Smartphone Battery Life

I am sure this happens to most of us. You unplug your fully charged phone from the mains in the morning. You then start to actively use it in the mid morning; you make calls, text, Whatsapp and of course do a bit of social networking. By lunch time you only have two thirds of the battery and by afternoon only a third of it is left. As you head back home in the evening you are hit by battery low alerts. So you switch off data and minimize the calls. For the social network addicts you now start tweeting via text. The traffic jams are not particularly useful since you easily get bored and unwind your earphones to listen to your favourite jams. Your twitter crush sends you a direct message on twitter and you are forced to turn the data back on in order to reply to the message. You then take the opportunity to reply to a few notifications and suddenly it’s a blackout. The phone dies. Some people carry around that backup Nokia feature phone but those who don’t are forced to survive the exile.

Battery life on our smartphones is probably the greatest challenge. Some manufacturers and tech experts usually advise on battery saving tips like turning down the brightness, disabling data and so on. Honestly, I don’t like such battery saving tips because it means that you don’t get to use your device like it was intended. By disabling all those features you revert back to a feature phone. What’s the point of having the best graphics if you won’t use it? Why have the best IPS display with full HD if all you will do is reduce the nits by turning down the brightness? In short you are buying an iPhone 5 or an Xperia Z or a Galaxy S4 and ending up with a Galaxy mini (no offense, just using the spec’s difference as a reference). So if you buy a HTC one you should get exactly that and not a HTC Desire C. But that means you will only use your smartphone for half a day. So what exactly needs to be done?

For one you can have battery life as your top priority specification. Evaluate the battery life before buying a smartphone. Go to the web and see what others are saying about the battery life. Most phone reviewers nowadays talk about battery life on a smartphone so you should check that. Sites like GSMArena and Engadget have standard battery tests so you should also check that out.

You should also know the kind of user you are. Android is arguably the best operating system but not really the best in terms of battery management. There are many reasons for this which I won’t tackle today. If you really don’t do much on your phone (and by that I mean if you only tweet and check mail and browse the web occasionally) then you should consider Windows Phone or even the iPhone. I can’t believe I just recommended iOS but those two platforms have no true multitasking hence no background apps to “eat up” battery. True android users know exactly why they need it. They use their droids to download torrents, play shadowgun, manage their blogs and websites and test out new ROMs every day. All this is done while the phone is connected to a wireless charging plate which doesn’t ruin the battery by the way. I guess my point is that before complaining about battery life on your device, first check if you have the right device in the first place. I know, I know, Samsung said the Galaxy S3 was built for humans. Well, that’s true but did they tell you who the battery life was made for?

Nokia is back

Well not quite, but things are looking up. A few things obviously need to be worked on as I will explain but so far so good.

Most people have moved on from the symbian dark days and are entirely evaluating Nokia based on their windows phone devices and so I will do the same. The devices serve different market segments, from low end devices like the Lumia 510 to the high end ones like the Lumia 920/928/925. It will take years to accomplish what Samsung have achieved but all Nokia fans want is to be impressed.

Fans who are into low end devices have something to smile about. They actually have three devices to choose from; Lumia 520, Lumia 510 and Lumia 610 with the Lumia 520 being the best of the bunch. It offers windows phone 8, dual core processor (1GHz) and decent battery. The Lumia 510 and 610 are entry level phones running windows phone 7.8. The idea with Lumia 510/610 is that if you want something that is better than the Asha series but with a similar price point then you can pick either of the Lumia phones.

Lumia 520

The Lumia 620 is a midrange phone that is meant to appeal to the youth. Windows phone 8, dual core processor, clear black display and exchangeable covers are part of the package but the screen may be somewhat small for some people given its only 3.8 inches.

Higher up the food chain are the Lumia 720 and Lumia 820. I kid you not, it is really hard to choose between these two devices. The 720 is better looking in my opinion, the 820 has a better camera, the 720 has a bigger battery while the 820 has a better processor and RAM. But the biggest difference is the RAM. The Lumia 820 has a 1GB RAM while the Lumia 720 has a 512mb one. That means that some applications and games won’t work with the Lumia 720. If you don’t give a crap about games (serious gaming) then the 720 would be a clear winner given its amazing battery life. Two days of normal use is a possibility.

The Lumia 920 is the current flagship. Well, there is the Lumia 925 but it’s basically a redesign with the same internals and probably a better camera though the megapixels remain the same at 8MP. The Lumia 920/925 has the largest screen on any Lumia at 4.5 inches with PureMotion HD and ClearBlack and Gorilla Glass 2. Processor is dual core and is clocked at 1.5 GHz with 1GB ram. The battery is only 2000mAh. If you have the money then this is the Lumia for you but if you don’t Nokia still has your back and all you need to do is just scroll up the article.

Lumia 920

Nokia is making the right strides but I have a few issues with the Lumia devices. Battery life is one issue. This may be something to do with Windows Phone 8 but video playback time isn’t so great averaging 5 hours. Nokia also have a tendency of fitting small batteries to their devices. The Lumia 620 has a 1300mAh battery. Nokia have always been great with battery management but a dual core device needs at least 1600mAh. It is worth noting that fitting the Lumia 720 with a bigger battery has worked wonders.

The other issue is timing. Nokia phones have always arrived late to the show. A good example is the pureview 808, a great device undone for by an aging operating system. Also, it takes a lot of time for Nokia devices to reach the market after being announced. Nokia needs to think ahead. Nokia must find a way to solve battery management in windows phone 8 then start work on multi core windows devices. It’s time they regained their innovativeness. With that said (written) I wouldn’t mind a Lumia tablet and phablet.