As long as it lasts me the whole day with moderate to heavy use from when I wake up to when I go to bed and plug my phone in I am happy. Besides it is much more easy to remember to charge my phone every night instead of every other night.
Add to that having a fixed schedule to charge your phone pretty much guarantees you never forget to do it. Actually, my current (overclocked to hell) android phone is the first one I never, not even one, ran out of battery, since I never forget to charge it.
But, it would be really great if it could reliably last for at least 48 hours, even when I use it heavily. That would mean I could go on a day-trip or overnight work trip (that tends to see heavy use, with Maps and other apps) without having to bring a charger along or worry about the charge.
For that matter, if I could get a good laptop that'd get me a reliable 24 hours rather than the current 8-10 then that'd be an even greater win. Imagine finishing a presentation on the morning train, an a
if I could get a good laptop that'd get me a reliable 24 hours rather than the current 8-10 then that'd be an even greater win. Imagine finishing a presentation on the morning train, an all-day series of meetings, then relaxing with a game on the evening train back
No, it sounds like the absolute LAST thing you need is a laptop that an run 24 hours without a charge.
Um, why? It's not like the workload would change or anything, just that one small source of stress would disappear. It's not the FIRST thing I'd need - that'd be my own tropical island - but it would certainly be helpful.
It's very convenient, you coould charge at night and be done. No need to find a plug anywhere, or stop working becausevthe plane doesn't have a charger. One less thing to carry, or forget. Freedom to know where you work or play or whatever is where yiu want. Having no tiesvto a wall. This is why the ipad changes use patterns. You assume correctly it will last a full long day of normal use.
I speach from my point of view which means I work from home, travel often, need to find quiet places often, forgetting a
Yeah, agreed. I'd like if they'd just stop making laptops thinner for just one or two generations, not make them bigger, just keep them the same. While everything else shrinks inside, increase the battery size and use newer better batteries, and set a new standard for battery life at double what it is. Then, fine, make them thinner again.
But, it would be really great if it could reliably last for at least 48 hours, even when I use it heavily. That would mean I could go on a day-trip or overnight work trip (that tends to see heavy use, with Maps and other apps) without having to bring a charger along or worry about the charge.
That depends on how you define moderate-heavy use. I have taken my Android-based phone on week-long trips into the woods without needing to charge it, and still having a working phone at the end of the week. In more normal situations, it's not uncommon for me to still have 60-70% battery left at the end of the day, and that's with several phone calls, and on average between 500-600 texts/received sent per day, as well as e-mail messages. I rarely bother with wifi at all, but I leave Bluetooth on 24/7 becaus
My Android phone lasts the day, every day, at night it sits in the desk-dock on my night stand as my bedside alarm clock, which also has the added benefit of charging it. (and I'm not likely to forget to charge it as I wouldn't have a bedside clock if I did.)
If I leave Wi-Fi and 3G off, my phone's battery will last quite a few days. But it is a smartphone, so most of the time I have one or the other on - and the battery is below 25% before bedtime.
Bluetooth is the other "drain." I grabbed apps to make it easy to toggle WiFi and Bluetooth on and off and battery life went from barely a day to several days. Most of the time my phone is a phone which helps with the battery life. Oh yeah, my phone is an LG "Thrill".
I now have a Bluetooth speakerphone in my car, so I tend to leave BT enabled on my phone so when I'm in the car, it Just Works, as opposed to my previous difficulties keeping Bluetooth headsets charged and having them fall off my ear while I'm driving. Phone battery life has gone from being reliably 3-4 days to unreliably 1-2, depending on how much talk time I'm using in the car.
On the other hand, it does motivate me to keep the phone plugged in to USB at night, so I'm more likely to run the calendar sync
My work-supplied Nokia E72 lasts up to 5 days with moderate use for phone calls with an odd bit of web browsing etc.
However, if I browse the web for hours or use its GPS navigation function extensively (thus keeping the display bright), then battery life can become significantly reduced. I habitually plug the thing into the car's 12VDC socket if I'm using it for navigation on long trips, just so its battery will not be too low on reaching the destination. I have not tried, but suspect that the battery wo
This happened to me too. Solution was quite simple: my car also comes with an USB port, for plugging in an USB stick filled with MP3s. Since my phone can act as a USB mass storage device, I have my filled it with MP3s. I can then play them in the car, and get phone recharged at the same time. Bluetooth takes care of the calls.
Except even with hands free options talking on a phone while driving makes you as dangerous as drinking and driving, except if you were drunk you'd have a slightly higher chance of surviving the accident from being more 'relaxed'.
There have been a enough studies showing this that a search should turn a few up quickly.
I've got a Galaxy S. I use it a lot for work emails during the week and bluetooth and wifi are always on to connect to resources around me.
At home, I don't have a land line, I use a regular cordless set that pairs with my cell phone over bluetooth. Given all this, my phone still lasts until 10 PM at night, where it falls below 20% (then it gets plugged in for the night.)
Just recently I found Touchdown's "Off-Peak" schedule. I use it to define the work week for push email, and poll every hour or two on the w
The other factor is the age of the battery. I still use the Moto RAZR I bought 2 years ago - the talk time back then was about 6 hours. Now it's down to about 3 hours. Same goes for standby time.
Which is a problem if the battery life wasn't great to start with. My smart phone is good for a bout a 1.5 days at best and it is only a few months old. Once the standby life drops below 24 hours, the phone will be nearly useless. My prior phone I kept for nearly four years. The one before that lasted six years. I can't imagine this phone lasting anywhere near that long, at least without replacing parts.
Well, it depends on battery type, but I have a 7-year old laptop that I bought a back-up battery for when I purchased it (both batteries had the same milliamp-hour capacity). Last year the heavily used battery got down to only holding about 45 mins of charge, compared to 4 hours when I first got it. I switched to the seldom-used back-up battery and within 3 or four months it was down to under an hour of charge.
No, but I accept that I may not be able to talk to any one at any time and that they may have more important things going on in their lives than talking to me.
Such a shock, I know.
I used to do that--pre-smartphone--as well. My phone was off unless (a) I was making a call or (b) I was expecting a call. The only reason I don't do it nowadays with my smartphone is that my phone takes too long to boot up. But I'll still turn it off in environments where I'd prefer not to be disturbed and I know I'll be there
This, more or less. I used to have my phone on all the time until everyone got smartphones; suddenly the threshold of what was important enough to call about dropped to zero. No matter how many notes I left, no matter how much I automated things for the 20 minutes to two weeks I was out, I would still get calls with questions that could have been answered in the time it took to dial my number.
About a year ago, I dropped my phone entirely because I realized I was just spending money to be driven insane. The funny thing is that I keep hearing how much I need a work phone and still don't have one, the conversation always ends with them saying my notes will probably cover it. I'm not trying to be that guy who doesn't own a [cell phone] and rubs it in everyone's face here, I'm just surprised at how much not having one has simplified my life and recommend trying it out to anyone whose phone is driving them nuts.
I'm not trying to be that guy who doesn't own a [cell phone] and rubs it in everyone's face here, I'm just surprised at how much not having one has simplified my life
Without a phone, how do you reach someone if you need a ride home or have bike trouble or car trouble or the like?
In the old days before urban sprawl, people weren't expected to live an hour's drive from work just to have affordable housing.
Walk to the nearest building and use their phone.
For one thing, that could be miles away if you're on an interstate highway (or foreign counterpart). For another thing, media hysteria about "stranger danger" has made it less likely that a stranger will offer to let you use their phone.
I don't get too many unnecessary calls on my work phone, what drives me crazy are the emails. ding...ding...ding... all day and night, non stop. 95% of the emails do not require immediate attention, but you don't know if it's in the 5% or not unless you check it. My old crap windows phone had one nice feature that would allow you to handle the notification of a new email differently based on the priority, so I would only hear the "ding" when I got an email with the little red exclamation point on it. No
The solution to this is to have a different communication method for the important messages. Back when I was the main person keeping our servers running, I would get a text if something went wrong, which meant I didn't have to check every email. Or you could set up a different email address for the phone, and only forward the important ones to that.
I have a 2 year old, 25 € Nokia phone. With regular usage, its battery lasts around 5 days, maybe even more.
This is its main interest. Of course, it is "slightly" less featured than a smartphone.
Yeah, my 4 year old MP3-playing, internet-browsing, GPS Nokia-phone still last 4 days with the original battery, of course when it was new it lasted 2-3 weeks.
I've got a cheap flip phone from walmart straight talk. It lasts about 10 days on a charge. It's a good phone and it was dirt cheap. It's a lousy computer but then I needed a phone with good battery life not a computer that could place calls.
I usually plug in my phone for charging whenever it's practical to do so. That way I always have a full charge. A habit I have from driving an electric car; no need to worry about how long it takes to charge it from 0% capacity.:-)
I read somewhere that this is the "recommended" way to go nowadays. The article said that battery technology has improved and the old problems with "battery memory" are no longer a problem. So there's no need to run the battery all the way down before recharging. Just plug it in whenever you can, to top it off.
They also recommended a few things like turning off the vibration mode whenever possible, especially with smart-phones that use a little jolt to provide tactile feedback for the virtual keyboard. Also
The article said that battery technology has improved and the old problems with "battery memory" are no longer a problem.
That said, as I understand it, batteries start to degrade after x number of charges. If you charge your phone twice a day, you will hit x much faster than if you charge it once every two days.
I have an iPhone 4, and it lasts about 2 days. I don't make too many calls or send too many text messages. I play games on it every once in a while, or use it to look up stuff on the web as needed. I put it in airplane mode when I'm driving so I'm not tempted to make or answer calls. I also don't use 3G because it's not available in my area. The Tracfone I had before that lasted nearly 5 days before needing a charge. Of course it couldn't browse the web, and the only games it had on it were Reversi & Su
I feel so "old-fashioned", but since I'm never really away from a land line, I've never felt a real need to have a mobile phone. I'm probably the most technically literate person (use Linux and still solve everybody's Windows problems) around here, and yet the least capable of composing a text message. It's kind of paradoxical, I know.
You're not the only one. I'm a Unix/Linux admin and probably understand the underlying technology of cell phones better than most but I don't actually own one myself. If I ever do get one, it'll be all or nothing: a decent smart phone that does everything or I'll stick with my land line alone.
I've had a few cell phones, but I'm done with them. The time came a few months ago where I was deciding whether to replace my last cell with a smartphone or not, and the more research and comparison I did the more I realized I didn't want another phone. I wanted a small computer that was connected all the time and could make/receive phone calls. So I picked up a Dell 1121z... an Intel Core i3 1.2 ghz w/ 2 GB RAM that natively (integrated) does 802.11abgn, 802.16e (WiMAX, "4G"), and CDMA 3G. It's worked out
How do you get to and from work? If by car, then how do you reach someone when you have car trouble? If by bike, then how do you reach someone when you have bike trouble? If by bus, then how do you reach someone when you need a ride and the bus service is not operating at that hour or on that day?
The battery life of my N900 initially lasted less than 24 hours (less than 12?) but with fixes and settings to preserve battery life now is more in the 24-72hs range (at least if i don't abuse of internet sites with flash). But not sure if qualify it as phone or as mobile computer.
IN my parents house, it will die within 10 hours. Anywhere else, it'll probably last well over a day. I suspect it has something to do with the wiring in the house, because if you step out of either the front or back door, you get perfect signal. But inside the house, it's atrocious.
I have a ruggedized Samsung B-2710 (it's waterproof up to 1m for 30 minutes, impact resistant, etc.) that lasts about a week between charges.
The battery display has five segments, and I normally charge it when it reaches one or two segments -- I don't want to needlessly wear out the gasket on the charger port by opening and closing it more often than needed. All it needs is an inductive charger, and I'd only ever need to open it to replace the battery or SIM card.
My Motorola flip phone was $30 unsubsidized and easly lasts over 3 days. With pre-paid Tracfone service purchased two years at a time with a free extra minutes coupon, it comes out to about $5/month all included.
Of course, it is not smart. Also, after 3-4 days, the battery goes from three green bars, to two, to one, to one red bar, to a blinking red bar, to dead over about 2 hours. Still, can't beat the price.
Lasts (on both the official batteries and third party ones) MAYBE 2 hours under actual usage (talking, using a light app, etc.). On suspend/not actually using it/screen off, it'll get around 12 hours, sometimes.
Oddly enough, the batteries not in the device discharge ridiculously fast.
About six months ago, my Nokia 2730 started going from 3-5 days on a charge (calls throughout the day, left on overnight) to 1-2 days, right about the time that coverage (for ATT) in our office went from moderately strong (3-4 bars) to vacillating from 0-2 bars fairly regularly throughout the day, with lots of new, complete deadspots around the office. Other ATT customers in the building have confirmed they have the same problem, all starting about six or seven months ago. I couldn't say what happened, bu
I voted for 24-72 hours because that is most often how long my battery lasts. The problem is there are many variable that can affect this. I have a Droid X, btw.
1. Poor reception in our building, sometimes. Something about our building blocks cell signals. They installed a repeater that seems to occasionally work. Before the repeater my battery could drop from 100 to about 20% in just 9 hours.
2. Use. I don't talk on the phone often and use it for light web browsing. With good reception I can ge
It varies on how much I use it and/or on the quality of 3g signal.
In the past I have run it dry within 6 hours with normal use when the 3g signal has been really poor. I now carry a backup battery pack just to make sure I last the day.
My phone is in essence a touch screen feature phone. My wife and I communicate almost exclusively via text, and I get maybe two voice calls in a week, so about all my battery is asked to do is keep the lights on for the week, if not longer.
Of course by today, the batteries inside the phones have been replaced by continuously charged batteries inside the switching office. This is much more efficient. I think the switch happened before WWII.
Though it makes me really wonder how bad the telephone service in other parts of the world is when so many people still have batteries in their phones.
I've never let my iPhone 4 run all the way down, but based on the battery level at the end of the day when I've been at work, I'm going to guess it will probably make it to 24 hours; possibly a little before or a little after, it depends what I've been using it for during the day.
My 3G lasts about 4 days, but I don't ask it to do too much either. Mostly GPS, texts, a couple hours of audio books, and a few phone calls lasting less than 3 minutes each.
My wife is set on 4GS iPhones for Christmas, so I suppose I'll be upgrading, but for all the 3G's faults, battery life isn't one of them.
Same here. my iphone 3G was bought the month they came out.(I won't wait in line but will order one when available)
I get about 48 to 60 hours with wifi on constantly, and using the maps and phone a lot more than you said.
for all the hoopla about non replaceable battery it just hasn't been an issue for me. of course I am tweeting facebook updates every five minutes either.
You did notice he used the plural for iPhone, right? Either that means his wife wants two phones for herself, or more likely, she wants to use NEW_FEATURE_X with him, and as such, his upgrading is a foregone conclusion.
I realize this is Slashdot, but women aren't *that* hard to figure out. It's not like we're some kind of boogie man that you never hear about outside of legends. You probably work with a few, to say nothing of having been exposed to them at school....
I have one of the Motorola Razr II dumb phones, which tries to have some smart features.
Worst feature, ever, though is the battery killing ring every so many minutes to alert me I have a message - so I'm forced to leave it on silent, big help there.
As it spends most of its life in my backpack, it also can suffer from Terminal_button_press, where something hits a button on the side and the camera turns or, or such and again the battery is dead when I need to use it - so often the phone is entirely turned off
I use mine incessently. Gaming/browsing/calling/texting both ways on a nearly 2 hour masstransit commute and often several hours at home while in front of the TV. Even with sporatic office usage thrown in, I get about 2 full days of use from an iPhone 4s. My Bluetooth radio is permanently on (though not always in use) and the wifi switches over when it's in range (I don't micromanage the radios). Just because your Dual Core 1.7GHz Samsung Galaxy S Prime Touch II FauxG S Platinum Edition with AMOLED5HD
The beauty of Android is that you do not have to live with stock roms that can and will drain you. I have several roms loaded, AmericAndoid has been the best so far with outstanding battery life. I can use it all day and not have to change for 2 days, or I can be smart and turn off wifi/BT at night when I sleep and lose maybe 1% over 8 hours.
As a way to mitigate that, I highly recommend the app called JuiceDefender. It allowed my HTC Inspire 4G with an almost stock ROM (stock except for the rooted and sideload enabled part) to have battery life on par with my iPhone 4G.
Not really, the gravity gradient isn't that strong at the heart of the sun and the gravitational pull is going to be fairly even from all directions. Pressure from the whole weight of the sun will make the diamond-making heart of Jupiter pale in comparison. Under that pressure, any phone would become very thin and trendy though, a real hot item... for the microsecond before it evaporated.
I have a smartphone, but I don't use it as a phone
How much did the ETF for that cost? Or are you stuck paying $39.99 per month for 450 minutes per month that you don't use? Or is there some data-only plan I'm not aware of?
Most providers have data only plans, they expect you to use them with USB sticks or tablets instead of phones, but you can usually just move the sim card over... the USB sticks often have the added advantage of larger data caps and lower prices than phone plans as well. (the tablet plans are often just as expensive as the phone plans though)
Of course I'm still of the opinion that I shouldn't need to pay for 2 plans, so I have a phone that acts as a hotspot for my tablet...
Same here. What ever happened to just buying a phone to make phone calls with? Mine's a bit newer than yours though, since my old non-smart-phone (dumb-phone?) had an issue with the battery swelling up and breaking the phone. (Literally - it puffed up and cracked the case and circuit boards inside of the phone. I heard a "SNAP" coming from my pocket, got the phone out, and noticed the side of it bulging and cracked... ) Technically, the battery on that phone "lasted" three years. I'm hoping that the curren
I remember a time when many phones had batteries that formed the back part of the phone, at the time several manufacturers had 2 types of batteries available for most phones the "standard" battery (which generally lasted 3-4 days) and the "extended" battery (which generally lasted a week or so) at the expense of a slightly thicker phone. There is no reason that companies couldn't continue to do the same thing (well except apple with their aversion to user replaceable batteries) but instead we're counting fra
It's hard to differentiate a "30%-50% longer battery life"... All phone vendors publish battery statistics and anyone who has owned a phone for any amount of time will tell you the ratings can vary so wildly that they are more or less useless. So, we are left with a marketplace where the only real differentiation in battery life as a feature is "does it last long enough for me to not be inconvenienced by charging it" which is of course going to depend heavily on the user in question. In the long run, wha
Define "need." There are tons of things in most people's lives they don't really NEED, that doesn't mean they don't want them, or make good use of them.
I don't NEED a home computer, or a TV, or stereo, or car, or many other things. But I do WANT them, and I do USE them. The smart phone is in the same category. Would I survive without it? sure, in fact I'd do fine without a cell phone at all I'm sure. But I don't WANT to do without it, and I do USE it a lot. You may not have a use for one, but many more than
Just long enough (Score:3, Insightful)
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That's mostly the way I see it also.
Add to that having a fixed schedule to charge your phone pretty much guarantees you never forget to do it. Actually, my current (overclocked to hell) android phone is the first one I never, not even one, ran out of battery, since I never forget to charge it.
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Mainly I agree.
But, it would be really great if it could reliably last for at least 48 hours, even when I use it heavily. That would mean I could go on a day-trip or overnight work trip (that tends to see heavy use, with Maps and other apps) without having to bring a charger along or worry about the charge.
For that matter, if I could get a good laptop that'd get me a reliable 24 hours rather than the current 8-10 then that'd be an even greater win. Imagine finishing a presentation on the morning train, an a
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No, it sounds like the absolute LAST thing you need is a laptop that an run 24 hours without a charge.
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Um, why? It's not like the workload would change or anything, just that one small source of stress would disappear. It's not the FIRST thing I'd need - that'd be my own tropical island - but it would certainly be helpful.
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It's very convenient, you coould charge at night and be done. No need to find a plug anywhere, or stop working becausevthe plane doesn't have a charger. One less thing to carry, or forget. Freedom to know where you work or play or whatever is where yiu want. Having no tiesvto a wall. This is why the ipad changes use patterns. You assume correctly it will last a full long day of normal use.
I speach from my point of view which means I work from home, travel often, need to find quiet places often, forgetting a
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Yeah, agreed. I'd like if they'd just stop making laptops thinner for just one or two generations, not make them bigger, just keep them the same. While everything else shrinks inside, increase the battery size and use newer better batteries, and set a new standard for battery life at double what it is. Then, fine, make them thinner again.
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But, it would be really great if it could reliably last for at least 48 hours, even when I use it heavily. That would mean I could go on a day-trip or overnight work trip (that tends to see heavy use, with Maps and other apps) without having to bring a charger along or worry about the charge.
That depends on how you define moderate-heavy use. I have taken my Android-based phone on week-long trips into the woods without needing to charge it, and still having a working phone at the end of the week. In more normal situations, it's not uncommon for me to still have 60-70% battery left at the end of the day, and that's with several phone calls, and on average between 500-600 texts/received sent per day, as well as e-mail messages. I rarely bother with wifi at all, but I leave Bluetooth on 24/7 becaus
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My Android phone lasts the day, every day, at night it sits in the desk-dock on my night stand as my bedside alarm clock, which also has the added benefit of charging it. (and I'm not likely to forget to charge it as I wouldn't have a bedside clock if I did.)
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It's better to charge every night anyway. Deep discharge wears out Li-ion batteries faster.
Like any smartphone - "it depends" (Score:3)
If I leave Wi-Fi and 3G off, my phone's battery will last quite a few days. But it is a smartphone, so most of the time I have one or the other on - and the battery is below 25% before bedtime.
Re:Like any smartphone - "it depends" (Score:4, Informative)
Bluetooth is the other "drain." I grabbed apps to make it easy to toggle WiFi and Bluetooth on and off and battery life went from barely a day to several days. Most of the time my phone is a phone which helps with the battery life. Oh yeah, my phone is an LG "Thrill".
Cheers,
Dave
Bluetooth makes a huge difference (Score:2)
I now have a Bluetooth speakerphone in my car, so I tend to leave BT enabled on my phone so when I'm in the car, it Just Works, as opposed to my previous difficulties keeping Bluetooth headsets charged and having them fall off my ear while I'm driving. Phone battery life has gone from being reliably 3-4 days to unreliably 1-2, depending on how much talk time I'm using in the car.
On the other hand, it does motivate me to keep the phone plugged in to USB at night, so I'm more likely to run the calendar sync
It depends quite a lot on usage patterns (Score:2)
My work-supplied Nokia E72 lasts up to 5 days with moderate use for phone calls with an odd bit of web browsing etc.
However, if I browse the web for hours or use its GPS navigation function extensively (thus keeping the display bright), then battery life can become significantly reduced. I habitually plug the thing into the car's 12VDC socket if I'm using it for navigation on long trips, just so its battery will not be too low on reaching the destination. I have not tried, but suspect that the battery wo
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This happened to me too. Solution was quite simple: my car also comes with an USB port, for plugging in an USB stick filled with MP3s. Since my phone can act as a USB mass storage device, I have my filled it with MP3s. I can then play them in the car, and get phone recharged at the same time. Bluetooth takes care of the calls.
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There have been a enough studies showing this that a search should turn a few up quickly.
Mycroft
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I've got a Galaxy S. I use it a lot for work emails during the week and bluetooth and wifi are always on to connect to resources around me.
At home, I don't have a land line, I use a regular cordless set that pairs with my cell phone over bluetooth. Given all this, my phone still lasts until 10 PM at night, where it falls below 20% (then it gets plugged in for the night.)
Just recently I found Touchdown's "Off-Peak" schedule. I use it to define the work week for push email, and poll every hour or two on the w
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Wi-fi isn't such a big deal, but bluetooth and GPS will eat charge like it's made of cashews.
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Mine has three answers:
1. If there's a new Angry Birds out, I can burn it down in 2-3 hours.
2. If not, I plug in once every 1-2 days and never have to power it down; and I'm a heavy user of SMS and internet.
3. My phone's battery, per se, has lasted almost 2 years. I think the question should be rephrased to focus on how often it needs to be charged.
The battery age matters (Score:2)
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Which is a problem if the battery life wasn't great to start with. My smart phone is good for a bout a 1.5 days at best and it is only a few months old. Once the standby life drops below 24 hours, the phone will be nearly useless. My prior phone I kept for nearly four years. The one before that lasted six years. I can't imagine this phone lasting anywhere near that long, at least without replacing parts.
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lasts for ages (Score:5, Funny)
I turn it off until I need it. If you want to talk to me, YOU buy me a phone.
Re:lasts for ages (Score:5, Insightful)
I trust you have purchased phones for everyone you wish to talk to, on those occasions you need your phone.
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No, but I accept that I may not be able to talk to any one at any time and that they may have more important things going on in their lives than talking to me.
Such a shock, I know.
I used to do that--pre-smartphone--as well. My phone was off unless (a) I was making a call or (b) I was expecting a call. The only reason I don't do it nowadays with my smartphone is that my phone takes too long to boot up. But I'll still turn it off in environments where I'd prefer not to be disturbed and I know I'll be there
Re:lasts for ages (Score:5, Interesting)
This, more or less. I used to have my phone on all the time until everyone got smartphones; suddenly the threshold of what was important enough to call about dropped to zero. No matter how many notes I left, no matter how much I automated things for the 20 minutes to two weeks I was out, I would still get calls with questions that could have been answered in the time it took to dial my number.
About a year ago, I dropped my phone entirely because I realized I was just spending money to be driven insane. The funny thing is that I keep hearing how much I need a work phone and still don't have one, the conversation always ends with them saying my notes will probably cover it. I'm not trying to be that guy who doesn't own a [cell phone] and rubs it in everyone's face here, I'm just surprised at how much not having one has simplified my life and recommend trying it out to anyone whose phone is driving them nuts.
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I'm not trying to be that guy who doesn't own a [cell phone] and rubs it in everyone's face here, I'm just surprised at how much not having one has simplified my life
Without a phone, how do you reach someone if you need a ride home or have bike trouble or car trouble or the like?
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Stranger danger (Score:2)
Kinda like in the old days.
In the old days before urban sprawl, people weren't expected to live an hour's drive from work just to have affordable housing.
Walk to the nearest building and use their phone.
For one thing, that could be miles away if you're on an interstate highway (or foreign counterpart). For another thing, media hysteria about "stranger danger" has made it less likely that a stranger will offer to let you use their phone.
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You know some of us live in a world of reality where we don't 'fear' the unknown. We use it as an opportunity to meet new people.
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I just bought my first ever cell phone (an iPhone 4S), and I did it because my iPod touch finally ran out of space.
Only my family and a few close friends have my number. Everyone else can continue to reach me through e-mail.
The achilles heel of smartphones (Score:3)
This is its main interest. Of course, it is "slightly" less featured than a smartphone.
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Yeah, my 4 year old MP3-playing, internet-browsing, GPS Nokia-phone still last 4 days with the original battery, of course when it was new it lasted 2-3 weeks.
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I've got a cheap flip phone from walmart straight talk. It lasts about 10 days on a charge. It's a good phone and it was dirt cheap. It's a lousy computer but then I needed a phone with good battery life not a computer that could place calls.
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My Iphone 3GS has a 3 minute battery life (Score:2)
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Well, it's a good thing Apple thought of this in advance for you and designed the phone with an easy, inexpensive user replaceable battery.
Not really sure.... (Score:2)
I usually plug in my phone for charging whenever it's practical to do so. That way I always have a full charge. A habit I have from driving an electric car; no need to worry about how long it takes to charge it from 0% capacity. :-)
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I read somewhere that this is the "recommended" way to go nowadays. The article said that battery technology has improved and the old problems with "battery memory" are no longer a problem. So there's no need to run the battery all the way down before recharging. Just plug it in whenever you can, to top it off.
They also recommended a few things like turning off the vibration mode whenever possible, especially with smart-phones that use a little jolt to provide tactile feedback for the virtual keyboard. Also
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The article said that battery technology has improved and the old problems with "battery memory" are no longer a problem.
That said, as I understand it, batteries start to degrade after x number of charges. If you charge your phone twice a day, you will hit x much faster than if you charge it once every two days.
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Thanks! (Mod parent up: Informative.)
I have a very basic phone (Score:2)
2 days (Score:2)
Two weeks (Score:2)
No battery (Score:2)
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You're not the only one. I'm a Unix/Linux admin and probably understand the underlying technology of cell phones better than most but I don't actually own one myself. If I ever do get one, it'll be all or nothing: a decent smart phone that does everything or I'll stick with my land line alone.
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For urgencies (Score:2)
I'm never really away from a land line
How do you get to and from work? If by car, then how do you reach someone when you have car trouble? If by bike, then how do you reach someone when you have bike trouble? If by bus, then how do you reach someone when you need a ride and the bus service is not operating at that hour or on that day?
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Ask your grandparents to explain it to you. They may be old enough to remember the days when there were no cell phones.
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Ask your grandparents to explain it to you. They may be old enough to remember the days when there were pay phones.
Fixed that perhaps?
Seriously, my grandmother carries a cell phone for urgencies because there aren't a lot of pay phones anymore.
Pay phone don exits (Score:2)
Same way people did before cell phones.
Pay phones existed then; they're much less common now precisely because of cell phones.
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he walks as necessary until he reaches a point of communication.
Please see what I wrote about such points of communication in this comment [slashdot.org].
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You should try going out into that big room with the blue ceiling a little more. :^D
What ?!? Batteries ?!? (Score:2)
Phone? (Score:2)
Depends on where (Score:2)
About a Week (Score:2)
I have a ruggedized Samsung B-2710 (it's waterproof up to 1m for 30 minutes, impact resistant, etc.) that lasts about a week between charges.
The battery display has five segments, and I normally charge it when it reaches one or two segments -- I don't want to needlessly wear out the gasket on the charger port by opening and closing it more often than needed. All it needs is an inductive charger, and I'd only ever need to open it to replace the battery or SIM card.
I use the phone for simple purposes: calls a
Long life, low cost (Score:2)
Of course, it is not smart. Also, after 3-4 days, the battery goes from three green bars, to two, to one, to one red bar, to a blinking red bar, to dead over about 2 hours. Still, can't beat the price.
Google Nexus One (Score:2)
Lasts (on both the official batteries and third party ones) MAYBE 2 hours under actual usage (talking, using a light app, etc.).
On suspend/not actually using it/screen off, it'll get around 12 hours, sometimes.
Oddly enough, the batteries not in the device discharge ridiculously fast.
Changes in reception areas kill my battery. (Score:2)
About six months ago, my Nokia 2730 started going from 3-5 days on a charge (calls throughout the day, left on overnight) to 1-2 days, right about the time that coverage (for ATT) in our office went from moderately strong (3-4 bars) to vacillating from 0-2 bars fairly regularly throughout the day, with lots of new, complete deadspots around the office. Other ATT customers in the building have confirmed they have the same problem, all starting about six or seven months ago. I couldn't say what happened, bu
It all depends (Score:2)
1. Poor reception in our building, sometimes. Something about our building blocks cell signals. They installed a repeater that seems to occasionally work. Before the repeater my battery could drop from 100 to about 20% in just 9 hours.
2. Use. I don't talk on the phone often and use it for light web browsing. With good reception I can ge
12-24 hours is the norm but can be less than 6 (Score:2)
It varies on how much I use it and/or on the quality of 3g signal.
In the past I have run it dry within 6 hours with normal use when the 3g signal has been really poor. I now carry a backup battery pack just to make sure I last the day.
About one week (Score:2)
Its a dumb phone with no data plan. And since everyone hates me, I get no calls. So it lasts a long time.
Text + Standby = Good All Week (Score:2)
My phone is in essence a touch screen feature phone. My wife and I communicate almost exclusively via text, and I get maybe two voice calls in a week, so about all my battery is asked to do is keep the lights on for the week, if not longer.
In the olden days phones used to have batteries (Score:2)
Of course by today, the batteries inside the phones have been replaced by continuously charged batteries inside the switching office. This is much more efficient. I think the switch happened before WWII.
Though it makes me really wonder how bad the telephone service in other parts of the world is when so many people still have batteries in their phones.
Probably a day or so (Score:2)
I've never let my iPhone 4 run all the way down, but based on the battery level at the end of the day when I've been at work, I'm going to guess it will probably make it to 24 hours; possibly a little before or a little after, it depends what I've been using it for during the day.
LG Optimus. I get 12 hours (Score:2)
...which is pretty crap. I had several dumb phones which would go five days easily.
Why would I have a phone? (Score:2)
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My wife is set on 4GS iPhones for Christmas, so I suppose I'll be upgrading, but for all the 3G's faults, battery life isn't one of them.
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Same here. my iphone 3G was bought the month they came out.(I won't wait in line but will order one when available)
I get about 48 to 60 hours with wifi on constantly, and using the maps and phone a lot more than you said.
for all the hoopla about non replaceable battery it just hasn't been an issue for me. of course I am tweeting facebook updates every five minutes either.
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He's talking about marriage. Logic need not enter into it. You must not be married.
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You did notice he used the plural for iPhone, right? Either that means his wife wants two phones for herself, or more likely, she wants to use NEW_FEATURE_X with him, and as such, his upgrading is a foregone conclusion.
I realize this is Slashdot, but women aren't *that* hard to figure out. It's not like we're some kind of boogie man that you never hear about outside of legends. You probably work with a few, to say nothing of having been exposed to them at school....
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An imaginary iphone with a 4G data connection, I suspect.
I use my non-Smart Phone very judiciously (Score:2)
I have one of the Motorola Razr II dumb phones, which tries to have some smart features.
Worst feature, ever, though is the battery killing ring every so many minutes to alert me I have a message - so I'm forced to leave it on silent, big help there.
As it spends most of its life in my backpack, it also can suffer from Terminal_button_press, where something hits a button on the side and the camera turns or, or such and again the battery is dead when I need to use it - so often the phone is entirely turned off
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You can't lock it?
Tried, but it apparently doesn't really lock it.
When it dies I'll get something else. Small wonder it wasn't a very popular phone.
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As a way to mitigate that, I highly recommend the app called JuiceDefender. It allowed my HTC Inspire 4G with an almost stock ROM (stock except for the rooted and sideload enabled part) to have battery life on par with my iPhone 4G.
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Key word there is "Heavy". A 4500mah battery ALONE is almost as large as a 7" tablet.
I guess those old brick phones are back in vogue huh?
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Let me guess, you don't work in the laptop industry, do you?
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If you're at the *heart* of the sun, then no. There's not a big gravitational field at the center because there's mass pulling you from all sides.
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Standby? Calling? Downloading? Gaming? Being subjected to the temperature and pressure found at the heart of our sun?
It's your phone, you tell us what hot, pressurized environment you keep it in.
Let me rephrase that -- just tell us how long you can keep it there until you need to charge it again.
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I can get 10 days out of my Samsung Galaxy if I don't do much.
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I have a smartphone, but I don't use it as a phone
How much did the ETF for that cost? Or are you stuck paying $39.99 per month for 450 minutes per month that you don't use? Or is there some data-only plan I'm not aware of?
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Most providers have data only plans, they expect you to use them with USB sticks or tablets instead of phones, but you can usually just move the sim card over... the USB sticks often have the added advantage of larger data caps and lower prices than phone plans as well. (the tablet plans are often just as expensive as the phone plans though)
Of course I'm still of the opinion that I shouldn't need to pay for 2 plans, so I have a phone that acts as a hotspot for my tablet...
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Same here. What ever happened to just buying a phone to make phone calls with?
Mine's a bit newer than yours though, since my old non-smart-phone (dumb-phone?) had an issue with the battery swelling up and breaking the phone. (Literally - it puffed up and cracked the case and circuit boards inside of the phone. I heard a "SNAP" coming from my pocket, got the phone out, and noticed the side of it bulging and cracked... )
Technically, the battery on that phone "lasted" three years. I'm hoping that the curren
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The great part about places with no cell phone coverage is that the battery lasts forever, because the phone is off!
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I remember a time when many phones had batteries that formed the back part of the phone, at the time several manufacturers had 2 types of batteries available for most phones the "standard" battery (which generally lasted 3-4 days) and the "extended" battery (which generally lasted a week or so) at the expense of a slightly thicker phone.
There is no reason that companies couldn't continue to do the same thing (well except apple with their aversion to user replaceable batteries) but instead we're counting fra
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It's hard to differentiate a "30%-50% longer battery life"... All phone vendors publish battery statistics and anyone who has owned a phone for any amount of time will tell you the ratings can vary so wildly that they are more or less useless. So, we are left with a marketplace where the only real differentiation in battery life as a feature is "does it last long enough for me to not be inconvenienced by charging it" which is of course going to depend heavily on the user in question. In the long run, wha
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"We" have always been there.
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Define "need." There are tons of things in most people's lives they don't really NEED, that doesn't mean they don't want them, or make good use of them.
I don't NEED a home computer, or a TV, or stereo, or car, or many other things. But I do WANT them, and I do USE them. The smart phone is in the same category. Would I survive without it? sure, in fact I'd do fine without a cell phone at all I'm sure. But I don't WANT to do without it, and I do USE it a lot. You may not have a use for one, but many more than
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I was so confused the first time somebody talked about switching off their phone.