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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."
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.
Remember all the trolling Android spergs on Slashdot who bashed the iPhone 4S for not having 4G? So much for that.
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%.
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.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
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.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
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.
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.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
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.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
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..."
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."