does bluetooth use a lot of battery power?

bluetooth. like any electronic component consumes power. As to how much depends on the phone design. I reckon having bluetooth active, but not talking to any device cuts the battery life on standby by around 1..2 days (from around 8..10 days). but bear in mind thats the standby time. it wont affect the talk time that much, which for most phones is still around 2..3 hours.

other things that can drain the battery (which you can't do a lot about) is distance from the cellphone antenna, the further away from a network mast, the more power the phone uses to keep on the network.

so if you want the longest life between charges turn everything off that you don't actually need

make sure the screen light turns off as soon as possible

if you receive a lot of calls use a ring tone that is simple.. dont' use vibrating ringtones

don't play games

dont play music.

f you can lock the keyboard, so that you don't activate the phone unknowingly.

the last one is a particular beef I have, thats why I have a separate MP3 player rather than a phone +mp3 player, then the phone is never discharged by listening to music.

Yes, it does. The longer the distance between the devices the more power it draws.

Also, the more you talk, the more power will be used. If you have two devices bluetooth connected with no data/voice sent in between them, it would still draw more power than when bluetooth is off, but less compared with the power draw when talking.

It's based on my personal experience using Treo 680 and Plantronics Voyager 520 headset.

depends on what device we are talking about.

most commonly is the mobile phone - who's standby current is extremely low and as such as a percentage of standby, bluetooth uses huge amounts of power

never leave it on permanently

if on the other hand we are talking laptop

then the bluetooth drain compared to operational drain is quite small and would only affect te run time by a few minutes

does bluetooth use more minutes on your cell phone from your car

In my experience bluetooth always runs my battery down very quickly. I never have it on permanently.

It probably varies from phone to phone but all the phones i have had have run out quicker with bluetooth on.

It does run the battery down. You should get it looked at a phone shop. to see if they can fix it or not.

like allready said, it varies from phone to phone. but it probably only really drains battery if you are connected to another phone or whatever you are connected to.

yes so turn it off if your not using it

but my battery runs down fast anyway so...