You may have read my review of the Blackberry Curve that I wrote just a while ago http://sysguy.com/wordpress/?p=165. Well the day after writing the review I started having problems with battery life. The phone was going through it’s charge in a day and a half even after it was turned off at night. Neither was there heavy email or even voice usuage on the phone. At first I thought it might be because of a low signal where I had the phone, after moving the phone there was no difference. Well I set the backlight to 30% (which is not noticeable to most people) but then I noticed something. I was getting a number of messages from Twitter via the google talk client. Turns out my Google talk client was running the whole time. This is what was draining the batterries of the unit. I signed off Google talk and the last charge lasted 5 days again!
But now going to the subject line of my post. While looking for solutions to my battery life problem, I stumbled upon some blogs with product leaks for Blackberries, in particular a new Curve 2, Pearl 2 and 8800 V2 phone. It would appear that CDMA versions of these phones are coming out (Telus and Bell customers will be able to get them) but the biggest feature on the new GSM versions is the addition of WiFi (802.11bg)! Apparently these phones will seemlessly switch from Edge to 802 seamlessly for mail downloads and we browsing. his is the one feature that I wish my current Curve had because it lowers data costs for mail and web surfing and it is much faster than the edge network. Although I have also seen that Rogers is testing their new HSPDA in some of the major centres (Calgary, Vancouver) I have seen no indication that these phones will be able to connect on that network.
Rumours have the phones coming out in the US sometime between September and December so they should not be far behind here. Well I am happy as I am eligible for an upgrade frome Rogers December 1 of this year so I will keep watching.
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