The more iPhones become more like Android the crappier the battery?

[Aikouka]

I took my iPhone 4S off the charger about 7 hours ago, and I've made a call, checked my e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, etc., and I'm at 94% battery life. As I've mentioned in other threads, Facebook seems to be my biggest problem right now with that strange update bug. I try to limit how often I'm actually in the app, because I can watch my battery percentage drop as it constantly uses my modem for no apparent reason. I'd guesstimate that 2% of the 6% used was just in the Facebook app.

 

[Bateluer]

As iOS catches up with modern abilities and features, its being asked to do a lot more. Battery technology has really been stagnate, while CPUs have gotten more powerful, screens larger, faster and more power hungry network technologies, etc. Smartphone, and tablet makers, can stick larger batteries into their devices, but its all the same Lithium Ion tech that's been used for years. Just slightly larger.

 

[Mopetar]

Battery technology has really been stagnate, while CPUs have gotten more powerful, screens larger, faster and more power hungry network technologies, etc. Smartphone, and tablet makers, can stick larger batteries into their devices, but its all the same Lithium Ion tech that's been used for years. Just slightly larger.

People are definitely working on it. The researchers from that article have done some interesting stuff to get the batteries to hold about eight times as much charge without the lifespan suffering. It's just that it takes time to develop these technologies, work to perfect them, and then for the necessary manufacturing tools to be produced in order to allow these batteries to make it to the market in large quantities.

Also, electric cars are really starting to become an important focus for many automotive companies. Right now the biggest limit is vehicle range due to batteries. Improving the battery capacity of these vehicles is on the minds of a lot of intelligent folks. If our consumer gadgets benefit as a side effect who am I to complain?

 

[ChronoReverse]

I took my iPhone 4S off the charger about 7 hours ago, and I've made a call, checked my e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, etc., and I'm at 94% battery life. As I've mentioned in other threads, Facebook seems to be my biggest problem right now with that strange update bug. I try to limit how often I'm actually in the app, because I can watch my battery percentage drop as it constantly uses my modem for no apparent reason. I'd guesstimate that 2% of the 6% used was just in the Facebook app.

Yeah, I did some IM, web browsing and tapatalk over my lunch hour on my HTC G2 and the battery is 92% right now. It was using wifi though which is more efficient the 3G.

It's not even close to the iPhone 4 when 3G web browsing (I think it's like 6 hours vs 8.5 hours) but it's not uselessly bad either. Not all Androids are created equal in the battery department.

 

[Bateluer]

People are definitely working on it. The researchers from that article have done some interesting stuff to get the batteries to hold about eight times as much charge without the lifespan suffering. It's just that it takes time to develop these technologies, work to perfect them, and then for the necessary manufacturing tools to be produced in order to allow these batteries to make it to the market in large quantities.

Also, electric cars are really starting to become an important focus for many automotive companies. Right now the biggest limit is vehicle range due to batteries. Improving the battery capacity of these vehicles is on the minds of a lot of intelligent folks. If our consumer gadgets benefit as a side effect who am I to complain?

Better batteries have been promised for many many years, decades in some cases. Progress has been slow, and usually hampered by 'other interests'.

 

[Oyeve]

Better batteries have been promised for many many years, decades in some cases. Progress has been slow, and usually hampered by 'other interests'.

The companies make money selling you a $2 battery for 20-30 bucks.

 

[Pliablemoose]

I get a full day out of my iP4 with 5.0.1 and I'm a heavy user.

I'm seeing better battery life with the updated OS's. I have to put an extended battery pack on Android phones to get similar results.

I do notice GPS use really hammers the battery life.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Can you do the same with an iPhone?

I'm actually just asking too, I'm not sure as I don't own any Apple devices.
But my ZuneHD can go idle for a long time too, unlike the original Zune 30 which couldn't idle for shit.

But I'm wondering if the iPhone's ability to idle is any different from the iPod Touch. I imagine manufacturers put more effort in their media players to allow the to sleep/idle far more effectively.

My Droid Bionic has a sleep mode that is quite effective in terms of battery. I can leave it in sleep all day and see no battery loss, never tried for a longer period of time since I like to use my phone. But forcing sleep is a lot different than leaving a device unattended and it managing power states.


The main question:
can you enable Airplane mode on a recent iPhone and have the same result - simply leave the phone unattended for an extended period of time and see minimal battery loss?
Especially with iOS 5? Since that's more like Android in terms of task and battery management than any other iOS release, I wonder if that has an impact on power management in airplane mode.

And just to clarify:
"standby mode" for the iPod Touch, in this case, is simply setting the device on a table after using it and walking away, right? You're not selecting something called Standby or anything are you?
Do you simply tap the power button to turn off the display, walk away, and see a nearly full battery a few days later?

The point is all the devices did nothing. Wifi and Airplane mode were on. If the Milestone is wasting CPU cycles trying to Sync Facebook when there's no data connection, then that's a software problem.

You can spin it whatever way you want, but the fact the iPod Touch used so little power while I walked away is amazing. I'm not shutting it down. What I meant by standby was the screen was off. I thought iPods usually shut down after a few days, but I took it out of my trunk and hit the Home button when I got to the gym and the screen turned right on to my surprise.

Apple might be engaging a deep sleep mode or whatever, but we've only recently started talking about Deep Idle on the Nexus S boards. Maybe this is the secret to what they've done, and maybe android will get there soon, but honestly, there is without a doubt in my mind that Android sucks more power than iOS.

I can definitely do some more controlled tests, but from what I've read, some friends of mine have done testing of a Nexus One and 3GS for power draw and whether it's screen on or screen off, the 3GS just wins in terms of power consumption. I'm not sure why. Unfortunately I don't have an iPhone anymore so I can't compare airplane mode stuff, but if my iPod Touch is essentially an iPhone without a radio, and airplane mode should disable the radio... then you would expect the two devices to behave similarly right?

 

[ChronoReverse]

Eh, when on standby my old Nexus One would only run down a little less than 1% per hour with wifi on (this was on an AOSP Froyo ROM though, I hear Gingerbread was more power hungry as is Cyanogenmod). By not doing anything, it could remain in standby for 5 days before running out of charge. I'd imagine it'd last a couple weeks if the radios were turned off.

Of course, once you actually did anything, the battery life was pretty low. 6 hours of 3G web browsing if you're lucky for instance. It doesn't hold a candle to the iPhones in active use.


Still, in any test, you should proceed from 90% down. The first 10% of lithium ion batteries tend to gauged really poorly because of the estimations required to produce a percentage charge.

 

[gorcorps]

This isn't news... it's never news. Every single update to iOS seems to come with throngs of people saying it ruined their battery life. I don't know if it's app incompatiblity, the way iOS updates, or legitimate bugs on Apple's end but it happens every time. Even smaller updates like 4.1 to 4.2 have these complaints. The major iOS releases definitely all had complaints from new and old phones alike.

I'm not normally one for conspiracy theories, but it happens so regularly that it seems like it's almost in place to force the jailbreak community to wait for the "battery fix update" that's always right around the corner. The jailbreak teams hate wasting a crack when they know an update is incoming.

 

[MrX8503]

This isn't news... it's never news. Every single update to iOS seems to come with throngs of people saying it ruined their battery life. I don't know if it's app incompatiblity, the way iOS updates, or legitimate bugs on Apple's end but it happens every time. Even smaller updates like 4.1 to 4.2 have these complaints. The major iOS releases definitely all had complaints from new and old phones alike.

I'm not normally one for conspiracy theories, but it happens so regularly that it seems like it's almost in place to force the jailbreak community to wait for the "battery fix update" that's always right around the corner. The jailbreak teams hate wasting a crack when they know an update is incoming.

Yeah and a lot of it is probably in their heads. Judging battery life is a bit hard gauge. I think some may be experiencing some battery life woes, but I think its a much smaller group. According to Anand's tests, the iPhone 4S does use more power under load, but it wasn't significantly more.

Battery life may have dropped a little bit, but it still has much better battery life than a comparable Android device.

 

[Pliablemoose]

One big difference I see with the iPhone radio software is that the thing is very quick to switch to WiFi if there's a signal around, they really worked to get the thing off cell data ASAP if there's a Wifi signal.

 

[hanoverphist]

id consider myself a heavy user of my droidX. i unplug it at 530am and by the time i leave work at 430pm its usually about 60% or so. during that time ill have made at least an hour to an hour and a half of calls, played multiple games on my breaks and used the internet at least 5 times. usually ill toss it in the dock and let it charge while i stream music on the way home, but even if i let it sit in my pocket it will still be over 30% by the time i go to bed at around midnite. most of the battery is taken by the display, and if i set it to minimum brightness it will last a hell of a lot longer. but i like to see the screen when im outside, so i have it on auto brightness. which motoblur version is broken big time. it also syncs 5 email accounts (2nd largest battery user) and weather services. i have it set to performance for the battery usage, so there is no data restrictions after a certain time. i am confident that if i forget to charge the thing, that ill have a bit of battery the next morning. ive done it many times when i forget my charger for an overnight work trip, and stayed out all night.

 

[Fingolfin269]

I get a full work day out of my 4S but charge every night ~25-30%. I think the amount of email traffic I'm getting through exchange is the killer.

I can pretty much go the entire weekend without a charge.

 

[runawayprisoner]

This isn't news... it's never news. Every single update to iOS seems to come with throngs of people saying it ruined their battery life. I don't know if it's app incompatiblity, the way iOS updates, or legitimate bugs on Apple's end but it happens every time. Even smaller updates like 4.1 to 4.2 have these complaints. The major iOS releases definitely all had complaints from new and old phones alike.

I'm not normally one for conspiracy theories, but it happens so regularly that it seems like it's almost in place to force the jailbreak community to wait for the "battery fix update" that's always right around the corner. The jailbreak teams hate wasting a crack when they know an update is incoming.

I think it's safe to say that it's Apple's fault legitimately.

Small updates like 4.1 to 4.2 to 4.3 introduced certain changes to UI behavior (visible in the configuration file if you jailbreak) and certain filesystem relocation so some things may not work as they did before.

The actual changes are probably a lot more sophisticated than just saying that they changed a file or two. Usually, that means older configuration files and older system file formats would not work. Which is why you can't restore a backup of a newer firmware into an older one. But that also means that the conversion of an older file format to a newer one would cause problems. Configuration files, contact database, SMS database, among other things, may experience issues, and that's perfectly expected.

Apple is sincerely not perfect. They have bugs in their firmwares. Developers get first dip and they complain the hell out of it, then when it goes public, the public gets to complain about it, and Apple takes the feedback, goes back to the drawing board, and start fixing stuffs. It has happened to every single beta since at least 4.0.

The iPhone 3G is a very good proof that Apple makes mistakes. They don't make as big mistakes as the 3G anymore (or at least not yet), but based on the number of bugs still residing on the bug report page, I wouldn't suspect that even iOS 6 still has some of those annoying ones.

At least they fixed the checkerboard pattern in Safari and WebView by replacing it with solid background color... That feature was requested so often that it seemed silly.

 

[ChronoReverse]

Because of this thread, I decided to see how my HTC G2 would react to just sitting there in Airplane Mode. I suspected that it wouldn't drain very fast if I only synced twice a day.



I must say, the radio and screen of my phone is certainly the biggest battery draw. My battery is over a year old and it's running Cyanogenmod so it's not the most efficient ROM.