Is iPhone Battery Usefulness On the Decline?

jfruh writes "Every time a company rolls out a new version of a product, it extols how much better it is than the previous version. Thus, Apple spent a part of its iPhone 5 rollout touting the staying power of the latest version of its battery. But have iPhone batteries really seen improvement since the original came out in '07? Kevin Purdy crunches the numbers and concludes that, while the 5's battery beats the 4S's, we still haven't returned to the capabilities of the original phone."

Comments

False Comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

This is because the original iPhone used EDGE. If you force future version off the 3G network, talk time beats the first generation iPhone easily.

Re:False Comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid article is stupid.

Re:False Comparison

[Firehed]

It would be a false comparison if people switched their 3G (or LTE) phones to use EDGE. They don't.

Re:False Comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

You can turn off 3G/4G data in the settings if you want to match.

Re:False Comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you used Android, you can set it up so that you get Edge battery life at 3G speeds, by automating switching back and forth.

Re:False Comparison

[timeOday]

What comparison? Despite all the blabbering there is actually no comparison in the article. Here's the key part:

Synthesizing the rumors and supposed leaks about the iPhone 5[...essentially baseless speculation.] Tests and assessments from reviewers and pundits will come next week, but will undoubtedly deviate from Apple's numbers.

In other words, nothing is known.

Re:False Comparison

[Telvin_3d]

Sure there is. General>Network and top of the page is enable/disable 3G

Re:False Comparison

[arekin]

I think the comparison is one of Battery life not keeping up with battery usage in newer devices. Technology is not increasing at the same rate, but the expectation is still there, especially for people who previously owned earlier versions of the iPhone. What most people see is not "my iPhone battery consumption is high because of increase demand from data networks", but rather "I never had to charge my old iPhone this much." Its like comparing movies sales in 2012 dollars, its a perfectly valid statement to make, even though we all know what causes the reduced data usage.

Re:False Comparison

[Score Whore]

What is that mod you recevied, a "+1, Wrong"?

Re:False Comparison

[superdana]

You're *almost* right. This feature was removed in iOS 5 but returned in iOS 5.1.

Re:False Comparison

[Albanach]

And if you used Android, you can set it up so that you get Edge battery life at 3G speeds, by automating switching back and forth.

I was about to ask about this.

I was wondering why you'd want 3G running all the time. if it sucks so much battery life. It's not like it's needed to check for new email or incoming text messages. I don't need 3G for a voice call. Automatic switching seems to be a no-brainer. Simply hand over to 3G if it's available as soon as you start to use data (or open apps that flag themselves as needing a high speed data connection).

Personally, I've long since given up on the cell phone arms race. If folk need to get hold of me the generally find a way.

Re:False Comparison

[mkraft]

You can turn off 3G/4G data in the settings if you want to match.

Actually for many, you can't. Carriers can disable the 3G toggle on the iPhone 4S. AT&T does so.

http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/03/09/ios-51-brings-3g-toggle/

Re:False Comparison

[rtb61]

Penny pinching to maximise profits and also the ability to tout light weight are creating the urge to under size batteries against expected use. Stop blaming the customer that crap is straight up marketing bullshit. Apple knows full well the expected use and is simply short changing the battery to pick up a few more cents profit.

Much the same as the change in screen size. Apple marketing was disturbed by people standing an iPhone up against a Galaxy Nexus and in comparison commenting the iPhone looked like a toy. So the marketing department rather than creating an equal sized phone, snuck in taller one so when people compared the phones standing up the iPhone wouldn't look as small. The reason, screen area is the number one big ticket cost and you pay per square mm, so Apple squeezing out extra profit from it's customers.

As for the reviews oh my the paid for pandering absolutely sucks. Apple do you seriously believe normal people will accept such biased reviews, best phone on the market, not based on specs, oh no, based purely on paid to comment opinion.

Re:False Comparison

[Macman408]

This is both carrier and iOS version-specific. I believe iOS 5.0 and 5.0.1 did not have the option at all, while 5.1 restored it, but not on some networks, including AT&T. (I have a 4S with iOS 5.1.1 on AT&T, and can confirm that there is no option to disable 3G in the Network settings.)

Re:False Comparison

[Guspaz]

I see the option on iOS 5.1.1 on Fido (Rogers).

Re:False Comparison

[Guspaz]

For some, it makes sense. Bell, for example, has no GSM network; they migrated from CDMA (EVDO) to HSPA+. Disabling 3G on a Bell iPhone would simply cut all connectivity.

Re:False Comparison

[jbolden]

Apple from a profit standpoint would much rather have a big cheap battery than the incredibly expensive light thin batteries they have. Heck they would rather sell the phone hooked up to a car battery and give you 1000 hrs talk time. Light and thin is costing them money, this isn't about penny pinching.

Re:False Comparison

[PixetaledPikachu]

This is because the original iPhone used EDGE. If you force future version off the 3G network, talk time beats the first generation iPhone easily.

Yes, but the battery capacity bump between the OG iphone and iphone 5 should also be put into consideration. My point is smartphone manufacturers in general believe that their customers will tolerate shorter operation time in return of bigger screens, slimmer body and faster data rate

Re:False Comparison

[PixetaledPikachu]

And if you used Android, you can set it up so that you get Edge battery life at 3G speeds, by automating switching back and forth.

I was about to ask about this.

I was wondering why you'd want 3G running all the time. if it sucks so much battery life. It's not like it's needed to check for new email or incoming text messages. I don't need 3G for a voice call. Automatic switching seems to be a no-brainer.

For me, the android switching process actually drains more power compared to locking the phone on 3G only. I think it has something to do with how shitty cell connection in Indonesia, so YMMV

Re:False Comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Android has some apps like JuiceDefender which help a lot in maintaining battery life, but it takes a bit of time to set up things.

For example, setting up schedules. In the day, you might want your E-mail services to have push capability. However, at night, you might want the device to turn off all radios except for a 30 second window every five minutes so an app that polls can get out, check for mail, download it, and be done.

It is hard to compare iOS versus Android. A jailbroken iPhone with Backgrounder allowing tasks to sit and run without being killed will have a shorter battery life than if one only uses the limited backgrounding that iOS provides.

Re:False Comparison

[R3d M3rcury]

I don't see the option on iOS 5.1.1 on AT&T.

Re:False Comparison

[otuz]

TFA compares with the 3GS, which had 300 hours standby.

Re:False Comparison

[sd4f]

Pretty much every phone these days has either lithium ion or lithium polymer batteries, that's to get the highest reasonable energy density in the battery. Apple isn't doing anything differently in this regard than any other phone manufacturer.

However, as a consumer, i'd rather a design concept like the motorola razr maxx, prepared to have a bit more thickness if it means the phone will last a weekend without charging.

Re:False Comparison

[GNious]

Disable 2G instead - if built properly, that should reduce power-consumption somewhat (works on my CrapBerry)

Re:False Comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

I did something similar with 3G because AT&T has a crap network. I could rarely if ever connect to 3G so I just disabled it. Both my transfer speed and my battery life improved dramatically. For whatever reason the network did a shit job of transferring between 3G and 2G infrastructure, which meant that the connection was constantly being dropped.

Re:False Comparison

[tehcyder]

Apple from a profit standpoint would much rather have a big cheap battery than the incredibly expensive light thin batteries they have. Heck they would rather sell the phone hooked up to a car battery and give you 1000 hrs talk time. Light and thin is costing them money, this isn't about penny pinching.

That serves them right for twatting on about how fucking thin and light their products are, when it actually makes zero practical difference to most people if their phone is a few millimetres thicker and a few grammes heavier.

Re:False Comparison

[hazydave]

It's network dependent anyway.. since on CDMA2000 networks, you can't do 3G voice.

On the other hand, for GSM, you may want 3G voice, even if the power requirements are higher, because it's more reliable. GSM uses a hard call handoff on 2G... it fully drops one cell before connecting to the next. This is at least one reason AT&T seems prone to dropped calls over Verizon or Sprint (the other is poor placement of the cell towers, made so when the AT&T part of the AT&T/Cingular network upgraded from DAMPS -- which had greater range -- to GSM). On 3G voice, you get soft handoff... the phone maintains connections to two or three cells, and uses only the best connection at any given time. Same as CMDA2000 has always done.

Some of it's also based on your relative power requirements. With good cell connections, the screen is far more likely to be your power sink than the cellular modem. But if you're on a cellular fringe, the phone can output as high as 1/2W of power... which is a pretty big frickin' power sink for a small device (that's radio power, and of course, PAs are not all THAT efficient). Depending on your circumstances (walls, woodlands, etc) you may be better off with 4G than 3G, or AT&T/Verizon over Sprint/T-Mobile, just due to frequency characteristics.

Re:False Comparison

[jbolden]

Apple isn't doing anything differently in this regard than any other phone manufacturer.

They use the highest density most expensive option. A few years ago this cost quite a bit more and fewer companies used them.

However, as a consumer, i'd rather a design concept like the motorola razr maxx, prepared to have a bit more thickness if it means the phone will last a weekend without charging.

I understand. I own the MacBook Pro Retina which made huge sacrifices for thin and light. People really like thin and light when they see it, when they try it. But just like the move from desktops to laptops, thin and light likely means 30% less device for 30% more money.

Re:False Comparison

[jbolden]

I have no idea how 114g feels vs. 140g. Probably not much. On the hand the Lumia 920 is 180g. I can imagine that starts to make a real difference in usage. Apple's shtick is thin and light in computers and it has worked out for them.

Re:False Comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Then buy the RAZR MAXX (tm). Motorola probably makes the name all caps to make room for extra battery.

Re:False Comparison

[sd4f]

Nah, screw that, unless it's a google phone, i have no interest in android, and the current google phone isn't quite what i'd like.

Re:False Comparison

[sd4f]

The phone industry has been using lithium ion batteries for ages, well before the iphone, and i don't mean a phone here and there, it's been ubiquitous for some time before the iphone. You would be hard pressed to find examples of phones made since 2000 which don't have lithium ion batteries.

Re:False Comparison

[Pahroza]

And I do, on 5.1.1 with AT&T.

Top of the Network preferences. "Enable 3G". iPhone 4.

Re:False Comparison

[tgibbs]

Not on my AT&T 4s

Re:False Comparison

[tgibbs]

Apple's batteries are essentially state-of-the-art. The trade-off is charge time vs. size, weight, and computing power. Apple clearly feels they have hit the "sweet spot." Some heavy users might feel differently.

Re:False Comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

iPhone 4s 5.1.1 Sprint no 3g option.

Re:False Comparison

[gl4ss]

if your battery technology has double the capacity per volume, you could keep your old volume and have double the capacity.

but that's more expensive, and it's more fun to use the weight for silly shit like glass on the backside(no longer though?).

Re:False Comparison

[gl4ss]

Then buy the RAZR MAXX (tm). Motorola probably makes the name all caps to make room for extra battery.

razr maxx is the funniest naming a long while.
first make a phone and dig up the old razr moniker because it's thin, like a razor.

then MAXX it up!

Re:False Comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy fuck that's a lot of horse shit.

Re:False Comparison

[Anubis IV]

And I have AT&T with an iPhone 4 running 5.1.1 and I can turn off 3G by going to Settings > General > Network, then disabling it at the very top, so I'd say that it is not determined based on the factors you've suggested. Rather, based on what we've seen and what other people are reporting down further, it sounds like the 4S lacks the ability to do so under your conditions, whereas the iPhone 4 is perfectly capable of it. Perhaps they combined the chips in such a way that disabling 3G without also losing EDGE is impossible?

Re:False Comparison

[Cimexus]

It's carrier-specific, but only on the 4S. AT&T iPhone 4S won't have the option. Every other iPhone model will.

And a 4S on any network other than AT&T generally will too (my 4S on a network here in Australia has the option, but I travel regularly to the US and soon as I put my AT&T SIM back in it, the option vanishes).

Re:False Comparison

[Cimexus]

Yeah I used to keep my iPhone on 2G (EDGE/GPRS) most of the time - it did wonders for battery life and was still OK for getting your emails and stuff. Soon as you wanted to do something a bit more intensive like check Google Maps though, you'd need to flick 3G back on.

Re:False Comparison

[Cimexus]

The weight I'm not too fussed about, but any reduction in thickness is awesome for anyone that keeps their phone in their pants pocket. :)

Re:False Comparison

[Urza9814]

I used to keep an Archos 5 IMT ( http://www.amazon.com/Archos-32-Internet-Tablet-Android/dp/B002OL2PLU ) in my pants pocket and never had a problem with it...hell you should see all the crap I've got in them right now...wallet, pack of smokes, lighter, two pencils, a pen, car keys & fob, RSA fob, house keys, office keys, apartment fob, detachable keychain, sunglasses, and an LG VX9800 ( http://www.cellphonestalk.com/cellphonereviews/lg/vx9800/lg-vx9800-flipside2.jpg )

...and that's all in my front two pockets. And the only thing in the left one is the wallet. Stop wearing tight jeans and it won't be an issue ;)

Re:False Comparison

[jbolden]

Or you could use a cheaper technology and just have more volume. Whether you like what Apple is doing with the space savings is irrelevant. The point is this wasn't the cheap thing to do, it was expensive.

Re:False Comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Nor on my AT&T 4s. I remember it used to be there on my 3GS.

Re:False Comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the option on a 4 with AT&T and IOS 6. That makes me suspect it's partially a chipset issue.

Re:False Comparison

[R3d M3rcury]

This.

I had it on my iPhone 3GS. It is not there on my iPhone 4S.

So much for the "consistent interface"...

Re:False Comparison

[Grizzley9]

Great, I finally review this thread and am correct (5.0.1 AT&T 4S) and confirmed by posters below, yet got rated -1. Thanks /.

Jokes on them!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still running an original iphone as my main phone. I still haven't seen anything worth upgrading for, yet, on either side of the isle.

It still works perfectly and holds a days charge.

Re:Jokes on them!

[slashdyke]

I'm still running a home phone - VOIP, not land line. I haven't seen anything worth switching to in the mobile market. So, I have you beat. I have not spent the money, nor will I, on any iPhone.

Re:Jokes on them!

[AK Marc]

As long as you don't want any apps. How many apps available today work on the original? I had a 1 year old 3G and could run about 10% of the apps I tried to download. Haven't tried any for the past few years, though. It's been turned into a heavy and slow iPod touch (phone without a sim).

Re:Jokes on them!

[cameloid]

Sometimes it IS necessary to upgrade though, it can save you real money. I used to spend $$ on firewood for sending smoke signals; but then I made a one-off payment by switching to semaphore flags. Simples!

Re:Jokes on them!

[Anonymous Coward]

You think you're saving money?
After getting a mating pair of carrier pidgeons, my transmission costs are minimal, and my bandwidth just keeps increasing. Sure there are a few lost packets to aircraft, bb guns and Richard Gere, and latency is high, but we're talking reverse data cap here.

Re:Jokes on them!

[socceroos]

Pidgeons? I use butterflies. Eventually, the ripples cause by their wings will cause my data to arrive at its destination - including all future data.

Re:Jokes on them!

[pspahn]

a heavy and slow iPod touch (phone without a sim).

Which is exactly where you have the real difference between iThing and Droidbot.

With Droidbot, you can always purchase an "mp3" player similar to the iThing Shush. Couple this with GoogooYak and any modern connection, and you officially have no reason to pay anyone except the web dealer.

The biggest web dealers know this.

Of course, it will be another 50 years before we realize that access to the "communication core" is a basic civil right. [@futurespecies looking back on ancient records - ha! I totally called that one!]

Re:Jokes on them!

[fnj]

Happy with homing mosquitoes here. You can carry a lot of them. One tenth of a thimble full of blood keeps dozens of them alive for weeks. They are use once and discard. I paint the message on the wing and the receiver just has to use a scanning electron microscope to read it. Only problem I've had is they fly to the wrong place, or the receiver swats them before seeing if there is a message.

Re:Jokes on them!

[tehcyder]

I'm still running an original iphone as my main phone. I still haven't seen anything worth upgrading for, yet, on either side of the isle.

It still works perfectly and holds a days charge.

LOL, I read that as "my mains phone" i.e. it now has such a short battery life you have to use it plugged into the mains.

Re:Jokes on them!

[tehcyder]

Of course, it will be another 50 years before we realize that access to the "communication core" is a basic civil right.

I'd rather we had a society where some people didn't own/earn hundreds or thousands of times more than other people as a basic civic principle first..

Re:Jokes on them!

[tom17]

I actually use hitherto un-invented methods to inscribe my messages into the hydrogen protons in a molecule of water. I know there is some statistic about how every molecule of water has been everywhere on the planet, so data loss statistics are very good.

Latency can be a bitch sometimes, especially if it gets stuck in a glacier for a few million years.

Now, if they manage to crack that fusion thing, my packet loss will go through the floor :(

XD

[Anonymous Coward]

Primero

don't care

[ThorGod]

On the grounds that I want a mini iPad and they didn't announce it yet.

SCORN!

Re:don't care

[spire3661]

The new ipod touch STARTS at $299, where exactly is an ipad mini going to fit in that lineup?

Re:don't care

[ThorGod]

Uhh, figure the 16 gig mini iPad will be the same price as a 32 gig iPod Touch.

Where it fits better is in my hand than an iphone or ipod touch. Sorry, they're just too small for me to comfortably use for what they're capable of doing.

More power for the same battery life is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

And as competitive as smartphones are today that's close to as good as we'll get for a bit. There IS a type of Lithium-ion battery that can store twice the charge of today's batteries at the same volume, but that's apparently coming to electric cars first; which obviously spend a lot more on batteries per unit and are in far more need of it.

But expect these batteries in phones at some point. In the further future the most promising technology is lithium-air batteries, which offer up to 10x the current charge per volume as today. But there are still numerous problems with them, and so an ETA there would be indefinite but quite possibly less than a decade. Still, imagine a phone that would need charging less than once a week!

Re:More power for the same battery life is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

imagine a phone that would need charging less than once a week!

...until they put 5G radios in them...

Re:More power for the same battery life is Good

[neonmonk]

But that's NOT as good as we can get. Apple sacrificed possible battery life for aesthetic thinness, as is their wont. But let's not fool ourselves into thinking that's the best that could be done.

Re:More power for the same battery life is Good

[arbiter1]

Apple's claim of 8hours LTE useage i think is very optimistic.

Re:More power for the same battery life is Good

[fast turtle]

You're right about the asthetic issue. I've got a candy bar phone that lasts at least a week between charges and if I'm actually using it, it'll last 6-8 hours of talk time in fringe reception area's because it has an actual antenna that I can pull out when needed. Range is great as I've successfully connected to the carrier while 6 miles off-shore (whale watching trip). Surprised the hell out of me an most everyone else when the damn thing rang.

Re:More power for the same battery life is Good

[SuperAlgae]

Wireless signals travel extremely well over water. Getting a signal 6 miles out is not too surprising.

Re:More power for the same battery life is Good

[Gothmolly]

I'm sure everyone wanted to throw your phone (and you) overboard. It's douches like you who ruin outdoor activities. "Yo dude guess where I am !!!"

Re:More power for the same battery life is Good

[Guspaz]

The answer is quite obvious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7yfISlGLNU

Re:More power for the same battery life is Good

[1u3hr]

ETA there would be indefinite but quite possibly less than a decade. Still, imagine a phone that would need charging less than once a week!

Like my 5 year old Motorola C168i?

Re:More power for the same battery life is Good

[dargaud]

Wireless signals travel extremely well over water. Getting a signal 6 miles out is not too surprising.

Well, good thing for her.

Re:More power for the same battery life is Good

[jago25_98]

Does anyone know what these better batteries are called?
Sounds pretty damn interesting to me.

Here's a link... but no name that's easy to Google for:
http://gizmodo.com/5889295/new-electric-car-battery-could-double-capacity-and-halve-cost

All I have is "Envia". Is this the one?
http://enviasystems.com/

If you're like me you're probably rapidly Googling to see whether we can shoe-horn this from a car battery into a phone battery ASAP

"2.1 The Envia Systems cells are prototype lithium pouch rechargeable cells. The cells have a capacity of 46 Ah and an energy density of 400Wh/Kg. The cell's dimensions are approximately 97 mm wide, 190 mm long and 10 mm thick. The cell's approximate weight is 365 grams. Cell serial numbers are 400WhK-07-005-111205 (designated as 005) and 400WhK-07-006-111205 (designated as 006).

5. Conclusions

5.1 One of the highest energy cells used in consumer applications is the NCR18650A manufactured by Panasonic, which can be used as a comparative asset to the Envia cells. The NCR18650A cell specification claims 3100 mAh capacity, 3.6 V average and weighs 45.5 grams. The calculated energy density of this comparative cell would be approximately 245 Wh/Kg.

5.2 The test results from the prototype cells tested at Crane were in line with the results obtained from the manufacturer. The claims of 400 Wh/Kg were substantiated through the cycling tests performed at Crane. This is a 160% energy density increase over the industry standard indicated in paragraph 5.1. "

Re:More power for the same battery life is Good

[tehcyder]

Still, imagine a phone that would need charging less than once a week!

You can still get phones with battery life of two weeks or more. What you can't get is a pocket-sized internet-connected computer that does the same.

Re:More power for the same battery life is Good

[tehcyder]

Cue Dom Joly:

I'm out on a boat watching fish! It's rubbish!!

Re:More power for the same battery life is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

My Symbian phone lasts for a week and can do everything that an iPhone can do.

Re:More power for the same battery life is Good

[hazydave]

Probably not. In some situations, LTE can actually use less power than 3G. Mine, for example. I got all-day-plus performance on my Galaxy Nexus (with the 2100mAhr battery) at my old office. That was in Philadelphia, in a very old stone building... very good 4G signal, in fact, much better in-building than 3G ever was (most of the cells in the city are going to use 1900MHz on Verizon, for the increased bandwidth, which gets more attenuation through old stone walls than the 700MHz used for LTE).

These days, I'm in an office in Downingtown, PA, in a pretty fringy 3G area. Same phone won't last a work day on standby without sitting on a charger when not in use.

Going forward, LTE will eventually save power over any form of 3G. Right now, not necessarily -- the digital protocols still take more power than either sort of 3G, but that's going to vanish as chips shrink. What you can't shrink is the need for the power amplifier (PA). Most phones want to be able to put out a signal of at least 1/2W (27dBm). The typical OFDM modulation schemes used in 3G, however, basically sum a large number of independent carriers (subcarriers) to deliver the full signal. When things line up unfortunately, you have too many signals summing high, creating a temporary power "crest".. this is known as the crest factor of a modulation scheme. For 3G as a class, this is a 6-10dB crest factor (also sometimes expressed as a PAPR -- Peak to Average Power Ratio). This means that the PA actually has to be able to support no just 27dB signals, but 37dB signals... a peak of 5W. Now, certainly, your phone isn't constantly transmitting 5W. But the PA has to be able to transmit at 5W without crushing the signal. That means the PA is going to be much less efficient than it could be at 1/2W.

Now to LTE.. the new SC-FDMA uplink modulation, presents only a single carrier on transmission, greatly reducing the PAPR/crest factor. Basically, it's a conventional OFDM modulation fed into a fourier transform, which has the effect of averaging out the high peaks. This can deliver 64QAM with a crest factor under 5dB. So you'd need an amplifier peaking at about 1.5W, rather than 5W, for the same uplink in 4G LTE vs. 3G HSPA. That's a huge win for the handset.

Re:More power for the same battery life is Good

[SirJorgelOfBorgel]

Thanks for that.

Re:More power for the same battery life is Good

[Urza9814]

Still, imagine a phone that would need charging less than once a week!

Already have one. Not a 'smart phone', but by the time these batteries are in top of the line phones, it won't last a week there either!

Oh, the milliamp-hours!

[Anonymous Coward]

"As explained around the web, milliamps hours (mAh) are something like a gas tank, and voltage (V) is the amount of fuel the device is drawing."

I don't know who wrote this bullshit, but they need to be shot.

(Yes, I attempted to read the article; so sue me.)

Re:Oh, the milliamp-hours!

[byornski]

mAh is a unit of charge not energy.

Re:Oh, the milliamp-hours!

[mug funky]

no, that would be Volts.

Re:Oh, the milliamp-hours!

[Anonymous Coward]

No it's charge. An amp is defined as

one coulomb per second

Now when you take units of charge/time and multiply by time, the times cancel out and you are left with charge. So a mAh has units of charge.

Re:Oh, the milliamp-hours!

[ZorinLynx]

The unit you're looking for (energy) is watt-hours.

Amp-hours * Battery voltage = watt hours.

1 amp from a 3.7V battery = 3.7 watts. Utilize that for an hour, that's 1 amp hour, or 3.7 watt hours.

Re:Oh, the milliamp-hours!

[dido]

Actually, simple hydraulics and electronics have natural analogies, in that similar equations can be used for both. Milliamp-hours is a unit of charge, 1 mAh == 3.6 coloumbs, or about the charge in 3.73e-05 moles worth of electrons, so yes, it would be accurate to say that mAh can be analogised to the volume of a tank of petrol, as charge would be the equivalent of fluid volume in hydraulics. However, voltage, being in units of energy per unit charge (a volt is 1 joule per coloumb), is more like fluid pressure in hydraulics (joules per cubic metre or pascals), or at how much pressure the fuel is being sent out the gas tank, so the article is completely wrong on that score. The "amount of fuel the device is drawing" is more like current, which is measured in amperes (coloumbs per second), which would be the equivalent of flow rate in hydraulics (cubic metres per second). Thus, if you had a battery rated at 1500 mAh used on a device that drew 100 mA of current from it on use, you'd be able to use it for about 15 hours before you needed to recharge the batteries. In a similar way, if you had a tank with a volume of 1500 cubic metres and were pumping liquid out at 100 cubic metres per hour, you'd need to refill it after 15 hours.

Re:Oh, the milliamp-hours!

[DeathFromSomewhere]

An ampere-hour or amp-hour (symbol Ah, AHr, Ah, A h) is a unit of electric charge
The kilowatt hour, or kilowatt-hour, (symbol kWh, kW h or kWh) is a unit of energy

Re:Oh, the milliamp-hours!

[AK Marc]

Volts would be the size of the fuel line or size of the engine - something that approximates instantaneous draw without being instantaneous draw.

Re:Oh, the milliamp-hours!

[guruevi]

The whole article is fluff link bait. It's a blog post on someone's opinion spread over three pages (2.25 actually, 5 sentences on the last page) to increase ad revenue.

I cringed at that notion as well and it was misinterpreted from it's source by a dipwit that claimed to do research at the outset of the article but simply Google'd some links together that are basic speculation and rumors.

There were no tests done, there were no graphics, not even a source for the technical data (not that the author would be able to interpret it correctly). Also, mixing the 3G and 2G capabilities and not understanding or explaining the difference and which one would be used at any point in time. Also, the iPhone's don't have Li-Ion batteries, they have Li-Polymer, a huge difference.

From the sparse sources claimed and misinterpreted in this article I can see:
On 2G:
iPhone - 8h talk time, 250h standby
iPhone 3G - 10h talk time, 300h standby
iPhone 3GS - 12h talk time, 300h standby
iPhone 4 - 14h talk time, 300h standby

On 3G:
iPhone - non-existent (but we'll take 8 as the base)
iPhone 3G - ~8h talk time
iPhone 3GS - ~8h talk time
iPhone 4 - 7h talk time
iPhone 4S - 8h talk time
iPhone 5 - 8h talk time

Has the battery decreased? Not really. Give or take a few given the circumstances (signal strength etc.) but probably not noticeable.
Have the features and speed increased? Yes.

When does your phone (any, not just limited to iPhone) use 3G vs 2G: It depends. The cell phone operator (or more accurately the tower) makes that decision based on the capabilities of your phone, availability of the spectrum and congestion. Which is better: 3G. Why: less congestion and more bandwidth. Why does it use more power: better voice quality, different frequencies and also continues receiving other data (e-mail and such) in the background.

There, I re-wrote the article probably much better from a technical viewpoint and it fits in a Slashdot comment.

Re:Oh, the milliamp-hours!

[sd4f]

lol, i like this guy, must be an apple fan.

Re:Oh, the milliamp-hours!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that was the error I was attempting to point out.

Re:Oh, the milliamp-hours!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a blog post on someone's opinion spread over three pages (2.25 actually, 5 sentences on the last page) to increase ad revenue.

Once again, I long for the web back before advertising. We got, and produced, better content when there wasn't the same profit motive to produce it.

Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Today's iPhone does so much more than the early models. The fact they've been able to keep the battery so powerful is a testament to their engineering. The new iPhone is 20% thinner. They could've easily used that 20% for more battery, and users wouldn't have even known.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

actually the iPhone does about the same now as before... the "improvements" have all been incremental... Which is why the iPhone 5 only does what a 1 year maybe 1 and 1/2 year old Android does... They've fallen WAY behind the times. the world just hasn't realized it yet...

But they will...

iphone 5 owner: LOOK I HAVE TURN BY TURN NAV!

Android owner: My last two phones did that...

iphone 5 owner: BUT I have 5 rows...

Android owner: SO do I and my phone has widgets and rotates... yawn

iphone 5 owner: Look at my 4" screen!

Android owner: 4.6" yawn

iphone 5 owner: But its APPLE!

Android owner: and you paid 100 dollars more good job sheeple...

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact they've been able to keep the battery so powerful is a testament to their engineering

Who's engineering? Apple don't design batteries.

Re:Seriously?

[tehcyder]

iPhone owner: but my phone doesn't crash and hang, doesn't drain the battery in a day and generally lasts longer than 6 months even under heavy abuse.

Anecdotes about crashing and hanging can be swapped until Doomsday, but from my observations of other people's iPhones they most certainly do need re-charging once a day (unless you turn them off...) and they are physically quite fragile.

Re:Seriously?

[hazydave]

Yup. And they're going to do that.. play catch up. It's inevitable. It's close to inevitable for any market leader to be conservative, since it's hard for them grab more share, fairly easy to imagine screwing something up and losing market share. So they don't do anything crazy. And in the tech world in particular, "innovation" is well described as "crazy that works"... you had this nutty idea, a big chance to what came before, and hey, look, it's working. Like the first iPhone... there was lots of "what came before" rolled into the iPhone. The "crazy" part was selling a smartphone to consumers. Because everyone in the business, Microsoft, Palm, RIM, they all knew, with certainty, that only business folk wanted smartphones.

Add to the natural conservative nature of the market leader several of Apple's standard behavior, and I can pretty much make the case that Apple isn't going to innovate anymore. And for the part, past the first iPhone, they really didn't do that much innovation anyway.

Apple sells a crazy number of devices for a single manufacturer... somewhere between 33% and 40% of all the smart phones sold in the USA, for example. They have a very precise formula -- one new model per year. This does tend to make their business skewed seasonal, but it also allows them to generate huge profits, making just the one model. More recently, they've addressed the lower end market by selling the older products at a reduced price. So unlike every other smart phone vendor, they're not spending a dime to address the mid-range and low-end of the smartphone market. And they're seeding the market for future upgrades.

All of this is dependent on their ability to keep the numbers up ... millions flocking to that same yearly new iPhone. If they were to do something in a new iPhone that drove customers away, their whole franchise could fail. Thus, they're never going to do anything particularly interesting with the flagship. There's also a bit of lock in for any smartphone platform... once you're serious about the iPhone, you're not looking closely at Samsung or Motorola or HTC or even Nokia for your next upgrade... you're waiting for that new iPhone. Apple needs to keep something of a parity with the competition... and that's pretty much what the iPhone 5 did. And about all it did. And I claim, that's more than enough. It doesn't do anything to upset the Apple cart :-)

Companies not in the lead are more likely to take risks. And companies with a broad product line are more likely to take risks. So look at Motorola. They had basically no presence in the smartphone business, they had been hurtin' for years. In 2009 they did the Motorola Droid/Milestone... in many way the anti-iPhone.. even THAT itself was a risk... you can tell, by all of the effort some other companies have gone to in order to make an iPhone-ish product. The iPhone was sleek and smooth, the Droid very industrial, and even with a keyboard. And a higher resolution display, which Apple wouldn't do for another year. This was a big success for Motorola, and led to a huge line of smartphones. But they're still struggling a bit. So last year, they took another risk and introduced the new RAZR. Again, kind of an anti-iPhone. More hard industrial edges. Rather than a phone made of mostly glass, they build theirs out of Kevlar -- the thing's as indestructible as phones get. This was a bit of a gamble, but Motorola has a full line of other devices.

It paid off... so a bunch more RAZR models. In fact, in-between the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 introductions, Motorola introduced five different RAZR models, and a bunch of other devices. That's the other thing about innovation, which goes back to my original claim -- innovation is crazy made successful. If you can't afford to fail, you can't take the risk, you can't bring the crazy, and so, you don't do any significant innovations. Consider that the only significant innovation in the iPhone 4S was SIRI, Apple's integrated speech recognizer/actor... software you can swi

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

So anecdotes about crashing and hanging are pointless but anecdotes about charging and fragility are fair game?

Better in all the ways that matter

[SuperKendall]

Did the original iPhone have 225 hours standby?

And the fact that you still get 8 hours browsing, even over LTE, is really impressive. It might be slightly shorter than browsing time on an original iPhone but how much browsing could you have got done on Edge? You could probably read 10x the content on the iPhone 5, so how is it not far ahead?

It comes back to the problem of looking at a raw number on a list, without thinking what that number MEANS to a user on the device.

Re:Better in all the ways that matter

[mkraft]

It remains to be seen if the iPhone 5 can really pull off 8 hours of LTE browsing as that would be impressive (blow through your data cap on a single charge), but historically Apple's battery estimates are on the high side.

Re:Better in all the ways that matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha.

I use a BlackBerry 8703e. I bought a bunch of them on Ebay for dirt cheap.

I replaced the batteries with aftermarket ones and can easily get over 14 days of standby (with a fair amount of email checking along the way).

What this means to the user is he paid a tiny fraction of the average apple fanboy, got several devices, can easily and trivially swap parts and do other user servicing, gets MORE battery life than the latest and greatest, and gets the nostalgia factor of using a 6+ year old device when picking up chicks.

Re:Better in all the ways that matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Something I've always wondered. They say "8 hours of browsing on LTE". What constitutes browsing? Obviously the screen being on is probably the big draw, but I know a good percentage of my "browsing" is actually reading the sites I've pulled up. During that time it's not pulling any data (unless you're on a javascript hungry site). On the other hand, someone could be skipping through web on image heavy pages or trolling web video trying to find something that would suck up more transfer time... So which is it?

I know I definitely get better battery life while on WiFi.

Re:Better in all the ways that matter

[epiphani]

Did the original iPhone have 225 hours standby?

No, it had 250.

And the fact that you still get 8 hours browsing, even over LTE, is really impressive. It might be slightly shorter than browsing time on an original iPhone but how much browsing could you have got done on Edge? You could probably read 10x the content on the iPhone 5, so how is it not far ahead?

It comes back to the problem of looking at a raw number on a list, without thinking what that number MEANS to a user on the device.

Great example of cognitive dissonance. The point of the article is that taking into account technology changes, this iphone isn't any better than the original. And you just argued "but but but... new technology!"

Re:Better in all the ways that matter

[robthebloke]

The typical iPhone user is only considered with the number 5.

..... it's got mp3 decks, and a massive number 5, because 5 is the most common number yeah!

Re:Better in all the ways that matter

[narcc]

Those were good times. I needed to charge my 7290 and 8820 at most twice a week under heavy use.

My current BB will only go about two days between charges, three if it's a slow week.

How "It'll make it through a day" became a selling point is beyond me.

Re:Better in all the ways that matter

[arekin]

You could probably read 10x the content on the iPhone 5, so how is it not far ahead?

Probably not actually, as speeds increase so does the average page size (even on a mobile browser). Honestly what 4g has bought us is a marginal amount of more information and a dramatic increase in ad usage. We are paying more for the privilage to see what people have to sell.

Re:Better in all the ways that matter

[jrumney]

Nokia posted their research into GSM/EDGE vs 3G battery usage around the time Apple started making excuses for the lack of 3G on the original iPhone. For standby, there is no difference, except in low signal areas if both 2G and 3G are enabled, due to continuous searching for stronger signals on both 3G and 2G networks instead of just one. Talk time is reduced on 3G, because it uses a 64kbps channel for high quality voice vs GSM's 13kbps. For data, GPRS/EDGE looks better in per minute figures for the same reason, but 3G is about double the efficiency of EDGE in terms of energy usage per bytes transmitted or received (and many times more efficient than GPRS).

I'd expect something similar for LTE - improvements in efficiency in the years since the 3G specs were written should give it better performance per byte, but since it's going through those bytes a lot quicker this makes it look bad on figures that only take time into account.

Re:Better in all the ways that matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's battery estimates are on the high side

Probably because they're based on ideal usage - ie no apps running etc, doing nothing but the aspect they're testing, and on a brand new battery which the maximum possible charge. Lithium batteries lose their charge as they age, after a year it might only hold 40% of what it did when it was new when fully charged.

Re:Better in all the ways that matter

[sootman]

> Did the original iPhone have 225 hours standby?

Maybe. Almost. I had one and after a few weeks, I realized "huh, it seems like I hardly ever charge this." So I started keeping a log. (Yes, really.) I typically got 5-6 days on a charge. And I did use it. Not super-heavily, but in a typical day I'd make a few calls, send 10 or 20 texts (back in 2007; I'm around 40-50 now), look up random things online while at lunch or in line at a store, and take some pictures. (I started using its camera as "visual memory enhancement" almost immediately) If I would have charged it and not used it, I very well might have gotten 200 hours out of it.

Immediately after switching to a 3G I noticed that the exact same usage yielded 2-3 days on a charge. I did try the "turn off 3G" trick but it never seemed to make a noticeable difference. Same charge intervals on my 3GS, 4, and 4S. (Yes, I took advantage of AT&T's "upgrade every year or so!" policies, which they have since discontinued. No, I won't get a 5 (or 5S or 6 or whatever) until late 2013.)

Crap compaired to ....

[frovingslosh]

The iPhone 5 is crap compared to the new iPhone 6 that will come out next spring.

Re:Crap compaired to ....

[roc97007]

Ssh. We're supposed to buy the iPhone 5 now, because the 4s is crap compared to the 5. We're not supposed to think about the iPhone 6 until May.

Didn't you get the memo?

Re:Crap compaired to ....

[wvmarle]

Of course. And don't forget to mention that the chocolate rations will be increased by then as well.

Re:Crap compaired to ....

[desdinova 216]

what's a memo? is that anything like an email?

No

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say iPhone batteries are just as useful as ever, although I still don't have much use for one outside of an iPhone. YMMV

Re:No

[PNutts]

And I'll add that I agree they are useful. Without the battery my iPhone's screen is too dark and I can't hear the audio.

HUGE DECLINE

[fferreres]

iPhone 2G, lasts me 12 hours full use or 4 days stand by (2 days average) - still use it btw with new battery
iPhone 4 lasted me (now my wife) about 8 to 9 hours and a day and a half of light use
iPhone 4S with most battery hungry functions (eg. GPS, notifications) lasts me 6 hours of constant use, or 22 to 26 hours of light use

Now the 4S is in the brink of being unacceptable. It's still convenient and the extra speed is very appreciated. But I always need a power outlet nearby when traveling, and I cannot count on it lasting a full day. It just can't if used for browsing and apps for a couple of hours.

Now, I love the iPad 2 battery life. Puts it in the Awesome Stuff list. I am guaranteed it'll last a day. If they could have kept the 2G life and not up CPU I'd have been more interested in the iPhone 5.

Re:HUGE DECLINE

[roc97007]

> iPhone 2G, lasts me 12 hours full use or 4 days stand by (2 days average) - still use it btw with new battery

Seriously? I thought we weren't supposed to replace the battery.

Re:HUGE DECLINE

[theJML]

My 4S is definitely better than my 3G was, but then it was 3 years old when I traded up. I still get a days worth on either. The catch is that the 4S is so much faster and generally more useful that I end up doing more battery sucking things with it just because. It's smooth and does great transferring real time maps with GPS while streaming Pandora in the background, even over AT&T "4G".

If I leave both on the table and mostly ignore them for the day, the 4S gives me more battery life than the 3G ever did.
If I actually use them as I usually would have, the 4S loses... but I find I actually use it A LOT MORE. When I first got it I found myself thinking "Man, the battery life sucks on this" but then I realized I was bascially using it non-stop. Once I got over the "OMG NEW-SHINY" period, it's on par with what the 3G was.

In short, I think the batteries Have improved, but we now expect our phones to do more, and have found more and more ways to use them more on a more regular basis. We cram more powerful AND power hungry chips in the same package and then get annoied and act surprised when it doesn't last as long as the older ones did.

The same thing has happened to laptops... and because this is slashdot, cars. I mean, I remember in the 80's and early 90's when we had little civic hatchbacks that got 55+ MPG. Why don't we have that now? because the civic is huge in comparison, weighs almost twice as much (the old 90 DX was literally 1 ton), has A/C, power everything, huge beams and airbags for safety, etc. And everyone thinks we should have more MPG by now. Yeah. We should, except you wanted all this other crap in there too.

Re:HUGE DECLINE

[Anonymous Coward]

iPhone 4 lasted me (now my wife)

You married your iPhone 4? That's being too much an iFanBoi.

Re:HUGE DECLINE

[Bill_the_Engineer]

The iPhone 2G only uses the edge network. 3G is more power hungry than 2G (LTE even more so). This is the point everyone is making. The article is flawed because it doesn't take this into consideration. People upgraded their phone to take advantage of the more advance features, so increased power usage should be taken into account.

My android phone battery has a much shorter battery life when I travel to some locations. I believe its a function on how much power is required to maintain contact with the nearest tower (using "4G" doesn't help). Right now I'm on the road and I'm lucky to get 24 hours of "standby" time on a single charge (standby being in quotes due to email client running in background so data is being transmitted on occasion).

My iPad2 seems to last a very long time (charge once a week range), but it's WiFi only and therefore doesn't need to use power to maintain contact with a tower miles away. Also the iPad2 models that have a wireless modem built in (CDMA or GSM) has the luxury of being able to put that modem to sleep to increase battery life since it doesn't have to accept incoming phone calls (especially when a WiFi connection is available). Also the iPad2 is able to have a physically larger battery.

My point being that "Your milage may vary" due to factors like usage pattern, location in respect to cellphone towers, and the data protocol being used.

Re:HUGE DECLINE

[puto]

The ATT Iphone 4s is not a 4g phone... Never was and never will be... No matter how hard you wish upon an apple star.

Re:HUGE DECLINE

[cerberusss]

I always need a power outlet nearby when traveling, and I cannot count on it lasting a full day

Last year my iPhone 3G broke (somehow I lost all phone reception), but money was really tight at that point in time. So I bought a cheap Samsung android phone which basically is specced the same as a 3GS. However the battery is replaceable... I bought three extra batteries and when travelling, I always have a bunch of fully-charged batteries. This is such a useful thing when you're travelling, that I'm really doubting whether to go back to an iPhone again. (I do have an iPad).

Re:HUGE DECLINE

[Anonymous Coward]

Err.. my S3 battery lasts TWO WEEKS on standby.

Re:HUGE DECLINE

[drinkypoo]

I remember in the 80's and early 90's when we had little civic hatchbacks that got 55+ MPG.

The only Civic that's ever got that kind of mileage was the pre-civic CVCC. The CRX HF got that kind of mileage, but it is a horrible deathtrap. We have a hatchback that gets 55+ MPG with all the accessories today, it is called the Golf TDI.

Re:HUGE DECLINE

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to AT&T's marketing department.

Re:HUGE DECLINE

[tgibbs]

When traveling, performance can be improved quite a bit by turning off wifi when not in a wifi zone, or turning off cell if you aren't taking calls. GPS is too power hungry to be used more than briefly. If I'm planning to drive and want turn-by-turn, I make sure to bring an auto charger.

Re:HUGE DECLINE

[Bill_the_Engineer]

I agree. In my case both Wifi and GPS are off. I use an "old fashion" Garmin GPS for driving, because in all honesty Google Navigator and MapQuest both still suck where I'm at (no reliable data connection while driving). However for some strange reason when I'm in a town with less than 2,000 people in the middle of nowhere, I have 4G. I drive to the nearest large city, which is more than a hour away, I'm lucky I get 2G. You'd think it would be the other way around.

Note: Yes I have tried caching the map data prior to leaving. Unfortunately the distance I must drive fills up my phone's memory card.

Re:HUGE DECLINE

[tgibbs]

I paid for Navigon, which is pricey (although cheaper than when I bought it) but as good as the stand-alone units I've used. But you definitely need a power connection for anything more than a short drive.

Re:HUGE DECLINE

[Bill_the_Engineer]

I'm not the biggest fan of Garmin which owns Navigon. My current Garmin GPS is out of date, and they charge more for the update than what I can spend on a new GPS unit. Thanks for the suggestion and Navigon does look like the app I need. I don't mind paying for quality software, but I do draw the line at being overcharged for updated data.

Re:HUGE DECLINE

[Plumpaquatsch]

The ATT Iphone 4s is not a 4g phone... Never was and never will be... No matter how hard you wish upon an apple star.

Which is probably why he put the "4G" in scare quotes, you competent reader.

Re:HUGE DECLINE

[Plumpaquatsch]

Err.. my S3 battery lasts TWO WEEKS on standby.

Is there a reason not to use it once for two weeks except for waiting for incoming calls?

depends on use

[alen]

ever since i got rid of my work email account off my ipad the battery time doubled or tripled

take 10 people off the street and you will have 10 different use patterns

Oversimplification

[mosb1000]

It's an oversimplification to assume that a company would, or should work to increase battery life. The different features have to be weighed against each other. Performance comes at the expense of battery life. A larger battery would mean a heavier, bulkier phone. Lithium ion batters today have about the same capacity of the batteries which existed when the first iPhone was released, while power efficiency of electronics has increased significantly. They could have used these advances to increase battery life, but have instead chosen to use them to increase performance.

Re:Oversimplification

[mug funky]

most companies will release one with features, one with battery life, one for people who browse, one for people who use it as a _phone_, one for media and games, and one for the fat-fingered.

apple only releases 1 of anything, and dangles the update like a carrot through their ridiculous press managed "leaks" and rumours.

Re:Oversimplification

[marcello_dl]

Battery life is a rather powerful tool for implementing planned obsolescence, too.

Re:Oversimplification

[mug funky]

oh, cool. i'll go buy Apple's dumb phone then.

fucking idiot.

Re:Oversimplification

[mosb1000]

Next I suppose you'll complain that Ferrari doesn't make a pickup truck.

Re:Oversimplification

[mug funky]

that's not my point at all. the dumbphone remark was part of a list of possible phones in phone-feature-space. i listed other permutations.

my point is that apple only offers the 1 phone, and if you have different needs or use patterns, you're shit out of luck with apple - you have to buy something else.

so it's not really valid for people to insist that you can do anything on an iphone, and then when someone says "what about buttons i can press", they say "well shit, why do you want that?". there's a bit of flawed logic there.

by the way, Ferrari offer several models. sure there isn't a pickup truck (though as legend has it, they used to use parts from tractors at one point - the man behind Lamborghini used to make farm equipment and found that his Ferrari used some of the same parts. when he got on Ferrari's case about it, they simply said "why don't you go make your own supercar then, smart guy?").

Why didn't they...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just leave the iphone 5 the same size as the iphone 4s(thickness), in order to squeeze in a bigger battery in.

Why compare to the first

[Chuck Chunder]

When Apple made the first iPhone they probably had very little real world usage info.
By now they have a good idea how people use their iPhones and what they should target.

Re:Why compare to the first

[wvmarle]

Article focuses on real-world tests more than on the numbers Apple gives. As always when it comes to battery time, the numbers a manufacturer gives are ideal-situation, best case scenario results.

Apple pretty accurate on battery estimates

[SuperKendall]

It remains to be seen if the iPhone 5 can really pull off 8 hours of LTE browsing

Yes, but remember that in every device Apple has shipped (from laptops to iPhones to iPads) the battery life estimates have been pretty much spot on.

as that would be impressive (blow through your data cap on a single charge)

Browsing is not watching media only. Browsing is loading pages, reading them, moving on and reading more. It's not about constant data streaming, so it's not overall something that will destroy your bandwidth - you can only read so much in eight hours!

Yes you could blow through bandwidth fast if you sat watching extremely high quality video for hours on end. But that is why mobile app developers are not giving you those really beefy data streams, instead over even LTE you'll get reduced quality video from most things unless you force the issue.

Re:Apple pretty accurate on battery estimates

[kaiser423]

With the latest version of LTE phones, it's not so much the browsing/downloading (heck on my Galaxy Nexus with the old inefficient LTE radios, I could download over 3GB in a day and still have battery at the end of it), but rather the screen drain.

I get tons of hours of usage if I'm in a dark room. Well-lit airport, and I'm easily half that unless I turn down the brightness low enough that I can barely read the thing.

#1 draw on nearly all modern smartphones is the display, which the 4S and lower had an edge on due to being quite a bit smaller. With the iPhone5 I expect that the biggest dip in longevity numbers will be screen-on-time, aka when you're using/browsing.

Not at all.

[SuperKendall]

The typical iPhone user is only considered with the number 5.

Not really. There will be a lot of iPhone 4s users that skip this update.

Heck, they could just take what they have now, make some ridiculously minor change, and then change the name and have a whole new round of sales to the macfags.

Oh the clever wit of the hater!

Oh wait, they already did that with the 4S.

Nope. Some people did upgrade, yes, but Apple had a lot more new sales. I never got a 4s because it was a minor upgrade. And now the iPhone 5 is an upgrade over the 4s, but not very large... however it is a big jump over the iPhone 4. And that's what is really most important because most people have two year contracts. For the iPhone 4 (and older) iPhone owners, the iPhone 5 is in fact a big deal.

Re:Not at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

The typical iPhone user is only considered with the number 5.

Not really. There will be a lot of iPhone 4s users that skip this update.

Yep, I'm in this category.

I'm on the 4S 64GB and don't see myself upgrading. I don't really need the extra screen size (I'd just grab the iPad) or hassle of changing all my iPhone docks/cables. The one feature I'd want is the LTE but O2 have no LTE service yet and the bands that're going to be auctioned off next year in the UK for 4G are not compatible with the 5. I don't really want to switch to EE, particularly as I know they don't have great coverage in a few areas I frequently find myself in. My contract lets me upgrade since yesterday, but if I choose to keep my iPhone 4S rather than upgrade they'll actually *give* me money!

Re:Not at all.

[robi5]

How is it a big jump from the iPhone 4? Everything is slightly better, but I may stick to 4 or get an android.
I don't care about Siri. A big jump was 4, quadrupling resolution, laminating screen glasses, multitasking and a cool new design. When it came, my 2-year old iPhone felt very slow esp. with the OS of the time.

The iPhone 5 should have introduced a wider, side to side screen and informative lock/home screen widgets at least, or using the back of the phone as a touchpad, or a google glasses like peripheral or something deeply AR, or all of this for a standing ovation.

Re:Not at all.

[hazydave]

And a not-insignificant set of smartphone fence sitters who may jump onto the iPhone, now that the 4S is $99, the 4 is "free", on-contract.

Particularly if they buy phones at stores run by the carriers. Anyone visited any of these lately. I challenge you to find the dumb phones. I'm not paying for smartphones for my kids, so we did this. At the largest Verizon store in South Jersey, they had exactly three dumb phones. And they were well hidden in the store. There's an iPhone section, a Droid section, a generic Smartphone section, a 4G section... they're trying to get everyone on to smartphones.

Lots of users skip each upgrade from Apple. I mean, for one, you probably have a two-year contract if you bought an iPhone in the USA (could be three years on some carriers in Canada). It is absolutely true that more iPhone users pay off their contracts each year to buy the new device early... but it's still not a significant percentage of the iPhone user base.

And historically, if you look back, it's hard to find an iPhone introduction that wasn't playing catch-up, apart from the original introduction. I mean, the first device came out as a "feature" phone, not a smartphone, and 2G only... many years into the reign of 3G smartphones. The 3G model was pretty much just about the 3G. The 3GS was the same thing, only faster. The 2010 iPhone 4 boosted screen resolution to a bit more than everyone else had in 2009, and it finally delivered a full implementation of 3G (the earlier 3G models didn't do HSUPA -- uploads were capped at 384kb/s).

The big difference: all of those introductions has Steve Jobs selling them. So they really did seem exciting. Hell, even I recall those as being exciting, but when you look back at what was actually introduced, there's no reason to have recalled them that way. Only conclusion: the Reality Distortion Field was a real thing. With that gone, sure, the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 introductions were rather so-so.

And of course they were. Apple's not going to go out on any limbs here.. they're not going for real innovation. A big change includes the possibility of failure. Jobs was actually ok with that, I guess, even as convinced as he was about being right about what consumers would want. That's not something the current Apple administration can or should do. They're on top -- it's easier for them to fall down, making a goofy attempt at innovation, than to slightly trail the innovators, add in the things that are proven to work as hashed out in the Android or other smartphone markets, and of course, deliver that in the right Apple wrapper. As long as they don't fall progressively further behind the other guys, there's every reason to believe they'll retain a dominant position in the smartphone market.

The other problem with Apple innovating -- all eggs in one basket. They do one smartphone per year. When Motorola gambled on the new RAZR introduction, they had a dozen other models out there in the market. Had that model not done well, it could have quietly gone away, to be replaced with the next educated guess at what consumers would buy from Motorola. It was a hit... so between the introduction of the iPhone 4S and that of the iPhone 5, Motorola put out five different RAZR models. And dozens of others. That's the kind of thing that makes both innovation possible... the need (Motorola regaining a strong position in the market) and some belief that one failure won't kill you.

Re:Not at all.

[hazydave]

How is it a big jump from the iPhone 4? Everything is slightly better, but I may stick to 4 or get an android.

The CPU and GPU will be about 4x the performance of the iPhone 4. Best guess is that the "5" has dual ARM Cortex A15 processors running at around 1200MHz, versus the single ARM Cortex A9 processor in the iPhone 4 (or dual in the 4S) at 800MHz. The graphics difference will only be apparent if you run 3D games... it has no important effect on normal 2D graphics. The screen is actually a new LCD tech, but it appears to be essentially the same, only a bit longer.

Apple is very cautious about changing the iPhone. They're very successful, and won't risk that by trying something too different. A wider model would be more comparable to the larger Android models that pretty much dominate the flagship units from the big Android makers. Then again, every other company also offers a smaller screen option. If Apple's going to do just one new phone model each year, you can bet it's going to be pretty much like the previous year's model. They can't risk a misstep.

Re:Not at all.

[MikeBabcock]

Blackberry was always just as cautious -- when you're successful you have to avoid changing too much, they said.

It worked out, didn't it?

Re:Not at all.

[tgibbs]

I'm sure that there are some enthusiasts and wealthy people who buy every new model, but so far I've not seen an iPhone model that thrilled me so much that I wanted to take the financial hit to upgrade before my 2-year contract expired. I've got my iPad and my iPhone on a staggered upgrade cycle, so I upgrade only one per year. Generally, I find the year-to-year hardware upgrades seem more evolutionary than revolutionary. But upgrading after 2-years always feels like a big advance. I like the bigger screen, but I can wait another year for it, and I know I'll get more goodies too.

I like the cycle I'm on with my iPhone. I skip the first generation with the big new feature (retina display, big screen), and I pick up the next one where they've got it refined and all of the software supports it.

Re:Not at all.

[robi5]

> The CPU and GPU will be about 4x the performance of the iPhone 4. Best guess is that the "5" has dual ARM Cortex A15 processors running at around 1200MHz

A Cortex A15 is an optimistic guess, there is some speculation on the web that the memory subsystem was improved. Even if we take the 4x speedup at face value, there aren't yet killer OS features or applications that make it a piece de resistance. So currently there is not much of a use case. Your second paragraph is on spot w.r.t. the conservative development and playing it safe. The iPhone became a hit and a success because they did not play safe then, and the improvements seem to taper off, while Google might steal the show with new types of user interactions (Google Glasses) and other phones put more emphasis on higher bandwidth between man and machine (which is why it would have been cool to put a wider screen in the same physical dimensions).

Trouble

[SuperKendall]

Brother, if you are picking up chicks with a Blackberry I hate to see what you are bringing home.

  I can get a million hours of standby with a clod of dung in my pocket but it doesn't mean I want to carry it around, much less show it off.

Re:Trouble

[tehcyder]

Brother, if you are picking up chicks with a Blackberry I hate to see what you are bringing home.

If he's in the UK, it will be teenagers. The main problem will be ensuring they're over 16. Blackberry is the phone of choice for under twenties.

Funny but informative

[SuperKendall]

The iPhone 5 is crap compared to the new iPhone 6 that will come out next spring.

Humorous.

And yet in that comment lies a revelation of why Apple's supposedly boring updates are not a problem.

Because from the 4 to the 4s, it was not that much of a leap. Or so it seemed at the time.

But now from the 4 to the 5, that is actually a pretty big jump. So even though we might see something like a 5s next year, you can be pretty sure that waiting for that will not be an amazing leap over the 5 - so there's little point to wait. And yet when the 6 does come out a year or two from now, it will probably be a really impressive gain over the iPhone 5.

Re:Funny but informative

[Anonymous Coward]

so? there already a generation behind... current Smartphones, by the Iphone 6 they'll be two...

Re:Funny but informative

[N1AK]

You've made this point a couple of times on this story and I'll be honest, I really don't see the justification. Unless you need, and are in a location with LTE, then the iPhone 5 really isn't a vast improvement on the 4. Sure it is better, and if you've got an upgrade coming up and have already decided that you want to get an iPhone then why not. An extra row of icons and a screen that has gone from pitifully small to small in an odd shape for a phone.

Re:Funny but informative

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, the 5S will be out milking the Christmas season.

Re:Funny but informative

[tsa]

You're right. I like my 4 a lot, and I decided to like it for at least two years more. I'm glad that Apple didn't fall for the Hummer-like screen sizes though.

Why is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

HEADLINE: Consumer electronics company releases new iteration of product! Features slightly changed!
wtf Slashdot...

No.

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

Marketing genius!

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

If I was to make a product and I just wanted money, but didn't care about improving society, I'd do a gimmick:

Every release, I'd have some things better and some things worse. Then I could tout,"Improved THIS AND THAT!"

Next release, I could make the worse things better and the better things worse, and tout,"We improved this now!"

The trick is that it can't be things the user easily can see in action like screen resolution.

Re:Marketing genius!

[neminem]

What are you talking about? Recently, everyone actually went so far as to -advertise- their worse screen resolution: all you need to do is come up with a nice gimmicky name that hides the fact that you just made it worse, like, say, "high definition".

This iPhone has the best battery ever seen!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdIWKytq_q4

More features draw more power

[Anonymous Coward]

It you limit your new iPhone to the capabilities of the original, the battery lasts much longer.

As a telephone

[FranTaylor]

The $20 phones from the convenience store have more battery life and equal call quality. If you are looking for a telephone they can't be beat.

If you want to talk about carrying a computer in your pocket, that's a different story, but for pure telephone use, the cheap ones are the way to go.

Re:As a telephone

[drinkypoo]

I got a $20 nokia candy bar with a flashlight and it can sit in my pocket for almost two weeks and have the battery say 2/3, which of course usually means it's pretty empty, but still. Epic.

Re:As a telephone

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, I am on your boat and then some. My wife has a smarphone, and it's absolutely essential she plugs it in daily.

I have a regular dumbphone (Nokia Xpressmusic, used primarily as an MP3 player). Unless I'm constantly listening to music, I can plug it in once, maybe twice a week. And IF I'm constantly listening to music... well, when it was new (it's probably pushing 6 years old now), I'd be able to play music 8 hours a day for several days before plugging in. I can still get a good 12 hours of music out of it even now.

And it's ridiculously thin and compact to boot. I *literally* was unable to find a cellphone case small enough for it about 2 years after I got it (lost the original one about then), and have long since just made my own out of duct tape. All cases nowadays are built for phones 3 times this size... even dumbphones.

It's sad that the keypad is going. I'd keep using this for another decade if I could. I may try to find one on Kijiji or Ebay or something to replace this one since it can't be bought new any more.

War lost long ago.

[PineGreen]

There is absolutely nothing new here. My Nokia in 1999 had a 10 day battery life and today I recharge my HTC One S every day. It is just a fact of life that we use phones todays for so much more that the batteries just last less. No phone has a 10 day lifespan these days.

Re:War lost long ago.

[adolf]

Slap a modern lithium battery into an old Nokia, and I'll wager that battery life will be much longer than 10 days. (Of course, you can't -- at least not in the US, since it won't have GPS as required by law. But in theory....)

That said, I get a week or so out of an old OG Droid that has no cell phone service. I used to have to recharge that exact same Droid every day when I used it as a cell phone, whether or not I actively used it it at all.

I remain puzzled as to how a phone that is just a dumb phone gets gets excellent battery life (and can make calls), and a smartphone with no service gets excellent battery life (but cannot make calls). But a smart phone that can actually be a phone? Phooey, charge it every day or be stricken with a dead battery.

If anyone wants to offer up an explanation for this incongruous behavior, I'm all ears.

Re:War lost long ago.

[Aldanga]

Constant data and intelligence gathering.

Hey: it could happen.

Re:War lost long ago.

[adolf]

My tinfoil hat prevents this from occurring.

Re:War lost long ago.

[Anonymous Coward]

Alternatively, buy a Nokia Asha phone that's running the S40 OS, and you can get up to one month's standby time.

A legendary battery life that will never be found in more 'modern' OSes (iOS, Android, Windows Phone).

Re:War lost long ago.

[drinkypoo]

Slap a modern lithium battery into an old Nokia, and I'll wager that battery life will be much longer than 10 days. (Of course, you can't -- at least not in the US, since it won't have GPS as required by law. But in theory....)

OK, who the fuck told you that? They are a lying dipshit. E911 does not require that all phones have a GPS. It only requires that the provider be able to provide positioning information. Literally all GSM providers in the USA do this with DToA, not with GPS. CDMA providers may also use DToA, but my understanding is that originally, the US CDMA providers did decide to go with GPS instead, so there's a lot of verizon and sprint phones with secret GPS receivers the user is not allowed to access. You will not find the same thing in US GSM phones.

Re:War lost long ago.

[adolf]

Everything you say is true. I was generalizing because I half-way forgot because it's been a very long time since I've been exposed to it as a problem that I needed to care about. And, alas, the only providers here in my area of the US that are worth the time of day are CDMA, and all of them decided that honest-to-goodness GPS was the One, True Way to accomplish E911's requirements.

(Indeed, I've never even held a GSM phone in my hand, unless you count my Droid 4...which ostensibly can grok GSM if it is fucked the right way first, but which really does want to live in CDMA-land.)

A car analogy that works!

[sqrt(2)]

There is a very good car analogy here.

Over the years cars have become much more efficient, through various refinements and improvements in the design of the internal combustion engine. We are able to produce more horsepower with less fuel. So, did cars stay the same size and increase in fuel economy over the years? Some have, but especially in the USA, designers instead chose to increase the size and power while keeping fuel efficiency relatively constant. So the engine has become more efficient, yet those gains weren't used to produce a more fuel efficient engine, they were used to make bigger, more powerful, cars that had the same fuel economy.

With the iPhone, the battery definitely has become better of the years. So did Apple choose to increase battery life? Nope. As with the cars, they increased the CPU power, screen resolution, GPU power, memory, radios, etc. They packed more powerful components, more efficient components, into the same size with ever increasing battery technology. So battery tech has to keep improving all the time, just to keep up with the increase in power usage from the rest of the system, and it doesn't even always keep up. It takes all the running you can do just to stay in the same place.

I've not developed this very far and I know there are counter-examples, many came to mind while writing this, yet the analogy is apt especially when we confine our comparison to specific segments of the US car market. I'm pleased that, in recent years, this trend seems to finally be reversing, and the US is becoming more--if only slightly--like Europe with their focus on smaller, more efficient cars.

Re:A car analogy that works!

[TubeSteak]

They packed more powerful components, more efficient components, into the same size with ever increasing battery technology.

The iPhone 5 is 1.778 mm thinner than the previous iPhone.
That's almost the difference between the Droid Razr and the Droid Razr Maxx.

You know what the Razr Maxx did with that extra thickness?
They almost doubled the battery capacity and now have a phone that outlasts everything else.

But people are used to plugging in their smart phones to charge every night, so Apple doesn't lose anything by adding thinness instead of battery life.

Re:A car analogy that works!

[jtownatpunk.net]

I'd prefer to pick the size of my battery than have it dictated by the design of the phone. Back in the day, I had three batteries for my old Nokia. The stock battery that I never used but kept charged as a spare, a very thin/light battery for day-to-day use that I charged each night, and a gigantic brick of a battery that could go for a week between charges which I used when travelling. That was normal back in the analog days and I wish manufacturers would bring it back.

Re:A car analogy that works!

[Anonymous Coward]

You can basically do this now by getting an iPhone case with built in (and fairly large capacity) battery. There are a lot of different ones on the market, probably more than for other phone models.

Re:A car analogy that works!

[jtownatpunk.net]

That would be great if I had an iphone.

Re:A car analogy that works!

[Anonymous Coward]

That focus on "more efficient cars" is a myth, even in Europe. Had to buy a new car recently and the most efficient new one you could buy was still slightly less efficient than the 10 year old car we had (because you can't buy any car without loads of features, even a car without air conditioning is really hard to get). And no, the hybrids are nowhere close to best, because you can't buy them without _all_ the bells and whistles that waste a lot of energy.
So to summarize: there was _no_, none, not the slightest progress in fuel efficiency in cars over the last 10 years, actually the opposite. Just like for phones.

Re:A car analogy that works!

[sd4f]

Europe's focus on small cars has been so because their fuel is taxed a lot higher, and some jurisdictions tax vehicles based engine capacity. So if you had to pay around $7.50 per gallon, i'm sure you'd consider fuel consumption as well. I agree with your premise, but i think the analogy is technically wrong, no real matter though. I still think what you are saying is right, so far i've only seen one smartphone which had the design concept of more batteries, ie, the motorola razr maxx, and it wasn't that much larger anyway, but seems that no one wants to make phones like it, they all prefer to go to the 1 dayers, i'd like to get at least a weekend.

Re:A car analogy that works!

[yoshi_mon]

To be fair that is the tradeoff that we make by not going with a 'standard' like the iPhone. We have much greater freedom to pick our individual models but to expect that every Android is going to have the same level of accessories that something as standardized as the iPhones are is not going to happen.

Re:A car analogy that works!

[Anonymous Coward]

With the iPhone, the battery definitely has become better of the years. So did Apple choose to increase battery life? Nope. As with the cars, they increased the CPU power, screen resolution, GPU power, memory, radios, etc.

And where those choices differ from what a user wants, it generates the same flames. I think "Why the hell would I want my car to be heavier when I could have it go further on a tank of gas instead?" the same way I think "Why the hell would I want more resolution and GPU power, when I could have it go a week between charges, instead?" Thing is, if I did happen to want that stuff more than longer life, I gotta admit, I might be delighted with these products.

What really failed here, IMHO, is the competition. Apple has so few products and there are so many niches and different things that different people want, you'd think they'd be down to 1% marketshare by now (i.e. no matter how good the iPhone might be within its niche, no particular niche is all that appealing to very many people), the other 99% taken up by 99 different Android-phone manufacturers. Instead, I see (nearly) the same shitty homogenous selection in AndroidLand.

I hate what happened in the patent case, but maybe it's for the best. Maybe deadly force being used against Samsung will make them start to offer better phones, instead of their phones continuing to get worse. Guys, you don't have to suck as much as Apple. Really, it's ok to serve the other 99% of the market. I'm sure you'll find some money there.

iPhone 5 is not the iPhone you are looking for...

[Esteanil]

That, my friend, is the iPhone 12 - as was revealed exclusively to me in a morphine-and-"don't worry"-drug-coctail following my (very successful) brain surgery 3 1/2 years ago, a little over a month after the iPhone3G was released.

At this point, sitting stunned in a hospital bathroom, I was pleasantly surprised:

You see, the Interplanetary Patent Office had commited a major temporal blunder, and I held in my hands the fabled iPhone 12.
I'd been looking forward to this, I came to realize, because of the wonderful new function added to this generation of iPhone.
  The Replication ability: Simply hold your phone in your right hand, turn your hand around to the left and a duplicate iPhone is created - one which lasts for 12 hours and can be used just the same as the original for that period.
Can you imagine the craze? Lend out your iPhone and keep it at the same time! Borrow an iPhone and buy apps, they'd follow you and not the phone. Lose an iPhone and you could join the begging crowd at the central railway station hungrily gazing at the iPhone Carriers - the source of their only light in life.

The only real problem was that damn bug - those jackasses at the Interplanetary Patent Office not only had committed a major temporal blunder, but they'd sent out a buggy test edition!

The only thing that happened when I turned my hand around to the left was that it made my head *hurt really bad*. I've chosen to take this as an analogy of what'll happen if I (a free-spirited hacker-minded kind of guy) pick up an iPhone... It'll just end in one glorious headache.

----------

Also, clearly, as evidenced by religious leaders, prophets and other conm^H^H^H inspired people, such drug-fueled visions - especially considering the holy trappings of the event... I'd just had a freaking robot in my brain!
This experience should from now on be considered the one holy truth about the iPhone 12.

Oh, and I'm pretty sure that the 4S isn't the only model increase that won't be a straight number one... By my calculations, iPhone 12 will be model 43.

Birther joke

[puddingebola]

”Are you better off now than you were 4 iPhones ago?“. "Yes, but I don't think this phone was born in the United States."

Iphone battery life...

[Anonymous Coward]

sucks apple fanboi dick... my samsung s3 has 200 hors standby...

Re:Iphone battery life...

[ColdWetDog]

sucks apple fanboi dick... my samsung s3 has 200 hors standby...

But apparently no shift key and no spell checker.

Hey, whatever floats your boat.

Re:Iphone battery life...

[Ash-Fox]

sucks apple fanboi dick..

Why would you do that? Is there something special about the flavor of Apple fanboi dicks?

Re:Iphone battery life...

[Plumpaquatsch]

sucks apple fanboi dick... my samsung s3 has 200 hors standby...

I'm not quite sure what your point is - the iPhone 5 has a quote "Standby time: Up to 225 hours".

The point remains

[SuperKendall]

Ok, so the original had slightly longer standby.. but...

Great example of cognitive dissonance. The point of the article is that taking into account technology changes, this iphone isn't any better than the original.

But that is exactly wrong, even if the times are identical - because the newer technology allows you to do MUCH more in those eight hours than you could before. It's not just arguing for new technology because it is new. It's arguing for new technology because it is actually useful to do more in the same amount of time.

Re:The point remains

[yoshi_mon]

But that is exactly wrong, even if the times are identical - because the newer technology allows you to do MUCH more in those eight hours than you could before. It's not just arguing for new technology because it is new. It's arguing for new technology because it is actually useful to do more in the same amount of time.

Citation please.

My proposal

[iampiti]

To smartphone making companies: Stop using the advancements in manufacturing to make the phones slimmer, they're slim enough (I'd say too much), instead use it to put larger batteries. They really need them.
I know some companies have gone that route (some Motorolas have large batteries) but we need more of these.

Re:My proposal

[sd4f]

Yep, I agree, it appears that they make the phone as small as possible, then get a custom battery to fit in the gaps. Some phone company should grow a pair of balls and design a phone around targets for what the battery should be able to do. So far it has only been the motorla razr maxx, and i would have bought it if not for my awful experience with android fragmentation and bugginess.

Re:My proposal

[imikem]

If people start buying the phones with huge battery life in droves, it won't take long for the handset makers to take notice. Meanwhile, numerous cases are available with auxiliary batteries if one needs more electrons than supplied by default.

Don't buy the spyPhone

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem solved.

Yes they do.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's batteries are not the same crap you get on other phones.
They own multiple patents on battery technology and are working on lithium air batteries.

Re:Yes they do.

[hazydave]

Apple has a few patents on the SHAPE of their battery. Otherwise, exactly the same crap you get in other smartphones. In fact, the iPhone 5 battery is being made for Apple by a so-far unrelieved company based in China. Everyone knows Japanese cells are what you want.

Though perhaps with better quality control. Consumer battery manufacturing typically produces cells that range all over the place in capacity. I was working on a robotics project about eight years ago that demonstrated this. Our robot was using a high-end R/C car as a motion base, and we were using high-end consumer R/C batteries to power them. Once this ramped up into production, we were only getting about 30% approval on the batteries. Next generation, we switched over the BB390 military battery.

Apple has some patents on battery charging... that's pretty critical. And they were caught, last year, leaving some charge on the iPhone 4 battery when the phone said "empty"... which is actually a really good idea. All rechargeables dislike being full cycled. If you run any smartphone from full to empty every day, you'll be lucky to get 300 days of performance out of that battery... it's the same for the iPhone as anyone else. That's just Li-ion/Li-poly for you. However, if you only partially cycle the battery, it lasts a really long time. This is why the batteries in hybrid cars don't need replacement after a few months... and why those in full EVs might only last a few years (or have driven (sic) new battery technology).

The NiMh cells in my 2003 Prius only get cycled over 40% of the actual capacity of the battery. They extended this to 60% in the 2004 model. Same is true of the lithium cells in most of the plug-in hybrids.

And also the reason Apple can get away with sealing batteries in their devices. Most people just don't run them into the ground every day. Those that do will visit the Apple store, probably early in the second year of that device, and they'll get a swap.. and pay for it.

IBM's one of the big guns in Lithium-Air technology. They think they'll be commercially ready with something in 2020... but they don't have a working prototype just yet. Some startups do, but they're not yet seeing anything like the improvements IBM's been suggesting. I haven't seen anything from Apple on lithium air. But they're all over the place on fuel cells. Based on patent filings, anyway, it seems pretty clear that's where Apple sees the not-too-distant future.

So buy a super spydroid?? O a wiet phone home?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think that Android is not full of spyware, I have a bridge to sell you.

Re:So buy a super spydroid?? O a wiet phone home?

[Chrisq]

If you think that Android is not full of spyware, I have a bridge to sell you.

But I am only using the pre-installed Apps, straight from the factory in China, Oh Wait.....

Battery life, not thinness

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it the trend is toward extreme thinness? Apple could have kept it to the same thickness and doubled the battery and thus, the battery life, ala the DROID RAZR MAXX. Wasn't the iPhone thin enough?

Constant voltage allows equivalence and confusion

[GlobalEcho]

The reason people can express all these capacities and power draws using Amps is that the phones are made to operate with near-constant voltage. This is very confusing to those who understand (correctly) that watt-hours and not amp-hours are energy units. Since

Watts = (Amps) x (Volts)

and volts are constant in this application, any given rate of amperage corresponds to a known wattage. Drawing 100mAh from a battery with 1200mAh of "amperage capacity" is the equivalent of the more-sensible energy representation at 4V: i.e. drawing 0.4 watt-hours from a battery with 4.8 watt-hours of capacity.

I don't quite understand why anyone started using amps instead of energy units to express battery capacities.

another moron wrote an article

[slashmydots]

from TFA:

As explained around the web, milliamps hours (mAh) are something like a gas tank, and voltage (V) is the amount of fuel the device is drawing

I stopped reading right there.

Re:re

[3dr]

Your crushing ideas intrigue me and I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Agreed!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, over on Doctor Who, the BBC apparently feels there were not enough ball and crotch jokes in the scripts, and have moved to rectify the situation.

Management is always aiming to rope in people using the dumbest of the dumb market indicators. If most people are retarded, then your product had better also be retarded to appeal to them.

Reality is that devices need to fit within a comfort size and weight range to work properly. But Thin will be In, so long as everybody's retarded uncle thinks it's cool.

Are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was totally ready to moderate this, "Funny", but then checked the links.

"Shanghai Shunky" and their complete line of crushers? Really?

Yes, apparently.

Re:iPhone 5 is not the iPhone you are looking for.

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing that happened when I turned my hand around to the left was that it made my head *hurt really bad*.

You were holding it wrong.

iphone 5 jack on the bottom ??

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does the jack is on the bottom now ?
It looks like a bad choice:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/19564623?tstart=0#19564623?tstart=0

Much longer than a year

[SuperKendall]

Lithium batteries lose their charge as they age, after a year it might only hold 40% of what it did when it was new when fully charged.

Not sure what lithium batteries you are using but two years into using my iPhone 4 Im still at least 80% of the original battery capacity, possibly higher... I still can go a couple of days of mixed use without recharging.

Probably because they're based on ideal usage - ie no apps running etc, doing nothing but the aspect they're testing

Same difference on the iPhone since if you are browsing most other apps are backgrounded. The fact is that in real world tests for past devices the battery life has been as long as they claimed.

Citation: reality

[SuperKendall]

Citation please.

Why do you need a citation for the obvious?

It would take a minute or two for a full web page load on Edge. I sat trying to get a map to work for about five minutes once.

Here's your "citation". Use any modern phone and turn off 3G/LTE until you are just on Edge. Visit 20 non-cached web sites. Now do the same thing with the faster network enabled.

Are you SERIOUSLY claiming this will not be incredibly faster to do? Really?

Faster network is faster. DUH DUH DUH.

Re:Citation: reality

[yoshi_mon]

Every point you made was about non-wifi network upgrades. So since you clearly missed the point let me get a little more specific. Assume that you are on a fast wifi network and you have access to the last 3 models of the iPhone. I will give you your quote again:

But that is exactly wrong, even if the times are identical - because the newer technology allows you to do MUCH more in those eight hours than you could before. It's not just arguing for new technology because it is new. It's arguing for new technology because it is actually useful to do more in the same amount of time.

Citation please.

Its the markets fault

[nurb432]

If every one didn't demand more features and larger screens, while reducing the size, we wouldn't have this problem.

Id be more than willing to ditch the 'shrink' in order to have a larger battery. They don't need to be any thinner..

Quit projecting Ash-Fox, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Run, Forrest - RUN!!!" -> http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3110069&cid=41346029 "Later that night when he ran from sight, came the WRECK of the 'Ash-Fox Fitzgerald'", lmao...

Re:Quit projecting Ash-Fox, and?

[Ash-Fox]

You're so tense, bro.