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Growing Power Gap Could Force Smartphone Tradeoffs
alphadogg writes "Mobile users face a fast-growing gap between their smartphones' increasing power needs and battery capacity. That gap could force users to make tradeoffs in how, and for what, they use their phones, even as vendors at all levels work even harder to reduce power demand in mobile devices, according to Chris Schreck, a research analyst with IMS Research. Schreck estimates that a 1500 mAh battery, the industry's current 'high water mark,' yields for many smartphone users a battery life of about 6 hours — highly dependent on what applications and on-device technologies, including Wi-Fi, users are running. The latest and greatest tech advances, including faster CPUs, higher data throughput, and improved displays all crank up the demand for power. The combination of user behavior and technology is boosting power demand faster than battery capacity can keep up. Schreck estimates power requirements can grow 15% a year."
The android challenge should add a green-attribute somehow. Perhaps a special award to that category. Its not sexy to make the battery last longer. It takes a lot of effort and without reward, it won't happen. That is because the app appears outside the phone framework. e.g. somehow not responsible for power loss, when it is.
-jp
cant login
gpscruise@gmail.com
There is always a relevant Dilbert strip.
Considering that a mobile phone is always in your pocket and being moved around, isn't there a way to tap the kinetic energy to send small recharges to the battery throughout the day. This won't be enough to never have to charge, but may delay the time between charges enough to make it worthwhile...
Like Rolex watches or something.
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
... Schreck, a research analyst with IMS Research.
As a work around, I think he plans on just having Donkey carry around more batteries.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
This already happened. Years ago. I rarely turn on the wifi on my phone, even if I'm in range and even if I'm surfing the internet, and am sure that GPS is turned off unless I'm actually using it.
Newsflash - laptops with giant screens and monster processors use more juice too. What's next, an article about how V8 engines use more gas than 4-cyl engines?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
It'd be great to know how much of the battery life is consumed by the processors. If it's a major factor (versus, say, screen life, where LEDs and quantum well diodes should theoretically help), then perhaps the reversible computing push so prevalent in Kurzweil's books and rhetoric could be of some assistance.
Was the battery not a solution for a time when devices were used temporarily then set aside? Wouldn't personal-perpetual power make more sense for an age when devices spend more time being on rather than off?
Hope is the currency of fools
Why does the same not hold true for the static handset platforms like the iphone? Yes, the iphone has added features as life has progressed (slightly faster clocks, 3g antennae, bigger storage, compass, etc) but these things - with the possible exception of 3g - are not huge power sinks, and most of them aren't even turned on most of the time.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
Wish they'd do one battery for the radio components and one for the CPU/etc. That way your CPU (MP3, gaming, PDA) requirements wouldn't be a slave to your talk time on the phone - and vice-versa.
Ever have to get some data off your mobile but couldn't turn it on because you've been talking all day and run it down?
Let's get the kneejerk comments out of the way:
- "Doesn't anyone use their phone as a god damn PHONE anymore? I'm running ($massively_antiquated_cellphone) and other than the hernia from carrying it around it stays charged for 3 months!"
- "6 hours on a charge? My anecdote beats that anecdote!"
- "Cell phone designers should stop being lazy and make their phones run on the tears of albino unicorns, then we wouldn't have to read about their problems with power consumption."
- "Technology will advance to take care of this problem. In fact, when the Singularity happens, we won't even need cell phones anymore."
Necessity is the mother of invention. Nothing will drive battery research like a heavy demand for better batteries.
Until that time, carry a spare battery. I've always done this, just in case I drain the first one. This is one of the biggest reasons I refuse to buy an iPhone -- you can't remove the battery.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
You're not going to be able to run the dialer app without a CPU.
I can usually get 12 hours off my iPhone during heavy usage. Days on light use. I don't think that the iPhone is considered a low end power consuming device. I think it is just the case they need higher quality batteries in their device, where the current one probably made the phone a little cheaper. Granted CPU usage will overtake battery growth... Batteries tend to approve linearly while Computation increases exponentially. However these gloom and doom stories we hear over and over again, never really come into play. As we find workarounds, and the fact our needs have changed. For example on the old cell phones they use to have an analog/digital switch that took a lot of power. Most new phones today are all digital so we save energy. Perhaps when we get to the point most cell phones will work over VoIP so they don't need features for the normal calls and text messages. As well it can turn off its cell service when we are in HotSpots, saving more energy.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
no biggie, desk charger... check, car charger.. check, nightstand charger.. check. I don't spend more than 10 minutes between any one of those things... so give me all the features baby, i only need 10 minutes between plug in times. (obligatory thats what she said!)
Don't anthropomorphize computers: they hate that.
The problem why most computing devices suck today is that are to restricted and often to cumbersome to use.
The iPhone was only successfull, because it is easy to use. It's still heavily restricted, for example you cannot do application development on it.
Windows Mobile devices are not much less restricted than the iPhone, but are harder to use.
At least for geeks this might change with newer Linux-based devices running on distributions like Maemo. For example my N810 can do nearly everything your unixoid workstation can do. Sure it's limited in display and keyboard, but seriously, you cannot fit a 30" display into a portable device, can you? I can simply ssh to other computers, or even ssh from them to my portable device. I can simply use apt-get to install packages, and if it shouldn't be availiable, it should be possible to compile it on the device.
I feel there already is a tradeoff. I have an iPhone 3GS, and I know that if I surf the internet or play games for 3-4 hours I'll all but kill the battery. A 2 hour bike ride with the GPS turned on and my route-tracking app running will suck nearly 50% of the battery life from it.
If I'm going to be out of the house or away from the office all day without a chance to charge the devices, I know I need to limit the amount of needless browsing or playing I do with the phone, in order to make sure I have enough power to actually use it when I need to, you know, make a phone call.
...for our on-call mobile devices at work.
Whiz-bang multimedia features, lightning-fast internet access...
What we found after the first few weeks is the we actually wanted a device to make and receive phonecalls, and get texts, maybe the odd email or Google search, and without having to run for a power socket every day.
As a result: GPS - Off. 3G - Off. Push email - Off. We've got a technological tour-de-force and been forced to gut it for usability. It's sad really.
Wow. 15% for 5 years results in double the power demands. I can see his point on battery technology having difficulty keeping up with that, but is sustaining that kind of power demand increase all that likely?
Nowdays the hardware is all the same. All smartphones have 3G, Wifi, GPS and Bluetooth, some have FM receivers. The difference now is all in the software. As much as I dislike the IPhone I guess it still has an edge over other models in that area.
Anyways, less and less power consumption in different parts of the phone could be new way for the hardware makers to differentiate themselves.
Samsung for example makes phones with Windows Mobile, Symbian, Android and their own Smartphone OS. HTC competes with them with their Windows Mobile and Android phones.
backpack-size batteries? like a proton-pack ?
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
I'm sure that the companies and individuals that heavily dealt with the inception of the smartphone knew that this was an inevitability. The more demanding a service becomes, the more the service has to provide; simple as that.
I think that fleeing from the problem --- mobile users demanding more ways to use their powerful devices --- is NOT the way to handle it. Can you really consider re-separating the mobile phone, media player and internet device for the sake of battery life progress? I know that the intention is not this extreme, but even the consideration of such a notion does technically promote these lines of thinking.
Like overcoming Moore's Law, this is a problem that needs to be fought. Many research groups are looking into new types of battery cells which are safer and more power-efficient. Mobile operating systems are increasingly recognizing problematic areas in power consumption, and are addressing them readily.
What I think Jobs is or will land up doing is imposing some kind of far-fetched condition for future iPhones; something like, "Make the iPhone run for two or three days with 3G and wireless enabled, Twitter and AIM in the background (via push notification) and my Bob Dylan collection going." Seems impossible...until their jobs are on the line.
I carry with me regularly:
--a cell phone, with utterly crappy battery life (You've heard about $15 phones with great battery life? This is one of the other $15 phones.)
--a digital camera, with a big fat Li-Ion that lasts for well over a thousand shots
--a netbook, again with a big fat battery
This is rather absurd. I can understand these devices having custom battery form factors, but the power itself should be reroutable. They're all just Li-Ion batteries producing (close to) some multiple of 3.7V; I should be able to run my phone off of my camera's battery, say, when the phone goes flat... or just carry around a big Li-Ion pack in my pocket and run anything I care to off of it. Batteries are flat and I'm in the middle of nowhere? Plug in a solar panel and charge everything, without having to mess with all this DC -> AC -> DC conversion.
In the early days of electricity, before the centralized power grid, families had large batteries they'd charge off of a generator, and then run various things off of by doing the wiring themselves, ad-hoc. We need something similar, but for portable DC setups.
As always, it comes down to consumer choice. Do you want an MC-900-Foot-Jesus-Phone with a library of twelve thousand different fart noises at your fingertips which goes from fully charged to flat in six hours, or would you rather tote around a nigh-indestructible Motofone F3 with a battery which lasts over a week on a single charge, but has no features beyond voice and SMS?
I would advise you to vote with your wallet and let the market decide, but you'd have to buy a new F3 every day for over three weeks just to add up to the cost of The Other Phone so it seems that some votes count more than others.
People always focus on charge capacity and energy usage, but charging speed is just as important. If they can make batteries that charge in a few minutes (or hell, 30 seconds) I wouldn't mind at all if the battery only lasts 6 hours under heavy use. Put some research into that.
From the FA: Battery power and life is "by and large a function of the chemistry in the battery,"
Yeah, and the battery size, maybe? I could go with double the battery volume in my iphone for twice the life; yup, that'd be just about fine with me.
A trend I've noticed for both smartphones and laptops is the constant drive to reduce size and make devices thinner. Smaller and thinner is trendier. Frankly, I wish they're just make an iPhone or laptop twice as thick, thus quadrupling the battery life. I'm not a weakling. I can carry a bit more weight especially if the device is functional enough to take over the function of some other devices I would otherwise carry.
It seems it will be a while before there will be significant progress in batteries. As a stop-gap measure is it realistic to deploy network of chargers? Chargers at cafe, shops, gov offices, ATM and phone booths. Preferably inductive chargers to evade connectors hell. Cellular network operators can brand them, to give them incentive. Payment can go into phone bill.
My G-1 had horrible battery life.
Until I realized that it was more netbook than it was cell phone.
Now I have my expectations set correctly, and I'm not so disappointed with the battery life. Oh, it could be better, maybe, and I would like more than about 9 hours typical life before it goes into the low battery profile, but I now know it is just not a cell phone.
It's more.
And that takes more power.
And we don't have batteries that do that.
Can we squeeze some methane fuel cells into the available form factor? I wish...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I for one welcome our newfound elite high powered smart phones and offer my services subjugating the less powerful smart phones as the growing energy gap widens between them. With the vanishing middle class of smart phones it is obvious that the high powered multifeatured phones will rule the less powerful, featureless unwashed masses of crapgadgets.
Eventually a new breed of simple highpowered basic phones using E-ink technology will eventually overpopulate and violently overthrow the elite phones in which I will help in this revolution, betraying the high powered smart phones at the most inopportune time, thus endearing me to the savage phone armies and securing once again my place of comfort as I exploit the peasantry.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Although I can use my Blackberry as a rudimentary camera, movie/mp3 player, etc. I limit my usage to e-mail, web, and phone. If I want a camera, I will carry one separately. Same thing for iPod. If I want to watch a movie, I can use a laptop. Usage of the BB is limited to things that my other gizmos can't do in a mobile environment. Otherwise, I exhaust the battery on mp3s, and I have nothing left when I really need to use the phone or respond to an urgent message. Nobody's power technology is going to make me feel good about playing mp3s and videos on a smartphone.
... since it doesn't exist. Somehow, my landline + voice only cellphone seem to be more than adequate for my needs.
:-)
Go figure.
Way back in the time of analogue mobile phones I had a nokia whose battery pack was six AA sized Ni-Cad cells. All the phones I have had over the last 6 years have had batteries the size of a wafer-thin mint and, by staggering coincidence, short operating times.
Making the phone twice as thick would give you approx 1000% more room for the battery.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
One word: MintyBoost.
You're not old until regret takes the place of your dreams.
Schreck estimates power requirements can grow 15% a year.
He made the assertion, before walking back down to his hovel in the swamp, with Donkey and Fiona.
There is a display technology just becoming mature enough to replace the LCD displays in smartphones with something that uses a lot less power; a phone battery might last 40% longer with this display in it.
http://www.mirasoldisplays.com/
You don't even have to go back that far... just a few years ago my phone could go a long weekend on a charge, now I have to keep an eye on the "bars" if I forget to plug it in every night.
And somehow I was able to carry that Nokia "bar" phone with a fat battery pack in my pocket. It was only about 20% longer than my current clamshell phone, and no thicker or wider. Give me that 20% back, and eliminate the extra space taken up by the second screen (since it wouldn't need one), two extra layers of shell and hinges, and I'll bet I could get 3x the battery life in a phone that's more rugged and simpler to make.
Besides, you know what they say about a man who has a really small phone.
1500mAh may be the high water mark for cell-phones, but certainly not the current high water mark. I know my Roomba vacuum uses 3000mAh batteries and I can even get 4500's if needed. But then carrying about a cellphone with a Roomba battery attached to it would certainly suck.
I called it a mighty Sperm Whale, she called it Finding Nemo.
It depends on the phone, period. Since the first mobile phone, some phones have had longer battery life than others, and the only reason why some newer phones have less battery life is because the guys who made them decided it was OK.
Battery life is directly proportional to the size of the battery!
It is about form over function. If they wanted to they could make the iPhone last 15% longer by making the battery however bigger it needs to be to accomplish that.
As for behavior, the reason why the iPhone sucks so bad in this area is because it doesn't have a removable battery. Even non-smart phone users that need their phone for prolonged periods of time know how to "adjust" their behavior... It's known as keeping a spare battery . Whether its digital cameras or laptops or whatever, that is the only trade-off for most devices.
Also, I don't see how mobile phones could be all that different from mobile computers, which recently have all doubled or even tripled in battery life, with a combination of market demand and the prioritizing of more efficient CPUs and computer parts.
If people want phones to last longer, they will. The trade-offs will be made by the manufacturers, not the users.
You're on to something here, better bookmark your comment and file a submarine patent, just in case someone can make it work!
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The problem why most computing devices suck today is that are to restricted and often to cumbersome to use.
Since you clearly know what to do why don't you go and fix the problem Mr. Smartypants. I'm sure you'll find it is a trivial problem to solve. I'm sure all those engineers would never think of trying to get a competitive leg up by actually designing a better phone.
The iPhone was only successfull, because it is easy to use. It's still heavily restricted, for example you cannot do application development on it.
Umm, exactly what do you think all those applications in the app store are? 2007 called and it wants its iPhone criticisms back.
If you are talking about actually doing development ON an iPhone instead of FOR an iPhone, I can't for a second fathom why you would want to subject yourself to that much pain...
Perhaps using multiple cores can do the trick. Say that we have the following cores:
1. Basic-core This handles the basic operations on the phone and is run at all time
2. Basic User interface core. When the user starts interacting with the phone this one kicks in and handles the basic operations
3. Advanced User interface This one starts as soon as more CPU intensive tasks are being engaged such as browsing through pictures, writing SMS/MMS (using dictionary lookups) etc
4. Multimedia core This core is activated when playing audio and/or video
Only the first of the 4 cores is active all the time and depending on user operation the others are activated/deactivated accordingly so as to consume minimal wattage. Perhaps the settings can provide the user with the options of forcing core 3 to be disabled to save power and/or forcing it to be enabled (when core 2 is enabled) so as to ensure GUI speed. If the battery runs out the phone can automatically enforce some of the cores to stay disabled until the battery is put on recharge...
This is just an idea but maybe it works...
Introducing the Polymer Lithium Ion Batteries
This is a 3 cell battery that outputs 3.7v @ 6Amps. Best of all its 40 bucks. I have modified many cell phones to utilize this battery pack.
Happy hacking folks.
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8484
yer never away from sleeping or desk for more than 5 hours?
ever heard of things known as weekends.. where people sometimes go outside all day long?
'course, I also leave my phone behind on those days
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Get a prepaid phone. I just got a new net10 basic phone (LG 300G) the other day, no frills, that came with 300 minutes for 30 bucks at mart du K. No idea how long it lasts straight talking, but just being turned on it seems to last several days easily. I had a functional tracphone and was going in to get more minutes, and for the same loot got a slightly larger screen, on a new phone, and more minutes! I don't have that many people I give the number to, so "portability" wasn't a big issue there, although I know you can do it.
Ya know, maybe you can have the best of both worlds. The net10 phone just takes a sim card I noticed when I was putting the battery in it and activating it, maybe get one of those cheap basic phones then slip your sim card from your energy hog phone and plan into it. You'll have to do research on what protocol it uses, I just don't know, to see if it might work on your network first. (I have no idea whatsoever if this would work or not, just thought about it)
And for that matter, on the same prepaid deal, boost mobile has fairly basic phones with just minimal bling, unlimited talk and basic web, etc, for 50 bucks even a month including tax. I'm thinking about jumping ship again to them as soon as I really want more of a PDA phone and they have one that I like and isn't hundreds of dollars. 50 bucks maybe, not 5-700 bucks like they get for smartphones today. I just hates those dumb two year telco plans, you are still paying full price for the phone, and get locked in to boot.
I like a simple basic phone *mostly*, but I want a larger screen for the *very* occasional web browsing.
How about better control over power use. For how long does the WIFI need to be on, and also the Bluetooth. Rather than forcing people to turn on and off various radios (which is unrealistic) design software that can be a little bit more intuitive. I'm so shocked in this modern age how little software learns from how the operator uses the technology. If every day I turn on my phone at lunchtime to check my email, surely the system should be able to learn this (and other patterns) and pre-empt my needs saving power and the need to leave connected power drains. Also, in the end all we are doing is changing information and transmitting it. Of course to transmit requires energy, but information itself has no weight and requires zero energy. So 100% of energy used processing information is due to inefficiency (resistance,leakage) and could be eliminated. When I lived powered by photovoltaics for 10 years, the 1st thing I learnt was to buy extremely low power tech and restrict usage, rather than increase battery size.
Just whiz on your phone when you need more power: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/07/08/urine-power.html
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
In my car, my phone is powered.
At my desk, my phone is powered.
At home, my phone is powered.
The only time battery life is an issue is when I'm away from a place to plug the phone in. If my life were like a sanitary napkin commercial (riding horses, running through grassy fields, etc.) I'd have a much harder time keeping my iPhone charged.
Bigtime Consulting - "We're the best because we cost the most"
If phones could display detailed and accurate information as to the power usage of each application, we'll be able to evaluate applications not only based on features and stability but also power consumption. Apps could compete to use the least amount of power, or be configurable individually to balance battery & speed.
Necessity is the mother of invention, if this goes too far, some genius will come up with the answer
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Firstly they need to hurry up with the portable fuel cells.
Secondly they should be better at designing portable detached power pack / battery units that are tethered with a slender cable and not trying to cram the battery directly into the handheld devices. I'd often rather have 10x the battery life at 1/4 the cost by having a belt clip / briefcase / backpack carried battery pod filled with commodity LiIon cells or NIMH AAs than trying to come out with some thin / slender integrated battery which is expensive, difficult to replace / upgrade, very limited capacity and/or not that lightweight / compact anyway.
Also, I've always wanted companies to offer a much better variety of modular portable electronics devices, and yet they never seem to do that. The "big battery" may be bulky / heavy enough that one may not want to have it inside an ultraportable / hand held form factor device. But look at the kinds of things that the "big battery" is rapidly drained by:
* high power 802.11 wireless networking
* relatively high power audio output for speakers / headphones / speakerphone.
* camera flash
* portable spinning hard disc storage for netbooks or other devices.
* read/write power for SD / CF / USB flash drives / etc.
* GPS receiver
* cellular transceiver RF power stage
* high power CPU
Ok, guess what, these and a lot of other things portable electronics may integrate DON'T HAVE TO BE IN MY HAND.
In fact they'd be better off in a back pocket, in a purse, in a backpack, in a briefcase, or for the things that really don't need high mobility just ubiquitously embedded into one's car / desk / etc.
Offload the big battery draining items that are more seldom used or which don't benefit directly from portability into what would basically be a "black box" unit that has a the embedded functionality and a decently large battery either integrated or attached. For that matter the large battery pack could be a distinct attached module in many cases too. Have some GOOD low power high bandwidth personal area network wireless technology such as a version of UWB or BlueTooth or 802.11 or whatever that is designed for 0-10 megabit speeds or so within about a 5 meter range or less as a short range low power modem which would be lower power consumption than 802.11 or bluetooth typically would be due to limited range design.
Now have the devices that really DO have to be handheld / very portable include things like:
* LCD / OLED graphic display.
* Keypad / keyboard / touch screen.
* Modest microphone / speaker / headset type unit not designed to be a loud speakerphone / speaker driving music amp.
* Modestly powered CPU that is just good enough to be a PIM / alarm clock / etc. which leaves much of the really processing intensive / battery intensive DSP / real time networking protocols / video processing to the more powerful CPU in the "black box" with the bigger battery.
* Modestly sized handheld battery that powers the stuff that has to operate in your hand.
Network the "black box" CPU / storage / cellular / networking unit to the lightweight / compact UI device over the PAN, and you end up with large battery life / capacity for the high power black box unit and large battery life and high apparent functionality / performance from the handheld / netbook UI unit.
The UI unit would act as an ultra low power "network terminal" to the "cloud" and to the "server black box" peripheral unit.
One could have a thin / flexible micro USB cable or whatever going between the UI unit and the "server black box" in cases where one needs higher bandwidth I/O between then or when you need to supply power from the black box to the UI device for extended usage periods.
One could have a black box unit as small as a deck of cards for pocket / purse / belt clip type usage which would STILL probably have double the battery capacity of any common smart phone, and one could have bigger battery / more capable storage & peripheral capacity type black box units optimized
There's all kinds of ways to create power and energy, after all. In the meantime, I just like to keep up with the latest in gadgets - the only way I've been able to afford this is by going to http://www.dubli.com./ It's a helluva experience and beats Best Buy by a country mile!
I agree. And it's not just "smart" phones (a category which is pretty arbitrary now that most phones can do the things that were once smart phone features, such as running applications and Internet access).
I've got a 4 year old phone that I can happily access the Internet on. The thing which limits me isn't the features, the interface, the browser or anything like that - they're all fine. The big problem is that Internet access sucks battery. Basically my choice is "Do I have a phone, or access the Internet?"
Similarly with playing mp3s. It functions fine as a 2GB mp3 player, but only lasts about 6 hours. The problem being that after that, I can't play either mp3s, or use my phone. So I still stick with separate devices.
And finally, the iPhone. I have yet to see that thing make it from the time I would wake up to the time I would go to sleep without a charge. From what I've seen (I don't have one - my girlfriend does), it needs charged twice a day.
Ouch. Thanks for the warning - with all the hype about its use for Internet access, I'd assumed that modern phones, especially high end expensive ones, had fixed this problems. I think I'll stick with my Motorola V980 :)
Let me highly recommend getting the big after-market battery on the G1.
A G1 only fits in the pocket of a suit jacket or something, which for me is maybe 10 days a year, so I'm carrying it in a belt-clip holder anyway. So who cares if the phone is thicker as a result?
Also, it actually makes typing on the keyboard much more comfortable.
The 1100 mAh battery is a real design flaw of the G1, but with the 2300 one I don't even worry about using wi-fi, keeping the brightness cranked, or whatever.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Especially interesting in the developing world. With more popularity/battery life/everything, will or are internet-capable mobiles replacing the need for laptops? It's interesting- instead of one laptop per child, one mobile per child?
The big fat extended battery is one of the things I miss from my HTC Universal from before it got stolen.
640*480 VGA screen, touchscreen, QWERTY keyboard - albeit a lousy one - 3G, SDHC, IRDA, Wifi, Bluetooth, 2 cameras, one for video, one for photos - that phone had nearly everything. And with the 4.8Ah battery I had, not only did the camera still work and so on, but it ran for a whole long weekend of heavy use on a single charge. I could leave home for work Friday morning, go away for a weekend, and it'd still be going when I got back to the office on Monday morning to charge it. OK, so, it was fat with the big battery and no longer fitted in its case - but totally worth it.
The only snags were the disastrous keyboard - poor layout, but app keys for the various bundled programs in the main alpha block, so if you didn't quite hit the space bar, you left your current app in mid-sentence and entered the web browser or something - and the fact that it ran Windows Mobile. Which is utterly horrid.
My current Nokia E90 does more and has a better keyboard, but it has no touchscreen, can't charge over USB, lacks a standard headphone socket and if I use it hard its battery is dead in 5-6hr. If I use my wonderful media phone as an MP3 player or radio all day, and navigate using its GPS, before sunset it's dead - and I can't charge it without the special Nokia charger. Old ones don't work, they changed the connector size.
If I tether it to my notebook it works fine as a 3.5G modem - but its battery is dead in 2-3hr of use.
And no extended ones are available.
It's so stupid it's tragic.
Liam P. ~ "Intelligence is a lethal mutation." (me)