Possibly thinking of going back to iPhone over Android ?

Z

Zorachus

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Dec 17, 2006
Messages
11,304
#1 reason to switch back to iPhone is battery life for me.

To me, Android battery life blows, compared to iOS. I rather support the open OS of Android, I currently have the EVO 4G as well, and it is a fucking joke how short this battery lasts, by lunch time it is dead for me. I actually use it as a phone too, ( I know, what a concept, using a smart phone to make calls :rolleyes: ) I also e-mail my vendors, and text clients, during my business day, and on a super busy day, it is dead almost mid morning, on a slow day, it might possibly last until 4:30 if I am lucky.

You should not have to install a cancer inducing huge battery that bumps out the back, making it a giant brick, that is just ridiculous to have to do that on a brand new phone, something it not right with the OS then ?

I am sort of an anti-Apple guy, but I did have the iPhone3G, I liked it, did not love it, it was ok, but after getting the Nexus-One last year, I thought the iPhone sucked after that. But after having 2 Android phones, and both sucking balls as far as battery life goes, and the OS just feeling a little sluggish and unpolished at times, I might just actually go back to the iPhone, and get the 4, well it would have to be jailbreaked, and use it on T-Mobile, because ATT sucks, and is way too expensive.

Opinions ?
 
Zorachus said:
#1 reason to switch back to iPhone is battery life for me.

To me, Android battery life blows, compared to iOS. I rather support the open OS of Android, I currently have the EVO 4G as well, and it is a fucking joke how short this battery lasts, by lunch time it is dead for me. I actually use it as a phone too, ( I know, what a concept, using a smart phone to make calls :rolleyes: ) I also e-mail my vendors, and text clients, during my business day, and on a super busy day, it is dead almost mid morning, on a slow day, it might possibly last until 4:30 if I am lucky.

You should not have to install a cancer inducing huge battery that bumps out the back, making it a giant brick, that is just ridiculous to have to do that on a brand new phone, something it not right with the OS then ?

I am sort of an anti-Apple guy, but I did have the iPhone3G, I liked it, did not love it, it was ok, but after getting the Nexus-One last year, I thought the iPhone sucked after that. But after having 2 Android phones, and both sucking balls as far as battery life goes, and the OS just feeling a little sluggish and unpolished at times, I might just actually go back to the iPhone, and get the 4, well it would have to be jailbreaked, and use it on T-Mobile, because ATT sucks, and is way too expensive.

Opinions ?
Click to expand...

What you are contemplating, I did.

Love Android, love the functionality, the battery life is terrible.. Enough to make me go to iOS. While I miss quite a bit about Android, the battery life more than makes up for it.

However, as it is right now, the iPhone 4s current baseband is locked. (So no Tmo) I'm sure @ some point it might be unlocked, but on the newest baseband you are locked in to AT&T.
 
Thanks for the reply. So is the iPhone4 really that much better on battery life ? Can it last a whole day, with tons of phone calls, e-mailing, texting, etc...

I thought I heard that a new jailbreak was coming soon, and it would work on T-Mobile ?
 
I use my iPhone as a phone as well, and while I do bring a dock to work, it is only because I want to be able to have my phone after work too. Any smartphone besides a blackberry is not going to last you a whole day of calling, email, texting. If you are that concerned about battery life, get a Bold 9700.
 
Sad thing is Android phones don't have to have such poor battery life. It is the manufacturer, not Android itself that is causing the issue.

Manufacturer's like Motorola and HTC do not do everything they can to make battery life the best it possibly can. Sadly it takes the modding community to do that.

If you want to keep using Android the solution is simple. Root the phone and customize it to fit your needs. Simply installing SetCPU (free download from XDA or $.99 donation from the Market) and allowing the CPU to downclock itself when not needed saves a ton of battery life. I haven't done anything to my wife's Droid Incredible other then root it and load SetCPU to downclock when not needed to be at 1GHz. She can get nearly a day of heavy use out of her phone now instead of ~8-10 hours. Texting, phone calls, Facebook (*shudder*), playing Sudoku, and the Internet is what she does.

You can go even a step further and install custom kernels which use lower voltage for the CPU which further increases battery life. My Droid with an Ultra Low Voltage kernel (if I run at stock speed) gets ove 24 hours of battery life with heavy usage. With the current configuration in my sig I get about ~16-18 hours of charge with moderate to heavy usage.

NOTE: Heavy usage does not include tons of Flash video as that eats any battery for breakfast.
 
I have yet to have my Captivate die, just a few close calls really really late at night. Always good to drain the battery and charge it back to full sometimes, then again I never hear anything good about Evo battery life.

Blackberry battery life is fucking magical, my Curve 8900 would go for a days with no charge.
 
I too have the EVO and I love it. Yeah, battery life should be better. I use it as a phone, for email (corporate and personal), and as a mobile hotspot for my laptop and iPod. If I need to, I plug it into the laptop for charging. I do know that 4G is a battery killer but I still don't have 4G by me. I just turn off whatever I'm not using, be it GPS, WiFi, hotspot and even 4G when I'm not in a 4G area. Yes, I know I pay $10 more for having a 4G phone. I can't control when it will be available. But whenever I'm in a 4G area, it rocks.

BTW, I also have an iPhone 3GS. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. Mind you, I left Verizon for the EVO. I liked the EVO that much. And I charge it once a day.

I'm just saying.
 
I have a captivate and it lasts all day with mid-heavy usage, maybe get a new android phone?
 
Hook your Evo up to wifi, it really makes a world of difference (it did for me)

Also, if you are in an area with low coverage, the battery dies much faster since the phone is normally searching for signal
 
Anandtech recently did a battery life comparison of a decent amount of phones. Rather than listen to comparisons of people saying 'my phone barely lasts a few hours' here's a proper objective test.

The iPhone definitely ranks up there, but some androids do very well when it comes to 3G talk time.
 
Vermillion said:
Sad thing is Android phones don't have to have such poor battery life. It is the manufacturer, not Android itself that is causing the issue.

Manufacturer's like Motorola and HTC do not do everything they can to make battery life the best it possibly can. Sadly it takes the modding community to do that.

If you want to keep using Android the solution is simple. Root the phone and customize it to fit your needs. Simply installing SetCPU (free download from XDA or $.99 donation from the Market) and allowing the CPU to downclock itself when not needed saves a ton of battery life. I haven't done anything to my wife's Droid Incredible other then root it and load SetCPU to downclock when not needed to be at 1GHz. She can get nearly a day of heavy use out of her phone now instead of ~8-10 hours. Texting, phone calls, Facebook (*shudder*), playing Sudoku, and the Internet is what she does.

You can go even a step further and install custom kernels which use lower voltage for the CPU which further increases battery life. My Droid with an Ultra Low Voltage kernel (if I run at stock speed) gets ove 24 hours of battery life with heavy usage. With the current configuration in my sig I get about ~16-18 hours of charge with moderate to heavy usage.

NOTE: Heavy usage does not include tons of Flash video as that eats any battery for breakfast.
Click to expand...

I've been down the route of UV Kernels, Underclocks and alike, and it still doesn't come close to the iPhone 4. Apple has that nailed.

To the OP, I can go all day with heavy heavy usage. The only thing that REALLY bombs the battery is gaming. If you game, expect the battery to take a hit.

I'm not the biggest fan of iOS, but as I mentioned the battery life more than makes up for it. It's definitely best in class.
 
crackbone said:
I've been down the route of UV Kernels, Underclocks and alike, and it still doesn't come close to the iPhone 4. Apple has that nailed.

To the OP, I can go all day with heavy heavy usage. The only thing that REALLY bombs the battery is gaming. If you game, expect the battery to take a hit.

I'm not the biggest fan of iOS, but as I mentioned the battery life more than makes up for it. It's definitely best in class.
Click to expand...


Thanks, and no, I do NOT game on my cell phone, that's what my Eyefinity PC setup is for.

I talk, like in actually use a smartphone, as a phone, go figure, and text, and e-mail the most.
 
Zorachus said:
Thanks, and no, I do NOT game on my cell phone, that's what my Eyefinity PC setup is for.

I talk, like in actually use a smartphone, as a phone, go figure, and text, and e-mail the most.
Click to expand...

Then it looks like you want a Droid 2 or Droid X according to the anandtech test PlatinuM195 posted, the Droid 2 actually lasted 2 hours longer than the iPhone 4 (9.5 hours of talk time vs. 7.5 hours).

Sadly your Evo 4G is like the worst, at 4 hours. See, it isn't Android that is the problem, but they hardware you're running. You picked a phone with terrible battery life. Either that or HTC really fucked up with the Sense UI stuff.

Also, to everyone saying iOS wins battery life, just want to point out that Android took 1st, 2nd, *AND* 3rd longest talk times. iPhone 4 came in 4th. Apple doesn't have battery life locked down at all. Couldn't even beat the year old Moto Droid :p
 
If you don't get 4G coverage then make sure it's turned off..mine lasts throughout the day when I turn 4G off..probably ends up around 20% at the end of the day with minimal 3G coverage an moderate use of some web, games, calls, text, etc.
 
Android battery life relies way too much on how you have your phone configured. On my old Droid I could change a couple settings and the way a few apps behave and the battery would last 2-3 days. Or I could do just the opposite and get about a half day out of the battery.

The problem with Android apps is that so many of them wake up the phone and ping a server to see if it should send a notification or download something instead of having some sort of native push notification system. That's why the task killer apps are so popular. Instead of figuring out which apps are doing what and changing the settings it's easier just to kill them all and get some extreme battery life.

Yesterday I had my iPhone 4's screen (Auto-Brightness) on for roughly 7 hours doing random stuff, sent and received about 10 texts, made a couple short phone calls, and played music from the external speaker with the screen off for about 2 hours. I got the 20% warning after about 14 hours off the charger.
 
AudioCow said:
Android battery life relies way too much on how you have your phone configured. On my old Droid I could change a couple settings and the way a few apps behave and the battery would last 2-3 days. Or I could do just the opposite and get about a half day out of the battery.

The problem with Android apps is that so many of them wake up the phone and ping a server to see if it should send a notification or download something instead of having some sort of native push notification system. That's why the task killer apps are so popular. Instead of figuring out which apps are doing what and changing the settings it's easier just to kill them all and get some extreme battery life.

Yesterday I had my iPhone 4's screen (Auto-Brightness) on for roughly 7 hours doing random stuff, sent and received about 10 texts, made a couple short phone calls, and played music from the external speaker with the screen off for about 2 hours. I got the 20% warning after about 14 hours off the charger.
Click to expand...

It has been proven that Task Killers are a BAD thing for Android. They destroy battery life because apps keep restarting forcing the phone to continuously start - kill - start - kill. Android handles task management quite well and is even better in 2.2. Those who use task killers are fools.

I'd love to know what apps you're talking about as well that don't have native push notification and cause battery life to suffer. If my phone just sits and does nothing I lose roughly 10% over an 8-10 hour period.
 
Vermillion said:
It has been proven that Task Killers are a BAD thing for Android. They destroy battery life because apps keep restarting forcing the phone to continuously start - kill - start - kill. Android handles task management quite well and is even better in 2.2. Those who use task killers are fools.

I'd love to know what apps you're talking about as well that don't have native push notification and cause battery life to suffer. If my phone just sits and does nothing I lose roughly 10% over an 8-10 hour period.
Click to expand...

The task killers only hurt when used improperly. But that doesn't even matter anymore because 2.2 changed all that and now task killers (to my understanding) don't work the same way anymore. But that's not important.

I have an original Moto Droid. It's rooted running a bugless beast 2.2 v0.4 with a chevy ultra-low voltage 1ghz OC kernel.

If I don't really use my phone all day, check time, few text messages, I'll be at 90% after 16 hours. If I use the phone more heavily the battery will go down faster, but that's because it's OC'd. Depends on what I'm doing though. Gaming and trying to surf the web in an area with a poor signal will kill the battery much faster. But still. If I game or surf a bit and go down to say 60%. If I have less usage for the rest of the day, I might, might lose another 10%.
 
I have a G2, and I had a Vibrant. My wife still has a Vibrant. The battery life of the G2 destroys that of the Vibrant. I charge it on the same schedule I did with my Blackberry 9700. I usually have at least half of my battery life after a normal day of usage.
 
kllrnohj said:
Then it looks like you want a Droid 2 or Droid X according to the anandtech test PlatinuM195 posted, the Droid 2 actually lasted 2 hours longer than the iPhone 4 (9.5 hours of talk time vs. 7.5 hours).

Sadly your Evo 4G is like the worst, at 4 hours. See, it isn't Android that is the problem, but they hardware you're running. You picked a phone with terrible battery life. Either that or HTC really fucked up with the Sense UI stuff.

Also, to everyone saying iOS wins battery life, just want to point out that Android took 1st, 2nd, *AND* 3rd longest talk times. iPhone 4 came in 4th. Apple doesn't have battery life locked down at all. Couldn't even beat the year old Moto Droid :p
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, I don't know anyone that talks on their phone for 7 hours a day much less 9. I'm much more interested in Browsing/General use battery life, where the the iPhone 4 mops up the floor with Android.
 
S3th13 said:
Unfortunately, I don't know anyone that talks on their phone for 7 hours a day much less 9. I'm much more interested in Browsing/General use battery life, where the the iPhone 4 mops up the floor with Android.
Click to expand...

I know this can sound silly but you can always carry a spare battery on your droid while the iphone is stucked with its internal battery.
 
Vermillion said:
It has been proven that Task Killers are a BAD thing for Android. They destroy battery life because apps keep restarting forcing the phone to continuously start - kill - start - kill. Android handles task management quite well and is even better in 2.2. Those who use task killers are fools.

I'd love to know what apps you're talking about as well that don't have native push notification and cause battery life to suffer. If my phone just sits and does nothing I lose roughly 10% over an 8-10 hour period.
Click to expand...

Of course task killers are bad. But if used correctly they can definately increase battery life, or if used poorly can kill your battery or even render parts of your phone functionless.

I haven't used an Android phone in about ~3 months but when I had my Droid the only apps that supported native push notifications were the standard phone and Google apps.

Every other app had to wake the phone from standby to ping a server to check for a notification (and possibly download data.) Classic examples would be the standard Facebook and Twitter apps.

Running a stock phone without tweaks and a handful of apps doing this at varying times can easily cause your phone to never enter standby and constantly be sending tiny packets of data.

Imagine NewsRob, one of my favorite RSS readers that supported notifications of unread articles in Android. You could tell it to ping your google reader account every 15 minutes, download all articles, headers, images, and even full articles from the website. Or I could set it up to ping my google reader account every hour and only download headers.

This is one reason you'll have people with the same phone as you but with a drastically different battery life.

iOS on the other hand doesn't allow the apps to open themselves back up and perform tasks, they merely send a native push notification that the app would like to perform a task.

Not trying to sound like a fanboy, I love all gadgets equally. Just pointing out some OS differences and how it relates to battery life.
 
Eh, Verizon iPhone rumors seem stronger than ever but then again, we go through this every year.

I've worked my rooted Droid 1 pretty heavily and still managed to have life at the end of the day. Pre-Root & SetCPU I could burn in out in 5-6 hours, Post-Root the same workload lasts about 10-12 hours.

iPhone 3Gs before that was pretty similar, battery drain on that was mostly due to the strain of constantly going into roaming in the backwoods down of Boston, MA... (not an AT&T fan...)
 
AudioCow said:
Of course task killers are bad. But if used correctly they can definately increase battery life, or if used poorly can kill your battery or even render parts of your phone functionless.

I haven't used an Android phone in about ~3 months but when I had my Droid the only apps that supported native push notifications were the standard phone and Google apps.

Every other app had to wake the phone from standby to ping a server to check for a notification (and possibly download data.) Classic examples would be the standard Facebook and Twitter apps.

Running a stock phone without tweaks and a handful of apps doing this at varying times can easily cause your phone to never enter standby and constantly be sending tiny packets of data.

Imagine NewsRob, one of my favorite RSS readers that supported notifications of unread articles in Android. You could tell it to ping your google reader account every 15 minutes, download all articles, headers, images, and even full articles from the website. Or I could set it up to ping my google reader account every hour and only download headers.

This is one reason you'll have people with the same phone as you but with a drastically different battery life.

iOS on the other hand doesn't allow the apps to open themselves back up and perform tasks, they merely send a native push notification that the app would like to perform a task.

Not trying to sound like a fanboy, I love all gadgets equally. Just pointing out some OS differences and how it relates to battery life.
Click to expand...

If the application requires user input to change the notification how is that an Android issue? If a person has News and Weather updating every 30 minutes then that's the users problem not an OS issue. If the Facebook app constantly checks for stupid "i'm taking a shit right now" messages that also is their problem. At some point we have to blame the stupidity of users and just say PEBKAC instead of trying to blame everything on Android.
 
Vermillion said:
If the application requires user input to change the notification how is that an Android issue? If a person has News and Weather updating every 30 minutes then that's the users problem not an OS issue. If the Facebook app constantly checks for stupid "i'm taking a shit right now" messages that also is their problem. At some point we have to blame the stupidity of users and just say PEBKAC instead of trying to blame everything on Android.
Click to expand...

You can blame the user to an extend. You guys keep forgetting the world outside this forum. The average owner of a smartphone doesn't know how to do shit I'd imagine. They install their apps and the widgets or whatever and it does what it does by default. They might not even think to look for settings to change it.
 
Dallows said:
You can blame the user to an extend. You guys keep forgetting the world outside this forum. The average owner of a smartphone doesn't know how to do shit I'd imagine. They install their apps and the widgets or whatever and it does what it does by default. They might not even think to look for settings to change it.
Click to expand...

And their solution to poor battery life is only a Google search away. I have ZERO sympathy for people who bitch and moan. This isn't rocket science. We're not asking them to write a driver or build a custom Android ROM. A simple "poor battery life on <phone of choice>" will yield plenty of results, ideas, and solutions.

The "doesn't know how to do shit" defense just doesn't fly anymore.
 
Vermillion said:
And their solution to poor battery life is only a Google search away. I have ZERO sympathy for people who bitch and moan. This isn't rocket science. We're not asking them to write a driver or build a custom Android ROM. A simple "poor battery life on <phone of choice>" will yield plenty of results, ideas, and solutions.

The "doesn't know how to do shit" defense just doesn't fly anymore.
Click to expand...

I'm not saying it's a real great defense, but that's the reality of it all.
 
Vermillion said:
If the application requires user input to change the notification how is that an Android issue? If a person has News and Weather updating every 30 minutes then that's the users problem not an OS issue. If the Facebook app constantly checks for stupid "i'm taking a shit right now" messages that also is their problem. At some point we have to blame the stupidity of users and just say PEBKAC instead of trying to blame everything on Android.
Click to expand...

I think you're missing the point. But depending on how you look at it applications not having access to a native push notification system is an Android problem. But on iOS I wish when I got a push notification the app would launch in the background and download the data.

Android is fine and handles things great on it's own. One of my favorite things about Android is the notification system, but if you want notifications, and if you want them in a timely fashion it's going to have a negetive affect on your battery life. That's Fact.

Me, being a power user, found the balance between the apps looking for notifications and battery life to meet my needs. Most people... the ones you hear the most, are the ones that install apps and let them run wild and then scratch their head when their Android is running like crap and the battery only lasts a few hours.
 
I have a captivate and used to get a full day out of eclair. Recently upgraded to voodoo cognition 2.3b3 and am at the end of day two of usage with lots of web/text and calls (mainly via wifi though). Still at 26 percent.
 
S3th13 said:
Unfortunately, I don't know anyone that talks on their phone for 7 hours a day much less 9. I'm much more interested in Browsing/General use battery life, where the the iPhone 4 mops up the floor with Android.
Click to expand...

Do you have a source for that? I'm quite positive the 3 phones that beat the iPhone 4 in talk time will *easily* win in browsing/general use. Why? Because the same shit is used to do both.

The only difference between talking and web browsing is that for the later the screen is on. How much battery drain that causes depends entirely on the brightness, and has nothing to do with the OS.
 
kllrnohj said:
Do you have a source for that? I'm quite positive the 3 phones that beat the iPhone 4 in talk time will *easily* win in browsing/general use. Why? Because the same shit is used to do both.

The only difference between talking and web browsing is that for the later the screen is on. How much battery drain that causes depends entirely on the brightness, and has nothing to do with the OS.
Click to expand...

You're kidding right? There are quite a bit more things to consider than just the backlight for browsing battery consumption. :rolleyes: Browsing uses CPU power, wifi/data radio usage etc.

The OS can be just as important for battery usage as the backlight. A more efficient system can make a massive difference in battery life especially when browsing.

Talking on the phone uses little cpu power on either platform, the backlight should be off and all you are using is the cell radio.

You most certainly do NOT use the same shit to talk as you do for browsing. Thats an incredibly ignorant statement to make.

Most importantly however when comparing the iphone to most android devices available is you are comparing a slow efficient processor to fast power hungry monsters. Its less of an issue with the platform and more of an issue with the hardware.
 
Disposed said:
The OS can be just as important for battery usage as the backlight. A more efficient system can make a massive difference in battery life especially when browsing.
Click to expand...

True, but they both use webkit. They are both spending the bulk of their CPU time browsing doing literally the exact same thing.

Talking on the phone uses little cpu power on either platform, the backlight should be off and all you are using is the cell radio.
Click to expand...

Browsing the web doesn't use a ton of CPU either (it is idle when you are reading the page that just loaded, for example), and cell radio *IS* the primary source of power drain. CPU makes almost no impact on battery life compared to display and radio.

Most importantly however when comparing the iphone to most android devices available is you are comparing a slow efficient processor to fast power hungry monsters. Its less of an issue with the platform and more of an issue with the hardware.
Click to expand...

Huh? The iPhone 4 uses a Cortex A8 CPU just like the rest of 'em. Hell, it uses the *exact same* Samsung Hummingbird CPU core as Galaxy S phones.
 
I have a Droid Eris - when I first got it, the battery life SUCKED ROYAL ASS.
But... over the past few months, tweaking, trying different programs, loading up all the stuff I want on the phone and all that - I can pretty much (well, normally as of today) get a full day's charge.

I have Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, Sync'ing on. My Wi-Fi is set to automatically change over when it recognizes any network it remembers (and I just set it up so that it sticks to the wireless network it connects to).

Right now, my phone serves as the following for me : regular phone, texting, messaging over IM clients, Facebook, Twitter, 4Square, 5 music apps (Pandora, Slacker, Grooveshark, A Online Radio, RadioParadise), recipe database, bartending database, diet/calorie tracker, exercise tracker, checking account tracker, notepad... it is basically my everything.

However, I may be inclined to find a new Droid-based phone, as this one may be finally slowly being killed.
 
I get a day and a half to 2 days on my Droid 2. I have to wonder how people are running the battery dead in a few hours. Not that I doubt it can happen. I just don't have enough hours in the day that I can spend on the phone.
 
xxEIEIOxx said:
I get a day and a half to 2 days on my Droid 2. I have to wonder how people are running the battery dead in a few hours. Not that I doubt it can happen. I just don't have enough hours in the day that I can spend on the phone.
Click to expand...

I guess the EVO should not be used to make phone calls then :rolleyes: I never game on it, why would I every play games on a cell phone anyways. I text and e-mail clients. It is dead by middle of the day
 
Zorachus said:
I guess the EVO should not be used to make phone calls then :rolleyes: I never game on it, why would I every play games on a cell phone anyways. I text and e-mail clients. It is dead by middle of the day
Click to expand...

Are you in a bad signal area? Have your screen on the highest brightness? There are a ton of threads out there at like androidforums.com about battery life. Your phone shouldn't be dead by mid-day unless you're having constant heavy use.
 
Dallows said:
Are you in a bad signal area? Have your screen on the highest brightness? There are a ton of threads out there at like androidforums.com about battery life. Your phone shouldn't be dead by mid-day unless you're having constant heavy use.
Click to expand...

I live in Chicago, great signal. Both by Brothers bought the EVO as well, one returned it two weeks later for the iPhone 4, and the other is borderline on returning for a different phone. We all keep 4G off, low brightness level, WiFi on, all the normal options to keep battery life longer.

For me, I actually use the phone all day for business, I can get 25+ calls a day minimum during 9 - 5. Plus texting clients, and e-mailing vendors. If I have a very busy call day it is dead by lunch time, otherwise dead by end of the workday for sure.

My Brothers had the same issue, piss poor battery life. The one who got the iPhone 4, said it is night and day better, can be on phone all day, text a million times, surf the web, and it is still running strong to dinner time.
 
Zorachus said:
I guess the EVO should not be used to make phone calls then :rolleyes: I never game on it, why would I every play games on a cell phone anyways. I text and e-mail clients. It is dead by middle of the day
Click to expand...

Did you look at the battery manager and see what the top battery usage is?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top