Weekly poll: Battery life - how much do you need?
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- TheNoteMan
- v0q
- 11 Jul 2016
Let's get real here. I daily record my wife's S7 Edge (rated as one of the best optimized for battery stamina) battery performance with an Excel spreadsheet to average usage time, % battery left, SOT, data and wifi usage: http://flic.kr/p/HLcg5u
From 47 battery cycles, with just using average 72% daily, she does 3:45H SOT, uses 420mb of mostly wifi, and can calculate 22 hours of use of she maximizes the battery to 0%, with the way she uses it. It's mostly just browsing, sorry calls, SMS and casual games. I guess this is typical way of smartphone usage.
Fact is, 98H endurance (by GSM Arena) of the S7 Edge is unrealistic. Sure, it's the uniform method of metric to compare phone to phone. But we don't just "use it for an hour each of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily". They don't even test it with LTE usage.
- Dual heatpipes
- vV5
- 11 Jul 2016
2days is ideal to me. I don't play much game, I want the wifi n data web browsing excellence n with the feature auto disable the internet connection while the screen off.
- S
- Screen brightness
- Sf{
- 11 Jul 2016
During my holiday on the sea side, I have seen that my new battery on Note2 dropped to 30% after 5 hours of continuous viewing at 100% brightness (normally I use very low brightness but under the sun even 100% of AMOLED is NOT enough), twitter and WEB cruising. I was quite far away from power plug, so went back to room for charge.
IMHO, test methods have to be changed and power requirements have to be changed as well.
Continuous WEB browsing and screen viewing (video, book reading, etc.) at 100% brightness has to provide at least 12 hours of juice from the battery. Of course intense gaming is out of this time. It is another category.
I have seen that 100% screen brightness sucks the life of battery like an insane hungry b..tard
- S
- Simon
- NU0
- 11 Jul 2016
Linas, 11 Jul 2016My S6 edge make for very least a day and that is when I hav... moreThat is your usage. I have the S6, and it can also last me like this when I don't actively use it. On stay-at-home weekends I swear I could not touch the charger friday to monday.
But, as soon as I travel or go out of town I don't feel comfortable without a large power bank. Pokemon GO? I'd have to come back home after a few hours. Same when I go out to record or navigate in a foreign city. Which.. makes it a bummer, even though the S6 lasts longer than any other smartphone I used before.
The problem is that manufacturers focus on short-sighted performance and rush to idle for CPUs (which is a strategy in itself).
Others suggested that fast chipsets are a problem, but they're not. The problem is that there is not enough progress in battery saving solutions. Case in point, a slower CPU won't save you battery - you can go with a Snapdragon 6xx series instead of 8xx series and you end up with a slower processor that will be in high performance mode for longer per task thus draining more battery, AND it's made on the much more battery draining 28nm process. Which SUCKS, since the high performance models are optimized for performance and less so for SUSTAINED performance and power efficiency (in case of the Exynos 74xx series, if it was clocked 0,2ghz less, you'd save ~30% battery per clock cycle, but they decided otherwise since everyone is interested in how a phone benchmarks).
If you want a FHD screen, they're much less efficient per-pixel than the top of the line QHD ones, since they are top of the line and have the most modern power optimizations, which will result in them eating up just a little bit more of your battery, even though they'd be more energy efficient then. But you can't have that, it's one or the other.
Case in point, the Galaxy S6/S7 QHD OLED uses just a tiny amount of power less than the FHD one of the Galaxy S4. The newer one would use MUCH less power if it was FHD and took advantage of all the improvements that the newest QHD ones went though, but you can't have that - it's either the old FHD or the new QHD, and if someone really wants to use a FHD panel it's either an old model or an inferior solution that doesn't come with all of the cutting-edge improvements.
Batteries? Don't even get me started. You either have a great 2600mAh one that's relatively too weak for the device, or a no-name bulky 6000mAh one that holds charge like a 4000mAh one tops. The latter ones come in low end phones as well, and their software optimization might surprisingly have you with a drained phone that didn't idle properly, because "who needs perfect optimization with THAT battery".
The problem is, that there is not enough push for battery life, and everyone is aiming at mediocre. Even Samsung. With the S6 they thought "We're going to make a slimmer phone with a small battery, so we have to optimize its software and hardware perfectly so it doesn't die too soon". Then someone was like "oh no, it looks bad, let's add wireless charging to divert attention, just in case". But they managed to optimize it REALLY well considering what task they were given - the battery life wasn't great but compared to competition it was a miracle what they did.
A year later, the S7 came out, they knew that they want bigger battery and a bulkier device. Result? Barely any better than the S6, as they thought "well, we have a bigger battery, we have big power margins now, we can safely go more crazy".
There is nobody aiming above mediocre. And it starts with component suppliers, which follow the need of breaking rush speed records that devices stopped being able to sustain years ago. Then there are design choices which rarely even take advantage of the best that those suppliers have to offer, and poor software optimization, especially after updates which never get as optimized as the OS version that the device comes with, if at least that one is good enough, which is also rare. And all of that is sad, and results in mediocre battery life. Of course besides battery tech not evolving much for the last.. DECADE..!
- T
- TheNoteMan
- v0q
- 11 Jul 2016
AnonD-510098, 11 Jul 2016Samsung have rubbish batteries.
SAMSUNG Note 5 = 85 hour... moreYou do know that the Note.5 only has 3000mAh, while the Mate 8 had 4000mAh, right? If the Note.5 had 4000mAh, it would have had 113H endurance.
This is the problem with sealed batteries - you can't change them to extended ones like with a 10,0000mAh one. This is why i still love my Note 3.
- D
- AnonD-510098
- m5I
- 11 Jul 2016
AnonD-442781, 11 Jul 2016No they aren't. Look at the huawei p9. 5.2", 3000mah, only ... moreSamsung have rubbish batteries.
SAMSUNG Note 5 = 85 hours endurance rating
HUAWEI Mate 8 = 103 hours endurance rating
So yeah....
- L
- Linas
- QPU
- 11 Jul 2016
My S6 edge make for very least a day and that is when I have GPS on, which is the biggest battery draw (GPS+screen on full brightness), Normally, I have 65% of the battery left after the day, which drops to ~62% over night. Theoretically can do second day, but most of the time charge over night. As 45% voted for 2 days battery life (and myself) I feel that S6 edge meets this criteria.
- h
- hansip87
- Mfx
- 11 Jul 2016
8 hour on screen time, with standby around 2 days. I'd expect 50% of battery at night, after minimum of 3 hour of browsing + Music Player running + about 1 hour of simple gaming. That's it.
- D
- AnonD-476243
- tDC
- 11 Jul 2016
25 hours video playback maximum brightness 25 hours browsing web maximum brightness and hsdpa signal 25 hours gamez play, 1 hours 10 minutes charging 0 to 100 percent can it be :D
- D
- AnonD-556519
- BQr
- 11 Jul 2016
I would buy a phone with 5.5 screen and 7000 mAh, or how much battery can they fit in until 200g
- ?
- Anonymous
- wry
- 11 Jul 2016
AnonD-481725, 10 Jul 2016Two days for what people?? You don't want to charge it at n... moreThe exact response i was expecting from a Sony fanboy.
- ?
- Anonymous
- wry
- 11 Jul 2016
Sony fanboys can expect to charge X Series 3 times a day.
- D
- AnonD-460767
- Hkt
- 11 Jul 2016
Phone manufacturers need to optimize the software use chips which are power efficient and does not heat up and also the. A thin and good looking phone is not necessarily the best phone if you can't use it and the battery dies out. I have used iphones and Android flagships, the iphones have terrible battery life (excluding the plus models) and it doesn't mean android phones have great battery life but they are still decent enough to give a whole day usage. Extending battery life through charging cases and using power bank is not the way out after we pay premium prices for the smartphones.
- D
- AnonD-544433
- MKm
- 11 Jul 2016
I need it to last a day (07:00 to 24:00) of heavy gaming.
- ?
- Anonymous
- FMY
- 11 Jul 2016
I dont mind a sealed battery as long as i get maybe 4 to 6 hours screen time gaming with lte on. because to be honest even when i use a removeable battery phone i would go to the manufacturer to get an identical battery even though it cost more. so i figure would probably do the same once the battery dies on the sealed battery. that way i know no one is screwing me over with fakes or used ones.
- ?
- Anonymous
- tZ0
- 11 Jul 2016
Redmi 3 lasts 3 days of light use :)
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- Anonymous
- J5P
- 11 Jul 2016
Anonymous, 11 Jul 2016Another thing is battery life degradation. I have a built i... moreThat is why replaceable battery is a must have, just replace the battery every second year and not be forced to buy a new expensive phone every second year!
- ?
- Anonymous
- sUU
- 11 Jul 2016
j7 2016 gives you 2 to 3 days battery endurance....go for it
- ?
- Anonymous
- J5P
- 11 Jul 2016
xavi3r, 11 Jul 2016its a shame that our beloved shiny phones cant make it trou... morePhones do not need to be ultra thin! Same specs but 9 mm, not 7 mm, thin is the solution for both performance and batterylife!
- ?
- Anonymous
- J5P
- 11 Jul 2016
Anonymous, 11 Jul 2016Ultra power saving mode give a month usage.So you can stream movies and play games... for a month? Ultra power saving mode is no longer a smartphone, it is a pointless unusable brick!