4G Phones Are Really Fast — At Draining Batteries

Hugh Pickens writes "With Verizon's 4G network covering a good chunk of the country and AT&T gaining ground, more smartphone users have access to the fastest wireless service available. But because 4G coverage isn't truly continuous in many locations, users' batteries are taking a big hit with 4G, as phones spend an lot of battery power trying to hunt down a signal. 'You've got a situation where the phones are sending out their signals searching and searching for a 4G tower, and that eats up your battery,' says Carl Howe, a vice president for research firm Yankee Group. The spottiness of 4G stems at least in part from the measured approach carriers have taken to it, rolling out the service city by city. There are a few tricks 4G users can try to extend battery life such as turning off your 4G connection when you don't need the fastest speeds — when using email, for instance — or using a program such as JuiceDefender to search for apps you may have downloaded that you don't need to run all the time, and erase them."

Comments

truly breaking reporting

[Trepidity]

Newest Generation of Consumer Electronics Item Uses More Energy Than Previous Generation Did

Re:truly breaking reporting

[snowgirl]

The hard core android fan brags about having four cores in their phone, even if everything they're doing could easily be handled by a single core, gets its battery drained four times faster, and doesn't have a noticable performance improvement over the competition.

You mean, "even though their phone just turns off the three other cores 95% of the time anyways". And in fact, some even turn off all four cores, and switch over to a super power-saving core that has especially low performance, but is well enough to play music and HW-decoded video.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[larry bagina]

Umm, the standard fapple rebuttal to "my android phone has 4G!" is that 4G is a battery hog and Apple is more concerned with battery life.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[demonlapin]

The iPhone - and it really was the first in this category - got people to charge their phone every single night. Since then people have understood that part of the price you pay for having a smartphone instead of a RAZR (or one of the beasts that had a really long battery life - I had a dumpy looking Moto phone that could easily get ten days of standby if I didn't use it much) is that you have to charge it every night. As long as it gives a full 9-10 hours, most people don't care. If I can get 16 hours without a charge under heavy call/text use, I'm fine.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[anubi]

Consider the marketing angle... that's where the money is.

The people who are opening their wallet to buy are after the snazziest technology they can get. Bragging rights. By golly, they want to have something that everybody else doesn't have.

Lamborghini did not make their profits from their mileage numbers. Anyone who can afford their cars would probably reconsider their purchase if the car failed to pass everything they meet on the freeway.

So the phone won't run an hour between charges... who cares? The guy has already bought spare battery packs and charging apparatus. The phone has already served its purpose if it impressed the hell out of his co-workers during the call in the conference room.

These phones are not designed for the same market that goes to Wal-Mart for jeans.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[snowgirl]

Oh definitely, but for example the Tegra3 despite having four cores shuts them all down most of the time, and runs a 5th power-saving core. All of this is done silently behind the scenes, and so they never know that they're usually only running on a low-power efficiency core, rather than the roaring engine in the back.

It's like having a two-cylinder engine that is used during stop-and-go traffic (you know, the majority of what you do during your commute) that allows you to drive your Ferrari down to the store without having to fill up on gas on the way back home. But any time you have to impress someone, and pull out the e-peen, then you can just "drop the hammer" and the engine switches over to the high-performance v12, and you go "ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!"

It's definitely all about marketing. This is the best way that they could come up with to let you have your cake and eat it, too... "it has 4 cores, _AND_ it has excellent battery life! *mumbling under breath* because it is almost always running on an economy core unless you're showing off..."

Re:truly breaking reporting

[Belial6]

Sounds like a brilliant design.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[garyebickford]

I'm still running my five-year-old Treo 650. For most of that time I've had to charge it almost every night. But last summer the vendor (Nokia) that supplied email support to Verizon turned it off, so I couldn't receive email any more. Now I can go three or four days between charges! :)

Re:truly breaking reporting

[ozmanjusri]

Sounds like a brilliant design.

In many ways, it's simply a logical next step - see Nvidia's white paper for architectural details. http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_90715.html

Thing is, we're so used to minimal innovation in the stagnant Wintel-controlled X86 world, the rapid pace of change in ARM systems is exciting. Imagine a beowulf cluster of them, for example...
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/11/the-opposite-of-virtualization-calexdas-new-quad-core-arm-part-for-cloud-servers.ars

Re:truly breaking reporting

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The Tegra does sound very good. Also, with the auto metaphor, several modern engine families do shut down cylinders when the brute power isn't needed, to increase efficiency while still allowing seamless access to full power. And it works pretty well, unlike GM's old, maligned 8-6-4 system, which I understand was a system rushed to market maybe a year before it was ready, and then abandoned before it was refined any further.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[Jeff DeMaagd]

My parents had to charge their Nextel phones every day or risk a dead phone on the second day.

I do charge my iPhone every day out of habit because I tend to forget once in a while, and if I forget two days in a row, I might be in trouble.

You might think iPhone started it, but people got in the habit of charging smart phones, regardless of brand, and this was before iPhone was available.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[Dutchmaan]

Now correct me if I'm wrong but I was under the impression that having multiple cores on a phones CPU actually *increased* battery life somewhat.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Newest Generation of Consumer Electronics Item Uses More Energy Than Previous Generation Did

The worst part is we don't need the extra speed, we need better coverage and better data plans.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[EETech1]

Too many of the damn things, and you end up buying your jeans from the thrift store.

I've got way more old phones than I have good pairs of jeans, and I kinda like it like that.

Never tried this though, perhaps I could get insurance from JC Pennys like I do Sprint. Then when my jeans won't zip, or I rip the knee, I could just piss them, and bring them in for the latest model too:)

Re:truly breaking reporting

[Pieroxy]

The iPhone 4S goes to the same speeds as 4G phones, and yet it uses the 3G network, giving more battery time and better coverage.

Not all phones are equal.

Now I'm waiting for the downmods to hit me for suggesting that an Apple product *might* be superior in *some* way to *some* other products that have an os that *claims* to be open-source.

Have a nice day.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[YoopDaDum]

It depends. For a given fixed amount of work that scales well over several thread, the multicores CPU will finish the job earlier and go to sleep faster. Even if you had the same implementation efficiency, going to sleep (power gating) earlier is a win as you save the leakage power. But in practice newest CPUs are also made on newer and more power efficient process than older, lower cores implementation. So you win also on that part.

The gotcha in this nice story is that it's only true for a fixed amount of work. If you start to do more, then you can increase the load up to a point where the load increase more than compensates for the limited efficiency gain. And then your power consumption increases.

Bottom line: whether a fancy multi-cores CPU will save or eat battery will really depend on your usage pattern. YMMV.

By the way, the same really apply to 4G vs. 3G vs. 2G (I thought I might touch about this too, as it's the topic of the thread ;). Each new generation is MORE power efficient in term of energy per bit transferred. No contest there. But people tend to use the network much more, and more than over compensate for the efficiency gain.
One caveat thought: the statement above applies once you're connected. The issue described here is due to a power inefficient scanning while the device is looking for 4G, and it's a different thing. But this part can be improved too over time. And will cease to be a problem when 4G is more widely deployed (youth problem).

Re:truly breaking reporting

[gl4ss]

it would be fun to actually use the things too.

on another note, with lte phones it seems like it's a case of bolted on extra chip burning away the juice rather than anything else.

btw usa is the number one place to go for cheap jeans. friggin 40 bucks for any levi's at a levi's branded(outlet, but still, was nothing "outlet" about that place) store? I have to pay 80euros+ for 501's here.

if you'd do a jeans price index then usa's mobile plans are horribly horrible. I guess it doesn't matter that the phone can only do 1 hour of 4g when you'll run out of quota in 30 minutes anyways.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[kelemvor4]

Oh definitely, but for example the Tegra3 despite having four cores shuts them all down most of the time, and runs a 5th power-saving core. All of this is done silently behind the scenes, and so they never know that they're usually only running on a low-power efficiency core, rather than the roaring engine in the back.

It's like having a two-cylinder engine that is used during stop-and-go traffic (you know, the majority of what you do during your commute) that allows you to drive your Ferrari down to the store without having to fill up on gas on the way back home. But any time you have to impress someone, and pull out the e-peen, then you can just "drop the hammer" and the engine switches over to the high-performance v12, and you go "ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!"

It's definitely all about marketing. This is the best way that they could come up with to let you have your cake and eat it, too... "it has 4 cores, _AND_ it has excellent battery life! *mumbling under breath* because it is almost always running on an economy core unless you're showing off..."

You don't know how good that car analogy is here. Honda's minivans have 6 cylinders and the computer will disable 3 of the 6 as needed to achieve better fuel economy without sacrificing performance when you need it. Of course "performance" on a minivan is relative, but you get the point.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[zmollusc]

Pah! My Nokia n95 predated the iphone and needed charging every night and topping up whenever possible during the day. On the plus side, (for additional reasons of crappitude) it made choosing phones easier in the future as i no longer considered nokia products. Just like LG did with my 910 Renoir and RIM did with whatever Blackberry I had (battery life on blackberry was ok as it couldn't do anything).
Sorry. Got sidetracked into ranting about crappy phones.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[realityimpaired]

By the way, the same really apply to 4G vs. 3G vs. 2G (I thought I might touch about this too, as it's the topic of the thread ;). Each new generation is MORE power efficient in term of energy per bit transferred. No contest there. But people tend to use the network much more, and more than over compensate for the efficiency gain.

I had always been under the impression that 4G radio does actually use more energy to transmit on a per-second basis. While it's true that per-bit it uses a *lot* less, simply because it's a lot faster than 3G or 2G radio, when you're streaming something like a Youtube video, that becomes moot, because the radio is on for 5 minutes whether you're watching at 3G speeds or at 4G speeds, simply because of how that service sends you the video. As a result, 4G devices will have lower battery life when you're using it for data intensive applications (like streaming media). In other words, that, too, depends on your usage pattern.

Other than that, I agree with everything you say, though.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[kelemvor4]

It doesn't have to be that way. Battery life has all but dissapeared in discussions/debates/religious wars about cell phones. The hard core android fan brags about having four cores in their phone, even if everything they're doing could easily be handled by a single core, gets its battery drained four times faster, and doesn't have a noticable performance improvement over the competition.

We're missing a battery life per functionality unit in the tech wars debate.

You're out of date.

http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-Services/Mobile-Phones/DROID-RAZR-MAXX-by-MOTOROLA-US-EN
4g droid with insane battery life.
Motorola says: On one full charge, you can host a marathon (as in more than 21-hour) conference call. Whip through the web for 7 hours straight. Get your movie fix with 15 uninterrupted hours of flick watching. Jam out all weekend. That’s right — on one full charge, you can listen to music for two and half days straight.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[AJH16]

My 4G galaxy nexus gets considerably better battery life than my 2 year old 3G Galaxy S. Granted I live in an area with pretty good 4G coverage, so it doesn't constantly search for a tower.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[atrain728]

Dodge's HEMI engines do the same thing, or at least it did in my 2007 Charger. Plenty of power when you need it, but is basically a really heavy 4-cylinder on the highway.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

The iPhone 4S goes to the same speeds as 4G phones, and yet it uses the 3G network, giving more battery time and better coverage.

Umm, no. It's not even close. Speeds on Verizon's 4G LTE network are far faster than any iPhone 4s is currently capable of.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[21mhz]

The people who are opening their wallet to buy are after the snazziest technology they can get. Bragging rights. By golly, they want to have something that everybody else doesn't have.

Somehow I doubt that the "look, it's got four CPU cores!" line would make every chick fall for you.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

Just getting people primed for the switch to Electric cars ;)

Re:truly breaking reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

This whole comment reaks of stupidity and a complete lack of understanding of phones and communication standards.

The iPhone 4S goes to the same speeds as 4G phones, and yet it uses the 3G network...

Your perception on the download speeds of these phones is completely subjective. Despite the fact that 4G standards are written so that the requirements for the upstream/downstream speeds are much higher than 3G standards, you're claiming that a phone on a 3G network can get the same download speeds as a phone on a 4G network? That may be true if your 3G phone was sitting next to a cell tower with no other users around, while your 4G phone was sitting inside a metal cage using a saturated network.

...giving more battery time and better coverage.

The iPhone 4S battery life is already piss poor. 4G phones are 3G capable, so your argument of coverage is irrelavent. Your coverage depends on the network, not your phone.

Now I'm waiting for the downmods to hit me for suggesting that an Apple product *might* be superior in *some* way to *some* other products that have an os that *claims* to be open-source.

How the hell does a post on 4G phones being power hungry turn into a Apple vs. Android discussion? You're suggesting that the same chipset that handles the 3G/4G connections somehow becomes superior when put into an iPhone vs any other phone? Yeah, that's pretty idiotic and this comment should be burried because you're an obvious kool-aid chugging Apple Fanboi that with no factual relevancy in this discussion.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[Miamicanes]

> The iPhone - and it really was the first in this category - got people to charge their phone every single night

No, it got people to carry chargers everywhere, and panic if the restaurant doesn't have a power outlet at the table. Apple legitimized undersized, wimpy batteries. If manufacturers weren't hellbent on making sure that every new Android phone is a fraction of a millimeter thinner than the latest iPhone, and just gave us another 3x5 inches of millimeter-thick 3500mAH battery goodness, we could go back to having phones that can be used aggressively all day, all evening, and still have enough power in the morning to last until noon. But no, we're forced to settle for pregnant lumps with half the area and double the thickness that render the phone incapable of fitting in any reasonable case, so we're stuck gambling between the phone's destruction and a dead battery.

There IS a middle ground between Apple (battery that maximizes capacity per area, but can't be user-replaced easily) and Android (lumpy battery that's a commodity, but undersized) -- put two batteries in the phone. One, that's iPhone-like and not (easily) replaceable, and one that's like typical commodity batteries. Set up the charging logic to always drain the commodity battery first, and charge the fixed battery first. That way, we'd get ~30 hours of use from the fully-charged pair, but could keep swapping $3 (from China) secondary batteries all day for another 3-6 hours of power if necessary.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[jader3rd]

Motorola says: On one full charge, you can host a marathon (as in more than 21-hour) conference call. Whip through the web for 7 hours straight. Get your movie fix with 15 uninterrupted hours of flick watching. Jam out all weekend. That’s right — on one full charge, you can listen to music for two and half days straight.

This is what we need more of. While an Apple like 1000 songs, isn't a very scientific unit of measurement, it does express the idea of what the device does for me regardless of hardware.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[jader3rd]

but is well enough to play music and HW-decoded video.

Are you saying a device needs four cores to play music?

Re:truly breaking reporting

[jader3rd]

If I can get 16 hours without a charge under heavy call/text use, I'm fine.

Exactly. But pulling off that great end to end experience generally requires more control over a system than what the device makers generally have. So when they decide to advertise their brand to consumers all they can go off on is how much hardware is on the system. But if the hardware doesn't actually help with anything the user notices (battery life for example) I find bragging about hardware to be a moot point.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[jader3rd]

Now correct me if I'm wrong but I was under the impression that having multiple cores on a phones CPU actually *increased* battery life somewhat.

If all a device manufactuer did was add cores, for each core you added, that much more power would be consumed. By default your computer sends NoOp signals across the core for every clock cycle it doesn't have anything to do. The last few years though there have been more games played with sending cores to low powered states or turning them off altogether. The reason why they have to play these games is because more cores require more power. So if there is an increase in power savings it's because they had to have the ability to play the power savings games that they didn't have before.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[YoopDaDum]

"Always on" at the user level doesn't necessarily mean always on at the radio level. For example in LTE the unit of allocation time-wise is called the subframe (SF), and lasts 1 millisecond. For low throughput, the radio will typicall only be used for transmission 1 subframe every N only and be off (or receive only for FDD) the rest of the time.

The topic of UL allocation is actually a very complex one, with trade-offs between power, user throughput and cell throughput. I can't go into all the details, but the frequency used is a very key element, and usually dominates the comparison. The first 4G deployed in the US, WiMAX, is in the 2.6 GHz band. Attenuation there is very high and requires high average transmit power. WiMAX and LTE both have the same maximum transmit power of 23 dBm, and at 2.6 GHz the device will spend most of the time at or very close to 23 dBm, and often being forced to subchannelize (only use a part of the bandwidth, to concentrate its power there and reach a sufficient power density at the base station). Whereas at 700 MHz a device is usually at much lower power level, with a much reduced power consumption. And can use the full band without problem (if practical). So expect 4G transmission to be significantly more power efficient at low frequency.

It turns out that historically, the first generations used the lowest bands. And newest generation had to use what's left, in higher bands. 2G is often at 900 MHz, 3G at 2.1 GHz and 4G started and will often be at 2.6 GHz (YMMV). The digital dividend changes this, and LTE is and will often be deployed in low bands too. Verizon started at 700 MHz for example.

In the end this means that it's nearly impossible for an end user to compare fairly 2G, 3G and 4G. You can only compare a couple (generation, frequency), and the frequency will often be the key factor.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[interkin3tic]

The display consistently uses up a third of my battery on my galaxy S2 skyrocket. So a big part of what's driving my battery drain is not the latest and greatest hardware, but the fact that I wanted a bigger screen. I told myself it was because I hate typing on cramped virtual keyboards and not just because of some compensation issues, but take that for what you will.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[jader3rd]

I wanted a bigger screen. I told myself it was because I hate typing on cramped virtual keyboards

Perfect. You knew what user experience you wanted and why you wanted it. In a perfect world there might have even been a size-of-screen-per-hour-of-battery metric that could have helped you make an even more informed decision. But if it's all about screen size, it's all about screen size.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[Dog-Cow]

No, the OP wasn't saying that at all. It's funny how you somehow twisted his words to imply the exact opposite of what he wrote.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[snowgirl]

No, the OP wasn't saying that at all. It's funny how you somehow twisted her words to imply the exact opposite of what she wrote.

TFTFY

Re:truly breaking reporting

[Pieroxy]

So you don't know shit about the iPhone 4S. Fine. But you shouldn't comment about it then.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[jader3rd]

I was trying to see if she was saying what the 5% of the time a handheld device needed the four cores was. I didn't find the statement to be clear enough which is why I asked the question. If decoding HD video doesn't require the cores, why would a user be paying for this extra hardware they're never really going to end up using?

Re:truly breaking reporting

[GameboyRMH]

I had one of those, it could go a week if you didn't use it much, after an average day of use the battery would be in the 60%-70% range. Sometimes I'd go two or even three days without a charge and still make it, I never ran it completely flat. If you were running yours flat every day without using it constantly something is wrong.

My N900 now, absolutely needs to be charged every night, and it wore down its first battery to the point that it was barely making it through the work day in just about two years.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[GameboyRMH]

Oh wait, I just remembered why my Treo's battery lasted so long. The keyboard backlight burns power like crazy, I used the app KBlightsoff to keep it off most of the time. It was a commercial app which you might have trouble finding now, if so send me an email...

Re:truly breaking reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

I know enough about cell phones and wireless standards to know how idiotic it is to think that the same chipset that handles network communications (not the A5, but the same Qualcomm chipset that goes into every other phone) gets put into another handset somehow becomes superior when put into an iPhone4S.

Go back to playing with your magic box.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[garyebickford]

:) Interesting - I never thought of that. With the magic of Google I found that it's apparently still available for download. Thanks!

The thing is getting pretty long in the tooth, so I'm probably going to replace it soon.

It's funny how such minor things that you wouldn't think of, can have such an effect on batteries. It shows how every little thing has to be just right to keep the batteries going longer. Then there's the odd phenomenon that we complain about the batteries on a handheld device that outperforms supercomputers of not-that-long-ago (that required a small river for cooling) and manages our entire lives (if we let it) - where's our sense of wonder and amazement? :D

Re:truly breaking reporting

[GameboyRMH]

Of all the PDAs I've bought the Treo 650 is the one that gave me the biggest "I'm living in THE FUTURE" feeling when I first started using it. The N900 was close but not quite as much, even though in terms of technical advancement it was astronomically bigger than any previous upgrade.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[garyebickford]

I was really, really looking forward to getting a WebOS phone, just waiting for a higher-quality hardware package than the Pre. Sigh.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[Pieroxy]

I'm not talking about standards, but about implementation. By reading you one would find impossible to believe the iPhone 4S has twice the data speed of the iPhone 4, since they are all on the same 3G network. How can that be? Huh?

Just an illustration of the theoretical speed of 4 phones The first generation 4G phones are not faster than the iPhone 4S. Of course, the 4G standard has much better potential than that. But the first version of the phones are consuming a hell of a lot of battery, while going no faster than an iPhone 4S.

Sure, you can call it Apple propaganda, but the field tests tend to agree with the graph (at least I've read about one a few weeks ago)

Re:truly breaking reporting

[sonicmerlin]

And yet in the end it doesn't matter. Android will lag no matter how much power you give it because its UI thread it locked to the same priority as the apps thread. Here's an example of a very sluggish web browser that renders the UI thread at the highest priority: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWXxCFmKUlQ&feature=player_detailpage#t=40s

No matter how slowly the page is rendered, the Vita's browser will give you a silky smooth, 60 fps experience. Android OTOH chugs when the phone is loading up heavy web pages, and the more apps you install the more the phone slows down. Tegra 3 is meaningless in the end. Google's attempt to avoid fixing their OS's most frustrating issues by covering it up with "MOAR POWER"ful hardware is the opposite of where the mobile industry is heading. If Google doesn't fix their OS's major problems (lag, standby battery drain, a garbage collection and VM that drains battery much faster than all other OS's), WP8 (and Windows Phone Tango) is going to swallow up all their marketshare.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[demonlapin]

aggressively all day, all evening, and still have enough power in the morning to last until noon

That's a phone that has to be charged every night during the week, because it can't do two full days' work on a single charge. Sure, my phone can easily do 48 hours or more on the weekend without a charge, but in the work week, it charges every night.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[sonicmerlin]

Google's dumping of a free OS drove everyone out of the market. Palm went bankrupt, Intel backed out of pushing MeeGo/Maemo. Samsung isn't bothering to bring Bada over to the west. It sucks. Google destroyed the mobile industry Renaissance we were about to have with their piece of trash OS.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[sonicmerlin]

Android nullifies any battery advantage because of its stupid garbage collection and VM.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[sonicmerlin]

Sorry to disappoint you, but nothing is as perfect or simple as you'd like them to be. Android suffers from massive standby battery drain issues:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1179809

Some people report losing anywhere up to 90% of their battery drain through the screen (or so it's reported in Android): http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1128219

Basically Android is a terrible OS that will never stop lagging because its UI thread is at the same priority as the apps.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[jader3rd]

its UI thread is at the same priority as the apps.

It's not quite as simple as that. Apps use the UI thread. The first problem is that the UI thread does too much. iPhone and WP7 have split the responsibility of UI into two threads which coordinate the responsibilities of the "classic UI thread". Roughly speaking, ones for input and the other is for output. You could make the UI thread on Android as high a priority as you want and it wouldn't matter because the UI thread receives an input signal and calls the appropriate method/event for the given area of the screen. The registered method can take as long as it wants, doing whatever work it wants, before the UI thread returns to the state of receiving more messages. So it's not the priority of the UI thread that matters, what counts is dividing up the UI work amongst threads, allowing each one the time it needs to get the job done. And since all of the UI on Android happens on the same thread, adding more cores to Android will have less of an immediate measurable gain than iOS or WP7.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[GameboyRMH]

If MeeGo/Maemo were the free OS that destroyed the competition I would have been happy.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[sonicmerlin]

That makes a lot of sense. Are you an Android developer?

At any rate, every OS built after iOS handles the UI input better than Android. WebOS, WP7/8, MeeGo/Maemo, Vita OS, even Blackberry's new QNX OS. In fact I'm guessing this is why RIM bought QNX instead of rebuilding their entire antique OS. Android's the only holdover left. I like to think that in a truly competitive market, one where OS's don't depend on the major carriers pushing them onto its customers, Android would not have succeeded against its technically superior competitors.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[sonicmerlin]

Oh god yes... don't make me weep. Now we're stuck with iOS and very likely WP8 will replace Android in the long-term future. They're fine but... jeez. Freaking Elop.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[GameboyRMH]

I think WP8's gonna flop. They're selling so bad they make the N900 and N9 look like mass market hot-sellers. Even I was surprised at how spectacularly WP8 has failed.

Re:truly breaking reporting

[sonicmerlin]

You mean WP7?

Re:truly breaking reporting

[GameboyRMH]

Yeah I remembered the name wrong.

Very frustrating

[jpwilliams]

I'm in SF, and I upgraded from an iPhone 3G to a HTC Thunderbolt with 4G. The Thunderbolt, even brand new, has to be charged twice a day at least, and I keep things like Bluetooth and wifi off most of the time. If I don't plug in my phone at night, it will be dead by morning.

Coming from someone who carefully manages when I plug my electronics in so as to extend their usable battery life, it sucks to have to feel like my phone always needs to be plugged in.

Is the 4g tech itself power hungry? Mine seems to have battery trouble even when I'm stationery and the 4g signal is strong.

Re:Very frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

Coming from someone who carefully manages when I plug my electronics in so as to extend their usable battery life, it sucks to have to feel like my phone always needs to be plugged in.

>

Take your nickel-chemistry assumptions about how to treat a battery out back and shoot them. There's this new battery tech called lithium-ion -- perhaps you've heard of it>? -- used in a few devices (by which I mean everything), and it does not like discharge cycles, especially deep discharges. Keep it plugged in.

Re:Very frustrating

[metalmaster]

Unfortunately the HTC Thunderbolt, one of the first attempts at a 4G handset in the US, is plagued with battery issues. A quick Google search shows that it's not just you. There are also many things you can do to try to extend the battery life such as using a resource manager like JuiceDefender that aggressively manages your radios and display options when not in use. You can also use the phone's built-in power saving mode which can be found in your phone's settings menu. This will perform the same task in a less aggressive manner.

I used Verizon's other 4G-launch handset, the Samsung Droid Charge, and regularly got about a day and a half out of the battery. I could stretch to 2 days orso with less use. After using the JuiceDefender app I was able to get a solid 3 days. However, this was a different handset from a different manufacturer YMMV.

Re:Very frustrating

[quacking duck]

People mocked Apple for not including 4G in the iPhone 4S, but your experience, and that of the entire article, seems to validate their position: 4G technology just isn't power-efficient enough (YET) to include without forcing Apple to either include a much bigger (heavier, bulkier) battery, or cut their estimated usage time significantly.

The competition pushed the "bigger screen = better" in part because it's a genuinely requested feature, but the unspoken reason was to hide the fact a bigger battery was needed to drive the 4G electronics--and obviously it's *still* not enough. It's certainly not your display that's sucking battery life--despite the 4.27" screen the Thunderbolt has less than 2/3 the pixels the iPhone 4 and 4S has.

Re:Very frustrating

[SlashdotOgre]

Interesting, I work in downtown SF and live in the East Bay and have no problem getting a full day out of a charge on my Tbolt. I picked up the phone around launch, and on the original stock firmware, battery life was pretty abysmal. I'm currently running a custom rom (Liquid Thunderbread 2.6), and now easily get a day on normal use (including roughly an hour of continuous browsing on BART each workday). My wife has the same phone and can get a couple days (she works in the East Bay and uses the Internet much less than I). She also uses a custom rom (Liquid Smooth 3.2), so that may be the difference (I believe both our phones use the "SMARTASS" governor and a clemsyn kernel).

Re:Very frustrating

[garyebickford]

I just thought I'd say thanks for actually using the proper grammar - "... uses the Internet much less than I" (with implied 'do'). Good job, good example! :)

Re:Very frustrating

[clarkn0va]

I get better battery life if I leave wifi on. It uses less power than 3G. The exception would be if I know I'm going to be away from wifi for a while, like on the highway, but as long as your phone is passing data (when isn't it?), it's better on the battery and on the pocket book to pass it over wifi.

Re:Very frustrating

[Solandri]

Is the 4g tech itself power hungry? Mine seems to have battery trouble even when I'm stationery and the 4g signal is strong.

Most 4G tech is using OFDMA. It achieves higher data rates than CDMA by using heavier signal processing to extract the data signal destined for your phone out of all phones in a cell. Previously this processing required too much power for a mobile device. But low-power CPU tech has advanced enough to where it's realistic to use it on a phone. As processor power requirements drop, the power needed for 4G will likewise drop.

Re:Very frustrating

[TubeSteak]

4G technology just isn't power-efficient enough (YET)

The problem isn't just the 4G hardware in the phone, it's the 4G coverage offered by cell towers.
Since coverage is spotty, the phone will spend a lot of time with the radio cranked to the max, desperately searching for a signal.

If you want to test this out, stick your phone in a *microwave.
It's not a perfect faraday cage, but it's good enough and I guarantee your battery will be dead within a few hours.

*I suggest you unplug the microwave first, to avoid any accidents.

Re:Very frustrating

[jpwilliams]

That's assuming there's a wifi network you can connect to. Pointless to have it on if you won't be connecting to a network.

Re:Very frustrating

[jpwilliams]

Hate to say it, but I just got served!

  http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries

Good article. I thought it was bad to keep it plugged in and good to let it run. Turns out it's the opposite!

Anyone know if the same applies for laptops?

Re:Very frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't like to get charged either. Every time you charge them they die a little inside.

Charging from 40% to 100% 10 times might be better than charging from 50% to 100% 12 times.

Re:Very frustrating

[norpy]

The power usage of an LCD is by far dominated by the creation of light, the number of pixels will increase power consumption but not by anywhere near as much as the bigger back light.

Re:Very frustrating

[stephanruby]

Is the 4g tech itself power hungry? Mine seems to have battery trouble even when I'm stationery and the 4g signal is strong.

The same for my Evo 4G, but I'm told the latest 4G models at CES consume less power and also run less hot on 4G. For me, I have 4G turned off almost all the time, and it's really only when I need 4G speed that I turn it on (which happens only once every couple of days).

For most things like Google Navigation, downloading regular-sized apps, listening to streaming podcasts, doing email, and browsing the web, 3G is usually ok enough. It's really for watching movies at high resolution, doing video chat, downloading the latest 350 MB game, or sharing my phone as a hot spot with my friends that I prefer to turn on 4G (I'll even choose 4G over my home wifi since the 4G speeds I'm getting are much faster than my home DSL).

In your case, if you really do need 4G to be turned on all the time, you should really consider investing in an extended battery.

Re:Very frustrating

[Relayman]

"The iPhone 4S supports HSDPA 14.4 and HSUPA 5.76 for GSM/UMTS-based carriers like AT&T, alongside CDMA2000 1x/EVDO Rev.A for 3GPP2 based carriers like Verizon." The article claims HSUPA is another name for HSPA+.

Re:Very frustrating

[YoopDaDum]

When 3G was improved, the downlink (DL, from base station to device) was improved first. This was HSDPA (D for DL). Then in the following release, the uplink (UL) throughput was improved too, and an improved UL is HSUPA. If you have both improved DL and UL, it's HSPA. And then there's been further improvement in the DL (carrier aggregation, MIMO. Although MIMO is not very popular) to give HSPA+.
In practice, there's no implementation with only the UL upgraded. So HSUPA support means HSPA support. Whether you're HSPA+ is another matter (and purely DL related).

Re:Very frustrating

[jank1887]

all laptops are Lithium based now. it was only the NiCDd and NiMH batteries that you had to run down. you actually hurt the lithium ones doing that. they like staying at a nice high state of charge.

Re:Very frustrating

[hobarrera]

The issue with laptops is that bateries tend to get very hot while charging. Specially on laptops that already build up a lot of heat themselves. It's the heat that degrades bateries. So while having it plugged in all the time should be a good thing, the heat can make it a bad thing.

Re:Very frustrating

[icebrain]

I run a rooted Charge with an extended battery (not only for longer use, but also to improve the feel of the phone in my hand--it's just too thin in stock config). On 3G only, I can get 3 days' use with Tasker running in the background. 4G would drop to 2 days' use unless I was using it real heavy.

I recently re-flashed to a new Gingerbread-based ROM and started using CPU controls in Tasker. We'll see how that does over the next few days (I used the full battery up yesterday doing a lot of installation and setup work).

I have noticed that playing music actually runs the battery down relatively quickly.

Re:Very frustrating

[21mhz]

It is mildly fascinating to see how much lower expectations Android users have to their devices' battery life, and how they are on the hunt for unofficial firmware that is supposed to make things work better. Isn't it what the device vendor should have provided you out of the box, or was it cheap enough to justify putting up with your phone being a semi-permanent charger attachment, as though you are back in 1990s?

I recently switched from a Nokia N9 to a Lumia 800, and the new phone makes me go tut-tut when it loses half the charge over the day. Right now it shows the battery at 49% after 23 hours of moderate use (which included some calling, browsing, checking the Facebook feed, reading a newspaper app, and playing music off Spotify for half an hour), and it estimates 18 hours left.

Re:Very frustrating

[CaptBubba]

The Thunderbolt is just power hungry in general. You can get an "LTE ON/OFF" app from the market and try turning off the LTE radio and you will see it really doesn't make that big of a difference. The main power-hog is the display because the auto-brightness function is too bright 90% of the time. Turning wifi off may actually be hurting you if you are at home because if there is a wifi connection the phone powers down the cellular data radios, saving a significant amount of power.

I'm a bit surprised (but only a bit) that you have to charge it overnight or it dies. Generally if I don't have it charging it will drop maybe 10-20% overnight and even when I'm on the road (with no wifi) the worst I've had happen overnight was a drop from 93% to 47% battery (hotel was in a spotty LTE zone). They also now make an inductive charger for the Thunderbolt so that may make it a bit easier for you to keep it charged.

Re:Very frustrating

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the best things you can do if you own a Thunderbolt is purchase a battery made for the HTC Rezound. It's higher capacity than the stock Thunderbolt battery and is the same form factor. It made a huge difference both in my rooted/CM TB and my wife's stock TB.

Re:Very frustrating

[sonicmerlin]

This will help you with your battery problem: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1179809

Re:Very frustrating

[sonicmerlin]

Partial solution: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1179809

JuiceDefender

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a feminine hygiene product.

I miss the good old days

[Freaky Spook]

Where your phone would last a week on stand-by and you wouldn't have to hang around the single power socket in the airport departure lounge with all the other smartphone junkies waiting to charge your phone.

Re:I miss the good old days

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you sleep? A charge that lasts 1 day and charging at night should be good enough for anybody.

Re:I miss the good old days

[phayes]

You still can, but you have to turn off all the extras. I have lasted 6 days between charges on my iPhone 4 when out of the country & not using wifi/bluetooth/3G which were all turned off. I was even using the iphone's camera a lot but I had to switch away from the camera app quickly because it drains the battery.

Re:I miss the good old days

[QuasiSteve]

You mean you miss the good old days where your phone was just a phone and texting capabilities was a luxury?

Because you know they still sell those, right? And those now get two weeks to a month.

Let's face it, the reason our fancy phones with internet, apps, etc. don't last very long is two-fold...
1. They do use more power - not much you can do about that right now unless you want to give up the capabilities again.
2. We keep wanting smaller and/or thinner phones. I promise you that if people would accept a phone half an inch thick again, battery life would be much improved - simply by virtue of being able to fit a much, much greater capacity battery.

Re:I miss the good old days

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I miss the days where no one had a fuckin' cell phone, and you would actual pay attention of the world around you rather than only lifting your chin while crossing the street. (Or am I being overtly optimistic about even that).

Ahh whatever, I'm just trolling; now get off my lawn!

Re:I miss the good old days

[Ayanami_R]

I would gladly take a "bulky" device with a ton of battery. I don't understand the the tablet manufacturers all trying to copy the thinness of the fruit product. Keep them relatively slim, but kill em on battery life. Take the transformer, it's thin enough and light enough. Now that they CAN make it slimmer than the fruit product DONT, fill the space with frigging battery!

Re:I miss the good old days

[demonlapin]

Well, don't buy a smartphone. Get a RAZR, you can have that experience again.

Re:I miss the good old days

[ganjadude]

cell phones??? pfft, It was way better before phones period! We used to talk to each other in person!

/end im older than you, get off my lawn rant

Re:I miss the good old days

[mlts]

Bingo. The phone I miss is my old T-Mobile MDA (rebranded HTC Wizard). It had the usual stuff (no 3/4G, of course, but Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc.), and it could run almost a week before needing to be charged. The reason why it had the battery life was partly due to the dual core OMAP CPU, and partially due to the fact that it was thick enough to handle a decent mAh battery.

I wouldn't mind a phone having a couple millimeters of thickness, if it meant significantly more battery life, and a thicker Gorilla Glass 2 screen. If phone makers can't get 64 gigabyte MicroSD cards, perhaps there might be enough room to have a slot for a second 32GB one.

Oh, and I also wish the non-fruit phone makers would stop growing the screens. If I want a tablet, I'll buy one. I want a phone with a phone size/shape, not something that can't easily fit in a back pocket.

Re:I miss the good old days

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I miss the days where no one had a fuckin' cell phone, and you would actual pay attention of the world around you rather than only lifting your chin while crossing the street. (Or am I being overtly optimistic about even that).

Ahh whatever, I'm just trolling; now get off my lawn!

such filthy language, do you talk around your mother like that?

Re:I miss the good old days

[mehrotra.akash]

You mean you miss the good old days where your phone was just a phone and texting capabilities was a luxury?

Or you could look at older mid range smart phones. My nearly 2 year old Nokia N79 gives about 5 days of use on a single charge with moderate 3G internet,voice and application use

Re:I miss the good old days

[garyebickford]

I read somewhere that coming soon is the Moto Razr MAX, which is just the Razr only thicker, with a bigger battery. Gee, I wonder why? :D

Re:I miss the good old days

[garyebickford]

My first day in high school, I was walking down the hall while reading a book - is that the ancient equivalent of staring at one's 4G phone? The main 'in crowd' girl - most popular etc., who had met me at a party a few weeks before, sang out, "Hi Gary!" ... It took me about three steps before I was able to pop my attention stack and realize I had been addressed, and by then she was offended and my high school future was sealed. (But it would have happened soon enough anyway - I'm just not the social type even today. I _can_ be sociable but it's work.)

And I still sometimes read while walking - books, magazines, and web pages. Or I'm working out some interesting problem in my head.

Re:I miss the good old days

[jonnat]

I really don't.

Re:I miss the good old days

[firefrei]

Where your phone would last a week on stand-by and you wouldn't have to hang around the single power socket in the airport departure lounge with all the other smartphone junkies waiting to charge your phone.

Aha, but you're making the classic mistake of assuming that thing you stick in your trousers is a phone. It's not - it's a portable computer which just so happens to bundle a phone app. Modern "phones" do so much more than the old dumbphones it's no wonder battery technology hasn't kept up with electronics.

Re:I miss the good old days

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't mind a thicker product, you can buy extended batteries, or even get an external battery pack. I use an extended battery on my Nexus S; it adds a silly looking bulge to it, but it doubles the battery life, so I can go through a day of heavy usage (games, videos, streaming music, GPS) and still have power to spare.

Re:I miss the good old days

[DigiShaman]

Excellent point AC. I've seen those available for my Droid 2 as my current battery has lost almost half of its charging capacity. And yes, it pretty much runs stock without any fancy animated backgrounds and stuff. The dilemma is that a replacement goes for about 50 bucks. The ones listed for about 4 bucks on Amazon are pirated scams that hold a questionable amount of power. Not to mention burning a hole in your pocket in more ways than one. So being that my phone is over a year old now, I might save the money and upgrade to an iPhone 5.

What I'm saying is this. If you plan on doing a lot of talking and e-mailing, get the extended battery when you buy the phone new. It seems a waste to purchase it after the phone has reached EOL for support.

Re:I miss the good old days

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Where your phone would last a week on stand-by...

I don't. On that last day, usually in the morning, the phone would die and my charger would be at home. Once I started using phones with much less battery life, this actually stopped happening to me.

...and you wouldn't have to hang around the single power socket in the airport departure lounge with all the other smartphone junkies waiting to charge your phone.

Charge your phone before you leave. This applies whether you measure your stand-by time in days or weeks.

Re:I miss the good old days

[Nihilomnis]

Hmm, mine lasts two to three weeks, but I only make one fifteen second phone call five days a week and use it as a clock about ten times a day on those same five days. I guess if I turned it off when I wasn't using it I could extend that to an extreme amount, but for those emergency situations... foreveralone.

Re:I miss the good old days

[Anonymous Coward]

On a Thunderbolt? No, it runs out between the start of the work day and the end of a long workday. If you wear your phone instead of leaving it plugged in at your desk, it will run out on your way home if you get a lot of email or texts. This cost me a job when the company purchased Thunderbolt couldn't stay active overnight or during a workday if I actually *wore* it instead of leaving it plugged in all day, which would also make me miss the excess number of alerts. The Android battery sucked itself dry like a very flexible teenage boy discovering just what he could reach.

Re:I miss the good old days

[phayes]

That's easy enough: search for "iphone battery cases" and you will find cases that will double an iPhone's battery life. Oh, you don't want an iPhone? Well with android's fragmented market and multiplicity of formats there may never be enough of an aftermarket for these to exist.

Re:I miss the good old days

[Joce640k]

Those days are still here. My Samsung Galaxy uses about 7% of battery per day in standby. On a couple of calls per day and some SMS I can go over ten days per charge.

Re:I miss the good old days

[Erikderzweite]

Except that I have an HTC Wildfire and there are plenty of bulky rear-panels to fit a larger battery. On the plus side, I don't have to dismantle my phone with special tools, battery is replaceable, hard to imagine, isn't it?
So I usually have an extra battery and replace it if needed every second day. I charge the batteries with external charger only, that way my phone always stays mobile.
Best thing is, if I'd ever want to do iPhone-style charging every night or so -- I still can.

Re:I miss the good old days

[ElmoGonzo]

I miss the way you could change the battery on a Palm using off the shelf batteries and it would remain active (if you were fast enough) . Super thin phones aren't really necessary -- batteries that can be changed when the charger is not available are.

Re:I miss the good old days

[Miamicanes]

The problem is that in most cases (with the possible exception of the oringinal Evo 4G), an extended battery means forgetting about a gel-type case to keep the phone from guaranteed destruction if it falls more than 3 inches.

I wish we could have TWO batteries... a non-replaceable one that's ~2200mAH and fills every nook and cranny of the phone's interior with lithium ion gel, and a commodity one that's ~1600mAH that can be easily swapped in and out. You'd need slightly more complicated charging logic from a 500mAH power source (charge the fixed battery first, drain the removable battery to 25% before using the fixed battery) and a bigger charger to do both at once, but then we'd have phones that were about a millimeter thicker, but could go for 30+ hours with aggressive use before dying.

Re:I miss the good old days

[interkin3tic]

I don't understand the the tablet manufacturers all trying to copy the thinness of the fruit product.

They're not stupid: most consumers will be drawn to the sexiest thing on the retail floor based on first impressions. Most buyers don't even think about battery life, they just think "OOOH PRETTTY!"

Same reason glossy screens are dominating over matte screens on laptops. (I'm painfully reminded of this as I have to crane my neck while typing this to see the text behind the glare from the window on my laptop.) Matte screens work better as you're using it, but glossy screens look prettier in the store, so more people buy the glossy screens. They might hate it later on, but the sales are made before that happens. Consequently, every manufacturer is pumping out the prettier, more useless version.

If there were a way for tablet makers to get paid more for how much use you got out of it, yeah, tablets would reach the ideal ratio between thickness for battery use and ergonomics for holding. They'd have non-reflective, non-smudgy screens. They would not be much to look at in and of themselves, sure, but they'd work great.

Re:I miss the good old days

[phayes]

I have both a pro & a home phone I have both an iPhone & a HTC android. What I carry around is an external pack using 2 AAs that I can connect to either phone. It's not in my pocket but in my backpack with the rest of the stuff I have to carry around when I'm on call. It's bulkier but the convenience of being able to use AAs...

enormous battery FTW

[Zarf]

I bought a triple sized battery for my 4G phone. My phone is friggin' enormous now... but I can use it on 4G for 12 to 16 hours. I have yet to completely kill it... even while using it on coast to coast flights.

Re:enormous battery FTW

[quacking duck]

The fact you're on coast-to-coast flights (5-ish hours) should actually *increase* battery life for that charge, since you're in airplane mode and it's not hunting for cell or wifi signals.

You're probably watching video or playing games more during the flight than you'd be running around on the ground of course, but I'm amazed how little battery is used when I watch an hour-long show on my iPhone while on the gym machines--less than 5% drained. For comparison, browsing the web or using Facebook for 30 minutes on the bus will eat 10%.

Re:enormous battery FTW

[garyebickford]

Yep, it's the radios that eat the juice, mostly. Unless you're doing raytracing on the phone! (Does anybody do that? It would be interesting....)

Re:enormous battery FTW

[Anonymous Coward]

And wildly inappropriate!

Re:enormous battery FTW

[YoopDaDum]

Yes, radio is an important power drain in practice. But it's not the only one. Taking pictures or shooting videos also eats battery a lot. And the screen is also an important contributor. In my usage pattern where I'm mostly under close WiFi coverage the screen tend to dominate for example. But his varies a lot depending on each person context and usage pattern. Which is why some people say it's ok while others say it's crap: different conditions.

Re:enormous battery FTW

[Zarf]

Now that you mention it, I *can* hang around for DAYS on wifi. My record so far is two and a half *days* on wifi. But, I usually use the phone as a mobile computer while traveling. In those situations it's a little TV for around 4 to 5 hours and it's a phone for 2 to 4 hours during lay overs and while navigating airports. For several hours before and after, it's a GPS... but it gets to be plugged into a car during those times.

Re:enormous battery FTW

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to be in airplane mode the whole flight. Sure your cell radio needs to be off, but you can use WiFi. When was the last time you flown? Most airplanes have WiFi on board now and for a small fee, about the price of two drinks, you can get in-flight internet. If you fly a lot, you can get a monthly pass, making your in-flight wifi per flight very affordable. Having the internet in-flight means you can be much more productive and/or entertained.

Secondly, my phone is half dead before getting on the plane. With all the heavy use on the train on the way to the airport and the heavy use at the airport, yea, about half dead around take off.

Android spergs

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember all the trolling Android spergs on Slashdot who bashed the iPhone 4S for not having 4G? So much for that.

Re:Android spergs

[Anonymous Coward]

I still bash the IPhone 4S. 4G may still be in it's infancy, but Apple should have jumped onboard already. If they wanna remain relevant they will have to.

Re:Android spergs

[larry bagina]

That's right. They should ignore the 37 million iPhones sold last quarter and bet it all on the advice of a dipshit posting anonymously on an internet message board.

Re:Android spergs

[Anonymous Coward]

Except Apple likes scalability - to keep manufacturing costs down they want to make a single iPhone that sells around the whole world and the US market still hasn't got a single 4G implementation within its own borders, let alone what the rest of the world may do. Hint: USA only accounts for about 16% of worldwide iPhone sales, so it's still a minority market.

Re:Android spergs

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right. They should ignore the 37 million iPhones sold last quarter and bet it all on the advice of a dipshit posting anonymously on an internet message board.

Welcome to slashdot. Natalie Portman is serving hot grits in the corner.

Re:Android spergs

[Solandri]

News flash. All the Android phones with 4G let you turn it off when you don't need/want it. I usually leave my 4G off unless I know I'm going to do something data-intensive.

Given a choice between having a feature you can turn on and off at will, and not having the feature, the better choice is always having the feature. An iPhone 4S with 4G would've had exactly the same battery life as the 4G-less iPhone 4S, but you would've been able to get 4G data speeds whenever you felt the tradeoff in battery life was worth it.

Maybe Apple left it off because they couldn't get it working in time. Or maybe they ran into delays with licensing. Or maybe they couldn't secure enough parts. Or maybe the cynics are right and they did it so 4S owners would have a reason to upgrade to the iPhone 5. But they most certainly did not do it because it was better for their customers. That's pure PR spin which you're swallowing up hook, line, and sinker.

Re:Android spergs

[Anonymous Coward]

Given a choice between having a feature you can turn on and off at will, and not having the feature, the better choice is always having the feature. An iPhone 4S with 4G would've had exactly the same battery life as the 4G-less iPhone 4S, but you would've been able to get 4G data speeds whenever you felt the tradeoff in battery life was worth it.

And how many of the gazillion people who bought iPhones would understand, much less remember, to do that?

My dad can't remember turn his iPad's 3G receiver to save power when he's home on wi-fi. Fortunately for him, the 3G modem is pretty efficient and the darned thing still runs all day and all night on a charge.

Apple has calculated that the no-fret longer battery life from a mature 3G chipset will result in happier customers in aggregate than the occasional speed boost of early 4G chipsets. I have zero doubt that Apple's calculus is accurate here. People don't like having to turn features off to get things to work well.

Re:Android spergs

[stephanruby]

GPS, Siri, and Bluetooth are power hungry too. And yet, it doesn't mean that you need to be using them all the time.

For me, 3G or wifi is usually good enough for what I do 95% of the time, but it's really when I need that extra speed/bandwidth that 4G has become a life saver.

Re:Android spergs

[Anonymous Coward]

mad bro?

Re:Android spergs

[Anonymous Coward]

News flash, you paid for a feature you aren't even using. Who's the sucker now?

Re:Android spergs

[Anonymous Coward]

You're such a dick.

Re:Android spergs

[am 2k]

News flash. All the Android phones with 4G let you turn it off when you don't need/want it.

So the most important aspect of 4G is that you can turn it off? Wow.

Given a choice between having a feature you can turn on and off at will, and not having the feature, the better choice is always having the feature.

Apple always goes for fewer options when possible in any way. Just compare the VLC preferences dialog to the QuickTime Player X preferences dialog (hint: there is none on the latter). The reason for this is that people don't care about configuring their appliances, they just want them to work.

keeping 4g off should be automatic

[Anonymous Coward]

The phones should really keep 4g off (& just stick to edge) unless you actually unlock your phone & start using network apps (e.g. you open mail, etc). Leave push notifications always on the most battery-efficient network available (wifi, edge, 3g, 4g, etc) & only turn on the faster networks when the apps are in focus & need them (e.g. browser, e-mail, etc) or if there's a background app that requests to use the highest-bandwidth connection available.

yes, yes - there's a latency to turning on & associating the faster radio. however, that would only be noticed in the launch first bandiwdth-heavier app after phone unlock scenario. your standby time would be waaaay better.

Re:keeping 4g off should be automatic

[TooMuchToDo]

You can do this with Tasker now (on Android), but of course, it should be an easy option in Settings for your typical user.

Re:keeping 4g off should be automatic

[gl4ss]

4g off shouldn't mean turning to edge..

3g(some 4g is just 3g though) when properly done doesn't consume more battery. if you know you're in bad 3g reception areas then yeah, keeping it off makes sense so it doesn't need to check periodically if there's network.

(yes, when done properly 2g doesn't conserve battery over 3g. but put on wimax radio on top of the 2g/3g chip and you're going to burn burn burn).

Re:keeping 4g off should be automatic

[GameboyRMH]

3.5g = 4g

Dropping from 3.5G to 3G saves no power though, only dropping back to 2.5G (EDGE) will help in the power department.

another trick?

[stanlyb]

What about having a fusion reactor with you, to charge your hungry 4G phone....Oh, sorry, let me go back to the future...

Re:another trick?

[pspahn]

What about having a fusion reactor with you

While not quite that, at least the name is right... Voltaic Fuse

Personally, I have given up on smart phones and have opted to carry a Clear Spot 4G wifi hotspot with me. I'm currently using my out-of-plan Evo with Google Voice and GrooveIP. While the audio could be better, it works, and it's $50/mo for all I can eat 4G that I can plug into my desktop, laptop, wifi for the Android, and it's even allowed me to keep working at work when everyone else's Internet is down because there was an accident that took out power to the entire downtown block.

This is the future... where you just pay for Internet that you can bring anywhere* and instead of getting a cell phone from some provider, you just use an Android device with wifi or an iPod touch along with Google Voice.

There's definitely at least a few telcos that Google will put out of business if they ever developed Voice into what it should be.

Re:another trick?

[pspahn]

oops.. ctrl+v wrong link. Here's the Voltaic

Re:another trick?

[garyebickford]

Oblig: Teeny tiny Liquid Thorium Fluoride Reactor FTW!!! :D

Re:another trick?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Could I trouble you to talk a little more about your experiences with Clear both good and bad? I'm seriously seriously considering it but have never used WiMax... or a device of that nature and I was curious what real-world experience (good or bad) with it was like.

Re:another trick?

[metalgamer84]

Ahh yes, Clearwire...which uses the same WiMAX(4G) technology as Sprint...which has ZERO coverage in my area.

Re:another trick?

[pspahn]

Just saw this comment. But I'll indulge... I live in Denver, and thus Clear coverage is pretty solid around here. Honestly, I can't really say anything bad about the service. It's fast and reliable (I play some COD on it on occasion and don't have problems with lag). Of course, reception is spotty once I leave the city, but that's to be expected. The device itself is pretty sweet. Battery lasts a reasonable amount of time, and it has power saving modes which I use to keep it from draining when not in use. In the end, it's $50/mo and totally worth it considering it replaces any kind of home internet service (for my uses anyway) and I can put it in my pocket and take it with me.

Re:another trick?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Thank you!

4G = bye bye battery

[markdavis]

My first experience with 4G was early last year in Richmond on Sprint. Indeed it was fast, but I could almost watch my battery disappear! (OK, it wasn't THAT bad, but I estimated it cut my battery life in half). It was very handy to have the Android widget right on the first page to toggle 4G on/off, so it would shift back into the much more battery-friendly 3G.

I do wish battery technology was on the same curve as CPU technology has been. Imagine- we could have super-smart phones that were twice as fast as now, but running on one charge a week or less. (Or perhaps we could finally have some good electric car range WITH great performance at the same time). Oh well, maybe in "5 to 7 years" or whatever the standard is for anything we still can't have...

Re:4G = bye bye battery

[TubeSteak]

TFA talks about the Droid Razr Maxx's crazy long standby, talk, and video playing time. Its secret isn't any secret at all.
They took the dangerously thin Droid Razr, added less than 2mm in thickness, and then filled that space with a battery almost twice as large.

3300 mAh vs the smart phone standard of ~1700 mAh.
Designers refuse to make phones thicker in order to accommodate larger batteries.
The Razr can get away with it because, for it, "thicker" is the normal size of other phones.

Re:4G = bye bye battery

[ganjadude]

soo... if the razr being thicker is the same as other phones, that still doesnt explain why other phones cant have the same size batt....In fact you made the argument that the other phones should be smaller, or bigger batteries.

Re:4G = bye bye battery

[garyebickford]

I suppose 'cause they first worked very hard to make the actual electronics very, very slim for design reasons.

I also suppose that the logical conclusion of this progression is a paper-thin, flexible, transparent phone that sticks to your wrist and is powered by the motion of your hand. Which means that those sessions in the bathroom with the Penthouse centerfold will serve two purposes!

Re:I'm switching power cables all damn day!

[markdavis]

And since none of those you listed have 4G options, imagine how bad your situation WOULD be if they were! You will have to carry a power backpack!

who leaves it on???

[joocemann]

I know several people with 4g service, including me; none of us would turn it on unless we know we will get service (and use it) or are probing for service so we can know. Its not like 4g users dont already know the gist of the articl already.... youve got to be pretty unaware not to notice your battery drain when its on.

Re:who leaves it on???

[Anonymous Coward]

I do the same as do the other 3 of us in the household with 4G phones (Nexus S). Even in areas where I know there is a good 4g signal, I still don't turn it on unless I really want the faster speed which is not very often. 3G is usually good enough for everything I do including streaming Pandora and Rhapsody in HQ or random IHeartRadio stations and/or browsing or using something like Latitude in realtime. I car pool up 95/395 in northern VA to DC. WIth Sprint, I get a decent capable 3G signal for streaming the entire 30 miles with the exception when I am passing by the Pentagon.

Not so fast

[MrEricSir]

I'm typing this on a MacBook Air, which gets about 3x the battery life of my previous laptop. And the room I'm in has CFL bulbs which are about 1/4 as power hungry as the old fashioned bulbs.

So no, newer electronics don't *always* use more power.

Re:Not so fast

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea no kidding. I think this 'worse than previous generation' concept must be something smartphone (Android?) apologists seem to hand waive over.

Re:Not so fast

[Anonymous Coward]

This blatant troll got modded insightful? Apple must have an army of Reputation Managers on standby.

Re:Not so fast

[Anonymous Coward]

So have you actually checked how much more powerful battery that Macbook Air has, than you previous laptop :)

Re:Not so fast

[mjwx]

I'm typing this on a MacBook Air, which gets about 3x the battery life of my previous laptop. And the room I'm in has CFL bulbs which are about 1/4 as power hungry as the old fashioned bulbs.

So no, newer electronics don't *always* use more power.

Your macbook cant do what an old P4 Laptop couldn't.

Your macbook gets a higher score on the battery because it gets a lower score on everything else.

I had an Asus U30SD. The U30SD has the Optimus graphics chipset, this is a GF520M and an Intel 3000, if I want to play games, I have to use the GeForce chip which gives it a battery life of 6 hours, if I use the Intel IGM, I get a battery life of 10 hours. I now have a U46SV with a GeForce 540M and the discrepancy is worse. Do you see the inverse relationship between processing power and battery consumption?

Now the reason LTE phones use more power then HSPA phones is that the LTE transmitter is not integral to the SoC, it is it's own chip. Once the new ARM line is released (mid this year IIRC) we'll see battery life improve significantly as LTE chips will be integrated into the SoC like HSPA chips currently are.

To elaborate, the Intel graphics chip in your laptop is integrated into the CPU die, so it's powered from the same source as the CPU rather then being a seperate chip with a seperate power supply, do you honestly think you'll be getting the same battery life if you had a discrete graphics card?

Re:Not so fast

[wvmarle]

Your MacBook can also do with more modern batteries, which may have double capacity what your old laptop had. Hard to compare. When I bought my iBook about eight years ago I could get 5, and dimming the screen up to 6 hours battery life out of it. Pretty good for the time. I don't think current Apple laptops can do 15 hours now, have yet to see even a netbook that betters 8-9 hours.

Re:Not so fast

[YoopDaDum]

Now the reason LTE phones use more power then HSPA phones is that the LTE transmitter is not integral to the SoC, it is it's own chip. Once the new ARM line is released (mid this year IIRC) we'll see battery life improve significantly as LTE chips will be integrated into the SoC like HSPA chips currently are.

No, that's not a significant factor here. The modem and RF are very unlikely to be integrated into the same die as the AP, as their life-cycle are quite different. At best it's integrated in the same package, but not in the same die (as in the SnapDragon chips). That's a bit more power efficient (shortest connections between AP and BB/RF), but it's negligible compared to the power consumption of a radio access subsystem.

One of the issue with each new WAN technology is that each major generation greatly increases the amount of computations to do. A standard as LTE is made to span years, and it's initially dimensioned to make the most of what's possible. So early implementations are large and power hungry. Then Moore's law (new processes power efficiency increases really) helps you get this down to a reasonable amount, up to a point where the power is dominated by the RF and PA, and no longer by the digital domain. And then the next beefier standard is introduced ;)

The current 4G implementations are quite naturally power hogs. 28 nm will help. The thing is, more expensive versions of 4G will arrive soon (LTE Advanced). And that will increase the power consumption again. This time it looks like the power load may increase faster than better process can significantly help, so implementation efficiency will matter. But there's a lot to do there.

Re:Not so fast

[Anonymous Coward]

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/72/overviewherogalleryover.png/

View and weep.

Re:Not so fast

[Anonymous Coward]

photo screwed the pooch, try this one...
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/845/macbrick.png/

Re:Not so fast

[realityimpaired]

To elaborate, the Intel graphics chip in your laptop is integrated into the CPU die, so it's powered from the same source as the CPU rather then being a seperate chip with a seperate power supply, do you honestly think you'll be getting the same battery life if you had a discrete graphics card?

Depends on how the video card in the laptop is designed, not to mention how the laptop itself is designed.

I get about 3 hours of gameplay out of my gaming laptop on battery. I get about 5-6 hours of life when not gaming. The laptop in question is a Core i7 quad 940QM, 4GB of RAM, and a 1GB Radeon HD 4850 video card, driving a 1920x1080 display (2-year old Dell Studio XPS 16). It also has a 9-cell extended battery. I have no doubt that I could get better life out of the laptop with more power-efficient hardware, but I am also doubtful that I would see significantly better performance out of it with an integrated graphics chipset, because the CPU already underclocks itself when the power isn't needed, and the Arrandale integrated graphics does exactly the same thing as the Radeon to save power: it powers down to 166MHz single core when not needed, and boosts to 500MHz dual core (or single core in lower end processors like the Celeron I have in my other laptop) when the processing power is needed. While it would use a little less power, the difference wouldn't really be that much when the idle draw on the discrete graphics card is already down to 2-3W, and 20W under load.

Re:Not so fast

[blueg3]

Your macbook cant do what an old P4 Laptop couldn't.

Bullshit. Unless, as the rest of your comment suggests, the specific application you're interested in has basically no CPU demand and is entirely performed by the graphics card. Even the M-series Core i5 (what's in the newest Air) outperforms a P4 and the SSD on an Air certainly outperforms a P4-era hard drive. So that's two components of "everything else" that are not worse.

To elaborate, the Intel graphics chip in your laptop is integrated into the CPU die, so it's powered from the same source as the CPU rather then being a seperate chip with a seperate power supply, do you honestly think you'll be getting the same battery life if you had a discrete graphics card?

Even discrete graphics cards share a power supply, although that's not what makes them more power-hungry. However, unless you know which Macbook Air he has, you don't know if it has Intel HD 3000 (which is on-die) or one of the nVidia mobile chips (which isn't). The older nVidia models got comparable battery life.

Re:Not so fast

[sonicmerlin]

Uh... no. The reason is the 4G radio is separate and must be powered at the same time as the 3G/cell radio. You can see it in pictures of a 4G phone's motherboard on Anandtech. New chipsets from Qualcomm will integrate the 4G radio: http://www.qualcomm.com/media/releases/2011/11/15/qualcomm-announces-commercial-availability-gobi-4000-platform-4g-lte-conne

This will dramatically improve battery life. And this chipset is exactly what Apple's been waiting for. Not that complicated.

Re:Not so fast

[YoopDaDum]

Nope, and maybe a bit more complicated then you think it is ;)

There are two main ways to integrate legacy with LTE: single radio and dual radio. When integrating with 3GPP 2G/3G (GSM and W-CDMA/HSPA) the standard way to go is single radio. With single radio you cannot have voice over 2G/3G and data over LTE, it's one or the other. Before voice over LTE is supported, when a voice call is coming you must revert data to 2G/3G too, this is called circuit switched fallback (CSFB). With CDMA you have the choice of single (called optimized eHRPD) or dual radio (non-optimized eHRPD). With dual radio you can support voice over CDMA with data over LTE at the same time. Whether a network uses single or dual radio (or both) is an operator decision, and the handset will adapt to that.

When the operator supports a single radio approach, you can still have separate radio chips on the PCB. But they're never powered at the same time. It does use more board space, but not more power. When a radio is not used it's simply shut down.

If the operator wants a dual radio approach (typically only for a CDMA operator who wants both CDMA voice and LTE data at the same time), then you must have two radios. And they can be used at the same time, that's the whole point. In such a set-up, a chipset with a single radio is just not suitable. But there's plenty of choice and Gobi is not the only way, you can also support dual radio with Qualcomm chips.

In any case, I stand by what I said. Integrating the RF is a win in die space but not significant in power consumption reduction. It's still discrete dies in any case, just in the same package. And the big gain is the move from 40/45 nm to 28 nm on the baseband, which saves power.

Re:Not so fast

[sonicmerlin]

Gobi 4000... is from Qualcomm. It's the first chip with LTE integrated into the same chipset as 2G and 3G. You only have to power that one chipset to run all the radios. Right now 4G phones become extremely hot because of having to power two chips.

Of course when Verizon turns on VoLTE nationally in 2013 and shuts down 2G and 3G the point will be moot unless you're looking for a global phone. Future chipsets are set to integrate LTE radios capable of using all freqs from 700 - 2600 MHz.

Re:Not so fast

[YoopDaDum]

Gobi 4000... is from Qualcomm.

I know. What I meant is that it's not the only choice in Qualcomm offering. If you want to implement a dual radio solution (also called SVLTE, for simultaneous voice and LTE) to offer voice over CDMA at the same time as data over LTE, you will be able do it with the coming Qualcomm MDM9615 in addition to the internal CDMA support of a SnapDragon for example. It's the same next gen 28nm baseband die that you will get in the Gobi 4000, packaged differently.

It's the first chip with LTE integrated into the same chipset as 2G and 3G. You only have to power that one chipset to run all the radios. Right now 4G phones become extremely hot because of having to power two chips.

I guess I wasn't clear enough, so let me rephrase. The choice of whether you need only one or two simultaneous radios is not driven by chipmakers, but by operators. If an operator wants SVLTE before VoLTE is deployed, you must have two radios. Then the Gobi is not a suitable chip, but as I said there are also next gen, more power efficient solutions for SVLTE / dual radio.

Now, for an operator using single radio and CSFB (ATT for example), you don't need anymore two chips but there you can use an integrated chip as the Gobi. That will save space, but not in itself power consumption. Because even if you had two chips in an early implementation, only one was active at a given time and the other was shutdown and not consuming power.

Power consumption is improved first and foremost by more advanced processes used in the baseband (move from 40 to 28nm with the MDM9615 / Gobi 4000), and improved implementation efficiency. Integration in a single package is not a significant factor for power consumption (but is key for board size).

Of course when Verizon turns on VoLTE nationally in 2013 and shuts down 2G and 3G the point will be moot unless you're looking for a global phone.

Yes, we agree on that. As soon as LTE coverage is on par with 2G/3G and VoLTE is there, you can dump the SVLTE approach and its two radios.
You don't necessarily need to sacrifice international roaming if the single radio supports the needed standards. You won't have SVLTE when roaming, but most international operators using W-CDMA/HSPA do not support SVLTE anyway but use CSFB (until VoLTE arrives).

Future chipsets are set to integrate LTE radios capable of using all freqs from 700 - 2600 MHz.

Yes. But there's still the problem of the front-end (FE).
You have the baseband chip (BB), which is by nature band agnostic. Then the RF chip, where new high end offering are now wideband as you say. But in front of the RF chip, you have what's called the analog front-end (or FE) with filters / duplexers / PAs. These filters / duplexers / PAs are band specific, and there's nothing in the pipe for now to make them universal as far as I know. So if you want to support more bands, you will end up with a more complex FE (with a switch connecting to different banks of components). This means more board space and higher cost.
Because of this, don't expect universal phones covering all bands. The phone handset will cost optimize for a few bands only (there are already 41 bands defined for LTE...). This is particularly true in the US where the phone are mostly all subsidized and locked to an operator, with the phone specs also carefully controlled by the operators. The phone is naturally optimized for the operator only (plus some roaming).

Apologies to Steve Jobs?

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

I do remember everyone saying the 4S absolutely needed 4G, but Apple kept 4G out of it for this reason - it would be horrible about battery life, so bad that it would negatively affect the consumer experience.

Not that the 4S is great about battery life either, but imagine it worse.

And all this for not even 4G. Its more like 3.75G, but the American carriers lobbied to bend the rules in advertisements.

Re:Apologies to Steve Jobs?

[quacking duck]

Concur that the 4S isn't that hot on battery life. I could go 2 full days using my old 3GS, but after day 1 on my 4S it's just a bit below 50% and I won't risk it dying in the middle of day 2. I'm not even using the whiz-bang features like Siri much.

It could just be iOS5 though--after updating my 3GS it was no longer able to last two days of usage, either.

Re:Apologies to Steve Jobs?

[Cro Magnon]

I have an iPhone 4, with no trailing letter, and it normally goes 2+ days without a charge, even with iOS 5. I did notice that location based stuff seems to drain the battery faster.

whither bonch?

[gmhowell]

33 comments posted and still no snarky comment from bonch? I are disappoint.

goog

[Anonymous Coward]

good master....................http://corexombliz.blogspot.com/

Free Idea for the Telcos/Manufacturers

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not download those detailed coverage maps to the phone periodically, and have the phone cross reference its current location to the coverage database to automatically enable or disable the 4G antenna?

Re:Free Idea for the Telcos/Manufacturers

[garyebickford]

Actually that would make for a really good App - an open data server that collects signal data from all the folks who have signed up and agreed to contribute the data, and constructs a dynamic map of coverage. There must be one already... ... [rummage, rummage] ... ... Like this (first one found): Crowd Sourced CoverageMapper. :D

Re:Free Idea for the Telcos/Manufacturers

[Skapare]

Better yet, fix the 4G design so the cells towers continuously transmit their ID (well, every second at least). Then phones can just listen first until they find one suitable to use. And they should be settable to even slow that down when not in use (assuming you aren't pocket surfing).

Apple again

[goombah99]

Wow this same story keeps happening. Apple elects to go with 2G edge instead of 3G. Gets ridiculed. The all the 3G phones have connection problems and drain their batteries. Apple delays 4G. Gets pilloried. Oops the 4G phones are suck and regret. It's not that apple is always later to the party. Indeed they are a realtively early adopter (dynamic memory, graphic printers, .... ) and an early dropper of obsolete tech (floppies, zip drives, ports...).

Like Paul Mason, they only serve their wine when it is time.

Re:Apple again

[Baloroth]

The battery life problem, if you bothered to read even the summary instead of jumping to the comments to defend Apple, is because there isn't regular 4G coverage everywhere yet. In order for there to be an incentive to develop such widespread coverage, there must also be people willing to use that network (no massive network can be established entirely without users.) This means the only way good 4G coverage can ever happen is if there are issues with it in the early life cycle, and without those early adopters widespread 4G will never happen.

So, without Android adopting 4G, Apple would never be able to follow suit, unless they want to receive the same complaints. Not that that would stop them, necessarily. Did you like all those dropped calls with the early iPhone because you were stuck on AT&T?

Re:Apple again

[Anonymous Coward]

Like Paul Mason, they only serve their wine when it is time.

I'm sorry but if you don't know the name is "Paul Masson" I'm not sure I can trust your judgment in fine wines, much less the previous content in your post :)

Re:Apple again

[tlhIngan]

So, without Android adopting 4G, Apple would never be able to follow suit, unless they want to receive the same complaints. Not that that would stop them, necessarily. Did you like all those dropped calls with the early iPhone because you were stuck on AT&T?

Two different issues.

First, Apple chose not to go LTE for one very good reason - the current LTE chipsets suck.

Here's the thing. LTE is a data standard. It doesn't define a voice standard, and there's proposals on how to do voice-over-LTE. And people want to do voice calls. So LTE phones right now hop onto the UMTS (or CDMA) network in order to handle a voice call, while doing LTE for data. The problem is that LTE phones now need two chips - one to do LTE, another to do 3G/voice (ever notice how the LTE versions of phones are always larger? It's not just the larger battery). The iPhone doesn't have enough space for another chip. Plus the extra chip takes power.

Now, Qualcomm has announced their roadmap that has a combined LTE/UMTS/GSM/CDMA baseband (listed as LTE+voice) in a single chip, which is anticipated to be in the next iPhone.

As for AT&T's dropped calls - it was because of over-aggressive power management from iPhones causing the control channel to be congested (which leads to dropped calls everwyhere in general). The irony being that the cells on AT&T were very underutilized (30-40%) but the control channel being completely saturated means dropped calls, slow data and other things.

As for who drives things - well, the carriers work with handset manufacturers. The carriers want to deploy the Next Big Thing that can charge customers more money for, and since Apple's basically an untouchable (the carrier bends to Apple's will), they work with HTC and others to stick in new chips to try to get people to pay more for a new network.

LTE deployment is quite interesting. When the (original 2G) iPhone came out, the 3G deployment in North America was quite spotty (the North American carriers chose 2G+ technolgies prior to the proper 3G rollout), but quite solid in Europe and Asia. These days, LTE deployment in North America is far more than Europe and Asia

Re:Apple again

[wvmarle]

As I don't use mobile data, a year or two back ago I switched from 3G back to 2G. Not only are voice plans much cheaper, I don't notice any quality difference (shops will tell you that 3G has superior call quality - well I had less problems with reception after the switch back to 2G!) and battery life of the phone is far better. Also my phone didn't heat up so badly anymore.

Re:Apple again

[EETech1]

I remember how fast my first Sprint phone would eat the battery up on analog roam, or when searching for a signal. Same thing here.

Nothing new.

Re:Apple again

[Anonymous Coward]

LTE is a data standard. It doesn't define a voice standard, and there's proposals on how to do voice-over-LTE

So just place the call as VOIP over LTE.

It's all VOIP over the backhauls anyway, once it leaves the cell, so why bother with a voice standard at all?

Re:Apple again

[YoopDaDum]

Here's the thing. LTE is a data standard. It doesn't define a voice standard, and there's proposals on how to do voice-over-LTE. And people want to do voice calls. So LTE phones right now hop onto the UMTS (or CDMA) network in order to handle a voice call, while doing LTE for data. The problem is that LTE phones now need two chips - one to do LTE, another to do 3G/voice (ever notice how the LTE versions of phones are always larger? It's not just the larger battery). The iPhone doesn't have enough space for another chip. Plus the extra chip takes power.

You're definitely right that space is very important for skinny smartphones, and integration will help reducing the floor plan size for the 4G subsystem.
But for power consumption, integrating several dies into a single package doesn't change things much (it's not single die integration). The improvement in coming chips will come from moving from 40 nm to 28 nm in most cases. And there's a lot to do to improve implementation efficiency, but the big guys don't seem too concerned by this. As in 3G they make big implementations, and count on new processes better efficiency to reduce the power consumption of the baseband (digital part) over time. For more, see my post above in the thread.

Re:Apple again

[petermgreen]

They don't want the best effort internet traffic to swamp the premium voice traffic. So if they want to go full VOIP they need to build QOS into every aspect of the network. Further they have to work out how you will handle phones switching mid call from 4G voip to 2G/3G circuit switched voice when they go out of 4G coverage. Finally all the carriers and phone vendors need to agree on this so it can be incorporated into mass market phones.

Plus even if they do get voice over 4G sorted they will still need the 2G/3G functionality so the phone works in areas without 4G network coverage.

Re:Apple again

[PixetaledPikachu]

Wow this same story keeps happening. Apple elects to go with 2G edge instead of 3G. Gets ridiculed. The all the 3G phones have connection problems and drain their batteries. Apple delays 4G. Gets pilloried. Oops the 4G phones are suck and regret. It's not that apple is always later to the party

The thing is, when apple actually release a 3G phone, it didn't score any better than those early adopters. There was no significant advantage (in connectivity and battery life) provided by the 3G and 3GS compared to my old HTC Dream or Nokia E51

Re:Apple again

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple elects to go with 2G edge instead of 3G. Gets ridiculed. The all the 3G phones have connection problems and drain their batteries.

Um, no. When the iPhone came out I had no trouble with 3G and my battery lasted multiple days. Apple just wanted to sell phones. I believe that their motivation is the same with 4G; there just happens to be a legitimate reason to not go 4G at the moment.

Re:Apple again

[Anonymous Coward]

So, without Android adopting 4G, Apple would never be able to follow suit, unless they want to receive the same complaints. Not that that would stop them, necessarily. Did you like all those dropped calls with the early iPhone because you were stuck on AT&T?

Have you looked at the power envelope of current LTE chipsets? Even without the coverage issues, a Qualcomm MDM9600 and MDM9200 4G stack (to take one example) needs more power than their corresponding MDM6600/6610 3G stack. It's not until the gobi 4000 series that was only announced in the October time frame (with large-scale availability coming online now, a few months later) that we have power envelopes in the same ballpark as the 3G stuff.

Once the MDM9615 comes online OEMs will be able to have LTE for the same power as MDM6600/6610, so they can keep the same battery sizes (and thus case sizes).

I have no doubt that early adopters are needed to push the limit of things, but Apple has decided the speed/battery trade off is not worth it for their products. I have never thought of Apple as a completely innovating company, but rather one that is about refinement: being able to look at everything out there, and bring it together in a way that doesn't suck.

We need companies and people that are on the bleeding edge, but also simply in the mainstream.

Re:Apple again

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed, sure 4G phones are battery killers with first gen lte radios, just like 3G phones were battery killers with first gen chips
getting the new fastest speed phone has always come with the caveat that your going to suffer some battery loss.
The general public has to learn that, or at least learn to ask about battery life when buying a phone, they rarely do.

That said I own an HTC Thunderbolt, by far the worst offender in 4G battery killing and with the standard battery I can get through a full day with light to moderate use
Throw on the extended battery and I can use it heavily and still go to bed with 20 - 30% charge, not the mention things like car chargers which can help you get through a very busy day.

From my experience with the most draining 4G phone the characterization of 4G phones being practically worthless because of their lesser battery life is greatly exaggerated

Re:Apple again

[FrankieBaby1986]

the current LTE chipsets suck.

This. I have the Verizon LG Revolution. Need to reboot (which uses typically 1/8th of my battery!) just to flip 4G off and on. 4G on = maybe 3/4 of a day of battery. 4G off = at least 2 days of battery.

Re:Apple again

[Anonymous Coward]

As more and more users switch away from 2G to 3G or 4G, 2G will eventually be phased out, I don't know what phones you use but I haven't had any heat issues with current 3G phones, my 4G phone does get a little toasty from time to time

Re:Apple again

[tibit]

I find it very hard to believe that the 4G transmitter would be active at all if there was no decent beacon head by the handset. So if there's no 4G coverage at all, I doubt there will be any extra battery drain.

Poor 4G coverage means there is some coverage, but low signal level, so the headset has to blast at full power so that the tower will hear back from it, and it had probably to do plenty of retransmits, keeping its transmitter on at max power and for much longer.

Re:Apple again

[sonicmerlin]

Look the article's stupid. The reason is because the 4G radio is separate from the other radios, so the phone has to power both radios at the same time. Once the 4G radio is integrated into the chipset (like here: http://www.qualcomm.com/media/releases/2011/11/15/qualcomm-announces-commercial-availability-gobi-4000-platform-4g-lte-conne ) then the battery drain will drop off dramatically.

Re:Apple again

[sonicmerlin]

You have no idea what you're talking about. There are literally two big squares on the motherboard where the cell radios reside. One square has the radios necessary for voice and 3G, and the other has LTE. Even when you're using LTE, the voice cell radio constantly has to be powered and connected/communicating with networks. This chipset will integrate the 4G radio: http://www.qualcomm.com/media/releases/2011/11/15/qualcomm-announces-commercial-availability-gobi-4000-platform-4g-lte-conne

Battery life will improve tremendously.

Re:Apple again

[sonicmerlin]

Of course since I have unlimited LTE on Verizon I don't mind being an early guinea pig. My data usage is... quite high.

Re:Apple again

[sonicmerlin]

No, this chipset will bring 4G phones back to normal power usage: http://www.qualcomm.com/media/releases/2011/11/15/qualcomm-announces-commercial-availability-gobi-4000-platform-4g-lte-conne

Apple's been waiting for the aforementioned integrated radio to deploy LTE on their handsets.

Re:Apple again

[sonicmerlin]

2G and 3G will be quickly phased out with the introduction of VoLTE. The spectrum will be repurposed as 4G networks are all IP and far less costly to operate.

Re:Apple again

[wvmarle]

In US maybe.

My current supplier is actually 2G only. With data limited to GPRS options. And it seems they're doing pretty well in their market, not having to maintain a 3G network and paying for the licenses does keep your costs down.

Re:Apple again

[YoopDaDum]

No, I know very well what I'm talking about. And you have a lot to learn. You need to understand the difference between single radio and dual radio integration of LTE. I already replied to you elsewhere on this topic, follow the link and read.

In short: if legacy and LTE must be enabled at the same time, the operator has chosen a dual radio integration of LTE. And then you must have two radios, and an integrated single radio chip will not cut it.

As for the gain of integrating the dies in the same package, it's very important in area but not in power. So for a single radio operator (ATT), the integration is nice but won't in itself help the power consumption much.

The big win in the next generation of Qualcomm is the move of the baseband from 45 to 28 nm. The gain will apply to both single and dual radio implementations.

"the" country

[Anonymous Coward]

>With Verizon's 4G network covering a good chunk of the country

which country? Belize? Andorra?

Question Re: 4G

[calgar99]

Without reading TFA, can someone simply tell me whether battery life is poor exclusively because 4G service is spotty, or if "full signal" 4G is still more power hungry than 3G. If it's both (as it probably is), can someone tell me which is the primary reason for 4G battery suckage? One more question... if 4G is actually a bigger drain regardless of coverage, is there anything that can be done with the technology (4G revision 2 phones, a software update, etc.), or will we need to wait for improved battery capacity or 5G before we see the problem resolved?

Re:Question Re: 4G

[antifoidulus]

Thats a hard question to give a definitive answer to. A big part of it depends on how you use it. A very significant portion of cellular modem power consumption is how long it is in the "excited" state(i.e. sending, receiving, or waiting for data). So if you have a lot of periodic low bandwidth traffic(checking email for instance), 3g will probably consume less power than 4g as the latency is dominated by how long it takes the radio to transmit the data to the carrier, and since 4g doesn't really improve on that the latencies tend to be very similar.

For longer downloads it's also a mixed bag. If the bottleneck is your modem, and not your carrier or the remote client then 4g will probably not differ considerably from 3g as the 4g modem stays active for a much shorter period of time. However if thats not the case, then 3g will probably get a much better battery life than 4g. (This is also why the same phone doing the same stuff may get wildly different battery life numbers, when using a carrier with a high latency/drop rate, the modem has to stay active and consuming power even when it's only waiting for an ack/timeout, the same phone on a good network can wake up, communicate, then go back into a lower power state.)

Happened to me

[XahXhaX]

Within a month of buying my iPhone last year, we went camping. I put a lot of effort into preserving the battery so I could test out the compass feature the following morning and take photos all day. I didn't realize that in being unable to find a signal, it would _continuously attempt it_ all night. I had about 90% battery when we went to bed, woke up to about 5%. I was pretty unhappy with this discovery, where I previously figured they were smarter than that.

Re:Happened to me

[Seraphim1982]

Sounds to me like you didn't put ANY effort into preserving the battery.

"a lot" of effort would have involved learning what kinds of things drain the battery beforehand and then avoiding them. Apple has a web page devoted to eeking the most you can get out of your iphone battery at http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html

A minimal amount of effort would have been turning the thing off, because turning a battery powered device off to save the batteries isn't exactly a revolutionary idea.

So what exactly did "a lot of effort" entail?

This is news?

[PrimalChrome]

Seriously?

How Do You Turn Off 4G?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumb Question: How do you turn off 4G (and presumably still have 3G/EDGE)? I have a Samsung S II Skyrocket with AT&T, but can't find such an option.

Re:How Do You Turn Off 4G?

[vikisonline]

Settings -> Wifi -> Mobile Networks GSM only gives you edge HSPA only gives you up to 3g GSM/HSPA/LTE gives you up to lte

I like big butts....

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw this hole "thinner is better" thing with phones. Make them a little thicker and stuff a bigger battery in there. I have a Samsung Galazy SII that is 10 or 11 mm thick. I would rather have a phone that is 15 to 17 mm thick and have the battery from hell that would run the phone at least 48 hours with 4G and bluetooth maxing out that entire time. Stop making anorexia phones.

Re:I like big butts....

[Tastecicles]

I love my RAZR V3i. Don't diss it, it's the best phone ever made. If only Motorola had made a 3G set in the same case (and no, the Droid RAZR is not the same phone), I would die happy.

BTW, I don't know about production phones but IIRC from videos demonstrating working prototypes, the SII is shy of 8.5mm thick.

Re:I like big butts....

[PixetaledPikachu]

I love my RAZR V3i. Don't diss it, it's the best phone ever made. If only Motorola had made a 3G set in the same case (and no, the Droid RAZR is not the same phone), I would die happy

Oh but they did, well.. sort of.

Re:I like big butts....

[Tastecicles]

Never saw that in the UK. I've got a ZTE F930 now, it's a nice phone except for the slightly wobbly feeling on the USB port which seems to be a common misfeature. Plus the fact that I'm not overly keen on full touchscreens with no hard cover.

Re:I like big butts....

[GameboyRMH]

The worst thing is that as these things get thinner they get harder to hold. The iPad2 is a good example, if it was thicker it would be easier to hold, I've heard many non-fanboys saying the same thing. Funny thing is that it's actually nearly 9mm (nearly half an N900) thick which seems reasonable, but it tapers towards the edges (where you hold it) to give the illusion of being thinner.

My android phone

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing to get more battery life, turn off background data. Granted if you want to use Market services you have to turn it on. But that significantly lengthened my battery life. It went from barely making it six hours to nearly twelve hours without having to be tethered to a charger.

LTE is overrated.

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is why T-Mo uses HSPA+. Comparable real-world speeds, without the battery drain. LTE just isn't worth it right now.

Re:LTE is overrated.

[hazydave]

No, T-Mobile uses HSPA+ because they don't have any spectrum for 4G. If they had 4G spectrum, and the cash to build out a 4G network, they'd be trumpeting it just like everyone else. They also suffer due to higher frequencies... less free air propagation at 1700/2100MHz, more attenuation through buildings and foliage, etc.

Two thoughts on battery life.

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Have you heard of the Droid Razr Maxx? Read up on its battery life if you have not.
2) Why don't things work this way: Your phone is on 3G all the time, when you open a bandwidth intensive app (streaming video etc) THEN 4G turns on, but not until - 99% of the time your phone is sitting in your pants idle - what a waste of searching for 4G for data and 3G for voice. Easily enough, only turn 4G on when the screen is on at least -is there an app for this that I'm not aware of?

Wrong, upgrades would happen anyway

[SuperKendall]

So, without Android adopting 4G, Apple would never be able to follow suit

This is simply incorrect.

The network would be upgraded with or without early adoption. The early adoption does help shake out issues (thanks as usual Android Beta Testers!) but a phone company lays out way in advance the capital required to upgrade the whole network, they are not going to be so insane as to rely on adoption in a few early cities to fund the rest of the expansion. It's just that the upgrade takes time, and as we see it takes time for the chipsets to get good as well.

They are actually more the issue, the network will be upgraded when the network provider decides it is time but the chipset makers have to feel like there's enough of a market to build against.

Re:Wrong, upgrades would happen anyway

[Bazer]

I'm in Central Europe and there has been complete 4G coverage in major cities before Apple even considered using it in the next iPhone. These days I can get 4G coverage in the outback (and I do need my tubes to be HD in there). Please don't excuse carriers in the US for not upgrading the infrastructure. They're robbing you blind.

Or...

[Osgeld]

You could get over your facebook status, tweeting every time you fart, and your dumbass dancing cat apps and just use a phone ... hell even my durn near 7 year old windows mobile 5 phone gets a week on a charge with all sorts of shit loaded on it and its original battery, but because I am not constantly dicking with it like a heroin addict it has no problem lasting

Re:Or...

[metalgamer84]

Thank you for that, I laughed heartily in agreement.

Not true

[SuperKendall]

The iPhone - and it really was the first in this category - got people to charge their phone every single night.

That's not the case.

I've had and iPhone since the first one, and I've usually only gone to charge it every three days or so. That's with moderate email/web/app use.

It's less time than other dumb phones but much more time than smart phones of the time (like Treo or Windows Mobile) offered. The realistic multi-day battery life was a huge draw early on, exactly because finally there was a smart phone you DIDN'T have to charge every day.

Re:Not true

[mjwx]

The iPhone - and it really was the first in this category - got people to charge their phone every single night.

That's not the case.

I've had and iPhone since the first one, and I've usually only gone to charge it every three days or so. That's with moderate email/web/app use.

Clearly you never use it.

I have to carry an Iphone 3GS for work, I have to charge it every day and all it does is receive SMS's. I make a call on it about once a month yet requires charging once a day. My Android phone (HTC Desire Z running Cyanogen 7) lasts two days on one charge as well as having a replaceable battery and I use that for voice calls, SMS and web use.

Iphone 4's I've seen require more charging then the 3GS did. There's a reason every Iphone owner has a charge cable at their desk.

Re:Not true

[SuperKendall]

As I said I use my phone daily. I currently have an iPhone 4 (not 4s) and I only plug it in to charge about every three days. Again, this is moderate web/email/app use (I don't make many calls either).

I think the 4 is somewhat better charge-wise than the 3Gs (which I also had).

At this point the 3Gs battery may simply be getting weaker, you could have it replaced fairly cheaply.

Re:Not true

[Relayman]

@SuperKendall: I agree with you. I check my 4S every night and, if the battery is at 75% or less, I charge it. I have a charger in my car but not one at my desk. So far, I haven't had any problems with running out of charge.

Re:Not true

[demonlapin]

That's not the case.

Maybe not for you. For some of us, it definitely is. If it goes below 50% charge after a day of use, it will be dead before the end of the second day, and so you have to charge it every night.

Re:Not true

[AmiMoJo]

As I said I use my phone daily. I currently have an iPhone 4 (not 4s) and I only plug it in to charge about every three days. Again, this is moderate web/email/app use (I don't make many calls either).

It all really depends on how you use it. Wifi on or off. 4G, 3G or 2G. Screen brightness setting. What apps you run, what notifications you have set up, how much stuff is set to background sync and so on. I don't know about iOS but on Android there is a handy feature built in that shows you how much energy each part of the phone and each app has used so you can optimise. Two or three days is about my average too, and I do a lot of reading on my phone.

At this point the 3Gs battery may simply be getting weaker, you could have it replaced fairly cheaply.

[smug mode]

* Flips open Galaxy S and pops in new battery *

(sorry, can never resist)

Re:Not true

[interkin3tic]

I think the 4 is somewhat better charge-wise than the 3Gs (which I also had). At this point the 3Gs battery may simply be getting weaker, you could have it replaced fairly cheaply.

Seems to me too that my wife's 4 lasted longer than my 3G did. The 3G was getting charged every night though from the very start. It wasn't dead by the end of the day, but I'm pretty sure it was less than 50%.

Re:Not true

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one don't care as long as my battery lasts me a full day, I don't see the problem with charging my phone every night, it's actually easier for me, I get 17 - 20 hours on my 4G phone with moderate usage, and plugging it in before I go to bed is just habit.
I can't count how many times when I had dumb phones that would last 3+ days I wouldn't pay attention and then I'd leave the house in the morning with a dead battery.
I think the multi-day battery life is just something for the luddites hanging around to make them feel superior over smartphone users, I have a dual core 4G phone and let me tell you I notice a huge difference in the speed of the operating system and apps compared to a single core device.

Re:Not true

[tibit]

You got a dud for the battery. Happens sometimes. That's not normal behavior from your phone, and the most likely culprit is the battery itself.

Re:Not true

[sonicmerlin]

Always keeping your phone at such high charge will cause the battery to degrade. You want to cycle it every now and then. Optimal charge for storage is 40%.

Re:Not true

[SuperKendall]

You make a good point, my wife has a pay-as-you go simple phone, that is constantly dead because she's always forgetting to charge it.

But that's also the case for using a smartphone, if you have a phone you use a lot more you pay attention to the charge.

When camping, use airplane mode.

[SuperKendall]

I didn't realize that in being unable to find a signal, it would _continuously attempt it_ all night.

Yes, that's pretty much the same issue being mentioned, just that around any other city there's enough network coverage you never see that.

When camping I turn on Airplne mode, unless I'm using the GPS. Sadly use of the GPS requires turning off airplane mode, I've never understood why a receive-only technology is disabled by something meant to stop emission of radio waves...

Re:When camping, use airplane mode.

[AdamHaun]

I've never understood why a receive-only technology is disabled by something meant to stop emission of radio waves...

Radio receivers use a local oscillator to demodulate the signal. This oscillator can radiate interference. Here's some more info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superheterodyne_receiver#Local_oscillator_radiation

The price of being an early adopter ...

[MacTO]

This sounds like the cost of being an early adopter. The infrastructure isn't in place yet, so you have to expend more power establishing and maintaining a signal. Assuming that 4G goes mainstream, things will probably be significantly better in a few years.

Remember, these critters are radios and omnidirectional ones at that. Halving the distance to a tower will roughly quarter the required transmit power.

JuiceDefender

[Jonah Hex]

I used the free JuiceDefender on my EVO 4G in order to wrangle my radios, especially the 4G which is useless in my area. I bought the latest version Ultimate and am fairly happy with it, especially the geo based wifi learning. However I don't use it to remove apps I'm not using, and don't even recall offhand if that's a feature. Just saying. - HEX

caps

[Ultra64]

It's not like 4G speeds are even worth it when you get capped or throttled at a measly 2GB/month

Re:caps

[Tastecicles]

2GB!? I could kill that in less than half a day on my plan (7MBit [truly] unlimited for £15/mo)...

Re:caps

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. I'm getting 5.5mpbs down and 3.5 mps on 3 here in the uk. 2000 minutes voice cross-net. 5000 minutes intra-network. 2000 sms. truly unlimited and unshaped data with iphone tethering included. £25pm.

I think a lot of the talking points in this discussion are based around the American carriers 3g services not only being atrociously slow, but ridiculously expensive.

Re:caps

[Tastecicles]

Mine's on 3 as well, PAYG (not interested in contracts when I can get a data plan like that!), I use probably 6 minutes of talktime and 10 messages per month out of the 300 cross-network minutes and 3,000 texts I get as part of the plan. Oh, and free Skype forever (probably why I don't use the talktime!) (ie it doesn't count on the data plan - or any Three data plan for that matter... you can even send files with the right phone)

Re:caps

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I forgot to mention, because I don't really use it, I get free Spotify with that too which I think is normally £10 a month. It's a month to month contract too, as I bought the phone up front, so I can walk away at any time assured that I'll never be out more than £25.

When I see Americans on here saying they're paying $60-80 pm for limited, low speed plans on 24 month contracts I lol in their general direction. /smug

Re:caps

[hazydave]

I see 10-15Mb/s down, 8-12Mb/s up, on a typical day in Philly. It's nice to be on an unlimited plan... you certainly can chew through that much faster than the typical 800Kb/s down on Verizon EvDO 3G (much slower than HSPA or HSPA+ flavors of 3G, but it does have some advantages, like only needed 2.5MHz bandwidth).

Of course, phone features have a history of...

[Tastecicles]

...killing batteries. Bluetooth and WiFi left on are sure ways to kill the battery right in the middle of that important call. Turn 'em off if you're not using 'em.

Of course, it would make sense for these features to have kill switches in prominent view on the Home screen... I don't know of any interface that offers this, just silly little indicators anyone short of Hawkeyes would miss.

Re:Of course, phone features have a history of...

[Osgeld]

god help anyone read the 50 page instruction manual ...

Re:Of course, phone features have a history of...

[gl4ss]

Of course, it would make sense for these features to have kill switches in prominent view on the Home screen...

sony-e's have them. though I suspect that any carrier branding hides them, as a way of herding the users to keep them on(for shit like carrierIQ to communicate and for generating billing of course).

Re:Of course, phone features have a history of...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a Droid X and a Nexus S, both came stock with that ability on one of the home screens to turn off various radios and airplane mode. In fact almost every android device I've messed with has had that as the default at the left most home screen. If not, I'm sure it can be added by touching and holding down your finger on one of the home screens.

Re:Of course, phone features have a history of...

[hazydave]

Radios can kill the battery, just like leaving anything else on. But they can also save battery, depending. Bluetooth running take up less power than your audio amplifier, so BTing at Class 3 power levels (0dBm) to Bluetooth speakers will actually use less power than a headphone. Some phones don't even support Class 1 (20dBm = 100mW), which is where you're going to see the power drain. Wi-Fi is usually maxxed out at 100mW as well, while the cellular radio will usually to at least 1/2W peak. The cell tower sets your uplink power level, so operating in buildings, particularly on higher frequencies, can drain the battery much faster than when you have a strong signal back to the tower. This is why 4G on lower frequencies can actually drain the battery less, depending on the real-world circumstances.

Does anyone remember...

[Anonymous Coward]

When RIM brought this up, and you all laughed?

And now you act as if Apple was the first to bring it up?

Good times, good times.

It will improve

[Anonymous Coward]

It was the same story when 3G was introduced. People disabled 3G and used GSM on their shiny new phones because battery life sucked.

4G devices and networks just need time to mature. It's not a problem with the standard as such.

Of course

[aglider]

They design smartphones for speed.

not quite

[Chirs]

My mom is a midwife and can go 24hrs or more without coming home. Her work recently gave her an iphone 4S and she had to get extra chargers for car and office. Her old blackberry went for several days between charges.

Not worth it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a 4g phone but rarely if ever, even in LA which in theory has great signals, do I ever see a reason to kill my battery so Pandora or a web page loads slightly faster. The battery tradeoff just isn't worth it.

Slashvertisment

[UnresolvedExternal]

Comon guys - Isn't this just a blatant JuiceDefender Slashvertisment? The issue may be real but I feel the shill count may have gone up by one...

So brilliant it has patents...for cars

[Kupfernigk]

That's basically what a Prius does, except it uses an electric motor in traffic. OK, a Prius doesn't have a V12 as the main engine, but the principle is the same. I can if I like go to the store in EV mode, and cruise at [redacted] on the motorway.

Before that, many cruising boats have a large outboard or inboard for open water, and a small outboard for the harbor or trolling. So the electronics industry is finally playing catch-up to a lot of small boat sailors.

Error in FTA and summary

[dextermanas]

JuiceDefender doesn't really help track down apps that are running in the background, however it can intercept/manage apps that maintain/initiate a data connection. You can create profiles which allow data for certain apps at certain times / conditions. If you want to track battery sucking apps, use Better Battery Stats or SystemPanel. Also, JuiceDefender doesn't help you in erasing apps; Titanium Backup is better suited for that task. Titanium Backup can even uninstall or freeze system applications (provided your device is rooted, of course).

A chart worth more than a thousand words

[joh]

Look out for the LTE phones on that battery life chart. Hint: Start looking from the bottom.

Re:A chart worth more than a thousand words

[Maury Markowitz]

Wow. Nice link!

Signal strength

[Kupfernigk]

I suspect this is an infrastructure issue. Phones need to use more power to talk where the tower signal is weak. My wife's phone goes days without needing recharge (strong signal for her carrier) while my company BB only lasts two days (weak O2 signal at home, stronger at work) and needs a daily charge in rural Devon where the signal is frequently missing.

This even happens in doors

[Shivetya]

Our building in is in a very hilly area which means your coverage is pretty bad. As in there are roads higher than us because of the landscape. I can watch cars drive at an elevation higher than us.

So we had the building wired by one of the wireless companies with repeaters. When two of them went out in one area it was battery life hell. From going the whole work day to dead right after lunch.

I would love to know why they spend so much time looking, aren't they smart enough to know their location isn't changing often

Here's an idea.

[MMC Monster]

I'm surprised if someone hasn't patented this already. It's sure obvious enough:

0. Download an app with the current 4G hot spots in the country
1. Use GPS/map to remember 4G hot spots.
2. Use 3G triangulation (which is always available) to see if you're near a 4G hot spot.
3. If you're near a 4G hot spot, look for 4G.
4. Once a day search for 4G.

Old New

[Anonymous Coward]

I still own and use a Nokia 6310i this thing lasts me 2 weeks solid without plugging it to a power source.
Had someone hand me down a (N97 or 96 cant remember). I gave it back to him after a few days, had to recharge every day and every time I NEEDED the phone it was out of battery. Who the fuck buys this shit ? are people mad ?

Stupid design

[Skapare]

Sounds like a stupid design to me. The cell towers should have a master frequency they periodically (every few seconds) transmit on with ID number, site ID key, whatever. No reason for any phone to ever transmit unless it detects a tower it wants to communicate with.

This has been though about already

[21mhz]

They don't want the best effort internet traffic to swamp the premium voice traffic. So if they want to go full VOIP they need to build QOS into every aspect of the network.

If you read the relevant 3GPP specs, you will see that this is very much the case: IMS voice is normally sent over a radio access network bearer separate from internet traffic, and bandwidth reservation for voice and video channels is further negotiated.

Further they have to work out how you will handle phones switching mid call from 4G voip to 2G/3G circuit switched voice when they go out of 4G coverage.

The handover procedures on a single radio have also been specified and demonstrated, see SRVCC.

Finally all the carriers and phone vendors need to agree on this so it can be incorporated into mass market phones.

This is the real problem: now all the carriers care about is 4G data for its faster transfer rates, so this is what phone vendors focus their efforts on. For some time in the future, we will have to live with CS voice fallback in "4G" networks, which means that active data bearers will downgrade to 3G whenever a call is made or received. Not that it is a big problem in practice.

Re:This has been though about already

[sonicmerlin]

Uh no. VoLTE handover to CDMA is not ready yet. It just doesn't work, which is why Verizon is delaying its implementation until late 2013. VoLTE handover to WCDMA however works fine.

So, all the time then?

[Maury Markowitz]

There's *very* good 4G coverage in Toronto, and I had a chance to try out a recent Samsung 4G phone.

I could not see any difference in performance compared to my 3G phone.

I suspect that latency is indeed better, but I don't use my phone for tasks where that's important. So

"turning off your 4G connection when you don't need the fastest speeds"

It seems silly to pay for a feature that by this logic should simply be turned off all the time.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

As discussed at CES

[sl4shd0rk]

At CES this year I sat in a room with a panel of people from at&t, verizon and others. There were also infrastructure engineers both on the panel and in the audience. 4g was discussed in depth. The Takeaway is that 4g is marketing hype. The telcos cannot get the necessary spectrum to support the number of devices, carriers do not have the infrastructure to support the bandwidth and device manufactrurers are struggling with device footprint and battery life. I didn't get a clear picture of how any of them were going to get past the issues.

Doesn't make sense to me

[bigbangnet]

That trick is stupid. You pay extra for a feature on a phone that your supose to use and that trick and most of them says not to use it ? wtf is that crap. Just sell the phone and go with a previous working then. It's like paying 50% more for a faster car but because of x reason, you can go faster. Why the hell did I buy that faster car then ????

Re:Doesn't make sense to me

[Anonymous Coward]

My Nexus S has more features over my previous phone that I wanted other than just 4G. It was not any more expensive than other 4G and non 4G phones that I was considering. I considered 4G a bonus, not a must have. If I am in an area that has 4G coverage and I need it, I am probably watching video or using it as a video phone that requires more processing and A/V anyway so I am fully aware that it will drain the battery faster. At least with 4G, I have that choice. It would be great if every phone used as much power in standby as it did when running intensive apps and I/O but the reality is they never will be. The more you use, the more power it draws. What a concept.

FFT anyone !?

[demiurg]

Increased power consumption has nothing to do with phones spending "an lot of battery power trying to hunt down a signal". 4M (both LTE and WiMAX) uses OFDMA as opposed to 3G which relies on CDMA. One of the consequences is that the baseband receiver needs to process much wider range of frequencies, which leads to increased power consumption.

Re:FFT anyone !?

[CurryCamel]

Except that the cell search can be done at the most narrow bandwidth, 1.4MHz. And actually even half of that (see e.g. Sesia et. al http://search.barnesandnoble.com/LTE/Stefania-Sesia/e/9780470697160 ).
And further more, in the cell search - the signal is searched for in the time domain. Only when you find a candidate do you need to start to use the fourier transform.

Verizon Galaxy Nexus - Dallas/Forth Worth

[oneiron]

I guess the coverage is pretty good around here because I get great battery life on my Galaxy Nexus. Full in the morning lasts until bedtime with typical usage reading emails and checking my calendar at work all day....a little RSS reading inbetween. Push enabled...

Your macbook cant do what an old P4 Laptop couldn'

[Anonymous Coward]

"Your macbook cant do what an old P4 Laptop couldn't"

Too true! Neither of them can run Skyrim at max bling.

But his old P4 laptop can't play full screen HD video at full FPS. His macbook can.

Everyone is wrong

[fast turtle]

Themain reason as stated in the damn summary is the lack of LTE towers. This means the blasted system is trying to find a signal more often then it does on 3G. In a Car Analogy you have a longer drive to get to the onramp of the autobahn as it's further away with fewer access ramps. Yes it offers faster travel but if you just need to get across town, it's faster to take local roads and streets instead of driving the distance needed to access the autobahn.

Re:Everyone is wrong

[YoopDaDum]

Frequent (and quite inefficient) scanning for 4G is indeed a current problem, but does not invalidate what's discussed above. It's an additional and separate issue. And one that's very carrier dependent. For Verizon, if they meet their very aggressive plans, this coverage issue should be gone by year end.

Re:Everyone is wrong

[tibit]

What I don't understand is this: the tower would be transmitting most of the time anyway. Of course towers can do beam shaping and adaptive transmit power, but I think that there's room for having a high power spatially multiplexed beacon. If the phone doesn't hear the beacon, there's no reason whatsoever to transmit. I think someone must have dropped the ball on the implementation of the protocol -- I presume the spec is not broken so badly that a handset would net to transmit just to confirm that there's a 4G tower nearby?!

coincides with data cap

[bmidgley]

It's all good... battery dies at the same time you use up your data cap for the month. After 41 minutes. (2GB at 6.44Mbps)

This isn't news, and isn't 4G

[hazydave]

I have one of those devices.. a Samsung Galaxy Nexus. And yeah, you can go through the battery.. even the extended battery.. in a short run.

Of course, that was also very true of the unit my Nexus replaced.. the original Verizon Droid. Great device, at least until the touchscreen fell out of calibration and Mot didn't offer, well, a calibration tool. Doing intensive network stuff on a weak connection, I could trash that Droid's battery in 2-3 hours. Good thing I had 5 replacement cells. But that had nothing specific to do with the 3G connection.

Yes, the 4G/LTE hardware can suck some power. The good news is that the RF uplink part is actually lower power than 3G. The digital part, right now, definitely uses more power than the 3G original.

And 4G isn't always even a problem. I work in Philly, in a 100-year-old former car factory (Marketplace Design Center, 2400 Market Street). If I move very far away from my windowed office there on the fourth floor, my 3G connection fades fast. That's not just a problem of connectivtiy,but one of battery. As my 3G signal gets weak, the cell tower will tell my phone to pump up the volume. The peak on a smartphone is on the order of 500mW-1W total output. In short, bad news for your battery. When I go on 4G in the same locales, I have a far, far better signal. That's just 700MHz through brick, morter, and steel. So in the building, 4G is actually saving me power.

You get the radio limiting life on the edge. Every summer, I spend a week on an island in a big lake in New Hampshire. Cell links didn't used to reach us at all, now, you can at least get a voice quality link on most of the island. But you pay a price... I have seen folks' phones lasting less than two days on the island. They're being told to, er,. pump up the volume, right now. The 4G vs. EvDo vs. HPSA vs. CDMA2000 vs. GSM issues are not even relevant.

Thing is, unlike mainstream articles designed to scare children and/or non-iOS users, this isn't even important. When I look at my phone's power use (and yeah, pretty easy to do), that beautiful 1280x720 AM-OLED screen is still sucking doen 40%+ of the power, even if it's in all ways more spectacular than an iPhone 4/4S display.. and maybe even sligthly lower power. Deep down on the menu is the radio modem, 3G or 4G. That's usually about 4% of the power draw. If 4G were actually twice as power hungry, you wouldn't notice the run-time change based on this extra power draw.

The real issue is that we all got 2011 phones release in 2011... all kinds of nice new hardware, all kinds of things that want power, like hi-rez screens. Apple was very conservative, so maybe they're doing ok on a 1400mAhr cell, but nearly everything else about that phone is lower-end than at least most of the higher end Androids. And I'd like to hear from an avid gamer... the 4S is well suited to games, but what does THAT do to one's battery life?

Regardless, 4G is a straw man for iPhone fanbois. If they could get it on an iPhone, you'd never hear an ill word about it. This is, as always, trying to sell backward iPhone tech against those moving much faster. Any time you hear an Apple guy going down on the tech, it's not real... it's an attempt to frame an argument that probably hasn't even happened yet.

blackberry 9930 / sprint / toast

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a blackberry 9930 through sprint. The battery lasts maybe 6 hours in 3G/4G, but when it flips to "1X" the battery lasts about 4 days.

One interesting thing is that when it lasts 4 days in 1X that is with fairly moderate usage. In order to get 6 hours in 3G/4G you have to purposely conserve the battery, like make it not ding, don't use it etc. haha.

Re:I'm switching power cables all damn day!

[hazydave]

Huh... the Galaxy Nexus I mentioned is very much a 4G LTE phone (well, as 4G as things get today... by the time we have LTE Advanced on our phones, the radio chips will have had a generation or two of power reductions -- it's the RF over-the-air stuff you'll never improve, the digital parts will get better with each generation). And yeah, you can kill the battery... but that's true of 3G devices as well. Radio isn't a huge factor most of the time... only when the signal is very weak and the RF needs to go out at 1/2W or whatever your particularly phone peaks at. And given the frequency advantage of LTE on 700MHz, this can be a substantial win, particularly over 3G at 850/1900 or 1700/2100, not to mention WiMax at 2500MHz.

Re:I'm switching power cables all damn day!

[markdavis]

>"by the time we have LTE Advanced on our phones, the radio chips will have had a generation or two of power reductions"

Don't be TOO sure. Sprint will be the first with LTE Advanced, and they are already starting to roll it out. They already have phones to go with it: http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/09/sprint-unveils-first-lte-phones-the-galaxy-nexus-and-the-lg-viper/

Maybe they are just LTE and not LTE Advanced? I don't know. Another article said they would use LTE for the data and CDMA for the voice until 2013, when they roll out "Advanced" and also start using VoLTE. So confusing :)

Simple solution

[sjames]

The problem is the phone trying very hard to find a 4G connection that isn't there. A simple solution is to not try so hard if an adequate 3G signal is available unless the user asks for it.

There is no good reason the user shouldn't be able to set priorities like that to get the right balance between battery life and network performance. If I'm doing a bit of emailing, I'd rather have more battery life than have the email poll take .25 seconds rather than .5 seconds.

There's no good reason such functionality as selecting the network type (when it's availabla at all) should involve dialing *#24585454154855588circlesquarehopononefootwhiledialing**666#, just make a simple menu option.