Ask Slashdot: Best Big Battery Phone?

An anonymous reader writes: Samsung's announcement today of the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6+ was a disappointment to a lot of power users. The phones both use a 3,000 mAh, non-removable battery. This is presumably part of Samsung's quest for thinner and thinner phones, but it's bad news for those who prize function over form — particularly from a phone line that is ostensibly made for power users. So, those of you who have the pulse of the mobile industry: what's my best bet for a high end phone that doesn't compromise on battery life? Are there any devices on the horizon that are likely to have big batteries? I'm also wondering if I should just get a cheap phone to tide me over to the next generation of flagships. My current device is old and doesn't have the fast/quick-charge tech that modern ones do — does that work as advertised?

Comments

LG G4

[aka_bigred]

Just bought one this week, so far really liking it. I upgraded from my bootloader-unlocked Samsung GS3 w/extended battery that I've been holding onto forever.

Re:LG G4

[aitikin]

Replaceable battery has 0 to do with requiring more than a single charge. My 18 month old phone's battery is starting to show its age and won't hold a charge for much more than 2/3 what it did when I bought it. Over the course of a few hundred cycles, lithium ion batteries do not maintain a charge.

I'm kind of surprised I have to explain that here, but I can't figure out why else you would be assuming danomac was meaning that he needed multiple charges...

Re:The problem is Android

[ADRA]

You could... I don't know look at the batery meter and tell any red flags to battery life. There certainly are applications on any device that drain batteries pretty well. That said, there is a cost for having basically immediate callbacks to online services and that are largely invisible to the user.

Now maybe your phone was a lemon, or maybe your Winmo phone has a significantly bigger battery, who knows, not enough info. But by far most common reasons for 'idle' power drains (in no particular order):

1. Cell service (bad service areas seem to cause significantly higher battery drain for me subjectively)
2. Wifi (pings, kepalives, receving network broadcasts, etc.)
3. Bluetooth (if the comm isn't v4)
4. Background services (most likely account syncs and such, all OS's do it, but some more heavily than others)
5. CPU usage processing all of the above's callbacks, schedules, non-ideal program's polling

I've had many Android phones over the years, and battery life varied largely. One could barely survive a 12 hour day while another could maybe last 2 days of light use. I've had phones with apps eating 90% background use (it was doing the right thing, but badly), but most of the time, I did something to eat away my batteries.

One option - Droid Turbo

[Indy1]

3900 mah battery, and it will give you 36-48 hours of use. Does support QC 2.0, which works as promised.