- Joined
- Mar 6, 2011
- Messages
- 8,649
The Why
When FAST posed the question about what phone he should purchase he mentioned a particular desire. To listen to music without killing the battery. I could only speculate and we heard from a couple iPhone owners on their success. So I decided to give my Android device a go at it.
The Premise and Expectation
The idea behind the tests is to run an 8 hour music test and after that see how much more use we can get out of the phone. Ideally a phone should last 16 hours. Even if your not in bed for your 8 hours of sleep you probably can find a charger by then. Anything less than 8 is horrible but realistic for abusers like me. I intended to respect the 15% battery warning as a dead phone.
Android versus iPhone? No such thing.
Remember that there are only 5 iPhones in existence. Compared to hundreds of android powered phones. My model alone is available as 4 different phones with different battery's, screens and processors. There are so many different configurations available and when it comes to battery life you cant classify Android as a device. My phone ran in a test against the new iPhone 4S and while coming out on top. Most of the other android phones in the test failed to match the iPhone by a couple hours. Its obvious the iPhone 4S is a serious contender.
Preparing my device
I am a battery abuser and no amount of battery draining apps scare me. But i uninstalled 20 of my 80 apps for this test. This included Sprints TEP which syncs my GPS location and contacts (I have it set for every 10 minutes!). I left the phones default sync on since most people will be running this. I also disabled my GPS and Data pinging weather/time widget. The normal clock widget that came on the phone doesnt do nearly as much on power as the one I use.
Test 1 - 3G Internet Radio test
I disabled the GPS (Some people are togglers and its very easy to get to (slide from the top and tap)). I also turned off the 4G since 3G was all we needed and WiMax is power hungry. I put the screen on automatic brightness.
Result FAIL. 6.5 hours later the device is at 5%, beyond the 15% warning. Clearly a couple hundred mb of music streaming is a bit much for my device, though it was expected.
Test 2 - 8 Hours of WMA/MP4
I dialed the screen brightness to 50% (Up from the auto's range in this light of 0-30%) where I normally keep it. Turned the GPS and 4G back on. Loaded the phone with 8 hours of music on the MicroSD and set it to play.
8 Hours in the music portion was done. 63% remaining, good enough for me.
30 minutes of Youtube left the device down to 53% Not bad but you can already see the OS's opinion on where power had started to go.
15 minutes of Angry Birds Rio Clearly my manual brightness is starting to take its toll. I keep a widget for a reason, knocked this down to 25% for the rest of the test since I am still indoors.
20 minutes of phone calls, 15 minutes of TeamViewer remote PC controlling, tack on some web browsing while watching TV
I finished the phone up to its last 15% randomly reading news and forums for an unknown amount of time. I am missing several screen shots including detailed screen activity, I also lost synchronicity with CPU spy at some point....
Result 12 Hours. Well its a bit short of 16. We got 8 hours of music, 30 minutes of youtube, 15 minutes of gaming, 15 minutes of controlling my home PC, 20 minutes of phone calls and probably an hour of web browsing. That covered listening to music to and from and during an entire workday. Showing some youtube videos to people and gaming a little on break. Some light to moderate usage of the normal features people might use like calling someone and checking the web. The life could get much worse, but with auto screen brightness it could have also been much better. What can you get out of a day, as much music as you like and maybe a phone call lol.
The iPhone 4S has a smaller battery by 400 mah and while it shows a little in one test I have seen it is obviously an efficient beast. I asked Duke to give an 8 hour test to his slightly older iPhone 4 and see how it stacks up. We discussed earlier his Inspire which has a measly 1230mah battery compared to my 1800. A phones physical size plays an important factor in capacity but so does cost cutting by the manufacturer. No matter what OS powers your device be sure to consider battery capacity in your decision making.
My longest run to date 21 hours! Not on purpose was my day off I gamed a little but I didnt use the device much.
I would test further but I need to go back to my 6 hour battery hating lifestyle.
When FAST posed the question about what phone he should purchase he mentioned a particular desire. To listen to music without killing the battery. I could only speculate and we heard from a couple iPhone owners on their success. So I decided to give my Android device a go at it.
The Premise and Expectation
The idea behind the tests is to run an 8 hour music test and after that see how much more use we can get out of the phone. Ideally a phone should last 16 hours. Even if your not in bed for your 8 hours of sleep you probably can find a charger by then. Anything less than 8 is horrible but realistic for abusers like me. I intended to respect the 15% battery warning as a dead phone.
Android versus iPhone? No such thing.
Remember that there are only 5 iPhones in existence. Compared to hundreds of android powered phones. My model alone is available as 4 different phones with different battery's, screens and processors. There are so many different configurations available and when it comes to battery life you cant classify Android as a device. My phone ran in a test against the new iPhone 4S and while coming out on top. Most of the other android phones in the test failed to match the iPhone by a couple hours. Its obvious the iPhone 4S is a serious contender.
Preparing my device
I am a battery abuser and no amount of battery draining apps scare me. But i uninstalled 20 of my 80 apps for this test. This included Sprints TEP which syncs my GPS location and contacts (I have it set for every 10 minutes!). I left the phones default sync on since most people will be running this. I also disabled my GPS and Data pinging weather/time widget. The normal clock widget that came on the phone doesnt do nearly as much on power as the one I use.
Test 1 - 3G Internet Radio test
I disabled the GPS (Some people are togglers and its very easy to get to (slide from the top and tap)). I also turned off the 4G since 3G was all we needed and WiMax is power hungry. I put the screen on automatic brightness.
Result FAIL. 6.5 hours later the device is at 5%, beyond the 15% warning. Clearly a couple hundred mb of music streaming is a bit much for my device, though it was expected.
Test 2 - 8 Hours of WMA/MP4
I dialed the screen brightness to 50% (Up from the auto's range in this light of 0-30%) where I normally keep it. Turned the GPS and 4G back on. Loaded the phone with 8 hours of music on the MicroSD and set it to play.
8 Hours in the music portion was done. 63% remaining, good enough for me.
30 minutes of Youtube left the device down to 53% Not bad but you can already see the OS's opinion on where power had started to go.
15 minutes of Angry Birds Rio Clearly my manual brightness is starting to take its toll. I keep a widget for a reason, knocked this down to 25% for the rest of the test since I am still indoors.
20 minutes of phone calls, 15 minutes of TeamViewer remote PC controlling, tack on some web browsing while watching TV
I finished the phone up to its last 15% randomly reading news and forums for an unknown amount of time. I am missing several screen shots including detailed screen activity, I also lost synchronicity with CPU spy at some point....
Result 12 Hours. Well its a bit short of 16. We got 8 hours of music, 30 minutes of youtube, 15 minutes of gaming, 15 minutes of controlling my home PC, 20 minutes of phone calls and probably an hour of web browsing. That covered listening to music to and from and during an entire workday. Showing some youtube videos to people and gaming a little on break. Some light to moderate usage of the normal features people might use like calling someone and checking the web. The life could get much worse, but with auto screen brightness it could have also been much better. What can you get out of a day, as much music as you like and maybe a phone call lol.
The iPhone 4S has a smaller battery by 400 mah and while it shows a little in one test I have seen it is obviously an efficient beast. I asked Duke to give an 8 hour test to his slightly older iPhone 4 and see how it stacks up. We discussed earlier his Inspire which has a measly 1230mah battery compared to my 1800. A phones physical size plays an important factor in capacity but so does cost cutting by the manufacturer. No matter what OS powers your device be sure to consider battery capacity in your decision making.
My longest run to date 21 hours! Not on purpose was my day off I gamed a little but I didnt use the device much.
I would test further but I need to go back to my 6 hour battery hating lifestyle.