Several of you have RAZRs.

I leave my bluetooth on in my pocket so everytime I get in and out of car i don't have to think about it.

How long are you guys getting on a charge in the bluetooth mode? It's dramatically less in the bluetooth mode. I have done all the other battery saving adjustments. Suggestions?

Also I did not get a bluetooth manual with my car. I assume bars showing on screen are phone signal strength. But if so how come before I even got my phone there we bars showing on the screen?

What does the triangle on screen I see once in a while mean?

I do not have nav.

 

Yep - leaving the BT on, on your phone is a huge drain. Hence the reason to go for a phone charging cradle which of course also gives the extra phone aerial strength.

When I get in the car, the Assist signal shows as bars (1-5) when the mobile is BTing then it changes to a small "aerial" picture.

 

Its not Bluetooth active on its own that drains the battery, its the fact that it is paired to the car for extended periods of time. I have a RAZR and I leave bluetooth on all the time - I used to use it with the HB850 headset, and battery life wasn't noticably reduced from the normal 2-3 days. However now I use the phone in the E60, I can barely get one day out of the battery! This is from about 2hrs of car usage. You just have to charge it whilst in the car.

 

Yeah that's the only disadvantage of having such a small phone. Mine did not last a whole day yesterday... crapped out on me before i got home.

And I noticed the same thing with the manual... I don't see ANYTHING about bluetooth in my manual... however they have some stuff about a car phone, even SMS capability (which would be cool to have with BT).

 

I have the RAZR. I leave BT on all the time, so I don't have to think about it.

The Bluetooth on drains battery power MUCH MUCH faster, whether it's paired or not.

I get about 15-20 hours of standby use out of my RAZR. I charge it at home every night, or else I can't make it through 2 days. And its not because my battery is old.... It worked that way since day 1.

If I go on a trip, or I need to save power.... I just turn off BT, and I get much more life.

But the Battery on the RAZR sucks pretty bad by today's standards. I had a Nokia before this RAZR, and the battery lasted a full week on standby.... even after 2-3 years of use. That phone kicked ass.

 

This does not add a lot of info but.....

 

Bluetooth 1.1 is really bad at power usage, 1.2 is better (RAZR apparently uses 15% more power than with it turned off) and Bluetooth 2.0 uses less power and has much better power management. However, Bluetooth uses an rf transciever so it will use power, however good the power management. When the phone is paired with the car it is constantly trasmitting (presumably check status and other sundry data such as signal strength) and therefore it cannot cycle down the power. As a result it will use more power than when the Bluetooth is just active and not paired.

I leave Bluetooth on all the time and always have done. Before I got the E60 I could get 2-3 days life out of the battery (I used the headset for 20mins or so a day). Now I have it paired with the car, I get at most 1 day out of a full charge!

subterFUSE - agree with you about the RAZR battery life - it is pretty poor by modern phone standards and IMHO Nokia have much better software as well, but that's the price we pay for style. Form over function...

 

The bars are the GSM signal strength of your Cingular RAZR. The triangle is when you are on an ATT cell site. The E60 sees this as roaming even though your phone is programmed by Cingular not to show this since their merger.

The bars you see when your phone is not paired to the car is a CDMA signal coming from the Verizon network for ASSIST.

The battery life of the RAZR is not the best but BT gives the same performance hit on the V550 and V710. I charge it in glove box if I am driving for an hour or longer.

 

My friend's e60 shows a cell phone icon where mine shows the AT&T triangle discussed above...he uses Cingular as well...any idea what that cell phone icon indicates.

Oh, re: bluetooth...no info in the main manual but there is a supplementary manual that came in the black manual folder that is for BT and cpt9000

 

I just set my razr to turn on BT temporarily and it auto disconnects when I shut off the car, but I do need to turn it on manually when I get in the car on the razr which is a PITA. Do they make a BMW phone tray for the RAZR does anyone know? Or has anyone hardwired a power cord into their center console and maybe the wire from the sharkfin? I don't really want to pay $300 for the phone tray, but a custom adapter that had antenna and power would be cool if it were wired inside the console.