Try the TripChill iPhone travel assistant the next time you travel. Get real-time flight alerts, book hotel and car, view alternate flights, notify friends of travel status, manage your itinerary, and much more.
=============
alora
Try the TripChill iPhone travel assistant the next time you travel. Get real-time flight alerts, book hotel and car, view alternate flights, notify friends of travel status, manage your itinerary, and much more.
=============
alora
I still cannot comprehend the "solution" to battery life is to turn basically all the features off. I did pick up an iPhone 3G, and regrettably am stuck with it. Had the phone on a complete full charge, called up and talked to a friend (local call) for about an hour and 10 mins, and I went from 100% charge to 5% charge. The solution of "turn off options" is mute, being that with other 3G devices, I can have all options on and easily talk for over the 5 hour mark, and easily not have to run to a charger for a few days. The other option of having a charger in your car, in your house, in your boat with a goat, etc, is insane. What happens if I'm a commuter on a train, or air, where there is no option to charge. Say I just got into my car, drove to the train station to commute to the airport; in that scenario, I'd barely have power a few mins after stepping onto the train. Add the low battery performance, with an impossible keyboard (double dare any of the "oh it's easy to type on" folks try holding onto the rail in a subway and type a few sentences in anywhere close to the type on any physical QWERTY keboard), a GPS that has no GPS app yet (though one rumoured b TomTom which will probably cost more than just getting a TomTom physical device), no way to add your own ring tone except to buy from iTunes, no way to truly customize the sounds the device has (other than a few options for the ringer and for inbound mail), and a host of other faults, it's a toy, plain and simple. If you need a device that you can use over the course of a day without the device going through detox after an hour and needing a charge, get anything, I mean ANYTHING, but don't get an iPhone. Hey, if ya don't agree with me, and looking for an iPhone, I'll gladly ship you mine free long as you pay the stupid cancelling charge for removing the device from my bill. Maybe I'll even have to post up a YouTube video of me smashing the device with the head of a passing Mac user. So, in closing, yes, the phone is *that* bad, and calling it a phone is even an insult to the old days big box phone on a rope from Alpine and such.
It would be horrible to have to constantly switch so many things on/off as needed, but perhaps disabling something innocuous like bluetooth will actually make a big difference! An accurate test would surely require actual load monitoring, as the battery will perform differently from run to run.
Sure the battery on iPhone 3G is not that great, but what can we do? We want small size phones, powerful features and lengthy battery life.
Just get a backup battery. I got mine from iPhoneck brands. Their new 3G backup battery is probably one of the better looking products in the market. Their website is www.iphoneck.com
Prior to owning the iPhone 3G I had the HTC Mogul Pocket PC (WM6). The Mogul was an absolute monster at eating batteries, despite its bountiful 1600mah battery (that was quite heavy). The iPhone 3G on the other thand is much slimmer, lighter and FASTER with better battery life. While waiting in line for my second iPhone (got the last one at the apple store on the 11th) for 7 hours the phone drained the battery to near death. This was with downloading and playing games most of the time.
Today I went from a full charge to 20% in 10 hours with several phone calls made, 2 hours of ipod use and lots of game playing and toying around.
The bottom line is this. If you play with the phone non stop you will get about the claimed 5 or 6 hours of use and will need to charge it a few times a day. But if you use the phone like a normal human being you should only need to charge it once a day and for infrequent use, every other day. To be safe, charge it every day.
Personally I have a charger at home, in the car and at work, to ensure that I have a charger wherever I am.
I have one. The battery life is shorter then the version 1 iPhone, but there is really no comparison between the networks. Look, you can charge the thing at home, in a car, or on a computer and it charges really fast. I don't think anyone has pointed this out btw, to charge the battery to full takes about 30 min in the wall, or in the car, or on a PC. Then, I can take it, use it all day and then when I come home, charge it again. It is really a cool thing to have and I really am happy with it.
It is interesting to see how 3G sucks battery power.
I am with Telstra and their new deal with the Iphone is that you get 5Megs a month 3G but you get unlimited Wifi access at all Telstra hotspots which are all places starbucks etc which is good for me as I spend a fair bit of time having coffee at starbucks etc :)
I am currently about to expire on my 2 year Imate JasJam Telstra contract, and I think I will roll over onto a Iphone, but I do see a few downfalls as well as some I can't be sure of until I get the Iphone
Firstly Telstra have NextG which gives me better speeds then standard 3g (I have tested this it really is a big difference)
So I will have to give this up.
Secondly I will have to give up my wireless modem ability of the Jasjam which I do use a fair bit as I am a top level emergency IT contact for out of hour support and keep my laptop in my boot of my car, (Don't try to tell me its practical to solve complex problems via any phone screen )
Thirdly I have noticed that the quality WMA playback on the Jasjam (windows Mobile version 6) is fantastic compared to other music players I have that include creative products I have had.
The Jasjam with a MicroSD card and Mortplayer are a good combo.
I do encode all my CDs (via windows media player ) or buy music online in high quailty WMA because its the most convenient these days.
I will be disappointed with the WMA quailty playback is exactly as comparable to the JasJam.
No keyboard, I guess this will be interesting for me as how well I will be about to push off a large sms message in a few seconds as I have managed to master the JasJam keyboard very effectively.
No copy and paste: I have read the iphone has no copy and paste, I have used this extensively on the JasJam, from copying and pasting phone numbers, emails, and URLS etc when using it for various tasks it really does come in handy in moments when you just want to get things done quickly.
My current plan of thought is I will use both, mainly just swapping over my sim card when I need wireless modem ability, I will have to ask if this is possible.
With regards to the keyboard: at first I hated it, but now that I have used it for 3 days I am quite fast, about as fast as I was with my Mogul, which had a full QWERTY keyboard.
As far as removing the sim, you will have to have a paperclip, toothpick or the sim removal tool to do so. Secondly, if you remove the sim alot you may run into the issue of the contacts getting heavily worn and the phone saying you have no SIM installed. This happened to me yesterday when I was at the Zoo. I had to use the toothpick in my Sandwich to reseat the SIM and get the phone working again. Not convient.. That said, I love my iPhone despite being a staunch Apple hater.
The 2009 iPhone should have the same 3G speeds (possibly faster uploads) along with the 3G comm chip fabricated at 65nm instead of 90. We'll see if Infineon can hurry up and get their X-GOLD 61x series chips fabricated in time for the '09 launch (right now the say 2nd half of 09, but that could be July 09 or it could be December 09).
Why wait for the 2009 model? I think the SE Xperia X1 will be a much better phone and battery life will be better too. Although that is my personal opinion.
Personally I find this to be a very good phone, on paper at the moment and I will be upgrading to this phone most likely.
As for another that said about WM and 640x480 etc... well they should look no further than the i-mate's. They are great & also have large screens with a monitor out too for connecting to a projector/ monitor etc. I remember way before the original iPhone came out I was going to get their
Here is a link to their site.
[url]http://imate.com/[/url]
One of their better models is the 9502 out of their current collection.
[url]http://imate.com/support/specs/SpecSheet_9502.pdf[/url]
It is a 640x480 with keyboard, touch-screen, GPS, 3.0 Megapixel auto-focus camera, etc...
Now the problem with the WM6 devices that I remember reading somewhere is that they are restricted to 65k screens. My old i-mate (pre-3G) is great, and lasts a fair amount of time, by that, I mean a couple of days with out a re-charge. Now I have delegated it to a GPS solution ;-) and never really seen the 65k limit as hindering.
So it seems that WM is not THAT after all.
[daydreaming]Ok, now to go and collect my phones for my advertising efforts[/day dreaming]
The iPhone 3G has proven to be really fun and easy to use. Being able to place calls, check out the weather, look up YouTube videos and browsing the net without being tied down to a Wifi hotspot is astounding.
Since I've owned an iPod Touch beforehand, I kind of got a feel of how much power I can get out of it when playing my music and video files and surfing the web via Wifi. With the iPhone, I was expecting to see a little more kick. After a full day of listening (roughly) to about 5 songs, watching 5 minutes of video, 15 min of 3G browsing, and 10 min of YouTubing.. my battery finally died at the end of the day.
Is this about average? I guess you're expected to charge your iPhone *every* night if this how you are to use it properly.
Thats ALL you did and it died at the end of the day ?
I have the original iPhone and aside from 3G browsing, from my experience you should be able to do A LOT more than that. Maybe try turning off the 3G if ur not planning to use it. Thats the thing for anyone whos disappointed with the battery life within the first few days or week. It is lower than some handsets and I came from a Blackberry 8700 that could go 3 days before needing a charge. But with the iPhone, I know I was constantly playing with mine when I first got it and it died twice on me, like mid-day. So YES, you should/do need to charge it every night AND I'd make a point to grab a car charger and charge it when you can. (LOL, when I didn't have a car charger, I went to Best Buy and put it in one of the speaker docks to charge, standing around for 15 minutes, brand new iPhone sitting there dead, employees asking me if I need help and I'm like "no I'm fine, I'm just charging my phone. 8)"
Nowadays, I can make my iPhone last a day and a half but I try not to do so. Under realistic use (you know, only using it when you need it), it'll last the day easily. Aside from phone use, I use it to check the weather, stocks, bank account, look up definitions, do conversions, reference things, Google maps for directions, phone numbers, etc., text. But if I have time to kill and start surfing for no real reason and watching youtube, use bluetooth or the camera (these 2 seem to be the biggest killers to me), and it will drain the battery super fast. I don't talk much on my cell, never have, and am on the 450 min plan FWIW. Oh and you'll learn that once you get that first 20% low battery warning, it goes down REAL fast IF you continue using it for surfing, watching vid, etc. It won't die immmediatly, but it reminds me of a camcorder battery thats basically telling you it will die in 2 minutes (if that), but no real warning before that haha. If you let it remain idle, you'd prolly get a few hours out of it or near a hour of talk time. But play with it and dead in half a hour or less I'd say.
The sealed battery design does irk me and I really have no idea why Apple insists on this but so long as you just remember to bring a charger with you, you'll be fine. I'm a road warrior so I'm able to charge it frequently if need be. All that being said I'm itching to go out and get the 3G, I'm a patient person for the most part but I hate waiting for EDGE and the GPS would help immensely with directions. I live in the boonies and the current triangulation can give something like a 5 mile radius for my current location and can be off by a few miles at that. Its workable but hardly ideal. And I still have my $100 Apple Store credit from the price drop... =)
didn't know about the nokia 810, but that looks much more impressive than the iphone, especially with that resolution and me being more interested in surfing rather than downloading/buying games for the phone.
"Unfortunately, as Apple doesn't design any of the chips or battery technology that goes into the iPhone, it doesn't really have much control over things like 3G battery life."
Are you joking? Why do people have to be Apple apologists? Can't you just say "Gee, apple was too lazy to redesign the iphone to get a bigger battery"? They couldn't add a millimeter or two more and stick in a thicker battery? What, they don't design the freaking thing or something? And what is the reason their lame ass designers can't put a memory slot in the thing?
Oh wait, I forgot it's the Gospel of Jobs, you don't NEED anything he doesn't give you.
You said exactly what I was thinking when I read that. Apple would rather sell a cooler looking phone than one that is more functional. It's the Apple way!
No, remember, function follows form. We can't have an iphone be bigger than its predecessor. Nor add an SD card slot.
Remember, not having those features that even my archaic Siemens S51 phone had are features that would thus lead people to believe the iphone is just another phone. Not to mention being able to charge with a standard USB port on a computer would associate the phone with such devices from HTC/Windows; we can't have that.
Rather, not having those features are reasons why Mac uses feel superior to you. You know, like not having more than one USB port or user changeable batteries or optical drives or an ethernet port, nor a brain.
So what? Apple chose form/functionality over being the Swiss Army Knife of cell phones. It does certain things great like web browsing and email, and does it in a nice looking brick. For some that's enough, for others get a Windows Mobile/Blackberry smartphone. It's not like people don't have a choice and MUST buy an iPhone.
Yep, 3G just takes more everything no matter what. 4G, with trials showing around what 170mbps, still won't be as fast, since latency is much higher than a normal broadband line.
Sadly, the only phone I know of with a high res 640x480 screen so far, is the OpenMoko phone, and is of course, not ready for prime time.
There are several PDAs with built-in phone and 640x480 screens. In fact, they've been around since before Apple released even the original iPhone (ex., the Qtek 9000, which has a proper keyboard in adition to the touch screen). The Nokia N800 or N810 are 800x480.
Yeah, those are PDAs. Notice how any Windows Smart Phone or otherwise has only 320x240, Nokia's included. 320x240 is nice for my Ming or smaller screens, but this is 2008.
Your assertion that "you'd have to load pages around twice as fast on average to equal the same productivity" isn't really accurate, unless *all* you are doing is loading webpages, and spending zero time actually reading them. Since that's probably almost never the case in real life, the 3G iphone would have to load pages much more than twice as fast as the EDGE version in order for productivity to be the same given that the battery only lasts half as long.
For example, say the EDGE phone gets a 600 minute battery life, and can load a page in an average of 2 minute. And say that the user spends an average of 4 minutes reading each page that is loaded. So loading and reading each page takes about 6 minutes, meaning that with the EDGE phone the user could read 100 pages before the battery runs out.
Now, say the 3G phone is twice as fast, but only gets half the battery life. So it has 300 minutes of runtime, and each page loads in 1 minute instead of 2, but the user still needs the same 4 minutes to read each page. So now each page only takes 5 minutes for the user to load and read, but still the user can only read 60 of them before the battery is dead.
As 60 < 100, the user is not equally productive on the 3G phone, even though it was loading the pages twice as fast. In fact, in this example, there is no way that the user could ever be equally productive on the 3G phone, even if it loaded pages 100x as fast as the EDGE phone. Too much time is dominated by the user actually processing the information displayed on the phone for faster download speeds to make up for the loss in battery life. I suspect in the real world, the case would be similar, and almost anyone would end up being more productive on a device that downloaded slower, but ran for twice as long.
I would argue the logic is flawed due to the assumption that the battery use is two times greater when there is no data transmission occuring.
If the tests were done the same as the 1st gen iPhone then it was a loop of consecutive web page requests always trasmitting and receiving data that lead to ~half the battery life.
In your scenario the battery use would be double for that 1 minute of downloading but then during the idle 4 minutes what would it be? I would argue (ignorant of the facts) that the 3G chip may take a little more juice even when not transmitting/receiving but probably far from double. Is there any data on this?
I would expect that the estimate that "you'd have to load pages around twice as fast on average to equal the same productivity" is largely accurate based on what I see.
Your measure of productivity is flawed but you ignored the fact that productivity also includes the realms of efficiency.
Although you can read more pages with EDGE due to longer battery life, however, no one is going to wait for a page to wait for 2 minutes patiently and spend all 300 minutes of battery life surfing. I am sure many will prefer quicker and speedier definition as productivity rather than able to do more in a longer time.
One look at the chart and one sees why Jobs did not want 3G. Also given the fact that 3G has been poorly implemented with few areas actually able to use it, Why all the demand.
I predict many phone users, be they iphone or other 3G capable phones disappointed with the battery life.
"One look at the chart and one sees why Jobs did not want 3G."
Palm and many other companies have been doing it for years without batery life problems. Why cant Apple? There HAS to be something wrong with their 3G implementation.
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32 Comments
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alora222 - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
Try the TripChill iPhone travel assistant the next time you travel. Get real-time flight alerts, book hotel and car, view alternate flights, notify friends of travel status, manage your itinerary, and much more.=============
alora
http://www.tripchill.com">http://www.tripchill.com
alora222 - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
Try the TripChill iPhone travel assistant the next time you travel. Get real-time flight alerts, book hotel and car, view alternate flights, notify friends of travel status, manage your itinerary, and much more.=============
alora
mrloon - Monday, July 28, 2008 - link
I still cannot comprehend the "solution" to battery life is to turn basically all the features off. I did pick up an iPhone 3G, and regrettably am stuck with it. Had the phone on a complete full charge, called up and talked to a friend (local call) for about an hour and 10 mins, and I went from 100% charge to 5% charge. The solution of "turn off options" is mute, being that with other 3G devices, I can have all options on and easily talk for over the 5 hour mark, and easily not have to run to a charger for a few days. The other option of having a charger in your car, in your house, in your boat with a goat, etc, is insane. What happens if I'm a commuter on a train, or air, where there is no option to charge. Say I just got into my car, drove to the train station to commute to the airport; in that scenario, I'd barely have power a few mins after stepping onto the train. Add the low battery performance, with an impossible keyboard (double dare any of the "oh it's easy to type on" folks try holding onto the rail in a subway and type a few sentences in anywhere close to the type on any physical QWERTY keboard), a GPS that has no GPS app yet (though one rumoured b TomTom which will probably cost more than just getting a TomTom physical device), no way to add your own ring tone except to buy from iTunes, no way to truly customize the sounds the device has (other than a few options for the ringer and for inbound mail), and a host of other faults, it's a toy, plain and simple. If you need a device that you can use over the course of a day without the device going through detox after an hour and needing a charge, get anything, I mean ANYTHING, but don't get an iPhone. Hey, if ya don't agree with me, and looking for an iPhone, I'll gladly ship you mine free long as you pay the stupid cancelling charge for removing the device from my bill. Maybe I'll even have to post up a YouTube video of me smashing the device with the head of a passing Mac user. So, in closing, yes, the phone is *that* bad, and calling it a phone is even an insult to the old days big box phone on a rope from Alpine and such.Zoos - Tuesday, July 15, 2008 - link
I would really love to see a more thorough test of different settings... for example, most of the ones listed on this page: http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html">http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.htmlIt would be horrible to have to constantly switch so many things on/off as needed, but perhaps disabling something innocuous like bluetooth will actually make a big difference! An accurate test would surely require actual load monitoring, as the battery will perform differently from run to run.
coco - Tuesday, July 15, 2008 - link
Sure the battery on iPhone 3G is not that great, but what can we do? We want small size phones, powerful features and lengthy battery life.Just get a backup battery. I got mine from iPhoneck brands. Their new 3G backup battery is probably one of the better looking products in the market. Their website is www.iphoneck.com
MaxxxRacer - Monday, July 14, 2008 - link
Prior to owning the iPhone 3G I had the HTC Mogul Pocket PC (WM6). The Mogul was an absolute monster at eating batteries, despite its bountiful 1600mah battery (that was quite heavy). The iPhone 3G on the other thand is much slimmer, lighter and FASTER with better battery life. While waiting in line for my second iPhone (got the last one at the apple store on the 11th) for 7 hours the phone drained the battery to near death. This was with downloading and playing games most of the time.Today I went from a full charge to 20% in 10 hours with several phone calls made, 2 hours of ipod use and lots of game playing and toying around.
The bottom line is this. If you play with the phone non stop you will get about the claimed 5 or 6 hours of use and will need to charge it a few times a day. But if you use the phone like a normal human being you should only need to charge it once a day and for infrequent use, every other day. To be safe, charge it every day.
Personally I have a charger at home, in the car and at work, to ensure that I have a charger wherever I am.
gutcheck2008 - Monday, July 14, 2008 - link
I have one. The battery life is shorter then the version 1 iPhone, but there is really no comparison between the networks. Look, you can charge the thing at home, in a car, or on a computer and it charges really fast. I don't think anyone has pointed this out btw, to charge the battery to full takes about 30 min in the wall, or in the car, or on a PC. Then, I can take it, use it all day and then when I come home, charge it again. It is really a cool thing to have and I really am happy with it.kdarling - Sunday, July 13, 2008 - link
Posting battery life comparisions is pretty meaningless without us knowing what batteries are being used.Is the Blackjack using its default tiny 900mAh, or an extended one?
The original iPhone has a 1400mAh battery, so of course its life would be much larger than other phones without extended batteries.
Any idea what the 3G iPhone uses? Best evidence so far is 1150mAh.
imaheadcase - Sunday, July 13, 2008 - link
I mean seriously, its a niche market. You might as well do a review of a Toaster that is colored Pink while you are at it.If you are going to do reviews on freakin phones, at least do lots of phones..esp the ones that are 100x better than any iphone on the market.
thebeastie - Sunday, July 13, 2008 - link
It is interesting to see how 3G sucks battery power.I am with Telstra and their new deal with the Iphone is that you get 5Megs a month 3G but you get unlimited Wifi access at all Telstra hotspots which are all places starbucks etc which is good for me as I spend a fair bit of time having coffee at starbucks etc :)
I am currently about to expire on my 2 year Imate JasJam Telstra contract, and I think I will roll over onto a Iphone, but I do see a few downfalls as well as some I can't be sure of until I get the Iphone
Firstly Telstra have NextG which gives me better speeds then standard 3g (I have tested this it really is a big difference)
So I will have to give this up.
Secondly I will have to give up my wireless modem ability of the Jasjam which I do use a fair bit as I am a top level emergency IT contact for out of hour support and keep my laptop in my boot of my car, (Don't try to tell me its practical to solve complex problems via any phone screen )
Thirdly I have noticed that the quality WMA playback on the Jasjam (windows Mobile version 6) is fantastic compared to other music players I have that include creative products I have had.
The Jasjam with a MicroSD card and Mortplayer are a good combo.
I do encode all my CDs (via windows media player ) or buy music online in high quailty WMA because its the most convenient these days.
I will be disappointed with the WMA quailty playback is exactly as comparable to the JasJam.
No keyboard, I guess this will be interesting for me as how well I will be about to push off a large sms message in a few seconds as I have managed to master the JasJam keyboard very effectively.
No copy and paste: I have read the iphone has no copy and paste, I have used this extensively on the JasJam, from copying and pasting phone numbers, emails, and URLS etc when using it for various tasks it really does come in handy in moments when you just want to get things done quickly.
My current plan of thought is I will use both, mainly just swapping over my sim card when I need wireless modem ability, I will have to ask if this is possible.
MaxxxRacer - Monday, July 14, 2008 - link
With regards to the keyboard: at first I hated it, but now that I have used it for 3 days I am quite fast, about as fast as I was with my Mogul, which had a full QWERTY keyboard.As far as removing the sim, you will have to have a paperclip, toothpick or the sim removal tool to do so. Secondly, if you remove the sim alot you may run into the issue of the contacts getting heavily worn and the phone saying you have no SIM installed. This happened to me yesterday when I was at the Zoo. I had to use the toothpick in my Sandwich to reseat the SIM and get the phone working again. Not convient.. That said, I love my iPhone despite being a staunch Apple hater.
Doormat - Saturday, July 12, 2008 - link
The 2009 iPhone should have the same 3G speeds (possibly faster uploads) along with the 3G comm chip fabricated at 65nm instead of 90. We'll see if Infineon can hurry up and get their X-GOLD 61x series chips fabricated in time for the '09 launch (right now the say 2nd half of 09, but that could be July 09 or it could be December 09).Aries1470 - Sunday, July 13, 2008 - link
Why wait for the 2009 model? I think the SE Xperia X1 will be a much better phone and battery life will be better too. Although that is my personal opinion.Here are some links to read up on it.
[url]http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_xperia_x1-22...[/url]
[url]http://www.sonyericsson.com/cws/corporate/products...[/url]
Personally I find this to be a very good phone, on paper at the moment and I will be upgrading to this phone most likely.
As for another that said about WM and 640x480 etc... well they should look no further than the i-mate's. They are great & also have large screens with a monitor out too for connecting to a projector/ monitor etc. I remember way before the original iPhone came out I was going to get their
Here is a link to their site.
[url]http://imate.com/[/url]
One of their better models is the 9502 out of their current collection.
[url]http://imate.com/support/specs/SpecSheet_9502.pdf[/url]
It is a 640x480 with keyboard, touch-screen, GPS, 3.0 Megapixel auto-focus camera, etc...
Now the problem with the WM6 devices that I remember reading somewhere is that they are restricted to 65k screens. My old i-mate (pre-3G) is great, and lasts a fair amount of time, by that, I mean a couple of days with out a re-charge. Now I have delegated it to a GPS solution ;-) and never really seen the 65k limit as hindering.
So it seems that WM is not THAT after all.
[daydreaming]Ok, now to go and collect my phones for my advertising efforts[/day dreaming]
Aries1470 - Sunday, July 13, 2008 - link
Correction:"So it seems that WM is not THAT after all. "
Should read:
"So it seems that WM is not THAT BADafter all."
Btw, here are the links properly inserted this time:
http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_xperia_x1-22...">http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_xperia_x1-22...
http://www.sonyericsson.com/cws/corporate/products...">http://www.sonyericsson.com/cws/corpora...oducts/p...
Hope it works this time.
cs1323 - Saturday, July 12, 2008 - link
The iPhone 3G has proven to be really fun and easy to use. Being able to place calls, check out the weather, look up YouTube videos and browsing the net without being tied down to a Wifi hotspot is astounding.Since I've owned an iPod Touch beforehand, I kind of got a feel of how much power I can get out of it when playing my music and video files and surfing the web via Wifi. With the iPhone, I was expecting to see a little more kick. After a full day of listening (roughly) to about 5 songs, watching 5 minutes of video, 15 min of 3G browsing, and 10 min of YouTubing.. my battery finally died at the end of the day.
Is this about average? I guess you're expected to charge your iPhone *every* night if this how you are to use it properly.
NestoJR - Saturday, July 12, 2008 - link
Thats ALL you did and it died at the end of the day ?I have the original iPhone and aside from 3G browsing, from my experience you should be able to do A LOT more than that. Maybe try turning off the 3G if ur not planning to use it. Thats the thing for anyone whos disappointed with the battery life within the first few days or week. It is lower than some handsets and I came from a Blackberry 8700 that could go 3 days before needing a charge. But with the iPhone, I know I was constantly playing with mine when I first got it and it died twice on me, like mid-day. So YES, you should/do need to charge it every night AND I'd make a point to grab a car charger and charge it when you can. (LOL, when I didn't have a car charger, I went to Best Buy and put it in one of the speaker docks to charge, standing around for 15 minutes, brand new iPhone sitting there dead, employees asking me if I need help and I'm like "no I'm fine, I'm just charging my phone. 8)"
Nowadays, I can make my iPhone last a day and a half but I try not to do so. Under realistic use (you know, only using it when you need it), it'll last the day easily. Aside from phone use, I use it to check the weather, stocks, bank account, look up definitions, do conversions, reference things, Google maps for directions, phone numbers, etc., text. But if I have time to kill and start surfing for no real reason and watching youtube, use bluetooth or the camera (these 2 seem to be the biggest killers to me), and it will drain the battery super fast. I don't talk much on my cell, never have, and am on the 450 min plan FWIW. Oh and you'll learn that once you get that first 20% low battery warning, it goes down REAL fast IF you continue using it for surfing, watching vid, etc. It won't die immmediatly, but it reminds me of a camcorder battery thats basically telling you it will die in 2 minutes (if that), but no real warning before that haha. If you let it remain idle, you'd prolly get a few hours out of it or near a hour of talk time. But play with it and dead in half a hour or less I'd say.
The sealed battery design does irk me and I really have no idea why Apple insists on this but so long as you just remember to bring a charger with you, you'll be fine. I'm a road warrior so I'm able to charge it frequently if need be. All that being said I'm itching to go out and get the 3G, I'm a patient person for the most part but I hate waiting for EDGE and the GPS would help immensely with directions. I live in the boonies and the current triangulation can give something like a 5 mile radius for my current location and can be off by a few miles at that. Its workable but hardly ideal. And I still have my $100 Apple Store credit from the price drop... =)
araczynski - Saturday, July 12, 2008 - link
didn't know about the nokia 810, but that looks much more impressive than the iphone, especially with that resolution and me being more interested in surfing rather than downloading/buying games for the phone.ShangoY - Friday, July 11, 2008 - link
"Unfortunately, as Apple doesn't design any of the chips or battery technology that goes into the iPhone, it doesn't really have much control over things like 3G battery life."Are you joking? Why do people have to be Apple apologists? Can't you just say "Gee, apple was too lazy to redesign the iphone to get a bigger battery"? They couldn't add a millimeter or two more and stick in a thicker battery? What, they don't design the freaking thing or something? And what is the reason their lame ass designers can't put a memory slot in the thing?
Oh wait, I forgot it's the Gospel of Jobs, you don't NEED anything he doesn't give you.
MonkeyPaw - Saturday, July 12, 2008 - link
You said exactly what I was thinking when I read that. Apple would rather sell a cooler looking phone than one that is more functional. It's the Apple way!sprockkets - Saturday, July 12, 2008 - link
No, remember, function follows form. We can't have an iphone be bigger than its predecessor. Nor add an SD card slot.Remember, not having those features that even my archaic Siemens S51 phone had are features that would thus lead people to believe the iphone is just another phone. Not to mention being able to charge with a standard USB port on a computer would associate the phone with such devices from HTC/Windows; we can't have that.
Rather, not having those features are reasons why Mac uses feel superior to you. You know, like not having more than one USB port or user changeable batteries or optical drives or an ethernet port, nor a brain.
bikinistud - Saturday, July 12, 2008 - link
So what? Apple chose form/functionality over being the Swiss Army Knife of cell phones. It does certain things great like web browsing and email, and does it in a nice looking brick. For some that's enough, for others get a Windows Mobile/Blackberry smartphone. It's not like people don't have a choice and MUST buy an iPhone.sprockkets - Friday, July 11, 2008 - link
Yep, 3G just takes more everything no matter what. 4G, with trials showing around what 170mbps, still won't be as fast, since latency is much higher than a normal broadband line.Sadly, the only phone I know of with a high res 640x480 screen so far, is the OpenMoko phone, and is of course, not ready for prime time.
Justin Case - Friday, July 11, 2008 - link
There are several PDAs with built-in phone and 640x480 screens. In fact, they've been around since before Apple released even the original iPhone (ex., the Qtek 9000, which has a proper keyboard in adition to the touch screen). The Nokia N800 or N810 are 800x480.sprockkets - Saturday, July 12, 2008 - link
Yeah, those are PDAs. Notice how any Windows Smart Phone or otherwise has only 320x240, Nokia's included. 320x240 is nice for my Ming or smaller screens, but this is 2008.sprockkets - Saturday, July 12, 2008 - link
Oh wait, nvm.Some1ne - Friday, July 11, 2008 - link
Your assertion that "you'd have to load pages around twice as fast on average to equal the same productivity" isn't really accurate, unless *all* you are doing is loading webpages, and spending zero time actually reading them. Since that's probably almost never the case in real life, the 3G iphone would have to load pages much more than twice as fast as the EDGE version in order for productivity to be the same given that the battery only lasts half as long.For example, say the EDGE phone gets a 600 minute battery life, and can load a page in an average of 2 minute. And say that the user spends an average of 4 minutes reading each page that is loaded. So loading and reading each page takes about 6 minutes, meaning that with the EDGE phone the user could read 100 pages before the battery runs out.
Now, say the 3G phone is twice as fast, but only gets half the battery life. So it has 300 minutes of runtime, and each page loads in 1 minute instead of 2, but the user still needs the same 4 minutes to read each page. So now each page only takes 5 minutes for the user to load and read, but still the user can only read 60 of them before the battery is dead.
As 60 < 100, the user is not equally productive on the 3G phone, even though it was loading the pages twice as fast. In fact, in this example, there is no way that the user could ever be equally productive on the 3G phone, even if it loaded pages 100x as fast as the EDGE phone. Too much time is dominated by the user actually processing the information displayed on the phone for faster download speeds to make up for the loss in battery life. I suspect in the real world, the case would be similar, and almost anyone would end up being more productive on a device that downloaded slower, but ran for twice as long.
Weiser - Sunday, July 13, 2008 - link
I would argue the logic is flawed due to the assumption that the battery use is two times greater when there is no data transmission occuring.If the tests were done the same as the 1st gen iPhone then it was a loop of consecutive web page requests always trasmitting and receiving data that lead to ~half the battery life.
In your scenario the battery use would be double for that 1 minute of downloading but then during the idle 4 minutes what would it be? I would argue (ignorant of the facts) that the 3G chip may take a little more juice even when not transmitting/receiving but probably far from double. Is there any data on this?
I would expect that the estimate that "you'd have to load pages around twice as fast on average to equal the same productivity" is largely accurate based on what I see.
AnnihilatorX - Sunday, July 13, 2008 - link
Your measure of productivity is flawed but you ignored the fact that productivity also includes the realms of efficiency.Although you can read more pages with EDGE due to longer battery life, however, no one is going to wait for a page to wait for 2 minutes patiently and spend all 300 minutes of battery life surfing. I am sure many will prefer quicker and speedier definition as productivity rather than able to do more in a longer time.
Scott66 - Friday, July 11, 2008 - link
One look at the chart and one sees why Jobs did not want 3G. Also given the fact that 3G has been poorly implemented with few areas actually able to use it, Why all the demand.I predict many phone users, be they iphone or other 3G capable phones disappointed with the battery life.
retrospooty - Saturday, July 12, 2008 - link
"One look at the chart and one sees why Jobs did not want 3G."Palm and many other companies have been doing it for years without batery life problems. Why cant Apple? There HAS to be something wrong with their 3G implementation.
strikeback03 - Tuesday, July 15, 2008 - link
Or they just are not willing to increase the size of the device to handle a larger battery.gramboh - Friday, July 11, 2008 - link
But Edge is ridiculously slow for anything other than text heavy browsing. It's painful to use, like dialup.