UPDATE: It’s dead! The BlackBerry Bold actually exceeded the marketing materials and died just short of the 39 hour benchmark.
UPDATE: It’s 1:12. There is 8% battery left and I used some extra juice to take a screenshot. Regardless, the BlackBerry Bold 9700 has been on for 36 hours and it seems like it will hit the 38 hour mark, as advertised, dead on. BlackBerry Cool reader Durbin007 deserves a hat tip.
UPDATE: 21:52. About 1/5th of the battery power left. The BlackBerry Bold 9700 has been playing music for 33 hours.
UPDATE: We are now almost 27 hours into the test and we still have 2/5 battery power.
UPDATE: We’re coming up to the 24hr mark and I have to say, this test is driving me slightly mental. If I were to design a new torture method, it would involve leaving loud music playing from headphones in the same room as someone for hours on end.
UPDATE: At 09:06 we’re about 21 hours into the test and the Bold 9700 is showing just a little over half battery. At this rate, it could be upwards of 45 hours to drain the battery completely.
UPDATE: It’s 20:32 EST, about 8 hours since we started and not even a single bar down. At this rate I won’t need to update until tomorrow.
UPDATE: It is 16:57 EST, a little more than 4 hours into it and we still haven’t gone through a full bar. Going to give it a while longer before another update.
UPDATE (14:26 EST): It has been 2 hours and we’re still running on full battery. This could take a long, long time.
So here’s the deal: The BlackBerry Bold 9700 has some battery optimizations that make it last so long it makes the Energizer Bunny look impotent. That, combined with some OS optimizations specifically tailored to the music player, means the Bold 9700 can play music for a long time.
But just how long can it play music on a single charge? Well I’m going to put this thing to the test. The test will involve 2 parts. The first part, will be playing music with the radio off and playing it directly from the SD Card. This will give us an idea of how long the battery will last, solely playing music without being interrupted by calls, emails and network searching. The second part of the experiment, will be playing the music from Slacker, to test the 9700’s ability to stream music while on the network. This will be an incredible strain on the battery but I have a feeling the Bold 9700 will surprise us.
So lets get started with Part 1 of How Long Will the Bold 9700 play music for?
Comment your predictions! Remember, the following conditions:
- Radio is off.
- Full battery charge.
- Full volume with headphones.
- No audio boost.
- No headset equalizer.
- Songs on continuous play so it won’t have any interruption.
