[graffitimonkie]

I have a recently developed problem with my Blackberry Curve phone, running on 4.5.0.81 on T-Mobile's network.

I have not changed my usage habits at all, and until a week ago everything has been fine.

Typical phone use includes, checking Myspace, Facebook, emails, text messaging, and surfing the internet with the default browser. Wifi is always on even when I'm not in a wifi area. Bluetooth always stays off unless I plan to make a call which in that case I'll turn bluetooth on and connect with a headset. I rarely ever make phone calls, and not long ones at that.

My phone used to be able to carry me through the entire day of usage until the evening where I'll plug it in overnight while I'm asleep and it'll be 100% in the morning for repeat use.

So here is the problem that I am experiencing.

Just this last week, my Curve blacked out on me it was in my belt clip so I have no idea what % battery it was at the time, but most likely it wasn't fully charged, I tried to press and hold the power button to get the Curve to turn on again and it would not turn on. The only way I could get it back on was with a battery pull. When the phone came back online, the battery was weak but not in the red zone yet, around 40%. Than a few minutes later of me tinkering with the web browser to make sure everything is safe, it blacked out on me again. This time same thing, battery pull to get it back on.

Over the weekend I was on the phone with my mom, a pretty full battery, but not on the charger, during our conversation probably 20 minutes into it the phone blacked out on me again. After the battery pull the phone's battery was down to like 5%, and I grabbed the charger to get it charged up so I could call my mom again to explain my phone died on me.

This would happen again on some other calls that I made through the weekend, seems that any call that last longer than 10 minutes without being hooked to a charger my phone has the potential to black out.

Than just today I was at the mall, my phone blacked out on me, so I did the battery pull and the phone was down to 5% battery again, I decided to run to the car and hook it up to the car charger, and after hooking it up to the charger I did a battery pull for the hell of it, and while it was restarting still plugged into the charger it came back up at 95%.

And another strange thing that I have noticed is that you know how when you are taking a picture with the camera, and you set flash to come on, the flash will stick around during the shot for a second? If my phone is unhooked to a charger the flash will just blink for a microsecond and go away, leaving my pictures dark without flash.

Does anyone else experience this problem with their phone?

I was on the line with my T-Mobile tech support and they're sending me a replacement battery that I am hoping solves this issue, but could this possibly be a hardware malfunction? If the phone is always connected to the charger I don't experience any of these issues. Could it be a software application incompatibility issue with my new OS upgrade? Is there a such thing as a bad OS install? I have installed the OS at least a month ago and was enjoying all the new features such as html email and camcorder for a while before this occurred, and it is quite frustrating not knowing when my phone might black out on me while in my belt clip.

Thanks for any helpful insight, I'm hoping the battery comes early next week, so that I can test things out with a new battery, I am not delighted by the idea of a handset replacement as it has applications I'll need to repurchase.

[playtoy]

The replacement battery might work or might not. Honestly lets hope it does, but my suggestion is to re-install / upgrade the OS on it. It might have got corrupted and is throwing the phone way off. You can do the reinstall/upgrade of the OS in the meantime.

Best
Let us know

[graffitimonkie]

Here is an update, I still haven't received the new battery from T-Mobile yet, it is still in the mail.

I have done a complete re-install of the 4.5 OS, and it was not a viable solution, the phone still blacks out.

Here are some new details for my phone's strangeness though:
1. Now the UMA icon won't pop up, I am hooked into my home WiFi network, it shows the name of my WiFi network on the face of the phone, yet the upper right corner displays EDGE in caps, and I do get the WiFi speeds. So UMA icon for some strange reason has vanished.

2. Just earlier when I was out I tried to access Google Maps, and apparently the data download shut my phone off, it wouldn't restart without a battery pull. I went back to the house, did exactly the same thing I did earlier with Google Maps only this time I had the phone connected to a wall charger, problem did not occur this time while getting data from the network.

3. If I'm on a phone call and the phone is about to shut off on me, I will hear a hissy static noise over the earpiece, this is a noise that is noticeable to the other person on the line as well.

4. Although I only did this once, therefore I don't think this is any statistically strong evidence of much yet, but I turned off WiFi on my phone, and ran it on the T-Mobile network only (I have always had both WiFi and normal phone networks on) and did exactly the same thing I did in step 2, this time I did not get powered off.

Conclusion, still waiting for the new battery but am beginning to think that something may be defective with my actual phone, anyone experience this problem and had any solution to their problem? Could there be a conflict with having both networks on at once, and if so what is the fix because what is the point of having a curve with WiFi access if I can't use it.

[BigEinTX]

graffitimonkie:
Please let me know what you find out. Your description of the problem is a 99% duplication of mine! The buzzing noise occurred during my first call of the day on a phone that had charged to full and died 20 minutes into my conversation. It wasn't used for sending emails, wifi off, bluetooth off, etc.. The battery went from 80 to red and could ONLY come back with a battery pull. It usually re-gained most or all of the "lost charge" only to die in subsequent calls seconds after the buzzing.

Tmobile customer care said to contact the BB dept or go to a store. The first store said they'd be unable to help me and didn't even have a battery to loan, test or sell me as apparently returns had already been sent off. Keeping it on a charger prevented the problem from recurring. The second TM store rep said it was under warranty, but I'd need to contact customer care for a battery. He said the battery appeared slightly swollen and was likely defective and policy prevented him from replacing my 7 month old phone battery at the store. Tmobile BB dept said the battery is not under warranty -though I repeatedly protested it was- according to the warranty manual provided by TM with the phone. A call to Rim proved unhelpful with the RIM guy saying essentially I'd have to deal with Tmobile. 10+ years with Tmobile, Voicestream and Aerial. After 2 more hours digging on the Rim website, and lo and behold - ALL accessories and batteries warrantied for 1 year! I explained my problem to a polite RIM representative [from India I'd guess] with excellent English who recognized the utter frustration I'd been having with my carrier of choice. He cared enough about my customer experience using his product to go the extra mile and contact TMobile -on my behalf- and "correct" them in regards to RIM's warranty while I held on the line. He returned to the line asking me to hold a bit longer while he called back because of them disconnecting him; only to have me ask the same of him as it appeared TM customer care was now calling me back on my cell. TMobile apologized for their mistake and agreed to rush me a replacement battery. The battery arrived 3 days later -no retail packaging- just a battery in a padded mailer; unfortunately, a day longer than a salesrep for a Fortune 500 company where thousands of BBs are deployed can wait.

The Fry's aftermarket battery I bought ran problem free. After a week of it, I put the "new" Tmobile RIM battery in, charged it up, and it quickly followed in the old RIM battery's footsteps: 100% charge, 10-20 minutes talking, buzz, hold on mister customer as I may lose you,...dead. Remove $40 TMobile aftermarket phone cover, battery cover off, battery swap, 2 minute boot time, is Mr. Important Prospect available. No, I'm sorry he just left. You get the idea.

With less than 5 months of warranty on my phone, I lent the new RIM battery to a co-worker Friday evening two weeks ago to try on his ATT 83xx; Monday he texted "the experiment was a 'success'. The battery is utter crap."

I've searched the web for indications of a bad lot of BB batteries - no sign. I also wondered about my recent OS upgrade perhaps being the culprit. The new os install did NOT go smoothly. It simply wouldn't take and I've installed many OSs: Windows, DRDOS, XP, Vista, 2000, Linux, etc. The BB folks were very helpful and spent an inordinate amount of time taking me through the re-install to correct it. However, a working Fry's Electronics battery would seem to negate the possibility of it being OS related; unless...

I do want to say, the support provided by the RIM rep, honestly, was the best service support call easily I've had in the past 10 years for any electronics related problem! The new OS features are nice: video and audio recorder, HTML email, and much better browser. BTW, my gal is ticked [not tickled]about the video; the camera was too much already and now I video everything. The former MMS voice feature w/o save required MMSing me -useless;The new digital tape recorder is awesome for leaving yourself a message for later [when thumbing a text reminder to oneself is impractical] or recording someting someone would prefer you rather not record. So I'd give RIM an A- on support. Two great folks and one dud [maybe he had a bad day]; I know I had three of them in a row. Tmobile, your real customers don't care about a SW airlines buddy pass, but we are concerned about service. You'd really screw me around on a $20 battery risking a very loyal customer on a $100 a month plan. I simply don't get it. And then a defective replacement battery; I'm left wondering if TM is purchasing counterfeit RIM batteries. I'm back to using my Fry's battery and scared to go back to RIM batteries. You may laugh, but these are business calls to professionals. I stayed with Aerial and Voicestream because I believed they provided fewer dropped calls than their competitors [things important in my business] along with loyalty and doing the right thing. Yeah, I am actually a salesrep.

A call for you to service after the sale [remember those days]:
I would like to hear from somebody at Tmobile or BB who cares. I have two of your RIM branded batteries -utter junk so far as I can tell. The Tmobile rep at the store said he could only sell me a new battery for he thought around $36 + tax as I recall. The RIM batteries on the internet go for half what TM charges and no name for less. Certainly a premium priced OEM battery should work as well as an aftermarket of comparable hours and that's not been the case for me. Hey mistakes happen. I'm in sales and I know this, but it's how you handle them sets your company apart in the long run. If it's a problem, then sweeping it under the carpet doesn't help.
TO graffitimonkie : please let me know what you hear.
To Tmobile: I'm disappointed...a 10 year customer and 7 months into a new contract this is how you wish to play it.
To BB: Thanks for the technolgy. I was worried about abandoning my Treo 600, but wanted BES/BIS and bluetooth. The phone hasn't disappointed, though it's taken some time to get over not having program support like Palm has; google docs has helped in that regard in replacing my daytimer and a Palm based blood pressure program on my Treo. And yes operational battery life on the curve is at best a day -usually; however, the battery is dinky by Nokia 5190 standards and runs all this marvelous stuff.

However, I[we] have a problem. May I exchange my two defectives for 1 good battery. I'm frustrated and tired of ranting to carrier CSRs that don't care, believe me to be an irritation, while I feel just in my position. If it's an incompatability between the new OS and the chip in the RIM battery then let's find a patch; otherwise, we'll presume it's a defective lot of batteries and maybe help those unfortunate folks that are in need of resolution.
Fair?
Regards a new crackberry addict.

[graffitimonkie]

Hey BigE

I had actually came to a resolution so far in regards to my Blackberry situation.

I had wrote a duplicate post in this thread as I found it after writing up my problem, these members have been experiencing the same issues with the phone, and have had different resolutions.

http://www.blackberryforums.com/gene...problem-2.html

My solution was to get a new battery, (hopefully it is a new one, sent from T-Mobile) it came with no packaging as well, so it might have came from a return unit within the 30 day trial period. I'm sorry to hear the T-Mobile reps weren't as cooperative with you, as they were very nice while working with me, I had to actually go into a T-Mobile store and hook up with their tech webcam since I only have one line and couldn't trouble shoot with them while being on my phone.

The Blackberry does warrant their product for a full year, and that includes the battery so if the phone is defective they will most likely try to troubleshoot the battery first, as it is cheaper than replacing the entire phone, but you might have been sent a defective battery. And may need to purchase a brand new one, if you don't want to deal with the Customer Service again, this way you have a guaranteed "new" battery to troubleshoot your phone.

I found my phone always shutting down after using some data intensive application but while charged on the cord the same issues never arose, so defective battery was my first choice of troubleshoot. Good luck !

Update: The new battery arrived, and I am currently running on 4.5.110 and the new battery seemed to have stopped the problem as of right now.

I made a 15 minute call with my friend and it did not shut down.

I am slowly reloading my applications onto the phone such as Jivetalk, and PDF reader, will see if things work out this week. Going to put the phone to normal usage limits once again and keep you updated.

The battery thus far is doing well, hopefully it stays that way but the moment it doesn't I'll be sure to update.

For anyone whose in this situation I strongly advice running to your local phone store you signed up for the phone plan at and asking them for a new battery. If they say "We have them for sale" let them know that you know Blackberry warrants their batteries for up to a year, so you want a replacement. They should be able to switch your battery out with a 30-day return phone's battery if they have one in stock or ask you to call customer support who will ship you one.

[Terasec]

Originally Posted by graffitimonkie

I have a recently developed problem with my Blackberry Curve phone, running on 4.5.0.81 on T-Mobile's network.

I have not changed my usage habits at all, and until a week ago everything has been fine.

Typical phone use includes, checking Myspace, Facebook, emails, text messaging, and surfing the internet with the default browser. Wifi is always on even when I'm not in a wifi area. Bluetooth always stays off unless I plan to make a call which in that case I'll turn bluetooth on and connect with a headset. I rarely ever make phone calls, and not long ones at that.

My phone used to be able to carry me through the entire day of usage until the evening where I'll plug it in overnight while I'm asleep and it'll be 100% in the morning for repeat use.

So here is the problem that I am experiencing.

Just this last week, my Curve blacked out on me it was in my belt clip so I have no idea what % battery it was at the time, but most likely it wasn't fully charged, I tried to press and hold the power button to get the Curve to turn on again and it would not turn on. The only way I could get it back on was with a battery pull. When the phone came back online, the battery was weak but not in the red zone yet, around 40%. Than a few minutes later of me tinkering with the web browser to make sure everything is safe, it blacked out on me again. This time same thing, battery pull to get it back on.

Over the weekend I was on the phone with my mom, a pretty full battery, but not on the charger, during our conversation probably 20 minutes into it the phone blacked out on me again. After the battery pull the phone's battery was down to like 5%, and I grabbed the charger to get it charged up so I could call my mom again to explain my phone died on me.

This would happen again on some other calls that I made through the weekend, seems that any call that last longer than 10 minutes without being hooked to a charger my phone has the potential to black out.

Than just today I was at the mall, my phone blacked out on me, so I did the battery pull and the phone was down to 5% battery again, I decided to run to the car and hook it up to the car charger, and after hooking it up to the charger I did a battery pull for the hell of it, and while it was restarting still plugged into the charger it came back up at 95%.

And another strange thing that I have noticed is that you know how when you are taking a picture with the camera, and you set flash to come on, the flash will stick around during the shot for a second? If my phone is unhooked to a charger the flash will just blink for a microsecond and go away, leaving my pictures dark without flash.

Does anyone else experience this problem with their phone?

I was on the line with my T-Mobile tech support and they're sending me a replacement battery that I am hoping solves this issue, but could this possibly be a hardware malfunction? If the phone is always connected to the charger I don't experience any of these issues. Could it be a software application incompatibility issue with my new OS upgrade? Is there a such thing as a bad OS install? I have installed the OS at least a month ago and was enjoying all the new features such as html email and camcorder for a while before this occurred, and it is quite frustrating not knowing when my phone might black out on me while in my belt clip.

Thanks for any helpful insight, I'm hoping the battery comes early next week, so that I can test things out with a new battery, I am not delighted by the idea of a handset replacement as it has applications I'll need to repurchase.

my battery has been going haywire for a couple weeks
Battery level going from 5-75% in no time
and as soon as i make a call it drops from fully charged to low battery within minutes
tech support couldnt tell if it was battery issue or phone not reading voltage correctly
i hedged my bets and bought a new battery today
havent charged it yet to see if that was the problem,
if it wasnt the battery, planned on getting the same phone anyway so have the spare battery for that phone,

[adorkable]

I've had my Curve for a little over a year, and recently I started experiencing the same problem with my camera flash. Even with a fully charged battery it would just be a tiny blip of light just before the actually picture was taken. Just now, though, I plugged it in and tested it, and the flash works fine. I didn't think to do that before. I'm definitely going to get a new battery, but I think I'll just order one from some aftermarket site. Hopefully in the mean time I won't start experiencing any of the other problems you've had.

[Byte]

This happened to me once..I don't know but I suspect I may have overloaded it..since I had around 10 heavy apps running

[pachannie]

Thank you so much for this post! I have been having the same issue for a few weeks...phone blacking out (only when I really need it) and some buzzing on phone calls.

I cleared my entire phone and re installed the os and that didn't help. I ordered a new battery from an aftermarket site today, so hopefully that will solve the problem - unless I get another bad battery!

If this doesn't solve the problem I think I'll cut my current contract and get a new contract with another company - it would cost me more to buy a new phone and keep my current plan.

Ugh....annoying phone companies.