Overnight battery drain with a Bluetooth smartphone
Performance, Troubleshooting, Communications Series 60, Series 80, Series 90, UIQ, General, S60 3rd EditionQ. I'm mystified. I go to bed at night with my smartphone next to me, showing a full charge, and in the morning it's down to almost zero. I've rebooted and made sure that there no extra, running applications that might be hammering the processor, and yet every night the story's the same. Is my smartphone faulty?
A. We'll bet that this is a connectivity issue. Do you use Bluetooth for connection to your desktop, by any chance? If you're leaving the Bluetooth connection open through the night, this could easily explain where the power's going, especially if your desktop's in your office, a room or two away. The Bluetooth transmitter in any mobile device automatically ramps up its power if necessary to keep a long distance (more than a metre or two) connection going. Having your Symbian smartphone pushing out the power trying to maintain a wireless link to your PC at the limit of its range, all night, is definitely going to hammer your battery.
The solution, of course, is to toggle Bluetooth 'Off' each night (this is included in the usual process of doing whatever you'd normally do to turn the phone part of your device off. On a Series 80 device, simply turn the cover phone off. On Series 60, switch to the 'Offline' profile. On a UIQ device, switch to 'Flight' mode.