Why Battery Life Should Be The New Smartphone Battleground - Polidicks

[QUOTE]Smartphones are unquestionably one of the most useful devices of the 21st century but they continue to have one critical flaw – battery life. We’ve all been there – you forgot to charge your smartphone and you have 10% battery life left to see you through the day.The trouble is, few if any manufacturers seem to have cottoned on to just how much each of us uses our smartphone. They, and sadly many consumers as well, have been obsessed with size and weight but they forget that smartphones are no longer just things we use lightly for an hour a day.Sadly, while the processing power and features of modern smartphones is more than up to the task, especially with 4G data speeds coming on tap in many different countries, their batteries simply aren’t. In fact they’re still using comparatively old technology that pre-dates the smartphone itself. There are two main issues with all current smartphone batteries. They take a long time to charge and they lack capacity.[/QUOTE] [URL]http://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyleather/2013/12/13/why-battery-life-should-be-the-new-smartphone-battleground/[/URL]

I can make a battery charge last about 3 days on a shitty brick phone. If I use it to make a lot of calls it's dead in 1. I have no idea how people with smartphones can handle having such a short battery life.

The problem is that the desire for longer battery life conflicts with the obsession with shaving micrometres off of it. The first step is to just make a slightly thicker phone.

Manufactures will just incrementally improve batteries so they can sell more models. They'll come out with a new one every other month claiming an increase over previous battery life spans, even though the manufacturers could probably use the best battery technology available right away.

I just got used to pinning the phone to computer's USB every time I sit down at home so I don't really mind the literally day long battery life (with me using the cellphone a lot) but I can't say I wouldn't appreciate longer battery life, I just wish it was at cost of thickness and weight (oh god the horror, right, what kind of monster am I) instead of functionality and performance. I really dislike stumbling upon unwieldy powersaving features which make the phone clunk up or lose good connection to ensure it's anemnic battery unworthy of driving an electric toothrbrush would be able to wheeze along for half an hour longer.

I wouldn't mind if my phone was say, 4mm thicker to put a bigger battery in. I couldn't care less about anything being thin, makes it feel flimsy IMO

Just an FYI this article aims mainly at North American and I guess European consumers. In South Korea and some other Asian countries phones come with 2 batteries in total in the box to combat this issue. Also it depends on who uses the phone and how much. You could be blasting away with Max screen brightness in an environment that's dark, on 4G data instead of wifi. There could be a poorly coded app that drains battery.

[QUOTE=thejjokerr;43332782]Battery lives arent that short are they? I havent once ran out of battery on this new phone, then again I dont spend my entire day fucking with it which I'm sure my employer appreciates and yours would too. For travel I've got a portable charger that can charge it fully and then has enough left to charge it another half. It was enough for my iPhone, havent had to test it on my droid though. I can imagine people that have to actively use a smartphone for work, running out of battery a lot quicker though.[/QUOTE] I like to use my phone whenever I am too lazy to be on the computer, namely when lazing about in the bed in the morning as well as evening, just browsing things and chatting to people. Outside of that I spend by average 90 minutes a day in mass transit which I have no better use for, then usually the unused amount of time at school waiting for lectures or such ads up to another hour or more.

[QUOTE=DELL;43332700]I can make a battery charge last about 3 days on a shitty brick phone. If I use it to make a lot of calls it's dead in 1. I have no idea how people with smartphones can handle having such a short battery life.[/QUOTE] I have a smartphone and it lasts 1.5 days with near-constant use, calling/internet/music. If I don't use it and don't charge it it lasts 5 days. How do you have such a shitty shitty brick phone.

The fact that people put a bunch of apps and syncing etc doesn't really help. I have two Galaxy S3 phones (one is my work phone and other is my personal phone) and there is a big difference in battery lifetime on the two. I have a bunch of stuff running on my private phone, like syncing 5-6 different things etc. And it holds about a day. My work phone is practically clean. There is my email that updates during peak hours and that's about it. And it lasts at least 3 days. And I use my phone quite a lot at work (I'm a support technician so I both make and receive calls often plus our monitoring systems sends out a bunch of sms). They DO need better batteries, but you also can't expect it to last long if you have a thousand things running in the background and syncing with the internet etc.

The whole thin phone thing is pointless. I don't see why a phone should be thinner than an iPhone 4, even that's too thin

[QUOTE=Laserbeams;43332876]The whole thin phone thing is pointless. I don't see why a phone should be thinner than an iPhone 4, even that's too thin[/QUOTE] Taking my case off the iPhone 4 makes it feel brittle and small as hell, and my case only adds a few mms to it.

I had a nokia smart phone with a flip out keyboard before I had an iphone. that thing's battery lasted a week, more if I didn't use it that much. my iphone doesn't even last day.

I still use my 10 year old phone which works perfectly fine

I love what LG did with the G2. I could go 2 days with medium usage. I charge it every night though, so I never had to, but after a long day at work I usually have 60-80% charge left.

The article argues well [i]why[/i] battery life is important, but it misses the two major reasons for battery lives being so bad on recent devices. The first is that lithium-ion battery technology has reached a plateau - the capacity to size ratio isn't going up. Take the iPhone for example; the original has a capacity of 1400mAh while the 5S has 1560mAh (and I bet that's mostly due to a size difference). The second is that newer devices consume more power. Newer handheld OS versions generally use more power than older ones due to more features and such (that are enabled by default), and newer devices often have more complex SoCs with faster processors and more antennas and sensors etc. As it is partly a software problem, there is much room for improvement here, but it's not the forte of most manufacturers. The two coupled together means that smartphone manufacturers don't really have a choice; the lack of new battery technologies forces them to use lithium-ion, and to keep newer devices desirable (when facing competition) they want to use the latest software. The only thing they could really do is put in a larger battery which significantly increases the size of the device, but then most people would probably prefer separate battery packs. The article makes it out as if manufacturers would be betting on battery life, they just need to realize how important it is - but the reality is that they're either waiting for newer battery technology, or themselves trying to develop better technologies than lithium-ion, which may or may not bear any fruit (I'm guessing Apple is probably in the former, and Samsung is in the latter).

My droid charge dies in like three hours from full charge. What even.

[QUOTE=EcksDee;43332832]I have a smartphone and it lasts 1.5 days with near-constant use, calling/internet/music. If I don't use it and don't charge it it lasts 5 days. How do you have such a shitty shitty brick phone.[/QUOTE] Maybe an old nackered battery

If you take the effort to save battery like killing background apps, disabling data and wifi when you don't need it and such, and not be constantly on your phone just fucking around you could have it last till the next morning. I've had my phone go from 100% to about 90% on a 4 hour flight from listening to music with screen and everything else off.

[QUOTE=DELL;43332700]I can make a battery charge last about 3 days on a shitty brick phone. If I use it to make a lot of calls it's dead in 1. I have no idea how people with smartphones can handle having such a short battery life.[/QUOTE] I bought a ZeroLemon battery for my S3 and I get 3 days. It is a bit thicker yeah, but it is totally worth it

[QUOTE=EcksDee;43332832]I have a smartphone and it lasts 1.5 days with near-constant use, calling/internet/music. If I don't use it and don't charge it it lasts 5 days. How do you have such a shitty shitty brick phone.[/QUOTE] You probably have an older smartphone with a lower resolution screen or just less battery intensive hardware. On my current phone i'll unplug it at 9 am and through infrequent/intermittent use and it'd down to 30% by 6pm.

Just to hop on the bandwagon, my smartphone's battery goes down to 5% in under 5 minutes if I open Cut the Rope. I don't even have to play it. It just depletes the battery instantly

It would make sense for battery life competition. Ask anyone who had different phones, it's essentially all the same. Battery life might be the deal breaker.

[QUOTE=mysteryman;43333162]You probably have an older smartphone with a lower resolution screen or just less battery intensive hardware. On my current phone i'll unplug it at 9 am and through infrequent/intermittent use and it'd down to 30% by 6pm.[/QUOTE] User powersaving features, and apps which add features that save power.

[QUOTE=IceyMalone;43333169]Just to hop on the bandwagon, my smartphone's battery goes down to 5% in under 5 minutes if I open Cut the Rope. I don't even have to play it. It just depletes the battery instantly[/QUOTE] Sounds like your phone might be messed up there, though, rather than a shitty battery life. Does it do it with similar applications or is it just Cut The Rope or something? I am one of those poor bastards who has a Nokia N70, the only reason I still have it is because I promised myself I would only buy a new phone once this one died and the bastard just doesn't want to which leaves me both furious and also very impressed. The battery life has been quite impressive (still running on the OEM battery) - 4-5 days on standby with minimal usage, 2-3 days if used heavily. On the other hand, everyone at my workplace fights to use my USB slots to charge their phones on a near perpetual basis, which leaves me wondering if I should move to a new phone at all or stick with a dumbphone.

The only reason my smart phone last a day is because I turn the backlight practically off. They're already lightweight and thin enough, forget making them smaller

[QUOTE=EcksDee;43332832]I have a smartphone and it lasts 1.5 days with near-constant use, calling/internet/music. If I don't use it and don't charge it it lasts 5 days. How do you have such a shitty shitty brick phone.[/QUOTE] I have never had a smart phone although I do have a tiny brick phone that lasts a month without a charge if I have only barely used it and a week with near constant use.

I know people who whinge about battery life, and generally they have data, wireless, location and all the other shit turned on 100% of the time. Turn that shit off when you don't need to use it (most of the time) - more battery life!

my ATIV S has 2300mAh battery, this motherfucker will last 3 days of consequent texting and listening to music and going online just a little bit, which fits for my use perfectly, it lasted exactly 3 days and roughly 20 hours, almost 4 days. HOWEVER! If i start playing games this motherfucker won't last 12 hours :D So moderate use kicks ass. here's proof: [img]http://i.imgur.com/qrkhcX9.jpg[/img]

Exactly. I can't stand charging my HTC One every night.