Wednesday, 24 July 2013

Tips on BlackBerry battery usage


1. Use Wifi when available and turn off Wifi when not in use
Wifi seems to be the biggest influencer of battery life on newer devices like the Bold 9900/9930. In all of our tests and real world outings, having Wifi on and connected to a Wifi network was amazing for battery life.
However when you know you won’t be using Wifi if you’re out for the day or somewhere where there is no Wifi connection, you can simply turn it off to keep it from eating away at your battery. This keeps the device from searching for networks and draining the battery.
2. Dim the backlight
When you fire up a new device, more often than not the backlight brightness is set at 70 per cent. This is all well and good to start as you can see the screen clearly and everything looks great. Your natural tendency to want to see things as bright as possible may have you cranking it up to 100 per cent, however this can more quickly drain your battery as the extra juice needed to keep the screen fully lit up eats away at battery life.
3. Change your backlight timeout
Having the backlight timeout set to a low value keeps your screen from staying on unnecessarily when you’re done doing whatever you’re doing. In most cases there is no need to have the screen stay on for two minutes or even one minute after you’re done using the device.
4. Turn off bluetooth when not in use
Bluetooth is a great feature of BlackBerry smartphones. It lets you connect with devices such as headsets, computers, speakers and much more. However when not in use, having Bluetooth active can slowly take away from your overall battery life. When you’re not using Bluetooth it’s always a good idea to just turn it off. Granted you won’t be able to automatically connect to devices without turning it on again, but it’s only a few clicks away so it’s never too much of a hassle to fire it up again.
5. Change network settings in poor coverage
This one not many people think of but it can also be a big help on the battery. If you happen to find yourself in an area with poor network coverage for your carrier, you can change up your settings or even turn off data completely and save yourself some precious battery bars. Sometimes when you find yourself in poor coverage it could be due to a clogged network.
6. Use the auto on/off feature or bedside mode
This is a simple yet not well known feature of BlackBerry Smartphones. Built into the Operating System is the ability to automatically turn the device on and off at given times. This is extremely useful for saving battery life as well as turning the device off when you’re sleeping, in daily meetings, among others.
7. Lock your device and/or use a BlackBerry case with sleeper magnet
When your device is in your pocket or purse and it gets banged around, sometimes the screen will activate when a key is pressed. To prevent this you can either use the lock button on your device or set a device password with a timeout. This is a good practice to keep the device safe while preventing the screen from turning on when you don’t want it to.
8. Exit unused apps
Simply closing unused apps can go a long way in helping battery life. In particular apps that constantly pull your GPS location or perfom other tasks really hinder your battery life when not in use. To easily close these apps you can use the built-in App Switcher to see what’s running on your device, then close anything you aren’t using.
9. Change app refresh settings
Apps like Twitter, Facebook and others that run in the background on your device can eat up precious battery life in no time. These apps constantly refresh at set intervals and slowly chip away at battery life you could be saving. For any app that has a background refresh, you’ll want to turn the refresh rate up or even off completely.
10. Charge your device and buy a spare battery!
Last but not least is the “no brainer” of the bunch. Charge your device whenever you have the chance. Be it at home or in your office with a standard wall charger or BlackBerry charging pod, in your car with a car charger or wherever you happen to be. Charging in your down time is obviously the best way to keep your battery up and running all day long.
—Source: crackberry.com

No comments:

Post a Comment

Recent Post