How satisfied are you with your phone's BATTERY LIFE?

[JFB]

POLL

How HAPPY are you with your phone's battery life?

Just trying to get a general feel for how happy or unhappy people are with the amount of battery life they get from their phone. Don't give your phone a pass because you use (or don't use) a lot of GPS, WiFi, apps, etc. Just vote the bottom line level of happiness.

or or or

[Charlyee]

I voted "Very Happy", but that is with my Lunia 900. With my HTC Vivid I was "Mostly Unhappy".

[Yankees368]

Very happy with the battery life of my iPhone 4S on Verizon. It can last me a full day out, about 14 hours of pretty heavy use. No android phone I've had comes close to that.

[viewfly]

I have been 'very happy' with all my iPhones, with the 4 and 4S being better than the 3G and 3GS.
Of course this is very happy with the smartphone in mind, compared to my old Nokia's, pre smartphone era.

I go easily the full day and by bedtime I have battery juice to spare.

[dmapr]

I suppose I should clarify. The reason I voted mostly unhappy is that if my phone doesn't have WiFi to use, getting one full day on a charge isn't easy. If the phone has WiFi all the time I can easily have 60% of battery life left before day's over. So I guess I'm mostly unhappy about having to be WiFi conscious.

For the record, my Nokia N8 which I rarely had to charge more often than every other day would also die in less than a day under heavy cell data use.

[Quint101]

I voted mostly happy with my RAZR MAXX. I would have been mostly unhappy with the Bionic.

[TWX]

I voted very happy for my iPhone 4S on AT&T. I haven't ran out of battery during a day so far.

[viewfly]

I suppose I should clarify. The reason I voted mostly unhappy is that if my phone doesn't have WiFi to use, getting one full day on a charge isn't easy. If the phone has WiFi all the time I can easily have 60% of battery life left before day's over. So I guess I'm mostly unhappy about having to be WiFi conscious.

For the record, my Nokia N8 which I rarely had to charge more often than every other day would also die in less than a day under heavy cell data use.

My WIFI is never on during the day. Only at home, after 6pm. So I voted 'very happy' for my iPhone 4S with the WIFI not on, but using cellular data.



P.S. Yankee, you wrote Very Happy, but voted Mostly Happy?

[Yankees368]

Oops, poor choice of words. Can't vote too high since there is always room for improvement. My battery definitely lasts longer if I close out all the running apps, which I wish I didn't have to do.

[josephd]

I was on the fence with this one, but chose to vote mostly unhappy. I do not expect stellar battery life from any smartphone.
If I put on WIFI the phone is better,but I find moderate use off WIFI, and sometimes even on WIFI I barely squeak a day out of the battery.

[viewfly]

Oops, poor choice of words. Can't vote too high since there is always room for improvement. My battery definitely lasts longer if I close out all the running apps, which I wish I didn't have to do.

Hey Yankee good to hear from you.

I can agree with that logic, certainly. Waiting for the device that recharges from near field wireless induction power sources as needed. (at least greater than a few mm's from the source). But I decided to rate it 'very happy' regardless.

However I'm curious about your last sentence.

Not to get off topic, but it is very relevant. What apps do you routinely use that run in background? There are only a handful of iOS apps that are allowed to continuously run in background..... audio (music/phone/internet radio), GPS , VOIP, Newsstand and push/notification apps - and apps such as Mail may run in the background until they complete their task. Even GPS will only run if you are using a nav app like Tom Tom, otherwise it is suspended. Same with VOIP, only if you have it set up to be on line and receive calls. The local Exchange server I use for one company will mess up every 3-5 months and will hang up my native mail app. Never had problems with using Gmail via Exchange however, nor Yahoo. I have to reboot the phone to clear it out.

All other apps close/release memory in 3 seconds to 10 mins automatically. IOS manages apps for you, the only choices I personally make are things like frequency of push/fetching mail and how many apps run notifications. I don't let every app send me push notifications...only the ones I really want. At least this is what I've read about it.

Or do I have that wrong? I'm always checking that I've set up things properly to max battery life.

From my understanding, that 'multitasking ' bar only shows what apps have been used, and can be switched to, not what is 'running' Nearly all are suspended or frozen, or even terminated after a few seconds. There are lots on explanations on the web, this one I found recently is pretty good. Misconceptions About iOS Multitasking

It is one of the things that Apple does uniquely well - native battery management - no 3rd party apps needed. And also that 'buttery smooth' OS that make it a benchmark for other smartphones.

Do you know other apps that run continuously in background?

[AnthroMatt]

I said mostly happy. I have no problems getting through the day on a single charge unless I am using a lot of GPS/Nav, but that kills a battery on any phone.

[Yankees368]

There are a few poorly made games that seem to drag my battery down. I don't know what it is, but if I leave them open (or in the dock, whatever) my battery drains fast. One of the games even was set up to send push notifications and annoyed the hell out of me. I'm guessing it was always running, waiting for notifications.

[dmapr]

My WIFI is never on during the day. Only at home, after 6pm. So I voted 'very happy' for my iPhone 4S with the WIFI not on, but using cellular data.

viewfly, do you have any idea how much data your phone uses during the day? I just checked my last "very unhappy" day and it was around 46MB, which resulted in 4% battery left by bedtime. An average day when I use < 10MB leaves me with 30%+ by bedtime. A good day when I use no more than 2-3MB leaves me in the 40%-50% range.

[viewfly]

viewfly, do you have any idea how much data your phone uses during the day? I just checked my last "very unhappy" day and it was around 46MB, which resulted in 4% battery left by bedtime. An average day when I use < 10MB leaves me with 30%+ by bedtime. A good day when I use no more than 2-3MB leaves me in the 40%-50% range.

Gee, I don't normally look at or reset the stat counter on this anymore. But I did just look up my ATT monthly 'web volume usage' on their site. This would only be celluar data and my daily usage is about the same. Not clear if that counts text or media, etc,

Anyhow I average about 700 Mb per month, so divide by 30 days gives 23 Mb per day. I normally have between 50-60% left over at bedtime. Hope that is useful. I'll try to monitor it more precisely over the next few days.

But there are other battery hogs, like screens on (sounds star trekkie), by reading a page, or viewing photos and the like. So not sure if using data alone is a good measure.

[dmapr]

Gee, I don't normally look at or reset the stat counter on this anymore. But I did just look up my ATT monthly 'web volume usage' on their site. This would only be celluar data and my daily usage is about the same. Not clear if that counts text or media, etc,

Anyhow I average about 700 Mb per month, so divide by 30 days gives 23 Mb per day. I normally have between 50-60% left over at bedtime. Hope that is useful. I'll try to monitor it more precisely over the next few days.

But there are other battery hogs, like screens on (sounds star trekkie), by reading a page, or viewing photos and the like. So not sure if using data alone is a good measure.

Thanks. I suppose as long as your usage is more or less the same day-to-day that's good enough. I didn't look at the data counter, rather at "current usage" on AT&T web site, which gives breakdown per "transaction" which I assume translates to a data session. At any rate, that allows me to check usage for any particular day. As you may've guessed I'm very uneven in my usage, since I normally average slightly over a 100MB per month, so swallowing nearly half of that in one day definitely sticks out for me

You're obviously also right about other factors, which I haven't really tried to track at all. But considering that on those days where it drains the most I handle the phone a lot less (can easily go several hours without touching it) than on those days where the battery is happy, I think that in my case it's WiFi vs. mobile data that is the determining factor.

[Cellular101]

As long as i remember to charge it every night, I never have any problems - its a great phone!

[JFB]

I voted 'mostly unhappy'. I like the phone (HTC Amaze), but the battery runs down very fast everyday.

[Charlyee]

I voted 'mostly unhappy'. I like the phone (HTC Amaze), but the battery runs down very fast everyday.

Joe, just out of curiosity is the battery on your Amaze worse than the WM XV????device you had prior to it? The battery on Androids are not the greatest but my QTEK 9100 had the worst battery life of all my devices, closely followed by my Treo 750. They were both WM devices.

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows Phone OS 7.5; Trident/5.0; IEMobile/9.0; NOKIA; Lumia 900)

[JFB]

Not even close. The old VM XV would last a week...I never even bothered to get a car charger for it.

[Charlyee]

Not even close. The old VM XV would last a week...I never even bothered to get a car charger for it.

Thanks, wow a week? I don't think I have had any device after my TDMA Nokia 5165 that lasted a week.

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows Phone OS 7.5; Trident/5.0; IEMobile/9.0; NOKIA; Lumia 900)

[CRC]

I voted "completely unhappy" with the battery life of my SGSII. Sometimes if I don't use it too much it's passable. But for the most part, my battery life for this phone bites the big one. :-( I may get a wifi router to help. At the moment I don't even listen to music or watch videos, or play games...but the battery life still stinks.

[RadioRaiders]

The last 2 years I had a Motorola Droid (Milestone) with a 1500mA battery, and now I moved to a Motorola Defy, also with 1500mA battery. Battery performance is similar, maybe a little better with the Defy maybe because it's a new battery. I normally leave my phone in the charger overnight so it's 100% every morning (unlike me ). By the end of the day it's down to about 80-70% with what I consider light/moderate use. Actually, I forgot to charge it the other night and after 2 days it was still ok at around 60-40%. I don't think it would have made it to the end of the 3rd day, but who knows. Maybe I'll do an experiment and see how long I can go until my phone goes down to 15% and shuts down. Normally I keep a charger and 2nd battery handy, so I always have access to some juice if needed urgently.

[budney]

With the standard 1800 mAh batteries on my last few Android phones, I am never happy with battery life. A extended battery is a must for me to get through the day. I don't have access to a charger when I leave my house and my phone is my radio and mp3 player. :-)

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

[Charlyee]

I normally leave my phone in the charger overnight so it's 100% every morning (unlike me ). By the end of the day it's down to about 80-70% with what I consider light/moderate use. Actually, I forgot to charge it the other night and after 2 days it was still ok at around 60-40%. I don't think it would have made it to the end of the 3rd day, but who knows. Maybe I'll do an experiment and see how long I can go until my phone goes down to 15% and shuts down. Normally I keep a charger and 2nd battery handy, so I always have access to some juice if needed urgently.

That is unbelievable battery life for any Smartphone except maybe Blackberrys..

What constitutes light/moderate use in hours approximately?


Thanks much.

[RadioRaiders]

What constitutes light/moderate use in hours approximately?

Hmm, maybe roughly 30 minutes of talk-time, another 30 minutes of web-browsing, and maybe another 30 minutes of doing other random things (pictures, music, etc.). With that in a day I go from 100% battery in the morning to about 70% in the evening. I don't have any background apps or widgets or any other "live" stuff that uses data/battery. I'm pretty happy with that performance.

It should also be noted that the radio environment also has an affect on your phones battery, so there's more variables than just your phone and how much you use it. Of course if you are in poor coverage, your phone will use more battery as it tries to reach the base-station. Conversely, if you are in an area covered by many cells your phone might be constantly measuring and handing off to neighbor cells, which will also kill you battery faster. Also settings in the network that you aren't even aware of affect the battery as well. If for example, the network can instruct the phone to start searching for a new cell when it reaches a pre-set level. If the setting is too high, your phone might be searching constantly and unnecessarily for new frequencies, which will also drain your battery.

...for me, I know I'm on a good network (I helped build it ), so I'm not worried about any poor network setting affecting my battery ...I don't know about the rest of you guys however

[viewfly]

Hmm, maybe roughly 30 minutes of talk-time, another 30 minutes of web-browsing, and maybe another 30 minutes of doing other random things (pictures, music, etc.). With that in a day I go from 100% battery in the morning to about 70% in the evening. I don't have any background apps or widgets or any other "live" stuff that uses data/battery. I'm pretty happy with that performance.

That is pretty low usage. In any case if 1.5 hours of usage gets your battery down to 70% then that is a projected possible usage of 5 hrs getting to zero.

If you are pushing mail and with other smartphone things running there is probably another 30 min of usage going on. So if I add that to make 2 hrs to 70%, then the projected time bumps to 6.6 hrs. I'm sure Android has a usage meter somewhere.

My iPhone gets about 7.5 hrs.

But can you always trust % meters to be linear? Just now I've been using my phone for 2 hours of web browsing an I'm at 83%. Using a weak wifi. That projected to be 11hrs of usage



Sent from my iPhone 4S using Tapatalk

[RadioRaiders]

That is pretty low usage. In any case if 1.5 hours of usage gets your battery down to 70% then that is a projected possible usage of 5 hrs getting to zero.

If you are pushing mail and with other smartphone things running there is probably another 30 min of usage going on. So if I add that to make 2 hrs to 70%, then the projected time bumps to 6.6 hrs. I'm sure Android has a usage meter somewhere.

My iPhone gets about 7.5 hrs.

Don't take what I wrote scientifically, as it's just a "thumb-in-the-wind" guess of how much I use my phone. Android has a usage meter, but only in %, so I don't see exactly how much time was spent on browsing, phone calls, etc.

I'm generally happy with my battery performance. I charge it at night, and it gets me thru the day. If I need more juice, I have a charger on my desk or a spare battery in my backpack when I'm out in the field.

[sis651]

I voted mostly unhappy. In fact it survives on daily usage, I charge it at night, and comes to half before I put it to charge the night after. But when I go to somewhere else, where I may not find possibility to charge it every night, I can't make use of it as much as I want and I need. I have spare batteries but one of them are old, and the other is fake; so they are just to use in disaster like conditions. Also I use the old battery when I watch TV on my phone, so that I try to increase the lifespan of the current battery.

[Irish Rose]

I am extremely happy with the battery performance from my unlocked iPhone 4S. I'm going at least 1 to 3 days between charging and getting 9 to 5 hours of usage.








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