Is iPhone Battery Usefulness On the Decline? 222
jfruh writes "Every time a company rolls out a new version of a product, it extols how much better it is than the previous version. Thus, Apple spent a part of its iPhone 5 rollout touting the staying power of the latest version of its battery. But have iPhone batteries really seen improvement since the original came out in '07? Kevin Purdy crunches the numbers and concludes that, while the 5's battery beats the 4S's, we still haven't returned to the capabilities of the original phone."
Oh, the milliamp-hours! (Score:4, Funny)
"As explained around the web, milliamps hours (mAh) are something like a gas tank, and voltage (V) is the amount of fuel the device is drawing."
I don't know who wrote this bullshit, but they need to be shot.
(Yes, I attempted to read the article; so sue me.)
Crap compaired to .... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Jokes on them! (Score:5, Funny)
Sometimes it IS necessary to upgrade though, it can save you real money. I used to spend $$ on firewood for sending smoke signals; but then I made a one-off payment by switching to semaphore flags. Simples!
Re:HUGE DECLINE (Score:5, Funny)
iPhone 4 lasted me (now my wife)
You married your iPhone 4? That's being too much an iFanBoi.
Re:Jokes on them! (Score:5, Funny)
You think you're saving money?
After getting a mating pair of carrier pidgeons, my transmission costs are minimal, and my bandwidth just keeps increasing. Sure there are a few lost packets to aircraft, bb guns and Richard Gere, and latency is high, but we're talking reverse data cap here.
A car analogy that works! (Score:4, Funny)
There is a very good car analogy here.
Over the years cars have become much more efficient, through various refinements and improvements in the design of the internal combustion engine. We are able to produce more horsepower with less fuel. So, did cars stay the same size and increase in fuel economy over the years? Some have, but especially in the USA, designers instead chose to increase the size and power while keeping fuel efficiency relatively constant. So the engine has become more efficient, yet those gains weren't used to produce a more fuel efficient engine, they were used to make bigger, more powerful, cars that had the same fuel economy.
With the iPhone, the battery definitely has become better of the years. So did Apple choose to increase battery life? Nope. As with the cars, they increased the CPU power, screen resolution, GPU power, memory, radios, etc. They packed more powerful components, more efficient components, into the same size with ever increasing battery technology. So battery tech has to keep improving all the time, just to keep up with the increase in power usage from the rest of the system, and it doesn't even always keep up. It takes all the running you can do just to stay in the same place.
I've not developed this very far and I know there are counter-examples, many came to mind while writing this, yet the analogy is apt especially when we confine our comparison to specific segments of the US car market. I'm pleased that, in recent years, this trend seems to finally be reversing, and the US is becoming more--if only slightly--like Europe with their focus on smaller, more efficient cars.
Re:Seriously? (Score:2, Funny)
actually the iPhone does about the same now as before... the "improvements" have all been incremental... Which is why the iPhone 5 only does what a 1 year maybe 1 and 1/2 year old Android does... They've fallen WAY behind the times. the world just hasn't realized it yet...
But they will...
iphone 5 owner: LOOK I HAVE TURN BY TURN NAV!
Android owner: My last two phones did that...
iphone 5 owner: BUT I have 5 rows...
Android owner: SO do I and my phone has widgets and rotates... yawn
iphone 5 owner: Look at my 4" screen!
Android owner: 4.6" yawn
iphone 5 owner: But its APPLE!
Android owner: and you paid 100 dollars more good job sheeple...
iPhone 5 is not the iPhone you are looking for... (Score:3, Funny)
That, my friend, is the iPhone 12 - as was revealed exclusively to me in a morphine-and-"don't worry"-drug-coctail following my (very successful) brain surgery 3 1/2 years ago, a little over a month after the iPhone3G was released.
At this point, sitting stunned in a hospital bathroom, I was pleasantly surprised:
You see, the Interplanetary Patent Office had commited a major temporal blunder, and I held in my hands the fabled iPhone 12.
I'd been looking forward to this, I came to realize, because of the wonderful new function added to this generation of iPhone.
The Replication ability: Simply hold your phone in your right hand, turn your hand around to the left and a duplicate iPhone is created - one which lasts for 12 hours and can be used just the same as the original for that period.
Can you imagine the craze? Lend out your iPhone and keep it at the same time! Borrow an iPhone and buy apps, they'd follow you and not the phone. Lose an iPhone and you could join the begging crowd at the central railway station hungrily gazing at the iPhone Carriers - the source of their only light in life.
The only real problem was that damn bug - those jackasses at the Interplanetary Patent Office not only had committed a major temporal blunder, but they'd sent out a buggy test edition!
The only thing that happened when I turned my hand around to the left was that it made my head *hurt really bad*. I've chosen to take this as an analogy of what'll happen if I (a free-spirited hacker-minded kind of guy) pick up an iPhone... It'll just end in one glorious headache.
----------
Also, clearly, as evidenced by religious leaders, prophets and other conm^H^H^H inspired people, such drug-fueled visions - especially considering the holy trappings of the event... I'd just had a freaking robot in my brain!
This experience should from now on be considered the one holy truth about the iPhone 12.
Oh, and I'm pretty sure that the 4S isn't the only model increase that won't be a straight number one... By my calculations, iPhone 12 will be model 43.
Re:No (Score:5, Funny)
And I'll add that I agree they are useful. Without the battery my iPhone's screen is too dark and I can't hear the audio.