iOS 5 to copy Android, Touchwiz?

[Patranus]

Battery life can be amazing or it can be crap. If you know what you are doing, its amazing.

So now I need to be educated on how to use a battery.
LOL.

There are consumer electronics. People pick them up and use them. They don't spending countless hours on the internet exploring how to get an extra 1/2 second of batter by turning off some obscure setting.

 

[Patranus]

I'm sorry. :hmm:

(So am I)

 

[cheezy321]

Can we please stop obsessing over battery life? That factor alone does not make either platform superior or inferior.

Android has plenty of factors where it beats iPhone hands down:

1. Price... both the handsets themselves are cheaper... but so is TCO... cheaper apps, more free apps, cheaper to upgrade storage, battery and even accessories are cheaper.

2. Physical hardware choice... Physical keyboard? no physical keyboard? 3 inch screen? 4 inch? 4.3, 4.5, 5 inch? Super Amoled, qHD, etc etc

3. Software customization... without rooting or jailbreaking...

4. File management... I'd sure like to store my Bangbros collection in a different directory than Finding Nemo... but unfortunately iOS doesn't help me with that.

Notifications was one of the advantages... and will continue to be an advantage until iOS 5 comes out.

Plenty more too... but Battery life doesn't make the list. Sorry.

Thanks for telling us your thoughts when choosing a phone. Unfortunately you are looking at this from a super user perspective.

Lots of people take battery life into consideration on a portable phone that runs on said battery. Sadly you do not speak for everyone. Only a very small minority who keeps their porn collection on their phone (Seriously, wtf?)

 

[Doboji]

Thanks for telling us your thoughts when choosing a phone. Unfortunately you are looking at this from a super user perspective.

Lots of people take battery life into consideration on a portable phone that runs on said battery. Sadly you do not speak for everyone. Only a very small minority who keeps their porn collection on their phone (Seriously, wtf?)

Oh crap... I thought this was a discussion forum where people come to share their opinions on technology and other.. stuff. Did I come to the wrong place?

Interesting that you instantly understood what Bangbros refers to though...

 

[Anubis]

Thanks for telling us your thoughts when choosing a phone. Unfortunately you are looking at this from a super user perspective.

Lots of people take battery life into consideration on a portable phone that runs on said battery. Sadly you do not speak for everyone. Only a very small minority who keeps their porn collection on their phone (Seriously, wtf?)

with how well android devices are selling im gonna go with the vast majority of people think battery life is a non issue

 

[cheezy321]

Oh crap... I thought this was a discussion forum where people come to share their opinions on technology and other.. stuff. Did I come to the wrong place?

Interesting that you instantly understood what Bangbros refers to though...

You said battery life doesnt make the list. Sure, it doesn't make the list for you. There are millions out there that it does make the list for and that is all I am saying. This entire thread so far has further proved my point that people take battery life very seriously on their phone.

Have fun watching porn on your phone...

 

[akugami]

Not a big difference. You can change the clock speed governor on any rooted Android.

Two things about the iPhone 4: it's underclocked, and iOS just doesn't let you do the stuff that would drain battery fast.

This is user controlled I believe? My speculation is iOS does this on the fly (and aggressively) similar to how modern computers will underclock the CPU when it is sitting idle to reduce power consumption. As opposed to having to manage it manually. I don't own an Android phone so correct me if I'm mistaken. It is easy for Apple to do this since they fully control the hardware and they only release one phone per year.

As another poster has noted, iPhones actually compare very well in battery draining situations like video and is among the top smart phones in terms of battery life. That's not to say that there aren't Android phones with comparable performance (enough to say that it doesn't matter). There are. It's just the majority of Android phones don't seem to fare as well for one reason or another.

 

[Doboji]

You said battery life doesnt make the list. Sure, it doesn't make the list for you. There are millions out there that it does make the list for and that is all I am saying. This entire thread so far has further proved my point that people take battery life very seriously on their phone.

Have fun watching porn on your phone...

You misunderstand me... the list is of features where I believe that Android is better than iPhone. Battery life is a feature where iPhone is better than Android. My point was to say stop trying to argue that Android does as good with battery life as iPhone...

And thanks... great thing about smartphones... you can hold them with one hand.

 

[cheezy321]

with how well android devices are selling im gonna go with the vast majority of people think battery life is a non issue

yeah just like im sure they are selling well because they are 'open' and the majority of android users want to root it

I saw a cricket user with an android phone over the weekend. They are selling well because they are on every single carrier and there are a ton of different options. Of course hundreds of phones on tons of carriers is going to sell better than 1 phone on 2 carriers (in the US). Pretty basic.

 

[s44]

No, the governor *is* the clock/power-down algorithm. It's all in the software (kernel). You can switch between fastest power-up (responsiveness), fastest power-down (battery), different load sampling/detection algorithms (look up, for example, the recent "smartass" governor), etc. with SetCPU or a similar tool.

Android is quite good at hitting low-power/sleep states when it's not doing anything/much. It's just that the free multitasking, background-updating widgets, and the stuff you get with an open sandbox can prevent the chip from idling enough for these low-power states.

On the other end, the underclock to 800mhz (eliminating the 1000mhz CPU state) prevents the iPhone from draining as fast under full load. You can manually simulate this on Android too, of course, and though you may not hit iPhone4 battery times (depending on phone/apps/widgets/use) it makes a really noticeable difference.

 

[zerocool84]

yeah just like im sure they are selling well because they are 'open' and the majority of android users want to root it

I saw a cricket user with an android phone over the weekend. They are selling well because they are on every single carrier and there are a ton of different options. Of course hundreds of phones on tons of carriers is going to sell better than 1 phone on 2 carriers (in the US). Pretty basic.

Iphone has been available on multiple carriers all over the world and still got beat. I guess people prefer crappy battery life (we already have android phones that beat the iPhone in some tests), buggy software, and subpar apps as all you guys say Android is. I see more than one iPhone on sale at any time as well. I must be seeing things. How many iPhone 4's are out there compared to the older iPhone versions? Isn't there a $50 iPhone available? Every iPhone before the 4 didn't get great battery life so that must mean people don't care about battery life or you're overblowing the situation and the average consumer isn't worried about battery life because the battery life is fine to them.

 

[Dulanic]

Oh crap... I thought this was a discussion forum where people come to share their opinions on technology and other.. stuff. Did I come to the wrong place?

The only problem is you came to Anandtech for a discussion. AT forums is the land of... well here and P&N. It is rather wonderful and entertaining isn't it

 

[poofyhairguy]

Android is quite good at hitting low-power/sleep states when it's not doing anything/much. It's just that the free multitasking, background-updating widgets, and the stuff you get with an open sandbox can prevent the chip from idling enough for these low-power states.

It is not just widgets. With Android almost all GUI changes (lists, transitions unless its Launcher Pro, pinch zooming in stock browser, etc.) are done by the CPU, while in iOS this is all done on the GPU. Live wallpapers eat a CPU like its nothing.

That is why in the long run I think Android will benefit more from more cores then iPhones will. In Android mores cores means the GUI function can be done quickly then all power states can return to low, so there won't be a single "pegged" core (cores are max speed use the most power). Once we see more efficient multi-core phones in the market (read Not Tegra 2), I think Android battery life will be more comparable.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Iphone has been available on multiple carriers all over the world and still got beat.

Do you have any evidence to back this up?

 

[Ns1]

Iphone has been available on multiple carriers all over the world and still got beat.

sooo many people own android phones only cuz they're free.

 

[cheezy321]

sooo many people own android phones only cuz they're free.

Thus my comment about the android phone on cricket. The girl using it looked rather...lower class.

 

[purbeast0]

did anyone try out iOS 5 beta yet? did not have time last night to get it.

 

[cheezy321]

did anyone try out iOS 5 beta yet? did not have time last night to get it.

Do you have to be a dev to get it? Or do you have a link to where i can download it? Ill try it out tonight if so...

 

[Ns1]

iMessage. While I haven’t spent much time in it, I have talked with a few friends, and it’s pretty ingenious how Apple just extended their SMS / MMS app into a full-fledged messaging service. When you start a new message and type in your buddy’s contact information, Apple will quickly check if they’re on iOS 5 and automatically switch from green (SMS) to blue (iMessage), and you’re off and running. Once you talk to someone on iMessage, future conversations started will show a blue chat icon next to their name as they will be iMessages — brilliant.

erm, goodbye unlimited text messaging plan?

//edit

Seems to only work with iOS5, so will probably need to keep messaging plan...

 

[Muyoso]

So now I need to be educated on how to use a battery.
LOL.

There are consumer electronics. People pick them up and use them. They don't spending countless hours on the internet exploring how to get an extra 1/2 second of batter by turning off some obscure setting.

Its not an obscure setting to check what services are running and turn down the brightness of the screen. If you don't feel like doing anything to even attempt to improve your battery life, you don't get to bitch about it. If you don't want to tweak your phone to your liking, then stick with an iPhone.

 

[cheezy321]

Its not an obscure setting to check what services are running and turn down the brightness of the screen. If you don't feel like doing anything to even attempt to improve your battery life, you don't get to bitch about it. If you don't want to tweak your phone to your liking, then stick with an iPhone.

So you are basically saying you have to work and earn your battery life? Now I am starting to understand the mindset of an android user!

EDIT: And you can tweak the iPhone to your liking. Stop acting like this isnt possible.

 

[badb0y]

Android sells well because:

a.) The phones are cheaper. I got the Atrix on contract for 99$, it's pretty much the best Android phone on ATT.
b.) Sales - Buy 1 get 1 free anyone? Verizon ran this promotion for a while.
c.) Range of phones from low end all the way to the top end, from multiple carriers at multiple platforms. It's much easier for consumers to pick up a phone at .01$ then to shell out 200$ for an iPhone.
d.) It's an alternative to Apple, I don't know why there is an animosity towards Apple but some people I know choose Android just because it's not Apple.
e.) Curiosity - That's why I bought one lol.

 

[alent1234]

it's like in the ghetto people worship their cars because they have nothing else. the single tech nerd used to worship PC's but its now smartphones. the rest of us with families and kids get iphones or cheap android phones and just use them. who cares what CPU it runs or what the frequency is. it's just a phone

 

[Red Storm]

And you can tweak the iPhone to your liking. Stop acting like this isnt possible.

When I had my iPhone, I wanted to tweak it so that I only had a single homescreen with no icons in grid layout and instead utilize the dock to quickly access my 30 most used apps. I couldn't do this.

I wanted a larger time display and weather that would automatically fetch itself based on my location and show it on the homescreen so I could check it at a glance. I couldn't do this.

I wanted a calendar widget that showed me the date, day of the week, week of the year, along with a list of upcoming appointments that I could accept/reject quickly from the homescreen. I couldn't do this.

I wanted a control widget that would let me toggle up to 8 different settings of my choosing from the homescreen, negating the need to sift through any menus. I couldn't do this.

That's just a few of them, and none require rooting your phone.

 

[s44]

Once we see more efficient multi-core phones in the market (read Not Tegra 2), I think Android battery life will be more comparable.

Tegra2 phones do pretty well in battery life, though. Look at the Atrix.

But yes, this is probably why Nvidia claims that Kal-El will actually lengthen battery life even on the same fabrication process.