4G Phones Are Really Fast — At Draining Batteries 281
Hugh Pickens writes "With Verizon's 4G network covering a good chunk of the country and AT&T gaining ground, more smartphone users have access to the fastest wireless service available. But because 4G coverage isn't truly continuous in many locations, users' batteries are taking a big hit with 4G, as phones spend an lot of battery power trying to hunt down a signal. 'You've got a situation where the phones are sending out their signals searching and searching for a 4G tower, and that eats up your battery,' says Carl Howe, a vice president for research firm Yankee Group. The spottiness of 4G stems at least in part from the measured approach carriers have taken to it, rolling out the service city by city. There are a few tricks 4G users can try to extend battery life such as turning off your 4G connection when you don't need the fastest speeds — when using email, for instance — or using a program such as JuiceDefender to search for apps you may have downloaded that you don't need to run all the time, and erase them."
truly breaking reporting (Score:4, Informative)
Newest Generation of Consumer Electronics Item Uses More Energy Than Previous Generation Did
Re:I miss the good old days (Score:5, Informative)
You mean you miss the good old days where your phone was just a phone and texting capabilities was a luxury?
Because you know they still sell those, right? And those now get two weeks to a month.
Let's face it, the reason our fancy phones with internet, apps, etc. don't last very long is two-fold...
1. They do use more power - not much you can do about that right now unless you want to give up the capabilities again.
2. We keep wanting smaller and/or thinner phones. I promise you that if people would accept a phone half an inch thick again, battery life would be much improved - simply by virtue of being able to fit a much, much greater capacity battery.
Re:Very frustrating (Score:3, Informative)
Coming from someone who carefully manages when I plug my electronics in so as to extend their usable battery life, it sucks to have to feel like my phone always needs to be plugged in.
>
Take your nickel-chemistry assumptions about how to treat a battery out back and shoot them. There's this new battery tech called lithium-ion -- perhaps you've heard of it>? -- used in a few devices (by which I mean everything), and it does not like discharge cycles, especially deep discharges. Keep it plugged in.
Re:4G = bye bye battery (Score:5, Informative)
TFA talks about the Droid Razr Maxx's crazy long standby, talk, and video playing time. Its secret isn't any secret at all.
They took the dangerously thin Droid Razr, added less than 2mm in thickness, and then filled that space with a battery almost twice as large.
3300 mAh vs the smart phone standard of ~1700 mAh.
Designers refuse to make phones thicker in order to accommodate larger batteries.
The Razr can get away with it because, for it, "thicker" is the normal size of other phones.
Re:Very frustrating (Score:2, Informative)
People mocked Apple for not including 4G in the iPhone 4S, but your experience, and that of the entire article, seems to validate their position: 4G technology just isn't power-efficient enough (YET) to include without forcing Apple to either include a much bigger (heavier, bulkier) battery, or cut their estimated usage time significantly.
The competition pushed the "bigger screen = better" in part because it's a genuinely requested feature, but the unspoken reason was to hide the fact a bigger battery was needed to drive the 4G electronics--and obviously it's *still* not enough. It's certainly not your display that's sucking battery life--despite the 4.27" screen the Thunderbolt has less than 2/3 the pixels the iPhone 4 and 4S has.
Re:truly breaking reporting (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds like a brilliant design.
In many ways, it's simply a logical next step - see Nvidia's white paper for architectural details. http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_90715.html [nvidia.com]
Thing is, we're so used to minimal innovation in the stagnant Wintel-controlled X86 world, the rapid pace of change in ARM systems is exciting. Imagine a beowulf cluster of them, for example...
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/11/the-opposite-of-virtualization-calexdas-new-quad-core-arm-part-for-cloud-servers.ars [arstechnica.com]
Re:Very frustrating (Score:5, Informative)
Most 4G tech is using OFDMA [wikipedia.org]. It achieves higher data rates than CDMA by using heavier signal processing to extract the data signal destined for your phone out of all phones in a cell. Previously this processing required too much power for a mobile device. But low-power CPU tech has advanced enough to where it's realistic to use it on a phone. As processor power requirements drop, the power needed for 4G will likewise drop.
Re:Not true (Score:5, Informative)
As I said I use my phone daily. I currently have an iPhone 4 (not 4s) and I only plug it in to charge about every three days. Again, this is moderate web/email/app use (I don't make many calls either).
I think the 4 is somewhat better charge-wise than the 3Gs (which I also had).
At this point the 3Gs battery may simply be getting weaker, you could have it replaced fairly cheaply.
Re:Very frustrating (Score:4, Informative)
The power usage of an LCD is by far dominated by the creation of light, the number of pixels will increase power consumption but not by anywhere near as much as the bigger back light.