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It's Not Your Imagination: Smartphone Battery Life Is Getting Worse (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Washington Post: For the last few weeks, I've been performing the same battery test over and over again on 13 phones. With a few notable exceptions, this year's top models underperformed last year's. The new iPhone XS died 21 minutes earlier than last year's iPhone X. Google's Pixel 3 lasted nearly an hour and a half less than its Pixel 2. Phone makers tout all sorts of tricks to boost battery life, including more-efficient processors, low-power modes and artificial intelligence to manage app drain. Yet my results, and tests by other reviewers I spoke with, reveal an open secret in the industry: the lithium-ion batteries in smartphones are hitting an inflection point where they simply can't keep up.
"Batteries improve at a very slow pace, about 5 percent per year," says Nadim Maluf, the CEO of a Silicon Valley firm called Qnovo that helps optimize batteries. "But phone power consumption is growing up faster than 5 percent." Blame it on the demands of high-resolution screens, more complicated apps and, most of all, our seeming inability to put the darn phone down. Lithium-ion batteries, for all their rechargeable wonder, also have some physical limitations, including capacity that declines over time -- and the risk of explosion if they're damaged or improperly disposed. And the phone power situation is likely about to get worse. New ultrafast wireless technology called 5G, coming to the U.S. neighborhoods soon, will make even greater demands on our beleaguered batteries. If you want a smartphone that excels in battery life, you pretty much have two options: Samsung's Galaxy Note 9 and Apple's iPhone XR. According to The Washington Post's tests, the iPhone XR and Note 9 topped the list with times of 12:25 and 12:00, respectively.
"Batteries improve at a very slow pace, about 5 percent per year," says Nadim Maluf, the CEO of a Silicon Valley firm called Qnovo that helps optimize batteries. "But phone power consumption is growing up faster than 5 percent." Blame it on the demands of high-resolution screens, more complicated apps and, most of all, our seeming inability to put the darn phone down. Lithium-ion batteries, for all their rechargeable wonder, also have some physical limitations, including capacity that declines over time -- and the risk of explosion if they're damaged or improperly disposed. And the phone power situation is likely about to get worse. New ultrafast wireless technology called 5G, coming to the U.S. neighborhoods soon, will make even greater demands on our beleaguered batteries. If you want a smartphone that excels in battery life, you pretty much have two options: Samsung's Galaxy Note 9 and Apple's iPhone XR. According to The Washington Post's tests, the iPhone XR and Note 9 topped the list with times of 12:25 and 12:00, respectively.
Stop trying to make the thinnest phone. Make them thicker, use the extra space for a larger battery, and make them durable enough to not need a case. They'll still be thinner than you end up with today.
It’s amazing how the entire thing dances around the elephant that fills up 90% of the room because he had to eat all the food that the retardphone makers denied their products.
None of the non-mainstream phones have a battery life problem. You get phones with 10Ah from a load of manufacturers now.
The "problem" is, that you can't cut your wrist with them because they're not thin like a knife for no freaking reason, and you can't hold them like a boom box because they're so impractically oversized. They may weigh a bit, but that's because they got actual batteries in them. And actual tough cases, if you want. And "worst" of all, they don't cost $1000 e-penis fee on top of the $150 manufacturing costs, so you can't compensate your tiny dick/tits with them.
Sorry, if you buy that "thinspiration" crap, you got only yourself to blame. I hope you slit yourself on them.
Make phones thick and OS/software light again! Back to basic please.
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
As far as I'm concerned they can also stop making them larger (those bigger screens require more power as well). Then again it seems to be what the market is asking for,
This,
The newer generation of SoC's are allegedly meant to consume less power, however more screen real estate means that any savings are being eaten up by the most power hungry component of the device. I've noticed a recent trend of making phones longer rather than wider (I.E. a 19:9 ratio screen rather than 16:9).
My Nexus 5x packed it in last week so I went and bough a Nokia 7.1, after nearly 3 years the battery on my 5x only lasted a day max, 18 or so hours with typical usage so the new phone is going to have a better battery life.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Two easy options to solve essentially all battery related smartphone problems:
1. Increase phone thickness, and use this change to increase battery volume.
2. Return to having a user replaceable battery that can be replaced in a few seconds by popping the rear panel off, taking the empty battery out, putting a full one in and closing the rear panel. As essentially all phones in 1990s allowed you to do.
And suddenly battery problems all go away. But with those changes, phone's effective life increases significantly, so sales will go down. Therefore, it will not happen.
Why do we even need a separate case? All those super thin phones are pointless if you need to put them into a bulky case to protect them.
The modularity of the cases has actual utility. It's cheap to replace a damaged or worn case. Plus it provides an opportunity for people to personalize their device both aesthetically and functionally. The problem is that Apple and others have ignored the function component of cases. It's a huge missed opportunity.
And some people like the thin phones and some don't bother with a case. So by making cases as functional as possible you increase utility to the largest quantity of smartphone users with the fewest trade-offs. Speaking for myself I'd like a case with a bigger battery and better camera optics. Other people would probably like a 3.5mm audio jack or a SD card slot. By making a way for the case to provide this functionality people can get the device they want and Apple/Samsung/etc can focus on making the core device as tight as they like.
This is the simplest and most reasonable answer to this problem. This was a non issue 10 to 15 years ago. For obvious spy on you reasons, most manufacturers will not allow this anymore.
First they take away your battery, then stupid problems arise, and we have to read stupid articles about something with a very simple solution to battery problems, which again, were a nonissue.
Second answer in addition to above is stop the stupid app craze that has access to everything and sends data at 5am when sleeping, etc because they can and dont give a shit, and abuse youur phone cause os makers don't care...
sales say yes. granted they may not have an equivalent choice that has a higher battery life with thicker phone (equivalent meaning an iPhone XS or Galaxy S9). But people buying millions and millions of a product will generally trump any theoretical market...at least until someone is brave enough to break out of the mold.
Are there a lot of chunky Android smart phones out there with increased battery capacity?
Yeah, but they are loaded down with so much unremovable bloatware - often you can't even disable it - that usage goes up and down. I don't know what happened last month, but something that had been running all the time was nixed, and my phone battery life improved.
I mean, "GlanceViewMk" is supposedly something about "Notification listener in use. Tap Settings to manage it."... tapping settings does nothing. My fingers itch at the idea that some swivel-eyed middle manager has more of a say in what runs on my phone than I do.
Dude why don't you just root your phone lolol
Because I shouldn't bloody have to.
>Those incovinences are why user replacable batties went out of favor
A blatant lie. They went out of favour because they prolonged useful life of the most common entropic failure point in the phone. Inability to easily change batteries translates directly to more phones sold.
Considering that spare battery literally fits into your wallet in most cases, and popping a battery into a dock next to your phone to charge has been the simplest thing for decades, your bullshit is particularly egregious.
Not going to even bother with your whining about the rest. You're literally regurgitating a common marketing BS item that has been used to sell people more less capable and more expensive things for longer than I have been alive.