smartphone users face: what I like to call “Battery Zombies”. These undead processes and options grab hold of precious battery juice and drain the life from it, forcing you on a quest for an outlet. Avoid unnecessary battery drainage by following a few simple tips:

1. Turn off Wi-Fi®
The quickest way to save on battery life is also one of the easiest. When Wi-Fi is turned on, your device will constantly search for access points, which can sap battery life. If you are on the road or don’t plan on connecting to a Wi-Fi hotspot, consider turning off your Wi-Fi network connection to save battery life.

2. Turn off unused connections
Along with Wi-Fi, you may also want to turn off Bluetooth® and NFC (if your device includes either of these features) when you are not using them.

3. Watch those apps
Apps that push notifications to your mobile device or frequently update data (think weather apps or news apps) can drain your battery in a hurry by downloading mounds of incoming data. Jump into the settings of these apps and minimize updates where possible.

4. Adjust Brightness settings
Another common suspect for battery drain is the settings for screen brightness and backlight timeout. If your screen stays illuminated long enough for you to walk a few blocks, dig into the settings of your device and decrease the brightness and timeout time.

5. Reduce notification bells and whistles
I used to have a 45-second musical score set as my notification every time my wife called or texted me — the song from our first dance. After the fourth time I heard it, I realized a 45-second notification for the most common person that contacted me was a bit…overwhelming. Not surprisingly, it also took its toll on my battery life. Reducing or eliminating long sound or vibration notifications on your device can add time to your battery.

By making sure your battery is functioning properly and by following the tips above, you’ll get that many more tweets, status updates, emails, BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) messages, and minutes of talk time. What will you do with it?

Extending battery life on the BlackBerry PlayBook

Ty Williams — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 18:51:07 +0000

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

The BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet is designed to give you a solid battery life depending on what you do, but there are some things you can do to help maximize the battery life of your tablet so you can stay connected, enjoy your media and capture amazing pictures and videos. We’ve compiled a number of tips to help you.

Dim the screen

A quick tip to help extend battery life is to adjust the screen brightness of the display to a lower value than the one you are currently using. To change your brightness setting, go to the Home screen status bar, tap on the Battery icon and toggle the brightness slider (in the yellow box below) to your desired value. Note, the system keeps separate brightness levels for whether you’re plugged in and charging or running on battery power only.

Five Tip Friday – BlackBerry Ty’s Favorite PlayBook Tips

Ty Williams — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 19:06:40 +0000

Whether you are a new BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet owner (maybe you got one for the holidays?) or have had one for a while, here are five of my favorite tips for quicker and more efficient use of the tablet. I hope you can use these to maximize your awesome BlackBerry PlayBook tablet experience!

1. Show and Hide the Keyboard

Whenever you need to quickly access the keyboard, just swipe in from the bottom left of the bezel. To hide the keyboard when you are finished, tap on the hide keyboard button that appears in the bottom left corner.

Extending BlackBerry 6 and BlackBerry 7 battery life

Ty Williams — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 21:26:35 +0000

With the recent release of BlackBerry® 7, I want to share some battery saving tips to help you get the most of your BlackBerry smartphone – for both BlackBerry 7 and BlackBerry® 6. Listed below are several tips I use that you can start taking advantage of today.

If you’ve got a tip on how to extend battery life, leave a comment and let us know as we may feature your tip in an upcoming post. Let’s get started…