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Two and a half months into buying my BlackBerry Curve 9220, I found the battery life to be very poor, especially compared to my previous phone – the Nokia E63 in which the battery lasted for three days straight. I also noticed that the phone would heat up quite a bit during use. I began to wonder if I’d bought a defective piece, but a little bit of asking around and surfing the net helped me figure out what was going wrong.

Poor battery life? Check your Wi-Fi connection

Now I rarely indulge in long phone conversations or marathon texting sessions. But the battery power on my BlackBerry 9220 would get depleted in as little as two hours. I do, however, browse the internet on my handset, but even that’s quite limited, and I didn’t realize that there could be a connection between internet browsing and battery life.

Turns out there is. What I didn’t realize and what a friend pointed out was that the Wi-Fi in my phone was activated and every time I surfed the internet, there would be an automatic search for available networks. This constant searching was a big drain on battery power and also caused the phone to heat up.

Manage Connections

Source: www.blackberry.com

What to do: To check whether the Wi-Fi option on your phone is turned on, click on the topmost panel on the home screen and see Manage Connections (other BlackBerry users will find the icon in their inner menu). Check to see whether the Wi-Fi option has been checked. If so, uncheck it. You’ll immediately find a marked improvement in the phone’s battery life.

Too hot for comfort? Monitor the temperature

Even after solving my problem with the battery, my BlackBerry 9920 continued to heat up, especially during charging. I rechecked the settings to see if I had carelessly activated some option. I hadn’t.

So I browsed some BlackBerry forums online and found my answer. It turns out there was nothing unusual about the handset warming up while it is being charged. Up to 50°C should be fine, although the battery doesn’t normally heat up beyond 42°C.

Battery discharge

What to do: I also found a rather interesting application called Tiny Meter which is a free application that you can download to monitor your BlackBerry phone’s battery, memory and signal levels. This application can be used in BlackBerry phones with OS 4.5+.

Not only does this app monitor the battery level, it also gives you handset temperature updates corresponding to battery charge levels. The application is called Tiny Meter and it can be downloaded for free from BlackBerry App World.

6 Responses

  1. nizzzzzzz

    it didnt work! my battery depletes immediately and the phone is in constant heating while charging and even just plainly using the phone.

  2. michelle garcia

    hi! i have problem in my blackberry curve battery it is easily get drained i already chabge the battery but it’s still not working.
    what should i do? thank you..

  3. joe

    The wierd thing about my drained battery is that its not getting heat while using. If Im not using my handset, thats the time it starts to get heat. Idk what to do.[b][/b]

  4. cal

    My curve (even if fully charged prior to going to bed) is dead and won’t turn on in the mornings. So I charge it to full each morning and the initial charge burns through in about 30 mins, and then when I charge it again, it works fine, and holds a full charge. Any ideas how to fix it so that I don’t have to charge it each morning?

  5. MichèLe

    depending on how old your battery is you may need to replace it. I discovered that there is a business use battery that will last longer. Older batteries will not hold charges, and they will also make your phone act wonky, the battery will also lose power quickly and get really hot more often than not. I discovered that when looking at a new battery versus my older battery, they older battery was slightly misshapen. I put the old battery in with the recycle container I keep at home, when I took it in with other batteries to be recycled it had so grown in size I was so amazed that phone batteries even did that sort of thing!

  6. Miles

    i have a problem on my black berry curve 9220 the battery is quickly draining !!! i don’t know what to do!!