Power Saving Tips For Your BlackBerry

Originally posted June 22, 2010


There is nothing worse than being caught out in the middle of the day, with a dead BlackBerry on your hands. And without a car charger, you aren't going to be making those all important calls or sending those urgent emails any time soon.

Save yourself the stress of a dead battery before it happens, with these quick tips to saving power while using your BlackBerry:

Charging

• Charge your BlackBerry® as much as possible
• Use wall chargers as the preferred charging method
• Only use car chargers when you really have to as the rapid charge can reduce battery life in the long run

Media

• Reduce volume
• Use headphones
• Load media using BlackBerry® Desktop Manager (avoids resizing)
• Turn off equalizer settings (Media > Options)

Browsing

• Visit mobile sites where applicable
• Turn Repeat Animations to a lower setting (Browser > Options > General Properties)
• Close browser when finished using (close with ESC key, not red End key)

Screen / Keyboard (Options > Screen/Keyboard)

• Reduce Backlight Timeout
• Reduce Backlight Brightness
• Holster smartphone (turns off LCD automatically)
• Set Audible Roll to mute
• Key Tone Off
• Use a sleeve when storing your BlackBerry® in a pocket

Network Connections

• Turn off unused connections when not in use, i.e. GPS, Wi-Fi®, Bluetooth®
• Use Auto On/Off
• Use single mode only (2G only or 3G only)

Camera (all accessible through Camera > Options)

• Turn off flash
• Set picture size to Small
• Set Colour Effect to Normal
• Set Picture Quality to Normal

Applications

• When exiting, be sure to close the application, not leave it running in the background (close with ESC key, not red End key)
• Log out of third-party applications when they are not needed

Indicators (set under Profiles)

• Set Audible notification to Off
• Turn off coverage LED

GPS

• Use the zoom out function to get the largest viewable area that you can still use usefully

With thanks to BlackBerryHelp - follow them on Twitter today!