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
Not so fast (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm typing this on a MacBook Air, which gets about 3x the battery life of my previous laptop. And the room I'm in has CFL bulbs which are about 1/4 as power hungry as the old fashioned bulbs.
So no, newer electronics don't *always* use more power.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm typing this on a MacBook Air, which gets about 3x the battery life of my previous laptop. And the room I'm in has CFL bulbs which are about 1/4 as power hungry as the old fashioned bulbs.
So no, newer electronics don't *always* use more power.
Your macbook cant do what an old P4 Laptop couldn't.
Your macbook gets a higher score on the battery because it gets a lower score on everything else.
I had an Asus U30SD. The U30SD has the Optimus graphics chipset, this is a GF520M and an Intel 3000, if I want to play games, I have to use the GeForce chip which gives it a battery life of 6 hours, if I use the Intel IGM, I get a battery life of 10 hours. I now have a U46SV with a GeForce 540M and the discrepancy is worse. Do you see the inverse relation
Re: (Score:3)
Now the reason LTE phones use more power then HSPA phones is that the LTE transmitter is not integral to the SoC, it is it's own chip. Once the new ARM line is released (mid this year IIRC) we'll see battery life improve significantly as LTE chips will be integrated into the SoC like HSPA chips currently are.
No, that's not a significant factor here. The modem and RF are very unlikely to be integrated into the same die as the AP, as their life-cycle are quite different. At best it's integrated in the same package, but not in the same die (as in the SnapDragon chips). That's a bit more power efficient (shortest connections between AP and BB/RF), but it's negligible compared to the power consumption of a radio access subsystem.
One of the issue with each new WAN technology is that each major generation greatly in
Re: (Score:3)
Your macbook cant do what an old P4 Laptop couldn't.
Bullshit. Unless, as the rest of your comment suggests, the specific application you're interested in has basically no CPU demand and is entirely performed by the graphics card. Even the M-series Core i5 (what's in the newest Air) outperforms a P4 and the SSD on an Air certainly outperforms a P4-era hard drive. So that's two components of "everything else" that are not worse.
To elaborate, the Intel graphics chip in your laptop is integrated into the CPU die, so it's powered from the same source as the CPU rather then being a seperate chip with a seperate power supply, do you honestly think you'll be getting the same battery life if you had a discrete graphics card?
Even discrete graphics cards share a power supply, although that's not what makes them more power-hungry. However, unless you know whi
Re: (Score:2)
Your MacBook can also do with more modern batteries, which may have double capacity what your old laptop had. Hard to compare. When I bought my iBook about eight years ago I could get 5, and dimming the screen up to 6 hours battery life out of it. Pretty good for the time. I don't think current Apple laptops can do 15 hours now, have yet to see even a netbook that betters 8-9 hours.
Apple again (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow this same story keeps happening. Apple elects to go with 2G edge instead of 3G. Gets ridiculed. The all the 3G phones have connection problems and drain their batteries. Apple delays 4G. Gets pilloried. Oops the 4G phones are suck and regret. It's not that apple is always later to the party. Indeed they are a realtively early adopter (dynamic memory, graphic printers, .... ) and an early dropper of obsolete tech (floppies, zip drives, ports...).
Like Paul Mason, they only serve their wine when
Re:Apple again (Score:4, Interesting)
The battery life problem, if you bothered to read even the summary instead of jumping to the comments to defend Apple, is because there isn't regular 4G coverage everywhere yet. In order for there to be an incentive to develop such widespread coverage, there must also be people willing to use that network (no massive network can be established entirely without users.) This means the only way good 4G coverage can ever happen is if there are issues with it in the early life cycle, and without those early adopters widespread 4G will never happen.
So, without Android adopting 4G, Apple would never be able to follow suit, unless they want to receive the same complaints. Not that that would stop them, necessarily. Did you like all those dropped calls with the early iPhone because you were stuck on AT&T?
Wrong, upgrades would happen anyway (Score:3)
So, without Android adopting 4G, Apple would never be able to follow suit
This is simply incorrect.
The network would be upgraded with or without early adoption. The early adoption does help shake out issues (thanks as usual Android Beta Testers!) but a phone company lays out way in advance the capital required to upgrade the whole network, they are not going to be so insane as to rely on adoption in a few early cities to fund the rest of the expansion. It's just that the upgrade takes time, and as we see
Re:Wrong, upgrades would happen anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Apple again (Score:5, Interesting)
Two different issues.
First, Apple chose not to go LTE for one very good reason - the current LTE chipsets suck.
Here's the thing. LTE is a data standard. It doesn't define a voice standard, and there's proposals on how to do voice-over-LTE. And people want to do voice calls. So LTE phones right now hop onto the UMTS (or CDMA) network in order to handle a voice call, while doing LTE for data. The problem is that LTE phones now need two chips - one to do LTE, another to do 3G/voice (ever notice how the LTE versions of phones are always larger? It's not just the larger battery). The iPhone doesn't have enough space for another chip. Plus the extra chip takes power.
Now, Qualcomm has announced their roadmap that has a combined LTE/UMTS/GSM/CDMA baseband (listed as LTE+voice) in a single chip, which is anticipated to be in the next iPhone.
As for AT&T's dropped calls - it was because of over-aggressive power management from iPhones causing the control channel to be congested (which leads to dropped calls everwyhere in general). The irony being that the cells on AT&T were very underutilized (30-40%) but the control channel being completely saturated means dropped calls, slow data and other things.
As for who drives things - well, the carriers work with handset manufacturers. The carriers want to deploy the Next Big Thing that can charge customers more money for, and since Apple's basically an untouchable (the carrier bends to Apple's will), they work with HTC and others to stick in new chips to try to get people to pay more for a new network.
LTE deployment is quite interesting. When the (original 2G) iPhone came out, the 3G deployment in North America was quite spotty (the North American carriers chose 2G+ technolgies prior to the proper 3G rollout), but quite solid in Europe and Asia. These days, LTE deployment in North America is far more than Europe and Asia
Re: (Score:2)
Here's the thing. LTE is a data standard. It doesn't define a voice standard, and there's proposals on how to do voice-over-LTE. And people want to do voice calls. So LTE phones right now hop onto the UMTS (or CDMA) network in order to handle a voice call, while doing LTE for data. The problem is that LTE phones now need two chips - one to do LTE, another to do 3G/voice (ever notice how the LTE versions of phones are always larger? It's not just the larger battery). The iPhone doesn't have enough space for another chip. Plus the extra chip takes power.
You're definitely right that space is very important for skinny smartphones, and integration will help reducing the floor plan size for the 4G subsystem.
But for power consumption, integrating several dies into a single package doesn't change things much (it's not single die integration). The improvement in coming chips will come from moving from 40 nm to 28 nm in most cases. And there's a lot to do to improve implementation efficiency, but the big guys don't seem too concerned by this. As in 3G they make b
Re: (Score:3)
They don't want the best effort internet traffic to swamp the premium voice traffic. So if they want to go full VOIP they need to build QOS into every aspect of the network. Further they have to work out how you will handle phones switching mid call from 4G voip to 2G/3G circuit switched voice when they go out of 4G coverage. Finally all the carriers and phone vendors need to agree on this so it can be incorporated into mass market phones.
Plus even if they do get voice over 4G sorted they will still need th
Re: (Score:2)
As I don't use mobile data, a year or two back ago I switched from 3G back to 2G. Not only are voice plans much cheaper, I don't notice any quality difference (shops will tell you that 3G has superior call quality - well I had less problems with reception after the switch back to 2G!) and battery life of the phone is far better. Also my phone didn't heat up so badly anymore.
Re: (Score:2)
Newest Generation of Consumer Electronics Item Uses More Energy Than Previous Generation Did
The worst part is we don't need the extra speed, we need better coverage and better data plans.
Re:truly breaking reporting (Score:5, Insightful)
The hard core android fan brags about having four cores in their phone, even if everything they're doing could easily be handled by a single core, gets its battery drained four times faster, and doesn't have a noticable performance improvement over the competition.
You mean, "even though their phone just turns off the three other cores 95% of the time anyways". And in fact, some even turn off all four cores, and switch over to a super power-saving core that has especially low performance, but is well enough to play music and HW-decoded video.
Re:truly breaking reporting (Score:5, Insightful)
The people who are opening their wallet to buy are after the snazziest technology they can get. Bragging rights. By golly, they want to have something that everybody else doesn't have.
Lamborghini did not make their profits from their mileage numbers. Anyone who can afford their cars would probably reconsider their purchase if the car failed to pass everything they meet on the freeway.
So the phone won't run an hour between charges... who cares? The guy has already bought spare battery packs and charging apparatus. The phone has already served its purpose if it impressed the hell out of his co-workers during the call in the conference room.
These phones are not designed for the same market that goes to Wal-Mart for jeans.
Re:truly breaking reporting (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh definitely, but for example the Tegra3 despite having four cores shuts them all down most of the time, and runs a 5th power-saving core. All of this is done silently behind the scenes, and so they never know that they're usually only running on a low-power efficiency core, rather than the roaring engine in the back.
It's like having a two-cylinder engine that is used during stop-and-go traffic (you know, the majority of what you do during your commute) that allows you to drive your Ferrari down to the store without having to fill up on gas on the way back home. But any time you have to impress someone, and pull out the e-peen, then you can just "drop the hammer" and the engine switches over to the high-performance v12, and you go "ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!"
It's definitely all about marketing. This is the best way that they could come up with to let you have your cake and eat it, too... "it has 4 cores, _AND_ it has excellent battery life! *mumbling under breath* because it is almost always running on an economy core unless you're showing off..."
Re: (Score:3)
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: (Score:2)
The Tegra does sound very good. Also, with the auto metaphor, several modern engine families do shut down cylinders when the brute power isn't needed, to increase efficiency while still allowing seamless access to full power. And it works pretty well, unlike GM's old, maligned 8-6-4 system, which I understand was a system rushed to market maybe a year before it was ready, and then abandoned before it was refined any further.
Re: (Score:3)
Oh definitely, but for example the Tegra3 despite having four cores shuts them all down most of the time, and runs a 5th power-saving core. All of this is done silently behind the scenes, and so they never know that they're usually only running on a low-power efficiency core, rather than the roaring engine in the back.
It's like having a two-cylinder engine that is used during stop-and-go traffic (you know, the majority of what you do during your commute) that allows you to drive your Ferrari down to the store without having to fill up on gas on the way back home. But any time you have to impress someone, and pull out the e-peen, then you can just "drop the hammer" and the engine switches over to the high-performance v12, and you go "ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!"
It's definitely all about marketing. This is the best way that they could come up with to let you have your cake and eat it, too... "it has 4 cores, _AND_ it has excellent battery life! *mumbling under breath* because it is almost always running on an economy core unless you're showing off..."
You don't know how good that car analogy is here. Honda's minivans have 6 cylinders and the computer will disable 3 of the 6 as needed to achieve better fuel economy without sacrificing performance when you need it. Of course "performance" on a minivan is relative, but you get the point.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:truly breaking reporting (Score:4, Interesting)
Not true (Score:4, Insightful)
The iPhone - and it really was the first in this category - got people to charge their phone every single night.
That's not the case.
I've had and iPhone since the first one, and I've usually only gone to charge it every three days or so. That's with moderate email/web/app use.
It's less time than other dumb phones but much more time than smart phones of the time (like Treo or Windows Mobile) offered. The realistic multi-day battery life was a huge draw early on, exactly because finally there was a smart phone you DIDN'T have to charge every day.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The iPhone - and it really was the first in this category - got people to charge their phone every single night.
That's not the case.
I've had and iPhone since the first one, and I've usually only gone to charge it every three days or so. That's with moderate email/web/app use.
Clearly you never use it.
I have to carry an Iphone 3GS for work, I have to charge it every day and all it does is receive SMS's. I make a call on it about once a month yet requires charging once a day. My Android phone (HTC Desire Z running Cyanogen 7) lasts two days on one charge as well as having a replaceable battery and I use that for voice calls, SMS and web use.
Iphone 4's I've seen require more charging then the 3GS did. There's a reason every Iphone owner has a charge cable at their desk.
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: (Score:2)
Signal strength (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
I'm still running my five-year-old Treo 650. For most of that time I've had to charge it almost every night. But last summer the vendor (Nokia) that supplied email support to Verizon turned it off, so I couldn't receive email any more. Now I can go three or four days between charges! :)
Re:truly breaking reporting (Score:4, Interesting)
My parents had to charge their Nextel phones every day or risk a dead phone on the second day.
I do charge my iPhone every day out of habit because I tend to forget once in a while, and if I forget two days in a row, I might be in trouble.
You might think iPhone started it, but people got in the habit of charging smart phones, regardless of brand, and this was before iPhone was available.
Re: (Score:3)
Pah! My Nokia n95 predated the iphone and needed charging every night and topping up whenever possible during the day. On the plus side, (for additional reasons of crappitude) it made choosing phones easier in the future as i no longer considered nokia products. Just like LG did with my 910 Renoir and RIM did with whatever Blackberry I had (battery life on blackberry was ok as it couldn't do anything).
Sorry. Got sidetracked into ranting about crappy phones.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
The gotcha in this nice story is that it's only true for a fixed amount o
Very frustrating (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm in SF, and I upgraded from an iPhone 3G to a HTC Thunderbolt with 4G. The Thunderbolt, even brand new, has to be charged twice a day at least, and I keep things like Bluetooth and wifi off most of the time. If I don't plug in my phone at night, it will be dead by morning.
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.
Is the 4g tech itself power hungry? Mine seems to have battery trouble even when I'm stationery and the 4g signal is strong.
Re: (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: (Score:3, Interesting)
Hate to say it, but I just got served!
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries [batteryuniversity.com]
Good article. I thought it was bad to keep it plugged in and good to let it run. Turns out it's the opposite!
Anyone know if the same applies for laptops?
Re: (Score:3)
Unfortunately the HTC Thunderbolt, one of the first attempts at a 4G handset in the US, is plagued with battery issues. A quick Google [google.com] search shows that it's not just you. There are also many things you can do to try to extend the battery life such as using a resource manager like JuiceDefender [android.com] that aggressively manages your radios and display options when not in use. You can also use the phone's built-in power saving mode which can be found in your phone's settings menu. This will perform the same task in
Re: (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 n
Re: (Score:2)
4G technology just isn't power-efficient enough (YET)
The problem isn't just the 4G hardware in the phone, it's the 4G coverage offered by cell towers.
Since coverage is spotty, the phone will spend a lot of time with the radio cranked to the max, desperately searching for a signal.
If you want to test this out, stick your phone in a *microwave.
It's not a perfect faraday cage, but it's good enough and I guarantee your battery will be dead within a few hours.
*I suggest you unplug the microwave first, to avoid any accidents.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Interesting, I work in downtown SF and live in the East Bay and have no problem getting a full day out of a charge on my Tbolt. I picked up the phone around launch, and on the original stock firmware, battery life was pretty abysmal. I'm currently running a custom rom (Liquid Thunderbread 2.6), and now easily get a day on normal use (including roughly an hour of continuous browsing on BART each workday). My wife has the same phone and can get a couple days (she works in the East Bay and uses the Internet
Re: (Score:2)
I just thought I'd say thanks for actually using the proper grammar - "... uses the Internet much less than I" (with implied 'do'). Good job, good example! :)
Re: (Score:2)
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: (Score:2)
Is the 4g tech itself power hungry? Mine seems to have battery trouble even when I'm stationery and the 4g signal is strong.
The same for my Evo 4G, but I'm told the latest 4G models at CES consume less power and also run less hot on 4G. For me, I have 4G turned off almost all the time, and it's really only when I need 4G speed that I turn it on (which happens only once every couple of days).
For most things like Google Navigation, downloading regular-sized apps, listening to streaming podcasts, doing email, and browsing the web, 3G is usually ok enough. It's really for watching movies at high resolution, doing video chat, downloa
I miss the good old days (Score:4, Insightful)
Where your phone would last a week on stand-by and you wouldn't have to hang around the single power socket in the airport departure lounge with all the other smartphone junkies waiting to charge your phone.
Re: (Score:2)
You still can, but you have to turn off all the extras. I have lasted 6 days between charges on my iPhone 4 when out of the country & not using wifi/bluetooth/3G which were all turned off. I was even using the iphone's camera a lot but I had to switch away from the camera app quickly because it drains the battery.
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:I miss the good old days (Score:5, Insightful)
I would gladly take a "bulky" device with a ton of battery. I don't understand the the tablet manufacturers all trying to copy the thinness of the fruit product. Keep them relatively slim, but kill em on battery life. Take the transformer, it's thin enough and light enough. Now that they CAN make it slimmer than the fruit product DONT, fill the space with frigging battery!
Re: (Score:2)
Bingo. The phone I miss is my old T-Mobile MDA (rebranded HTC Wizard). It had the usual stuff (no 3/4G, of course, but Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc.), and it could run almost a week before needing to be charged. The reason why it had the battery life was partly due to the dual core OMAP CPU, and partially due to the fact that it was thick enough to handle a decent mAh battery.
I wouldn't mind a phone having a couple millimeters of thickness, if it meant significantly more battery life, and a thicker Gorilla Glas
Re: (Score:2)
I read somewhere that coming soon is the Moto Razr MAX, which is just the Razr only thicker, with a bigger battery. Gee, I wonder why? :D
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Except that I have an HTC Wildfire and there are plenty of bulky rear-panels to fit a larger battery. On the plus side, I don't have to dismantle my phone with special tools, battery is replaceable, hard to imagine, isn't it?
So I usually have an extra battery and replace it if needed every second day. I charge the batteries with external charger only, that way my phone always stays mobile.
Best thing is, if I'd ever want to do iPhone-style charging every night or so -- I still can.
Re: (Score:2)
You mean you miss the good old days where your phone was just a phone and texting capabilities was a luxury?
Or you could look at older mid range smart phones. My nearly 2 year old Nokia N79 gives about 5 days of use on a single charge with moderate 3G internet,voice and application use
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I really don't.
Re: (Score:2)
Where your phone would last a week on stand-by...
I don't. On that last day, usually in the morning, the phone would die and my charger would be at home. Once I started using phones with much less battery life, this actually stopped happening to me.
...and you wouldn't have to hang around the single power socket in the airport departure lounge with all the other smartphone junkies waiting to charge your phone.
Charge your phone before you leave. This applies whether you measure your stand-by time in days or weeks.
Re: (Score:2)
/end im older than you, get off my lawn rant
Re: (Score:2)
My first day in high school, I was walking down the hall while reading a book - is that the ancient equivalent of staring at one's 4G phone? The main 'in crowd' girl - most popular etc., who had met me at a party a few weeks before, sang out, "Hi Gary!" ... It took me about three steps before I was able to pop my attention stack and realize I had been addressed, and by then she was offended and my high school future was sealed. (But it would have happened soon enough anyway - I'm just not the social type
not quite (Score:2)
My mom is a midwife and can go 24hrs or more without coming home. Her work recently gave her an iphone 4S and she had to get extra chargers for car and office. Her old blackberry went for several days between charges.
enormous battery FTW (Score:2)
I bought a triple sized battery for my 4G phone. My phone is friggin' enormous now... but I can use it on 4G for 12 to 16 hours. I have yet to completely kill it... even while using it on coast to coast flights.
Re:enormous battery FTW (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact you're on coast-to-coast flights (5-ish hours) should actually *increase* battery life for that charge, since you're in airplane mode and it's not hunting for cell or wifi signals.
You're probably watching video or playing games more during the flight than you'd be running around on the ground of course, but I'm amazed how little battery is used when I watch an hour-long show on my iPhone while on the gym machines--less than 5% drained. For comparison, browsing the web or using Facebook for 30 minutes on the bus will eat 10%.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, it's the radios that eat the juice, mostly. Unless you're doing raytracing on the phone! (Does anybody do that? It would be interesting....)
Android spergs (Score:2, Insightful)
Remember all the trolling Android spergs on Slashdot who bashed the iPhone 4S for not having 4G? So much for that.
Re: (Score:2)
Given a choice between having a feature you can turn on and off at will, and not having the feature, the better choice is always having the feature. An iPhone 4S with 4G would've had exactly the same battery life as the 4G-less iPhone 4S, but you would've been able to get 4G data speeds whenever you felt the tradeoff in battery lif
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Given a choice between having a feature you can turn on and off at will, and not having the feature, the better choice is always having the feature. An iPhone 4S with 4G would've had exactly the same battery life as the 4G-less iPhone 4S, but you would've been able to get 4G data speeds whenever you felt the tradeoff in battery life was worth it.
And how many of the gazillion people who bought iPhones would understand, much less remember, to do that?
My dad can't remember turn his iPad's 3G receiver to save power when he's home on wi-fi. Fortunately for him, the 3G modem is pretty efficient and the darned thing still runs all day and all night on a charge.
Apple has calculated that the no-fret longer battery life from a mature 3G chipset will result in happier customers in aggregate than the occasional speed boost of early 4G chipsets. I have zero dou
Re: (Score:2)
GPS, Siri, and Bluetooth are power hungry too. And yet, it doesn't mean that you need to be using them all the time.
For me, 3G or wifi is usually good enough for what I do 95% of the time, but it's really when I need that extra speed/bandwidth that 4G has become a life saver.
Re:Android spergs (Score:5, Funny)
keeping 4g off should be automatic (Score:4, Interesting)
The phones should really keep 4g off (& just stick to edge) unless you actually unlock your phone & start using network apps (e.g. you open mail, etc). Leave push notifications always on the most battery-efficient network available (wifi, edge, 3g, 4g, etc) & only turn on the faster networks when the apps are in focus & need them (e.g. browser, e-mail, etc) or if there's a background app that requests to use the highest-bandwidth connection available.
yes, yes - there's a latency to turning on & associating the faster radio. however, that would only be noticed in the launch first bandiwdth-heavier app after phone unlock scenario. your standby time would be waaaay better.
Re: (Score:2)
You can do this with Tasker now (on Android), but of course, it should be an easy option in Settings for your typical user.
4G = bye bye battery (Score:3)
My first experience with 4G was early last year in Richmond on Sprint. Indeed it was fast, but I could almost watch my battery disappear! (OK, it wasn't THAT bad, but I estimated it cut my battery life in half). It was very handy to have the Android widget right on the first page to toggle 4G on/off, so it would shift back into the much more battery-friendly 3G.
I do wish battery technology was on the same curve as CPU technology has been. Imagine- we could have super-smart phones that were twice as fast as now, but running on one charge a week or less. (Or perhaps we could finally have some good electric car range WITH great performance at the same time). Oh well, maybe in "5 to 7 years" or whatever the standard is for anything we still can't have...
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: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I suppose 'cause they first worked very hard to make the actual electronics very, very slim for design reasons.
I also suppose that the logical conclusion of this progression is a paper-thin, flexible, transparent phone that sticks to your wrist and is powered by the motion of your hand. Which means that those sessions in the bathroom with the Penthouse centerfold will serve two purposes!
who leaves it on??? (Score:2)
I know several people with 4g service, including me; none of us would turn it on unless we know we will get service (and use it) or are probing for service so we can know. Its not like 4g users dont already know the gist of the articl already.... youve got to be pretty unaware not to notice your battery drain when its on.
Apologies to Steve Jobs? (Score:2, Insightful)
I do remember everyone saying the 4S absolutely needed 4G, but Apple kept 4G out of it for this reason - it would be horrible about battery life, so bad that it would negatively affect the consumer experience.
Not that the 4S is great about battery life either, but imagine it worse.
And all this for not even 4G. Its more like 3.75G, but the American carriers lobbied to bend the rules in advertisements.
Re: (Score:2)
Concur that the 4S isn't that hot on battery life. I could go 2 full days using my old 3GS, but after day 1 on my 4S it's just a bit below 50% and I won't risk it dying in the middle of day 2. I'm not even using the whiz-bang features like Siri much.
It could just be iOS5 though--after updating my 3GS it was no longer able to last two days of usage, either.
Happened to me (Score:2)
Within a month of buying my iPhone last year, we went camping. I put a lot of effort into preserving the battery so I could test out the compass feature the following morning and take photos all day. I didn't realize that in being unable to find a signal, it would _continuously attempt it_ all night. I had about 90% battery when we went to bed, woke up to about 5%. I was pretty unhappy with this discovery, where I previously figured they were smarter than that.
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds to me like you didn't put ANY effort into preserving the battery.
"a lot" of effort would have involved learning what kinds of things drain the battery beforehand and then avoiding them. Apple has a web page devoted to eeking the most you can get out of your iphone battery at http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html [apple.com]
A minimal amount of effort would have been turning the thing off, because turning a battery powered device off to save the batteries isn't exactly a revolutionary idea.
So what exactly did
When camping, use airplane mode. (Score:2)
I didn't realize that in being unable to find a signal, it would _continuously attempt it_ all night.
Yes, that's pretty much the same issue being mentioned, just that around any other city there's enough network coverage you never see that.
When camping I turn on Airplne mode, unless I'm using the GPS. Sadly use of the GPS requires turning off airplane mode, I've never understood why a receive-only technology is disabled by something meant to stop emission of radio waves...
Re:When camping, use airplane mode. (Score:4, Interesting)
I've never understood why a receive-only technology is disabled by something meant to stop emission of radio waves...
Radio receivers use a local oscillator to demodulate the signal. This oscillator can radiate interference. Here's some more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superheterodyne_receiver#Local_oscillator_radiation [wikipedia.org]
This is news? (Score:2)
The price of being an early adopter ... (Score:3)
This sounds like the cost of being an early adopter. The infrastructure isn't in place yet, so you have to expend more power establishing and maintaining a signal. Assuming that 4G goes mainstream, things will probably be significantly better in a few years.
Remember, these critters are radios and omnidirectional ones at that. Halving the distance to a tower will roughly quarter the required transmit power.
JuiceDefender (Score:2)
caps (Score:2)
It's not like 4G speeds are even worth it when you get capped or throttled at a measly 2GB/month
Re: (Score:2)
2GB!? I could kill that in less than half a day on my plan (7MBit [truly] unlimited for £15/mo)...
Of course, phone features have a history of... (Score:2)
...killing batteries. Bluetooth and WiFi left on are sure ways to kill the battery right in the middle of that important call. Turn 'em off if you're not using 'em.
Of course, it would make sense for these features to have kill switches in prominent view on the Home screen... I don't know of any interface that offers this, just silly little indicators anyone short of Hawkeyes would miss.
Re: (Score:2)
god help anyone read the 50 page instruction manual ...
Of course (Score:2)
They design smartphones for speed.
Slashvertisment (Score:2)
Here's an idea. (Score:3)
I'm surprised if someone hasn't patented this already. It's sure obvious enough:
0. Download an app with the current 4G hot spots in the country
1. Use GPS/map to remember 4G hot spots.
2. Use 3G triangulation (which is always available) to see if you're near a 4G hot spot.
3. If you're near a 4G hot spot, look for 4G.
4. Once a day search for 4G.
Re: (Score:2)
And since none of those you listed have 4G options, imagine how bad your situation WOULD be if they were! You will have to carry a power backpack!
Re: (Score:3)
What about having a fusion reactor with you
While not quite that, at least the name is right... Voltaic Fuse [slashdot.org]
Personally, I have given up on smart phones and have opted to carry a Clear Spot 4G wifi hotspot with me. I'm currently using my out-of-plan Evo with Google Voice and GrooveIP. While the audio could be better, it works, and it's $50/mo for all I can eat 4G that I can plug into my desktop, laptop, wifi for the Android, and it's even allowed me to keep working at work when everyone else's Internet is down because there was an accident that took
Re: (Score:2)
Could I trouble you to talk a little more about your experiences with Clear both good and bad? I'm seriously seriously considering it but have never used WiMax... or a device of that nature and I was curious what real-world experience (good or bad) with it was like.
Re: (Score:2)
Oblig: Teeny tiny Liquid Thorium Fluoride Reactor FTW!!! :D
Re: (Score:2)
Actually that would make for a really good App - an open data server that collects signal data from all the folks who have signed up and agreed to contribute the data, and constructs a dynamic map of coverage. There must be one already... ... [rummage, rummage] ... ... Like this (first one found): Crowd Sourced CoverageMapper [appbrain.com]. :D
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I love my RAZR V3i. Don't diss it, it's the best phone ever made. If only Motorola had made a 3G set in the same case (and no, the Droid RAZR is not the same phone), I would die happy.
BTW, I don't know about production phones but IIRC from videos demonstrating working prototypes, the SII is shy of 8.5mm thick.