Which Android Devices Sacrifice Battery-Life For Performance?

MojoKid writes: A couple of weeks ago, Futuremark began handing out copies of PCMark for Android to members of the press, in an effort to get its leaderboards filled while the finishing touches were being put on the app. That might give you pause in that the results, generated today, are not going to be entirely accurate when the final version comes out, but that's not the case. Futuremark has encouraged publication of results generated with the benchmark. What makes PCMark for Android useful benchmark is that it not only tests for performance, but also for battery-life and performance combined. As such, you can easily figure out which devices sacrifice battery-life for performance and which ones have a good blend of both. The HTC One M8 really stands out, thanks to its nearly balanced performance/battery-life ratio. A result like that might make you think that neither value could be that great, but that's not the case at all. In fact, the battery-life rating on that phone places far beyond some of the other models, only falling short to the OnePlus One. And speaking of that phone, it becomes obvious with PCMark why it's so hyped-up of late; it not only delivers solid performance, it boasts great battery-life as well.

Comments

all

[turkeydance]

of them?

Re:all

[slaker]

The Note 2 and Note 3 are, based on my observation, good for a couple days without charging. Like the iphone 6+, this probably has more to do with the form factor than anything else.

I can get about a day and a half out of my S4, but I'm an atypical user since I don't use any messaging aside from E-mail (SMS is stupid and I hope it dies soon).

It's somewhat silly to try to define "using a smartphone as a smartphone" since that's really the ultimate movable goalpost. I use mine primarily to read things on the web while I'm away from a bigger computer and I listen to locally-stored music. I don't really launch other apps, maintain social connections, play games, make calls or look at pornography while on the toilet, all of which might be part of someone else's definition of justifiable smartphone-ing.

Re:all

[WuphonsReach]

Battery life depends on a bunch of things...
- What you leave running in the background
- Whether bluetooth / wifi / cell / GPS are on/off
- Whether you have a good cellular signal (more bars = less power needed to talk with tower)
- Quality of the WiFi signal / network congestion
- Screen brightness

With the HTC One (m8), I have to charge it every 2-4 days. Depends on how much I'm using it, what the weather is like outside, how many hours I spent on the phone that day, and where it spent most of the day.

I spent about 2.5 hours on conference/phone calls today and the phone has been off the charger for about 18hrs. Battery is at 66%. GPS, WiFi and Bluetooth are all turned on. That's not fabulous but not horrible either.

Who cares about performance?

[gnu-sucks]

Besides gamers, who cares if it takes a few more milliseconds to launch a web browser or process an image?

Seeing as all these phones are pretty decent, from my point of view, I just want the greatest battery life.

Re:Who cares about performance?

[swillden]

Besides gamers, who cares if it takes a few more milliseconds to launch a web browser or process an image?

I do... because that's a few less milliseconds my CPU isn't idle, which reduces battery life.

Seriously, does anyone understand this benchmark? I see pairs of performance and battery life numbers which seem to have no real-world meaning, so it's not at all clear to me why it makes sense to compare them. In addition, it's common that for a given set of tasks, a device with better performance will use less power because it spends more time in an idle state. The notion that devices trade off performance against battery life makes little sense in the ARM world.

Maybe this actually does say something useful, but if so I'm too dense to see it.

I think they way you tune it can be bigger

[Sycraft-fu]

I mean sure if you use heavy usage games lots then maybe this matters, but most of your use is standby and cell network stuff. I've got my Note 3 lasting 3-4 days on a charge. How?

1) Turning off background services that slurp up battery. Just took some looking at the battery monitor and then considering what I needed and didn't.

2) Turning off additional radios like Bluetooth and GPS when I don't need them. It doesn't take long to hit the button if I do, and even when they aren't doing things actively they can sip some juice.

3) Having it on WiFi whenever possible. In good implementations on modern phones it uses less power than the cell network. Work has WiFi and I have a nice AP at home so most of the time it is on WiFi.

4) Using WiFi calling. T-mobile lets you route voice calls through WiFi. When you do that, it shuts down the cellular radio entirely (except occasionally to check on things) and does all data, text, and voice via WiFi. Uses very little juice and an hours long call only takes a bit of battery.

The WiFi calling thing has been really amazing. When you shut down the cellular radios battery goes way up. Not just in idle, but in use. Prior to that (when I first got it T-Mobile was having trouble with the feature) standby life was good, though not as good as it is now, but talk seriously hit the battery. Two to three hours could do it in almost completely. Now? I can do that, no issue, and still have plenty left.

Not my LG...

[damn_registrars]

... my LG Android device doesn't perform well or get good battery life. It's a slug that is constantly running out of internal storage (which makes apps run like crap and prevents them from being updated) and gets about 6-8 hours of battery life on standby most days. I don't do any apps more complicated than google plus on it, and I don't view any videos of any kind on it.

Apples and Oranges

[Frescard]

"Balanced features" in this context means nothing -- you have some random index indicating performance (which could be anything they want it to be), and compare that to some other random index for the battery life.
Yes, by itself those two indices might be useful, if you're looking for a phone to match your personal priorities, but talking about some "balance", just because the two indices are near each other is quite nonsensical.

I have the Razr Maxx

[Richy_T]

Didn't really want it (I had a Samsung in mind) but it's what work gave me (it was that or an iphone). Gotta say, the battery life is impressive and it doesn't sacrifice much performance, only lagging occasionally. I actually intended to run the battery flat a couple of weekends ago but it was still going late Sunday from being taken off charge Friday AM.

I'd forgotten how nice having decent battery life is. I had an L7089 in a past life and that would go out to seven days. I would gladly sacrifice quite a few "niceties" for battery life. Where are the e-ink android phones? (I have a Motofone F3 somewhere but sadly it doesn't work on the frequencies here)

you lose some smarts that way

[Chirs]

The more things you turn off, the less "aware" your phone is of its environment.

For example, I have a friend who uses Tasker on his phone. He gets in the car and it pairs with the bluetooth ODB2 port and starts displaying engine info. He goes to the movie theater and it detects the wifi access point and switches to vibrate. He sets location-based reminders (next time I'm within 5 miles of store X, go pick up item Y).

I guess it's all about what's most useful to you...

Re:I care about performance?

[reikae]

We had buttons that give feedback, but most people stopped buying such devices.

Re:It's not the absolute values that matter

[marsu_k]

But I'm really not sure what they're measuring with the arbitrary battery life score. As an anecdotal example, I have an Xperia Z2. I get a full day of heavy use out of it, or 2-2 1/2 days of moderate use. According to pretty much every review, Z3 has slightly better battery life. So, assuming the scale is linear (and my Z2 would thus score slightly lower than a Z3), OnePlus One should have a 4-5 day battery life? Which I really don't think it has.