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

[danomac]

Second this, my old Galaxy S3 died back in June, coincidentally about three days after the G4 was released.

I spent a day or so looking around at replacement phones, and most are a nonstarter. A portable device that runs on a battery should have the battery itself user-serviceable, period. Anything else is defective by design.

The G4 is the only flagship that still has a removable battery and a SD card slot (up to 2TB!) The quick charge on mine does work, it charges way faster than my old S3. I've also noticed that all the weird little problems with bluetooth, unusual battery drain, and random resets don't happen with this phone. With light usage my phone can last three days, normal use gets me about two days, and heavy use I can still usually get a day out of it.

The only complaint/issue I have is with the touchscreen keyboard, sometimes it doesn't register a key tap. I have learned to type on it now so I don't see that nearly as often now.

Re:LG G4

[nullchar]

Can you root it like the G3?

Re:LG G4

[TopherC]

I also agree although mine is an older G3. If your Android device doesn't have an easily-accessible battery and SD card slot and cannot be modded, it might as well be an iPhone. My previous phone was an SGS3 too, but it had serious overheating issues. For me the main things I look for are: replaceable battery, SD card slot, thermal management, battery life, and good antenna sensitivity (wifi and cellular). I also found the SGS3 annoying in that I had to hold it in specific ways to not press buttons like volume, power, back, or menu. This meant I could not hand my phone to someone else without buttons getting pressed at random.

For me the main drawbacks of the LG G3 are bootloader protections and the lack of equivalent camera functionality in Cyanogenmod-based builds. LG worked hard to lock the phone down, and this has slowed the modding community quite a bit.

Re:LG G4

[plasm4]

Out of curiosity, what is it that you do on a phone that requires more than a single charge? If it's that important why not just take a charging cable with you? Phones charge really fast now.

Re:LG G4

[Grishnakh]

Or you could just get a Galaxy S4 or S5. They're pretty cheap these days, they're an upgrade from the S3, and they're well supported by CM.

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:LG G4

[tlhIngan]

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.

So what are you going to do then? Buy a replacement?

A used battery is in the same boat. A NOS (new old stock) battery is in the same boat. Both have substantially diminished capacity. Yes, lithium batteries lose capacity even sitting on the shelf.

So if you were wise and bought a spare with your phone, that spare would also be significantly diminished in capacity. What you need to do is find someone willing to sell you a new compatible battery that's freshly manufactured.

Though chances are, the cost of a new battery would probably be expensive and make you question why you're bothering with your old phone.

Apple didn't get rid of removable batteries because it was just easy to make stuff smaller - they realized that the vast majority of people did not buy spare batteries for laptops, phones and many other devices. The few that did, you can generally disregard as not being in your target market. And of those, they are typically completely capable of replacing the battery on their own.

And there's always the maintenance thing - most phones do not have a way of charging spare batteries other than inside the phone itself. Which means charging the spare is a complete PITA for most people as it requires discipline in charging the primary battery, then swapping out the battery with the spare and charging that. Forget and you have two dead batteries and you're screwed.

Some phones do have a dock you can buy to separately charge a spare battery, but again, that's only a small subset of phones (I only know of 1 phone model, out of the roughly quarter-million different android phones out there).

Re:LG G4

[damnbunni]

Dunno about Android phones, but when I bought a brand-new spare battery for my Blackberry Q10 - which was about $30-ish - it came with a little charging adapter. In fact the charger encloses the battery completely and has a tiny short MicroUSB on it, so if I don't want to pull the battery from the Q10 and replace it, I can plug the charger into the phone and boost the battery.

They also sell the battery without the charger, but it was only a few dollars less.

Re:LG G4

[fustakrakich]

A portable device that runs on a battery should have the battery itself user-serviceable, period. Anything else is defective by design.

Put simply, non-removable batteries are a safety hazard. They should not be allowed on the market. We should be able to eject them like an antimatter core.

Re:LG G4

[danomac]

So what are you going to do then? Buy a replacement?

Yes, I did that a little over a year ago when my OEM battery on my S3 couldn't hold a charge for more than 8 hours (with very little use).

I bought a new Anker battery, and this battery surpassed the OEM battery.

What finally drove me to replace the phone was the weird resets while using it, and I noticed other things like bluetooth not wanting to connect. Oh, it also refused to wake up without yanking the battery. It was done. My Galaxy S1 had similar issues, I guess Samsung's phones just don't last longer than 2-3 years.

I still see people using the iPhone 4 (and some 3GS), and I see a lot of 5-6 year old LG Android based phones in use today.

Re:LG G4

[danomac]

Yes, there is a root image available, but I haven't tried it. From what I can tell it overwrites the system partitions so the download is huge.

Re:LG G4

[danomac]

Person A: Here, install this new SD card for music on your phone.
Person B: Sweet! Oh hey, there's an eject button. Click. *POP... SWOOSH... THUD... BANG!*
Person B: I think I need a new battery now too. :-(

Re:LG G4

[fnj]

Apple ... realized that the vast majority of people did not buy spare batteries for laptops ...

Bullshit. Gross gooey bullshit. Apple found it easier and more profitable for THEM to make the batteries non-replaceable. They relied on idiot fanbois to keep buying their shit anyway, and on regulators not to give a fuck about doing their job and keeping waste minimized by REQUIRING all batteries in all consumer goods to be replaceable.

Re:LG G4

[fnj]

A portable device that runs on a battery should have the battery itself user-serviceable, period. Anything else is defective by design.

Non-replaceable batteries should be ILLEGAL, period.

Re:LG G4

[aitikin]

What you need to do is find someone willing to sell you a new compatible battery that's freshly manufactured.

Though chances are, the cost of a new battery would probably be expensive and make you question why you're bothering with your old phone.

Really? Cause I was buying a new Palm Pre battery for 2 years after (as in new, not NoS, which one could argue would still be a massive improvement over a 300 cycle used) the Pre was released for roughly $40. In the age of unsubsidized smartphones, your argument holds very little water.

Re:LG G4

[fluffernutter]

I'm very sad to hear about your S3. I am trying to make mine last as long as I can. It's doing ok. I have two batteries. So glad they are replaceable because the factory one is messed up and dies at half charge. Thinking about buying another one.

Re:LG G4

[plasm4]

It just didn't occur to me that lack of a user serviceable battery would stop someone here from changing the battery if it had worn out, hence I assumed the only utility in it was the ability to swap batteries throughout the day. It's not that hard swapping a battery out, even on an iPhone. I'd rather have a thinner phone every day even if it means have to spend an hour every two years swapping the battery out.

Re:LG G4

[plasm4]

Full brightness and GPS? Yeah I can understand the utility then.

Re:LG G4

[AmiMoJo]

The OnePlus One might be a suitable alternative, depending on your needs. No SD card slot, but the 64GB version isn't very expensive. In fact it is much cheaper than most other phones anyway. The battery is easy to replace, and mine lasts three days with moderate use (a couple of hours browsing and app use per day).

It's got a good screen, good camera, 3GB RAM, 8 core CPU, runs Cyanogen natively and supports hardware accelerated crypto if you want to encrypt your device with minimal performance loss. Bootloader is unlocked.

If the lack of an SD card isn't a deal breaker it's excellent value for money. The only thing I wish it had is wireless charging.

Re:LG G4

[American AC in Paris]

Apple ... realized that the vast majority of people did not buy spare batteries for laptops ...

Bullshit. Gross gooey bullshit. Apple found it easier and more profitable for THEM to make the batteries non-replaceable. They relied on idiot fanbois to keep buying their shit anyway, and on regulators not to give a fuck about doing their job and keeping waste minimized by REQUIRING all batteries in all consumer goods to be replaceable.

Sure, because even though swappable batteries are bigger, heavier, more expensive to make, compromise the strength of the laptop's chassis, require more moving parts, need to use contacts, and still need to be bought from the manufacturer at a stupid high premium (or at Joe's U-Test-Em Fly-By-Night Battery Emporium dot com, if you're feeling brave,) by GOD they're user-swappable, and THAT, my friends--THAT is the thing that REALLY. MATTERS.

THERE OUGHTTA BE A LAW, I TELLS TA

Re:LG G4

[danomac]

Sure, because even though swappable batteries are bigger, heavier, more expensive to make, compromise the strength of the laptop's chassis,

Uh, the iPhone 6 doesn't have a removable battery and it's bending in people's pockets... in Apple's obsessiveness for thinness, they've already compromised the strength of the phone/laptop chassis.

Re:LG G4

[RockDoctor]

That sounds a reasonable combination of features. Listening to some of the other whinging from people here, I was mentally putting together a feature list for a device/ spare battery/ charger combo. (My normal reason for needing such is for the camera batteries on a multi-day trip into the hills. Which I solve with a pocket battery and a USB cable.)

Re:LG G4

[scottme]

+1 on the G3 -- it isn't really all that far behind the G4 on features, with the bonus that it can be had for about half the price of a new G4.

As well as SD card slot and replaceable battery, the G3 still has old-school features like an FM radio and an IR port: things that other manufacturers dropped years ago, but I still find them practical and useful.

Buy a battery case

[StormCrow]

I think the ship has mostly sailed on phones with larger batteries. Buy a battery case or just an external battery pack.

Re:Buy a battery case

[Grishnakh]

Yeah, and what good is your phone? The only thing you can do on it well is talk. That's one of the rarest things I do on my phone, and I avoid it whenever possible. For texting, navigation, web browsing, dating apps, voice mail, etc., your phone is useless. You need all those sensors and a big touchscreen to do those things (yes, including texting; texting on a 0-9 keypad is idiotic and unusable) (and yes, including voice mail too; listening to voice mail is so 1990s, these days I read my voice mail with Google Voice).

Re:Buy a battery case

[dotancohen]

I think the ship has mostly sailed on phones with larger batteries. Buy a battery case or just an external battery pack.

The ship has sailed, but you can still catch it. A used Note 3 is cheap. I stayed away from smartphones until just last year when I got the Note 3, and I love it to death. The battery lasts two full days with charging, that includes considerable talking but I turn the GPS and internet off when I'm not using them. In the year that I've been hauling around a spare battery, I've never needed to swap it in. But its nice to know that I could.

And the S-pen is amazing. I just bought LectureNotes about an hour ago, a few days with the trial has turned this phone into one of the most useful devices that I've ever owned. I could not imagine getting another device for 'real work' that doesn't have the active pen.

Just don't get the Spigen Slim Armor case. Mine broke four months to the day after I bought it due to an obvious manufacturing defect, and even though I bought it from an authorized reseller Spigen wouldn't cover it as their one-year warranty applies only to the Spigen online store, not authorized resellers! Lots of other people have had the same case failure that I had.

Re:Buy a battery case

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I remember those days when my phone would go two weeks without charging, I just don't remember it fondly. Even though its standby time was was good, its talk time wasn't. If I did have to talk on it it just meant instead of having ten more days left to charge it I had maybe one or two. In other words I really only had that sort of standby time if I wasn't actually using my phone. I also had to buy a separate charger to keep at work because by the time it finally did reach that last bar, it always liked to die in the middle of a work day when I need the phone the most. I ended up developing the habit of charging the phone every night anyway, just like I do now with my smart phone. Oh... and I regularly have 4+ hour conversations on my current smartphone, that *never* happened back when I had the two-week phone. I never talked longer than two hours on one charge. It's not like I was ever able to, for example, go on a business trip and not need to bring a charger along.

I also remember how big and bulky that phone was and how it occupied all that pocket space even though I wasn't getting calls very often. Yes, the less bulky phone I have now doesn't have the standby time, but at least the other things its doing with its extra data radios is keeping me in the loop with a good deal more information than was possible on what you call a flip-phone.

Buy a battery case or a battery back with a USB port. The worst case scenario is you have something that can charge other stuff in your house, something that came in handy for me during a recent power outage.

Re:Buy a battery case

[gstoddart]

Buy a battery case or a battery back with a USB port. The worst case scenario is you have something that can charge other stuff in your house, something that came in handy for me during a recent power outage.

My personal choice is a rechargeable battery brick which has two USB outputs to charge other devices, and charges from USB. They have both 1A and 2.1A outputs.

I've currently got 4 -- two 6000 mAh ones, and two 5000 mAh ones. They're exceedingly useful for travel and vacatations since I don't need to be near an outlet to top stuff up. I've managed to find them for around $15-$20 each at various places (like a Marshall's type store).

Years ago I decided that, except for very specific things, everything MUST charge from USB. My cameras are the only things I have with their own chargers. Otherwise, I won't buy something which doesn't charge from standard USB.

I travel with 1 or 2 of my multi-port USB wall chargers, at least two of my battery packs (all four if both the wife and I are travelling, we each bring two), and about 6 USB cables. The multi-port USB chargers do both 110/220V and 50/60Hz, and have 3 or 4 USB ports ... again, you can find these for $20 or so.

With that I can keep everything charged, and not be tethered to a wall to charge something like my tablet or my phone. The wall chargers cover charging everything else, including the batteries.

With a relatively small pouch I can carry all of my chargers, cables, and electronics - and it all fits easily into my carry on. Throw in a couple of USB chargeable speakers, my iPod, and my car GPS and I've got almost everything I need. Since my GPS charges from USB as well, I can charge it while sitting on a sofa and planning out a route.

My wife and I can pretty much keep all of our electronics charged without any hassle ... and except for a tablet (which will use an entire charge), I can charge a lot of stuff from a 6000 mAh battery pack.

As an added bonus, they all have LED flashlights built into them ... something which came in very handy for us during a power outage as well. And it will last a hell of a long time.

It's the kind of thing you can throw into your backpack and have with you in case you find you need to charge something which can be charged with USB -- which for me is pretty much everything.

Re:Buy a battery case

[Jawnn]

Yeah, and what good is your phone? The only thing you can do on it well is talk. That's one of the rarest things I do on my phone, and I avoid it whenever possible. For texting, navigation, web browsing, dating apps, voice mail, etc., your phone is useless. You need all those sensors and a big touchscreen to do those things (yes, including texting; texting on a 0-9 keypad is idiotic and unusable) (and yes, including voice mail too; listening to voice mail is so 1990s, these days I read my voice mail with Google Voice).

Texting on a touch screen keypad is idiotic. Yes, it's an improvement over a 10-key, but just barely, i.e. it still sucks compared to more useful input devices. Useful? I can convey far more information with my smartphone's antiquated talky thing than I can with that shitty keyboard, meaning that "app" is still the most useful thing on my smart phone. Don't get my wrong. Having a browser and a GPS in my pocket is useful, from time to time, but when it comes to actual effective communication, the platform has a long way to go before it can supplant telephony.

Re:Buy a battery case

[Reziac]

You can also get small portable solar panels made specifically for charging devices like phones. They start at around $18, including the battery unit.

I got a $10 gadget called a "Pocket Juice" that can be used as a direct power source and is small enough to hold in the same hand as my phone, and it can fully recharge the phone four times before I have to recharge it (which I can do from any USB port or charger). And my only criteria were "cheap" and "small". Basically I picked the cheapest and smallest unit at the checkout counter at Walmart, and it's perfectly good for the purpose. Turns out as a bonus it does a fast recharge on my phone, unlike the wall charger which takes hours. And it doubles as a flashlight.

Re:Buy a battery case

[Grishnakh]

Texting on a touch screen keypad is idiotic. Yes, it's an improvement over a 10-key, but just barely, i.e. it still sucks compared to more useful input devices.

Wrong. Yes, it sucks compared to a real keyboard, but I can't fit my Model M into my pocket. When you're away from your desk, what alternative is there? In its time, 10-key texting was useful for some cases, since it was better than nothing at all. But now it's obsolete just like floppy drives, so it's dumb to continue using it when superior alternatives exist and are commonplace.

the platform has a long way to go before it can supplant telephony.

Yes, you probably can talk a lot faster than you can text, but the problem with telephony is that it requires both parties to be available to talk at the same time. When they aren't, you wind up playing telephone tag, or exchanging voice mails. Of course, Google Voice (and other speech-to-text enabled voicemail systems) make this a lot better. But still, if you want to get a short message to someone immediately, with a high probability they'll see it right away, nothing beats texting. With a phone call, you have to hope they'll pick up, and if they do, you're interrupting them. With voice mail, there's a good chance they won't bother to read/listen to it for a while. But with a text, it shows up right away on their phone and is nearly impossible to miss. This doesn't mean it's great for having long conversations however; I have no idea why a lot of people do that instead of just calling.

Re:Buy a battery case

[Jethro]

*sigh* your mistake is referring to these things as "phones".

It's a mobile pocket computer. It also happens to be connected to the sum-total of Human knowledge. When I was a kid that was a fevered dream of hardcore nerds who read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. We thought we'd be carrying these large-paperback sized devices in satchels and have a chording keyboard in our pocket.

Seriously. These things are insanely amazing. They are marvels of technology. if you want a pure "phone" then yeah, stay away from them. That's not what they're for. Yes, they are communication devices but they're sooo much more.

If that means I have to put it on a pad when I'm at home, I can absolutely, 100% live with that.

Add-ons

[American AC in Paris]

Getcherself a battery-backup case/portable battery. Alternatively, invest in a few extra charge cables and scatter 'em about your domain.

But then again, you're a power user. You know this already.

Re:Add-ons

[snookiex]

It's interesting how, the same way we are going back to the old concept of mainframe with the cloud thing, we're also making our "mobile" phones wired again.

Re:Add-ons

[American AC in Paris]

It's interesting how, the same way we are going back to the old concept of mainframe with the cloud thing, we're also making our "mobile" phones wired again.

I mean, if you think of a smartphone as a souped-up cell phone, then yeah, you're gonna be charging a whole lot more. Alternatively, if you think of a smartphone as a stripped-down Internet-connected laptop you can carry in your pocket, then not so much.

A smartphone is only a phone these days in the sense that one (or honestly several) of umpteen different apps it has allows you to make telephone calls.

Cell phones were never meant to be computing devices. They were mobile telephones with some truly horrid additional functionality bolted on top (the most successful of which was texting, which was simply horrid experience on a numeric keypad, T9 or no.)

We're not re-wiring our mobile phones. We're stratifying our computing across devices, and relegating telephony--a formerly essential function that used to require a dedicated device--to the status of a supplemental application that we tend only to use on our more mobile computing devices, if at all.

Re:Add-ons

[Anonymous Coward]

It's amazing how many "power users" think that a 2nd battery is the only way to get things done. The portable battery is larger than a 2nd battery and can last several models of phone as well as being able to charge the same phone multiple times, not needing to shut down and boot up the phone to replace a battery and charging it while using it or on the move.

"Power users" must not these things are worthwhile during their power using.

Re:Add-ons

[Anonymous Coward]

Getcherself a battery-backup case/portable battery.

Yeah, 'cuz an external battery pack dangling off your phone is so much better than having a phone that is 1mm thicker.

Re:Add-ons

[gstoddart]

A modern smartphone would have been classified as a supercomputer not so long ago.

At one point, a single CPU/core Apple running at 1GHz was still technically munitions grade equipment.

That we need to provide more juice to these devices should surprise nobody.

My wife's Nexus cell phone has more compute power than ... well, than all of 1983 I think.

These mobile phones are, in fact, full fledged computers. And that takes some power.

Re:Add-ons

[jtgd]

These mobile phones are, in fact, full fledged computers. And that takes some power.

What takes even more power than the supercomputer is the light behind the LCD.

Sony Xperia Z3

[GWBasic]

I've had a Sony Xperia Z3 for 6 months, and the battery capacity is shockingly giant. Idle, browsing, and reading on Kindle hardly use the battery. GPS and talking also are rather gentle on the battery. The only thing that eats battery is copying 100 GB of music over WIFI. The phone has a stamina mode to help throttle applications as well; but IMO, I'd rather only use it in emergencies.

Re: Sony Xperia Z3

[Mof-Tan]

Yes, the Sonys have great battery life nowadays. In fact I would argue that they offer the best Android phones these days. But for some mysterious reason U.S. operators are effectively blocking them from the market. When was the last time you saw a high-end Sony at a Verizon or AT&T stand?

Re:Sony Xperia Z3

[Stephen Chadfield]

I get all-day battery life from my Xperia Z3. I never have to think about the battery or moderate my usage. The phone is fast and stable with only minor customization of Android 5.1.1. I expect to be happy with this device for some time to come.

Re:Sony Xperia Z3

[chromaexcursion]

Add my my vote.
I've had mine for almost a year. With moderate use I can go a couple days on a charge.

Battery Case?

[Lifix]

Get a battery case for your phone!

iPhone 6 user here, two things piss me off: 1. Running out of battery 2. Stupid Apple LIghtning plug. I bought a battery case from Anker, it adds a bit of heft to my phone, but it addresses both of my issues. The battery case charges via micro USB, so now instead of keeping track of this silly lightning cable, I just charge my phone through the battery case with the same cable I use to charge everything else I own.

Re:Battery Case?

[qpqp]

As a side-note, you could also order a usb-lightning adapter. That things fits in a hole in your teeth if necessary.

Re:Battery Case?

[Firethorn]

Get a battery case for your phone!

In which case, which phone, other than apple's, has the best battery cases available? Is it possible to mod a phone to have separate external contact points so as to avoid increasing the height of the phone too much?

How about for a tablet?

Re:Battery Case?

[magarity]

There are battery cases for older Note series that do just what you describe. Remove the standard back, remove the standard battery, insert huge battery, place new back molded to go around huge battery.

Re:Battery Case?

[Carewolf]

But that is stupid. If there is a market for battery-cases there is market for thicker phones with more battery, and they would be a lot smaller if it was only integrated.

Re:Battery Case?

[Lehk228]

mugen power makes a lot of extened battery models, I can even get one for my blackberry Q10. they make your phone a bit thicker but more than double runtime.

external battery works for me

[Trepidity]

I find it easier to just buy some decent phone, using whatever criteria you want to shop for on the phone side (price, features, etc.), and then if you want extra battery life, buy an external battery that can charge the phone via USB. They're small/light enough these days that I just keep one in my laptop bag, which I usually have with me. If you're more the outdoor/hiking type, you can get a version that doubles as an LED flashlight. Lets me go about 2x as long without having the kind of big/fat phone you'd need for a big internal battery.

The problem is Android

[CastrTroy]

I think the biggest problem is having Android as a starting point. In my experience, Android is just terrible on battery life. Something about the way it works that just lets apps suck down the battery. I had and Android phone, and replaced it with a Windows Phone

My old Android phone would easily be out of battery by the end of the day with a similarly sized battery. I usually plugged it in at work because otherwise the battery wouldn't make it to the end of the day. The Windows phone with the same usage patters isn't even below 60% by the end of the day most days. It's also really nice in the fact that if I just leave it sitting on the desk all day, the battery will only go down about 5%, whereas Android would still drain the battery even if you didn't touch it.

After I got the new Windows phone, I did a factory reset on my old Android phone, it easily had a battery life of 3 days. Until I logged back into my Google account on the thing (just connected my account, not even installing apps). Then it was back to it's old tricks and draining the battery over the course of a single day, just sitting on my desk doing nothing.

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.

Re:The problem is Android

[known_coward_69]

android has "real multitasking" just like the fan boys wanted. i've noticed out of the 3GB RAM on my Note 3 less than 1GB will be free most of the time. almost every app likes to run a process in the background. i keep bluetooth off as well as location settings on power saving mode which is good enough.

Re: The problem is Android

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not a shill. Windows phones don't have apps, so he isn't running anything that can drain the battery.

Re:The problem is Android

[danbob999]

i've noticed out of the 3GB RAM on my Note 3 less than 1GB will be free most of the time

Which means your phone is wasting almost 1GB most of the time. RAM should never be free.

Re:The problem is Android

[lexman098]

The problem is Google Play Services. As much as Google pushes their documentation and API notes about saving battery life, they take none of their own advice. GPServices will create hundreds of alarms (device wakeups) and wakelocks for syncing and tracking your location etc.

Fortunately this can be fixed if you're at least rooted. With tasker you can have sync automatically turn on and off (or the entire data connection) to limit usage. If your bootloader is unlocked you can install xposed with the Amplify module to literally put an exact limit on the rate of alarms and wakelocks. The Greenify module helps too. With light usage on a G3 my battery drains 2%/hr. After that it's all the screen, and I notice a lot of people never turn their screen off and just wait for it to timeout which adds up throughout the day.

Re:The problem is Android

[ThatsMyNick]

I second this, get a windows phone. I switched to Lumia 640 recently. I get 3 days usually with it, and even with heavy internet usage I get 2 days. Windows 10 (which can run android apps) runs smoothly on this, cant wait for the final release.

Re:The problem is Android

[Grishnakh]

That's why you need to upgrade to CyanogenMod. It's all the bloatware and adware that's eating up the battery life.

Switching to Windows Phone is a terrible solution, because then you have to use the shitty butt-ugly new Metro UI. There's no way in hell I would ever get a Windows Phone, just because of that. I don't care if they paid me to use it, and the battery lasted a month. It's just too fucking ugly. Having to occasionally use Windows 8.1 at work is already bad enough, there's no way in hell I'm going to subject myself to that on my phone.

Re:The problem is Android

[plasm4]

To use Android effectively, you must root your device and freeze/remove unwanted apps. With root, you must also use a firewall to block or limit network access to you still want to use.

You must also mange your radios well - only enable Bluetooth and GPS when you need it, otherwise keep them off; toggle mobile data and wifi when you roam which means don't leave wifi on while you leave your residence or workplace, and don't leave either on at night or for extended time. (Yes there is a lag in the morning when you turn on wifi and all the background apps sync at once to get email, messages, updates, etc. but you trade that for longer battery life by not using as many charge cycles.)

Managing both software and hardware is a bitch, but if you spend a bit of time to learn, you can get great battery life and overall performance (less background apps), and enjoy enhanced privacy (block ads, prevent data leaks, don't respond to wifi/BT pings, etc).

Why bother having a smart phone if you're going to do all of that?

Re:The problem is Android

[dwywit]

I've got a Motorola Razr HD, a bit over 2 years old, and just out of warranty. It's still got a phenomenal battery life - almost 3 days with light use, and at least 1 day with heavy use.

I use the "smart actions" feature to schedule when certain features are off or on, e.g. between 10pm and 7am all radios are off. Don't need all that stuff while I'm asleep. GPS is off unless I actually want to use it, ditto bluetooth, wifi and mobile data. If the battery drops below 25%, all non-essential features are off or throttled.

I had to disable nearly all of the stock Google apps - music, movies, news,etc, turned auto-sync off, turned auto-updates off, and disabled Google Play Store. I replaced a lot of them with alternatives. It's not that the Google apps weren't working, but they were almost constantly fetching updates.

After the update to kitkat, I noticed reduced battery life so I installed GSAM battery monitor and let it collect stats for a few charge cycles. One thing that stood out - kernel wakelocks. There's a process called "emu_det" that seems to fire up whenever a cable is plugged in, either for charging only, or for data transfer. It pretty much doesn't let the kernel go to sleep, even when the cable is removed. I couldn't find out much about it, except that a reboot was needed to kill it.

Now that the phone's out of warranty, I'll look into unlocking the bootloader (you can get the instructions from the Motorola website, after all the usual "void your warranty" stuff) and seeing what's out there in terms of an alternative, e.g. Cyanogen

Re:The problem is Android

[ncc74656]

That's why you need to upgrade to CyanogenMod. It's all the bloatware and adware that's eating up the battery life.

I have been getting better battery life out of my Moto X since unlocking it and putting CyanogenMod on it. I think a big part of that, though, isn't a matter of stock settings or installed apps, but more a matter of increased flexibility in power settings. CyanogenMod lets you do things like turn LTE and 3G on and off that I don't think the stock firmware allows. With Tasker, I can have it automatically disable LTE when WiFi is available, and reenable it when out of range of WiFi. If I'm doing something that's not too data-intensive, I can manually cut data speeds back to 3G or EDGE. Sometimes, the battery ends up lasting longer now than it did when my phone was new, and I've had it for more than a year and a half now.

Re:The problem is Android

[exomondo]

That's an awful lot of faffing about just to get your smartphone to work effectively.

Re: The problem is Android

[ILongForDarkness]

Depends on the user I guess. Win phone has all the big ones (or at least the ones I've heard of, albeit I'm not glued to my phone like the zombies I see walking the street). Facebook, gmail, bbm, kindle, etc etc). I have a Lumia 920, generally speaking I'm not on the phone for more than an hour at a time and at most send say 10 texts in a day so not a heavy user. Never have a problem getting through the day though even with 4 email accounts syncing to it. Not sure if this is good or not but for example I can read on the phone for 1.5hrs on the way to work, with screen at full brightness and use about 15% of the battery, ie I could read for about 7hrs and probably more with the screen dimmed. Not sure how that compares to texting and the like, obviously the antenna isn't in a lot of use while reading but the touch screen is still getting hit every 30s or so.

It might be that Nokia (and it is mostly Nokia in the Win side): never fell in love with the idea of trying to make a phone look like a razor blade. They are (relatively speaking) boxy thick phones leaving plenty of room for the battery. It is also possible that win phone does manage battery better than the others though I couldn't really say one way or another. I think nokia had a few phones that came in both android and win phone versions perhaps battery life comparisons between the same phone different OS would answer that one.

Re:The problem is Android

[mcrbids]

Describing your excellent battery life, you described my Razr Maxx HD rather well!

Even after 3 years, it powers through a full day with hard use with > 25% battery life, and I *use* my phone. Stuff like GotoMeeting app usage for hours, Nextiva VOIP app over wifi for at least an hour, Skype app all day long, etc.

It's also awesome on the road! Spending an hour or three at the airport, watching TED videos or downloaded movies while on the plane, diving directions after landing, etc. it does *just fine*.

With nightly charging, I think I've had it die between charges perhaps twice in the last 3 years. If I could buy a new one today, I probably would, even though its specs are sub-par to today's flagships!

All the features in the world are for naught if your battery is dead.

Re:The problem is Android

[driblio]

Cache. You just drop it when need the ram for something else. Done properly, it will even have you new application in ram BEFORE you request it. Remember super fetch? People who don't get it complaining Windows was using all their ram- shock horror!

Re:The problem is Android

[MrL0G1C]

People who don't get it complaining Windows was using all their ram- shock horror!

Obvious solution here is too describe memory being used by the cache as being free memory! ;-)

Re:The problem is Android

[AmiMoJo]

My OnePlus One is the same, and runs Android. It's down to the phone and the quality of the drivers, more than the particular OS in use I think.

Re:The problem is Android

[Toshito]

I had a Windows phone, a Nokia Lumia 920. For 2 years.

I loved the operating system, and the phone itself was great (very good camera for macro shots!)

But I had a problem with it... about once a week it would start to overheat seriously (like almost too hot to touch) and the battery would drain 10% every 5 minutes. I never found what caused it, and even after several updates the problem is still there. I agree with you that when this overheating problem was not going on, the battery life was great. But it was completely unpredictable, and I often found myself with a dead phone and no way to charge it.

Here, have phone reading this thread about the same problem I had, going on for more than 2 years: http://answers.microsoft.com/e...

I replaced that phone with a Moto G LTE, a great little phone. Does everything I need without any fuss, and the battery is good for almost 2 days. Crappy camera tough.

Google Search

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick google search came up with http://www.tomsguide.com/us/smartphones-best-battery-life,review-2857.html.
Top 3 batteries on smart phones are:
Huawai Ascend Mate 2 14:43
Oneplus One 13:16
iPhone 6+ 10:00

Re:Google Search

[Ryan McLaughlin]

My Oneplus one easily lasts me two days, that is even with moderate game playing.

Re:Google Search

[DuckDodgers]

My HTC One Max has a 1920x1080 (not quad hd) screen and 3300 mAh battery, I can get two days between charges with moderate usage. My daughter can watch Netflix on it for about six or eight hours before it needs a charge. (I know it's no good for her to watch that much, but sometimes I'm just too damn tired to make her do something else.) The phone is good in all respects except the camera, which just can't match the mid range or better Android cameras.

note 4

[hypergreatthing]

I mean what's really the benefit of getting the latest phone? Note 4 has a removable battery and a microsd card. It has a great screen, can be used as a vr screen. Honestly why bother getting anything else?

Re:note 4

[roc97007]

I mean what's really the benefit of getting the latest phone? Note 4 has a removable battery and a microsd card. It has a great screen, can be used as a vr screen. Honestly why bother getting anything else?

To manufacturers, this is a problem. When phones are good enough that there's nothing substantially better to upgrade to, people tend not to buy new hardware. A way has to be found to force them to upgrade. Hence, the lack of SD cards (no way to put in a bigger one) and the lack of a replaceable battery.

Re:note 4

[frnic]

That's easy, because it is worth $700 to most people to be able to brag about having 20% more pixels than they can see, and the latest onto core processor, which will let them type emails on that tiny keyboard at least 8 times faster than the old school quad cores.

I mean really, just being seen with a one generation old phone is a stigma waiting to happen.

Re:note 4

[bobbied]

I mean what's really the benefit of getting the latest phone? Note 4 has a removable battery and a microsd card. It has a great screen, can be used as a vr screen. Honestly why bother getting anything else?

Totally agree... I have a note 4 and I'm very pleased with this phone. It has a reasonably strong multi core processor, lots of RAM and a lot of flash that can be easily and cheaply extended with the microSD card. Battery life is not great under heavy use but in standby it will easily last the whole day away from the charger. However, the battery is quickly replaced if you carry a spare or two.

Personally, I carry my Note 4 in a wallet style case that easily stores my two spare batteries. Should I happen to not be near a charger and bored so I'm using the phone for entertainment, I can get around 4 hours out of a battery so 3 gets me a full 12 hours of non-stop entertainment.

Re:Note 4

[MiniMike]

Second this. I bought a Note 4 three weeks ago for $77 (Sam's Club) after rebates/etc. I didn't wait for the Note 5 because of the lack of expandable memory and the non-removable battery, also why I didn't go with any of the other 'high end' phones.

Re:Note 4

[dotancohen]

Third this. I'm using the Note 3, and I'm very happy with two days battery life, even with substantial talking. Just shut down the GPS and internet when you're not using them.

Re:note 4

[DuckDodgers]

Planned obsolescence is more profitable for vendors. But really, the only reason to upgrade since the Samsung Galaxy S3 era Android phones has been for the camera. I think 2GB of RAM or Android 4.x or both were the tipping point to where Android is stable and simple to use. All enhancements past that has been window dressing.

But of course, you need CyanogenMod or something similar to keep getting security updates on older phones.

I think the really cost effective thing to do would be to get a Samsung Galaxy S3 or something similar and a separate digital camera, and just get into the habit of carrying both around. But I forget the phone as it is.

Re:Note 4

[MrL0G1C]

$77 is not the price the price is roughly $600, you no doubt have to pay $30+ a month for a couple of years to get the phone at $77.

Re:Note 4

[MiniMike]

Yes, that was only meant to indicate the upfront cost. For many similar phones that cost can be $200 - $300, in addition to paying the monthly fee.

Re:note 4

[roc97007]

I mean what's really the benefit of getting the latest phone? Note 4 has a removable battery and a microsd card. It has a great screen, can be used as a vr screen. Honestly why bother getting anything else?

To manufacturers, this is a problem. When phones are good enough that there's nothing substantially better to upgrade to, people tend not to buy new hardware. A way has to be found to force them to upgrade. Hence, the lack of SD cards (no way to put in a bigger one) and the lack of a replaceable battery.

I have been explaining this to friends and colleges for quite a while now. New technologies work on a sort of an exponential curve. In the beginning there is plenty of room for new features and improvements. After a while they are feature saturated and the improvements are minimal. This applies to things like: Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, Linux, Smart phones, Android, iOS, etc. etc.

Exactly. So, if it looks like you have a successful product, you should be looking ahead at what your business model is going to change to when the curve flattens out. Apps is a good one. Service is another. But it's easier to enforce periodic unneeded upgrades.

Re:note 4

[burbilog]

To manufacturers, this is a problem. When phones are good enough that there's nothing substantially better to upgrade to, people tend not to buy new hardware. A way has to be found to force them to upgrade. Hence, the lack of SD cards (no way to put in a bigger one) and the lack of a replaceable battery.

It's not that simple. The problem is that market is saturated with lots of bad sd cards. SD card forgery is rampant. 2gb marked as 16gb is something way too common.

Now what happens when user insert lousy card? He complains that phone is slow or broken and blames the phone (and not himself for buying card for 1/4 of its real market price). And manufacturers see this as their biggest problem. No sd card slot, no problem.

Re:note 4

[roc97007]

To manufacturers, this is a problem. When phones are good enough that there's nothing substantially better to upgrade to, people tend not to buy new hardware. A way has to be found to force them to upgrade. Hence, the lack of SD cards (no way to put in a bigger one) and the lack of a replaceable battery.

It's not that simple. The problem is that market is saturated with lots of bad sd cards. SD card forgery is rampant. 2gb marked as 16gb is something way too common.

Now what happens when user insert lousy card? He complains that phone is slow or broken and blames the phone (and not himself for buying card for 1/4 of its real market price). And manufacturers see this as their biggest problem. No sd card slot, no problem.

Yeah, sorry, I don't believe that.

My favourite phone "on the horizon": Fairphone

[blind biker]

The "fair" part of FairPhone isn't of too much concern for me. What is of much interest is the fact that it is extremely easily repairable and expandable (down to the level of replacing ports, sockets, the microphone etc.) with nothing more than a screwdriver!
This phone, if it gets funded, will have a number of different, easily replaceable, batteries.

No more..

[bhcompy]

So, no more SD slot, no Note Edge, and no removable battery.. This seems like a downgrade

Re:No more..

[dotancohen]

So, no more SD slot, no Note Edge, and no removable battery.. This seems like a downgrade

That's why I'm sticking with my Note 3. Terrific device. I cannot imagine what went into the planning of the Note 5.

High-end phones will always be battery hogs

[SIGBUS]

Those fast CPUs/GPUs and large-pixel-count screens are going to suck up the juice. Consider going a notch down instead - a 720p screen and a 4xx series processor can handle things quite nicely. The LG G Stylo has the same battery as the G4, but the battery life is flat-out awesome. With moderately heavy daily use, I rarely see below 60% remaining battery life when I plug it in for the night.

Like the G4, the battery is removable and there is an SD slot.

Keep in mind that the T-Mobile/MetroPCS version is better than the others; it has 2GB RAM/16 GB internal storage vs. 1GB/8GB for other carriers.

The main drawback to the Stylo is that LG purposely crippled the camera; there are very few shooting modes available, and no manual controls, even though it's the same camera hardware as (at least) the G3. Fortunately, XCam LG will run fine on it, even though it was intended for the G3.

Re:High-end phones will always be battery hogs

[drinkypoo]

What are you doing on your phone that strains the limits of 720p? Is it a phablet? I'm on my second 720p 5" phone and I have yet to wish I had more pixels. I wouldn't mind a few more on this 1280x800 TF201, but that's quite a bit larger.

For those who find they can live with 720p, the spanking new Moto G 32GB (which has 2GB RAM) ought to be more than enough phone for any non-gaming purposes. The same would be true of the 2014 (titan) if it came with 2GB, but you really do notice the 1GB of RAM. I've tried several roms and the difference in multitasking performance from e.g. a Nexus 4 is substantial. But it actually has a faster CPU than that phone, for a pittance.

Seriously though, what do you need more than 720p for on a phone-sized display where you can't see the pixels anyway? Please tell me it's VR, then... you could see the pixels

Re:High-end phones will always be battery hogs

[MrL0G1C]

Those fast CPUs/GPUs and large-pixel-count screens are going to suck up the juice

Pixel count is irrelevant, it's generating light that uses the battery and those CPUs can idle as good as any phone and they will use less power doing the things you want to get done. My Galaxy note also lasts all day because with a bigger screen comes a bigger battery (and it lasts for weeks on a single charge sitting around in standby).

Buy a chargeable USB battery

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a ZAGG 6000 mah battery that plugs into the wall and has two fast charging USB ports (not sure what fast charging means here, but it is faster than say plugging into a laptop).

Yes its a pain to carry a storage battery around and no this probably won't make your life easier if you're at a concert for 12 hours with no backpack or bag.

On the other hand however these kinds of batteries are cheap and getting cheaper. If I bought one for the same money I spent 2-3 years ago I'd be looking at a 20000+ mah extra battery instead.

Now when I go on trips say through the airport, if my tablet dies mid flight I don't need an outlet. If my phone dies on the flight and I need it at the next layover, again I don't need an outlet and the problem of needing a bigger battery is solved.

And finally, with this approach you won't need to carry a 90's sized brick around (except in your back pack or purse or car or elsewhere).

Note 4

[The Raven]

The Samsung Note 4 is still a high end phone (until the Note 5 comes out, only the iPhone 6 hase more performance), and a removable back. You can add a monster aftermarket battery on to it. It's likely to drop in price (it's already started) as the Note 5 comes out.

There is no faster phone, that I am aware of, with a replaceable battery.

Re:Droid Maxx

[flablader]

I was going to comment that the Droid Maxx is a good option if you're on Verizon. I have one, and it's been a great workhorse. Unfortunately it's a non-removable battery, it's already about 2 years old, there's no expandable memory, and you're stuck with Verizon for S/W updates (worst part). Also if you don't get the developer version, the boot loader is locked. If you're OK with all of that, I'd say go for this one. It should be relatively cheap by now.

the best bet is not....

[roc97007]

Motorola Droid M. When I was issued this, the battery would barely last 8 hours. Now six-eight months later, I take it off the charger at home, and by lunchtime it's blinking red and I have to put it on the charger at work. With the earlier Droids with removable batteries, I could (a) carry a spare, and (b) replace the battery easily when it stops taking a charge. I guess, well I guess you're supposed to just throw the phone out now and buy a new one.

iPhone 6+

[Theovon]

I'm sure I'll get modded down for this. But the iPhone 6+ has enormous battery life. The 6 is kindof anemic, but the 6+ will last 2 or 3 days of normal usage before needing a recharge, including plenty of Angry Birds. As others have said here, the operating system is part of the equation, and iOS does a pretty good job.

Re:iPhone 6+

[GreatDrok]

Another vote for the iPhone 6+. I've actually run it for five days without a charge just to see how long I could make it last. If you really hammer it with games and stuff then you'll chew through the battery but if you use it to make a few calls, do a bit of e-mail and text then it will last a working week. I do carry one of those little extra battery packs just in case and frankly, whenever I have a chance to charge my devices I take it but knowing that my phone always has days and days of power in reserve is so much better than it was with my old iPhone 4.

Re:iPhone 6+

[macs4all]

I'm sure I'll get modded down for this. But the iPhone 6+ has enormous battery life. The 6 is kindof anemic, but the 6+ will last 2 or 3 days of normal usage before needing a recharge, including plenty of Angry Birds. As others have said here, the operating system is part of the equation, and iOS does a pretty good job.

There ARE benefits to making the whole widget. And Apple has been doing Power Management very well, for a very long time.

As I have said elsewhere in this thread, I get at LEAST 3 to 4 days of average use out of my 128 GB iPhone 6 Plus. Its battery life is simply spectacular.

HTC One M8

[chrisaj5]

My previous phone was a Droid Razr Maxx, and I really wanted similar battery life. I ended up getting the HTC One M8 (*not* the M9, which I still believe is inferior). The battery under normal / light use lasts 2 days. Though I'm not happy with the way HTC the company has headed, I'm still happy with my phone 4 months later!

Quick Charge

[airos4]

QC works exactly as advertised. I bought a car version on Amazon for ten bucks from Aukey. It literally fills my Turbo approx 1-2% for every minute on the charger. I go over to my girlfriend's, my phone is up 30%; random small trips during the day keep it nicely topped up. It's a game changer.

Re:Quick Charge

[macs4all]

QC works exactly as advertised. I bought a car version on Amazon for ten bucks from Aukey. It literally fills my Turbo approx 1-2% for every minute on the charger. I go over to my girlfriend's, my phone is up 30%; random small trips during the day keep it nicely topped up. It's a game changer.

How hot does it get while charging?

You realize you're killing your battery with that quick charger. It's ok once in awhile; but I try to avoid using my car charger with my iPhone, because it gets broiling-hot. And that simply isn't good for the battery. In fact, with ALL battery-types, the slower you charge them, the better.

i'm doing cheap phones and ipads

[known_coward_69]

i have a Note 3 that i plan on keeping for close to 5 years. I have an ipad 4 and will buy an ipad air 2 for each kid this year and take the ipad 4 for myself and keep it for a few more years. maybe buy a new ipad next year to splurge. phones and tablets are in their 8th generation now and mature. i find that most of my phone use is texting, reading the news and some gaming. don't need a new phone every two years for that anymore. it's like computers now where you can keep them for years

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.

Re:One option - Droid Turbo

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus the turbo charger really is pretty impressive.

Re:One option - Droid Turbo

[Jonboy X]

Seconded. It just keeps on going, supports Qi wireless charging and runs the newest Lollipop release with only a light coating of surprisingly-not-worthless Moto add-on crud.

Re:One option - Droid Turbo

[gustygolf]

48 hours? Seriously? Is that what counts as 'good' battery life these days?

I want a phone to last a week on a single charge. Especially if all it's doing is lying on the table, screen off. Mine currently feels like a Tamagotchi that needs to be fed every two days.

I don't care what kind of phone....

[bobbied]

What you need is a REPLACABLE battery. That way, you can have a phone that lasts for as long as you wish by just replacing the battery as often as necessary. If you couple this with the ability to charge your spare batteries outside of the phone, you have the best of all worlds. As long as it lasts a few hours, who cares if you have a spare in your pocket...

Of course, that rules out an IOS device, sorry Apple.....

Re:I don't care what kind of phone....

[fluffernutter]

Really? It takes three minutes to replace the battery and boot. You're that worried you're going to miss a call?

If you truly want function over form

[recharged95]

who prize function over form

Then get a phone that has a OS that isn't bloated with eye candy, odd navigation menus, and constant connection for 'guessing your next request'... and crapware that runs in the background 100%.

There was a time not so long along phones ran for at least a day, and we're "zippy", now they're slow & buggy (I'm looking at you Android & WP) or last 6 hrs (iOS). And it's mainly from the OS being used.

Most of the functions I use on today's phone were available on a 2003 Palm Tungsten (email, cal, notes, sms, video, audio): and when I ran a Palm, it ran smoothly (though not as zippy as a 2013 phone), but lasted nearly a whole week before a need to charge. The latest "flagship" phones are so heavily bias to graphics and cloud gaming that kills everything else when is comes to usability.

Imagine a bare bones phone: web browser, video/audio player, sms and workable phone. 3000mah would go a long ways w/just that.

Want function over form: get a phone w/a efficient OS--yep, there's isn't one today.

Re:If you truly want function over form

[macs4all]

...or last 6 hrs (iOS)

Liar.

The only way I could get my iPhone 6 Plus to last only 6 hours was to do turn-by-turn navigation; which not only cranks up the high-current-draw GPS hardware, but more significantly, wants to keep the backlight lit so you can see the scrolling map.

Otherwise, my iPhone gets about 3 to 4 DAYS of average use. I chatted the other day with some friends on a cellphone call for nearly 6 hours, and it STILL had about 30% left, and IIRC, it only went into that call with about 62% capacity.

thats one reason im using a 3 year old phone

[bobjr94]

I like my 3 year old phone, you can spend 20$ buy a batter with 4x the capacity and new back cover and you good. Want a smaller phone, put the original battery back on.

nokia

[veberic]

nokia asha 501 dual sim: 10 days of battery time (with power saving on).

BlackBerry Passport

[XB-70]

Ok, Ok, I know BlackBerry is dead. EVERY one of my friends' phones has died during the day.

My BlackBerry Passport has NEVER died. End of story.

Sony Xperia Z3 (and Compact) and OnePlus Two

[twasserman]

I'm quite happy with battery life on my Sony Xperia Z3 Compact with its non-removable 2600 mAh battery. GSM Arena gives it an Endurance Rating of 101h, and I routinely go two days without having to recharge it. For those who want something larger than its 4.6" screen, the Sony Xperia Z3 has a 5.2" screen and a non-removable 3100 mAh battery, but its Endurance Rating is only 85h. The Samsung Galaxy 6 Edge, with its 2600 mAh battery and 5.2" screen, is rated still lower at 73h, perhaps because of all of the running bloatware. You might do better if you root it, and kill off some of the useless stuff that eats the battery.

Another likely winner on battery life is the brand new OnePlus Two, with a 3300 mAh battery (up from 3100 in the OnePlus One) and a 5.5" display. But its Endurance Rating is likely to be similar to that of the Galaxy 6 Edge.

One note: US carriers don't carry the Xperia Z3 Compact, so you have to get it from Sony (sonymobile.com). But it's much cheaper than the Samsung's, and Sony offers an additional discount to students and others with a .edu address. Then you can get the SIM chip from your chosen GSM wireless carrier, which will also make sure that the data settings are correct. For the OnePlus, you need to secure an invitation (several ways to go about that), and then claim your phone on the OnePlus site. Since it's half the price of the Samsung, it's worth a bit of a wait.

Battey case or charger battery

[Chewbacon]

I don't really care for the battery cases as they add weight and bulk to the device. I see a lot of traveling industry reps I work with carrying the battery cells with USB ports. Just plug in and charge. The cell gets them through the day and they plug it in at night in the hotel. I do not own one and don't have much of a need for one, but one of the reps let me borrow his when I needed a charge. It is slower than a wall outlet, but works.

Turn off your f'ing radios

[Karmashock]

No seriously, that is your problem.

I have a little battery that I charge separately and take with me. I normally don't even need it. Its just in a backpack I lug around.

If I see my phone is going into the DANGER ZONE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Then I plug it in to the pack and throw it in the backpack. I mean, I have a stereo bluetooth headset that I use all day. So, if I get a call... I just press a button and I'm talking to people. So long as the phone is in bluetooth range... who cares.

The big issue with phone battery life is that people leave all their fucking radios on all the time. If you leave Wifi, Data, and GPS on all the time... then you're fucked sideways with a chainsaw. There's no reasonable battery that is going to handle all that crap all day.

I personally only have the bluetooth on most of the time. Bluetooth sips power unlike everything else.

Here people will either say "I need all these radios on" for no reason or they'll be honest and say "I'm too lazy to turn them off"... I put the buttons to turn them on and off on my home screen... and generally don't mess with them much because I keep them the fuck off. But if I need to quickly turn something on, I do that... and then I turn it off when I'm done.

I very very rarely need to resort to the battery pack. And when that happens... there it is.

I find myself needing it most often when I use the GPS. The GPS radio gobbles power for some reason.

Re:Turn off your f'ing radios

[metrix007]

GPS doesn't matter, since it is only activated when requested and only receives. Data is surely a hog though.

Re:Turn off your f'ing radios

[Karmashock]

Whenever I see someone bitch about battery life and I look at their phone... they have all their radios on.

Bluetooth, Wifi, GPS, Data.... everything is on.

I suggest "hey you'd have better battery life if you switched some of that shit off"... and they say "but its le hard and Ie lazy"... to which I basically say "okay"... and promptly lose interest.

Switch the radios off that you're not using and the phone will typically last all day no trouble. If you need those radios on for some reason... and I would argue that most people that think they do... do not... then I'd just suggest people get an external battery and charge their phone in their purse or backpack etc. I have a backpack that I carry around with me everywhere. The back pack is the male purse. I keep all my shit in it.... which includes a battery capable of keeping my phone topped up with all radios on. If I need to really thrash my battery then I just plug it into the external battery. Problem solved.

Re:Turn off your f'ing radios

[Karmashock]

Not my experience... possibly because there are a lot of programs that query location passively or something. But if I don't turn my GPS off my battery life is substantially lower. Granted, the battery doesn't drain as fast as when I'm using the GPS for navigation. The battery life is pathetic under those conditions. But typically I can plug into the car's inverter in that case.

Re:Turn off your f'ing radios

[metrix007]

At least on Android, there are 3 different levels of location. Only the highest level shows that it is in use, The mid level is Google's kung fu using wi-fi and stuff to approximate your location, which still uses radios even if disabled.

I think.

Re:Turn off your f'ing radios

[Karmashock]

I hate the mid level. I want it on or off. Just me. I don't see how it helps me for the phone to know roughly where I am? What does that do for me besides waste my battery power and assist snooping apps that have no business knowing that information?

Re:Turn off your f'ing radios

[metrix007]

Agreed...I'm not a fan.

Re:Droid Turbo.

[macs4all]

Big battery and can charge quickly using the "turbo" charger (3900 mAH)

Fine. Turbo charging mode is for suckers.

Let's see how much battery life you have after a year of doing "Turbo" charging. I'll bet your phone will be at 50% of its original battery life (or less).

Fast charging = heat. Heat = premature battery death. True to a greater or lesser extent with ALL rechargeable battery technologies.

So, enjoy replacing your expensive battery or phone in a couple of years.

S6 Active = 3,500 mAh

[KevinFlannery]

This phone has great battery life & is waterproof. What more could one need?

Bring a big battery, not a big phone.

[Antique Geekmeister]

A battery with at least 2 full phone charges in it fits well in a briefcase or backpack, and allows remote tethering for others in a crisis or when the corporate or public wifi is misconfigured. There are dozens of excellent external batteries, many of them very robust or even with solar recharge capacity. These can save you from having to lend your phone to someone else who ran out of charge, or being tethered while your phone recharges.

Re:Bring a big battery, not a big phone.

[fluffernutter]

Yes.... Because everyone wants a cord that attaches their phone to their briefcase. So convenient!

Xiaocai X6 1.77-inch Waterproof Outdoor Mobile

[warewolfsmith]

6 weeks battery life, however its only a G2 bar phone.

Re:$50 Nokia

[avandesande]

Just got a Nokia 635 off Amazon for 35$... it's a great phone.

Good Quality Phone with Quality Extended Battery

[ne0phyte73]

Any good quality replaceable battery phone with good quality extended battery will do the work. Example: LG G4 with this 6200mAh beast offering 2x battery life, Galaxy Note 4 with this 6640mAh battery or Galaxy S5 with this 5900mAh powerhouse.

Look for yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

A great resource: http://www.gsmarena.com/battery-test.php3

Kyocera Duraplus

[0100010001010011]

I think I charge mine once a month or so.

I'm a field engineer and nothing else has survived. If I absolutely need to get to the internet it does have OperaMini and I have been able to Facebook and other websites working on. Otherwise I have a laptop. It has actual buttons that you can use to T9 text without looking. It has a cradle, swappable batteries, and has a lot of good headsets.

All of the 'apps' load instantly, no bloatware. It has an alarm, countdown timer, calendar, bluetooth.

It texts, it makes calls and in a pinch it can be used to open walnuts.

Galaxy S6 Active (not regular/Edge, but Active)

[obarthelemy]

head and shoulders above other flagships: http://www.phonearena.com/news...

Re:BlackBerry Passport

[zlives]

not dead for me either, works well and little less worried about the hacks mostly due to lack of foot print... so yeah don;t buy blackberry

Zero Lemon 9300 mAh for Galaxy Note 2

[HughJazz]

Have had the Zero Lemon battery for nearly three years. Typically lasts two days with heavy use but charge nightly. Haven't had a dead battery day since I got it. Still charges fine. It also comes with nice rubberized replacement cover that's far more durable than original (I'm a klutz that drops my phone from time to time so handy). On the con side the big battery also means you have a much bigger phone but this is understandable trade off.

Re:Droid Turbo / Droid Maxx

[Osgeld]

I have one, if I stay off the cell network (ie non wifi data and phone calls) the thing will run easily 3 days of pretending to work

I don't want to mod in this thread, so...

[PNutts]

I like big batts and I cannot lie...

Huawei Ascend Mate2

[p51d007]

When I got it last year, it was one of those, I play with it a week, send it back to Amazon because the specs are so bad. (I had 2 previous 5+ inch screens Dell Streak 5, Note 1, so the size didn't bother me). I mean, how good can a device be (2014) with only a 720p screen, snapdragon 400, 2gb ram, JB4.3 with a 4,100mAH battery. Well, it came, and WOW was I surprised. It blew me away. Bright clear screen, snappy performance, runs everything I want (I don't play games), video, mp3's, great camera, 2-3 day battery life. Less than 300 bucks! It just got the 5.1.1 LL update toward the end of June, but even if it didn't JB4.3 was flat stable. Best 300 bucks I ever spent on a phone, and I've been buying em since the original Motorola brick back in the 90's. I found out that if you find the right device, you don't have to spend 700, 800 or more just to have a great device. They are out there, if you look. I think too many people are buying on brand name only.

Adaptive Fast Charge

[gl4ss]

it totally works. cuts charge time to like one fifth or sixth or even less.

you can get usable charge into the phone while taking a dump.

(at least on note edge, however note edge if you watch youtube and have it connected to a normal 500mah 5v charger it will barely charge.. ).

anyhow note edge has removable battery too(as well removable backplate and comes with two.. one with the faux leather 'wallet' case and one without.

it's pretty handy. the edge is usable mostly just as a quick launch bar or as a night watch

custom rom

[sad_]

first thing is to install a custom rom, my latest android phone, a samsung s4 mini lte didn't last 24h. this was ridiculous and i installed a custom rom after a few weeks and the result - phone lasts for days now on a single charge. going to bed and waking up in the morning only takes 1% off the battery!

Re:custom rom

[Phreakiture]

If you don't mind me asking, what carrier, which version of the S4 mini, and what ROM did you use?

I have an S4 mini, CDMA/LTE version, on Sprint, so this interests me. The battery life is not currently bad, but it would be interesting to de-bloat the firmware.

BlackBerry Z30

[RandomActOfKindness]

The Z30 has a 2880 mAH non removable battery, I charge it every morning, but only out of habit: by the end of the day it's maybe down to 60% but is usually higher.

Why no standardized batteries?

[ecloud]

Prismatic/thin battery sizes could have been standardized years ago, so that the replacements would fit a huge number of devices. Presumably it's just a racket: the manufacturer gets a chance to sell you an overpriced replacement or a new device, your choice.