Inside BlackBerry » battery

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.

Top 3 BlackBerry Accessories for Summer Travel

Donny Halliwell — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 14:55:27 +0000

Picture this: You’re at the airport, all of the outlets are taken and your smartphone battery is about to die. Or, you’re sitting at the beach relaxing and you get a few important emails, but the sunlight’s glare makes it impossible to read them. Or, you’re relaxing in a lounge chair at your hotel and realize you forgot your headphones.

Well, #TeamBlackBerry, if you have been in any of these situations, we have you covered. After speaking with a few of my friends and colleagues, here are my top BlackBerry® accessory recommendations for summer travel:

Extra Batteries
When you’re out and about at an airport, an amusement park or a beach, the last thing you need is a drained battery – especially when you aren’t close to an electrical outlet. Something I like to have at the ready is an extra battery or two when I know I’ll be away from a power outlet for the majority of the day. You can find extra batteries and external chargers for your BlackBerry® 7 OS devices (and others as well) on Shop BlackBerry, so be sure to grab a few before you head out this summer.

Anti-Glare Film
As summer heats up, many of us spend more time outside. Since BlackBerry people are doers, we know how important it is to be able to stay on top of incoming messages and keep in touch with the important people in our lives. To protect your screen against the sun’s glare and make sure you’ll still be able to see everything on your screen, check out this anti-glare film you can easily apply to your screen. Plus, your device’s touch screen will still be fully functional, so you’ll have the best of both worlds.

Premium Stereo Headset
If you’re looking for headphones that can multitask as much as you can, we have the a great option for you. Our Premium Stereo Headset not only gives you quality audio and sound isolation so you can hear your music clearly, but it also includes a microphone so you can hop on the phone and chat, too. What’s even cooler is it has a single button to easily navigate between calls and music – perfect for when you’re lounging on the beach and want to keep things simple. While you’re at it, be sure to give BBM™ Music a whirl and make a few summer playlists!

These accessories are our favorites, but we want to hear from you: what is your favorite BlackBerry accessory that you never leave home without?

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.

How to reset a BlackBerry smartphone

Ty Williams — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:44:31 +0000

Some useful information every savvy BlackBerry® smartphone owner should know is how to reset their device. A reset of a BlackBerry smartphone is a troubleshooting method that completely turns off and restarts the operating system software and applications of a BlackBerry smartphone. In terms of troubleshooting, it is a useful first step if a BlackBerry smartphone is experiencing hardware, software, or wireless network issues.

There are two options when performing a reset: a hard reset or a soft reset. The difference between the two is that performing a hard reset involves removing the battery temporarily, whereas when performing a soft reset, a key combination is used to reset the BlackBerry smartphone.

Both options accomplish the same goal – restarting the BlackBerry smartphone – but an important thing to know is that a soft reset can only be performed on BlackBerry smartphones with a QWERTY keyboard, such as the BlackBerry® Bold™ 9900 smartphone or BlackBerry® Torch™ 9810 smartphone.

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…

BlackBerry Smartphone Simulators Overview

Naveen — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 20:15:14 +0000

For all you hard-working developers out there, the BlackBerry® Smartphone Simulator is an essential tool: it enables you to run BlackBerry® smartphone applications on your computer. The BlackBerry Smartphone Simulator includes the BlackBerry native applications that are typically available on BlackBerry smartphones, and enables you to load and test your own applications. You can even simulate and test various connectivity and state changes – definitely useful when you’re trying out a new app! When you use the BlackBerry Smartphone Simulator to perform testing, you might need to simulate additional BlackBerry services; the BlackBerry® Email and MDS Services Simulator Package are available for this purpose.

In short, the BlackBerry Smartphone Simulator allows you simulate all the aspects of the BlackBerry smartphone including battery conditions, network conditions, SD Card, GPS capabilities and more. In this post, I will briefly describe how to simulate some of the functionalities of the BlackBerry smartphone. Before we go further, let’s quickly recap where you can find the latest BlackBerry Smartphone Simulators. All the most up-to-date BlackBerry simulators can be found at the BlackBerry Smartphone Simulators page under the Developer Resources section of the website. You can also head here for the complete instructions on installation details, and you can find more detailed information on the BlackBerry Smartphone Simulators at the BlackBerry Documentation site.

How to extend your BlackBerry 6 OS battery life even longer!

Kerri B. — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 17:02:00 +0000

Ever wonder how you can get even more battery life out of your BlackBerry® 6 OS smartphone? Lucky for you, the new user-friendly OS makes it even easier to fit more productivity into your busy life before you start running low. With a few quick and easy tips from your friends here at the Inside BlackBerry Help Blog, you can get more life out of your device when you need it most.

Charging – Top it up!

To keep your device running in top shape, make sure your battery is fully charged whenever possible. Whether you’re at your desk, in your car or relaxing at home, keeping your device plugged in will ensure the battery is ready to go when you are.

Quick Tip: Wall chargers are the preferable method of charging as it is a direct electrical current to your battery which allows it to recharge quicker. Don’t have your wall charger handy? Check out this mini-adaptor to turn your USB cable into a one!

Paul’s Challenge: No Laptops Allowed!

Paul S. — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 21:12:31 +0000

Hi everyone – my name’s Paul. I’ve worked at Research In Motion® (RIM) for over eight years as a Technical Account Manager, and I’m now the Manager of Technical Services for the Enterprise Sales group at RIM. For the past few months, I’ve been making a deliberate effort to conduct all of my work on my BlackBerry® smartphone (a BlackBerry® Torch™ 9800 smartphone, to be exact). This project started very slowly, but with each week, I learn what I can do to keep my laptop at home.

I started while on a business trip to Chicago, and although I had my laptop present, I tried to keep it in my bag. The next trip was to San Francisco, and once again, I had my laptop with me – but this time it stayed in the hotel room. For all of my meetings, I relied on BlackBerry® Presenter.

Before the holidays I tried my first official week where my laptop didn’t even make it on the plane – I was able to do all my work laptop free! Through January, as I head off to a week-long conference, I plan to leave my laptop at home. Very liberating – and all thanks to my BlackBerry smartphone!