No 3G on the iPhone, but why? A Battery Life Analysis
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 13, 2007 3:53 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
Still an Impact while Mostly Idle? The Email Test
Web browsing is an obvious stress test for battery life, but what about checking your email throughout the day? In our iPhone review we found that the Blackberry Curve can last over a full 24 hours, all while constantly checking email. Neither the Samsung Blackjack or the iPhone came anywhere close, but it's still a valid test for battery life using these various connections.
For this review we went with a much lighter email load test than what was used in our iPhone review. Both phones were setup to automatically check a gmail account every 15 minutes, downloading 10 - 15 emails each time. The phones were completely idle during the 15 minutes in between checks, although the screens remained turned on throughout the entire test.
On 3G the Blackjack lasted slightly longer than on EDGE, but we're only talking about a 3.5% difference which is within the margin of error for this test, meaning that battery life on 3G vs. EDGE is basically identical.
This test is particularly important as it shows that if your usage is dominated by extensive periods of idle time, then there's no negative impact to 3G vs. EDGE. Another way of looking at it is that if all you're doing is short bursts of data traffic, the negative impact of 3G is minimized.
The same can't be said about Wi-Fi vs. EDGE on the iPhone where there's about a 25% increase in battery life when we ran the test over Wi-Fi instead of EDGE; the difference is identical to what we saw in the web browsing test. It appears that maintaining the Wi-Fi connection and using it to periodically check for email is significantly more power efficient than doing so over EDGE, despite the reduction in data traffic compared to our web browsing test.
It seems to be that how much data you send isn't the only limiting factor, but rather just polling for new data is much more power efficient over Wi-Fi.
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James Fixen - Tuesday, July 15, 2008 - link
Had a good laugh: a smart Dutch dude became so angry that his battery of his iPhone 3G drained, that he asked some manufacturers in Linkedin to built him a rechargable, strong but small battery without funny cases or cables. The product will be out in two weeks and gives, almost 70% more energy (1770 mAh) than earlier devices, f.e. Kensington or iSound (1000 mAh).coco - Tuesday, July 15, 2008 - link
Sure the battery on iPhone 3G is not that great, but what can we do? We want small size phones, powerful features and lengthy battery life.Just get a backup battery. I got mine from iPhoneck brands. Their new 3G backup battery is probably one of the better looking products in the market. Their website is www.iphoneck.com
abpages - Wednesday, May 28, 2008 - link
Yep same here, i'm in Australia and would have bought an iPhone if it supported 3G. Such a shame. I ended up with a Samsung Blackjack and it's fantastic sofar.Ron Stark
http://www.BrisbaneWebDesign.net.au">http://www.BrisbaneWebDesign.net.au
edwinder - Sunday, July 22, 2007 - link
Hi Anand,Stop defending the iPhone's lack of 3G. (You seem to keep justifying their lack of the 3G feature saying how they made a 'wise' choice). In other parts of the world, and its a very well known fact that 3G drains the battery tremendously. Yet every single phone has 3G and we work within their operating limits.
From a technology/market demand/innovation perspective, adoption of new technologies will push the envelope that will benefit the end users (you and me). This pushes the manufacturer to keep innovating, unlike Apple, who decided to take one step back and provide less features and charge you a bomb for it, and you keep praising them.
I'm disappointed.
Edwinder
peternelson - Tuesday, July 17, 2007 - link
Despite the hype about the justification for using old wireless standards: ie physical space and power consumption aka battery life, I think there is another important factor they neglected to mention:Since 2G is less chips, less pcb assembly mounting and traces, and the chips themselves are simpler and more mature, THE OLD CHIPS MAKE IT CHEAPER TO MANUFACTURE THAN 3G.
Simple as that. Reduced costs of production and parts make for bigger profits.
That is the truthful reason, but they are not likely to admit that as a primary factor in the decision. It wouldn't be "cool" to tell people their equipment is outdated already.
Squuiid - Tuesday, July 17, 2007 - link
I have an AT&T 8525 and disable 3G on it.When using MS Push I get less than 10hrs on it with 3G, I'm in NYC with full signal all day.
On GSM it lasts all day till I get to charge it at night. So even thought I have the 3G capability, it is unusable due to ridiculous power consumption.
sprockkets - Saturday, July 14, 2007 - link
Are you saying you can use edge to make voice conversations instead of GSM? I have never heard of that. So what about GPRS.The whole point of why you get less talk time over UMTS is because it is WCDMA and is inherit in the technology. Wikipedia it and see for yourself.
While not real proof, if I use an edge connection for data, it sounds like a voice conversation over speakers. Sure you use edge for voice?
drwho9437 - Saturday, July 14, 2007 - link
It is not clear to me from your webpage results that the faster connection wasn't largely impacted by the fact that it simply rendered more pages. That is what is the cost of rendering the page, not just getting the data.The talk time stuff is interesting, looks like something you could fix up in firmware easily though.
nvmarino - Friday, July 13, 2007 - link
It would be helpful to know how long the battery lasted on both phones with the screen on but doing nothing.And what the hell did you guys talk about for 9 hours, anyway?
"Can you hear me now?"
"Good..."
:)
--Nino
kennyb - Saturday, July 14, 2007 - link
Excellent article. The first time i saw an iPhone i knew Apple wouldn't allow a user-replaceable battery. Why? It would ruin the iPhone's aesthetics. If you've ever bought a Mac before you'd understand. I expect Apple to incorporate a really slick mechanism to open the chassis without uglifying the iPhone sometime soon.Also, when i heard that 3G would not be supported, i immediately thought about [chip]space. Maybe EL Stevo mandated that the iPhone not exceed "X" mm thickness. Hey, it happened with the Powerbook G4.
Yeah, i want one. Yeah, i don't need one.