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Android 6 vs 8.1 Oreo (Go) Battery life

M

meridius

Member
Can someone please explain this.

I am using two phones for calls only (no mobile data). One is a Samsung Galaxy J5 SM-J500H from 2015 with Android 6. The other is a Nokia 1 from 2018 with Android 8.1 Oreo.

I have stripped down the Nokia 1 so that it is only really used for calls with minimum functionality. Yet the Samsung Galaxy J5 can be used for days without charging as opposed to the Nokia 1 which needs to be charged at least every two days and consumes more battery.

Is this something to do with Android 6 vs 8.1 Oreo (Go) as operating systems with different battery usage or the phones themselves or both reasons as potential explanations?...
 
This review of the Nokia 1 is hardly flattering even though we have one... Actually it has compatible frequencies to travel all over the world so it serves this purpose...

If I wanted to buy an energy efficient Android phone (2G/3G/4G) at $100 or less, with long battery life being the priority, what would you recommend?
 
Buy any phone you want, the battery issue can be fixed by using an external battery pack. No need to pull your hair with the phone's settings and power management.
 
meridius said:
Samsung Galaxy J5 can be used for days without charging as opposed to the Nokia 1 which needs to be charged at least every two days and consumes more battery
Click to expand...

Samsung J5 has a 2600 mAh battery and the Nokia 1 has a 2150 mAh battery for starters. If you've got different carriers, you could have signal quality issues where the power levels needed to maintain a connection are higher on the Nokia.

meridius said:
If I wanted to buy an energy efficient Android phone (2G/3G/4G) at $100 or less, with long battery life being the priority, what would you recommend?
Click to expand...

Too many variables to make an informed recommendation, but I like @lvt 's suggestion of an external battery pack.
 
lunatic59 said:
Samsung J5 has a 2600 mAh battery and the Nokia 1 has a 2150 mAh battery for starters. If you've got different carriers, you could have signal quality issues where the power levels needed to maintain a connection are higher on the Nokia.
Click to expand...

This is true. Both phones are with different carriers so this wasn't a valid test...

So I guess a higher mAh means more battery life and this is what I should look for when buying a new phone?

I asked Nokia support about battery consumption and they said setting the network to 3G consumes less power than 2G. I had thought it was the opposite... I don't need 4G as this is a phone for calls only and not mobile data but I don't know what that setting would do in terms of battery life and most importantly signal strength...

lunatic59 said:
Too many variables to make an informed recommendation, but I like @lvt 's suggestion of an external battery pack.
Click to expand...

OK let's work with what we've got... In the Nokia 1 is it a problem to charge the phone when it is on and charge the battery to 100%? I've read so many things to do with what you should or should not do to prolong battery life.

Many phone batteries now seem to be Li-lon (this is the case with Nokia 1) and I'm not sure what this exactly means, but what happens with older phones is you have trouble finding a genuine replacement battery after a few years and I don't know if I will end up like this with the Nokia 1.
 
Personally I don't worry about fully charging a phone. In any event the phone will stop charging before there is any risk of overcharging. There are people who will tell you to keep the charge between some range to maximise the longevity of the battery, but even if the benefits are not overstated that conflicts with your other desire to maximise the time between charges, so you need to decide on priorities there. Avoiding running it flat is a good idea.

I can't remember the last time I saw a phone battery that wasn't lithium ion (or lithium polymer, which is closely related). It's just the battery chemistry. What it means is that you don't have to worry about the memory effect older technologies suffered from. The chances of finding genuine OEM batteries after a few years are not good for any phone.

Charging when on, no problem. Heat is your enemy, so charging while using it heavily is best avoided, but when on is not a problem.

3G transceivers are more efficient than 2G, so if you have the same coverage for both then 3G will use less power. For many networks 2G may be stronger, especially indoors, which can reverse the benefits.

mAh is a measure of the current capacity. So yes, more mAh generally means longer life, all else being equal. Stored energy (mAh*voltage) would be better, but they prefer to quote mAh and most phone batteries operate at similar voltages anyway. It has been known for third party batteries to exaggerate their capacity.
 
Thanks for your feedback. What you say makes perfect sense. :)

I hope we will eventually be moving on to viable technologies that can combine solar hybrid phones etc. as this would also make sense for the environment and energy efficiency.
 
They do make solar battery packs that will charge your phone and recharge themselves with daylight. I can't say how effective they'd be for you without knowing how much daylight you have access to during the day, but it's certainly possible to keep a phone going indefinitely without line current.
 
A battery pack that you can leave in the sun makes more sense to me than a solar phone, since my phone spends most of its time in my pocket and is in a case to boot. And it can have a bigger area than a phone, which will make a big difference.

I got curious and decided to work out whether it would be feasible to power a smartphone using a photovoltaic cell on the phone, and my feeling is that it isn't. The intensity of sunlight at ground level is about 1 kW/m^2 when the sun is at zenith on a clear day, lower at other times. The biggest panel you could fit on a phone is about 7x12 cm^2 = 0.008 m^2, so would receive at most ~8W. If the photovoltaic cell has 20% efficiency for sunlight (a reasonable ballpark) that's about 1.7W. That's about 2/3 what slow charging from a laptop's USB-A port would deliver, so enough for a trickle topping-up but not enough to power it when in serious use. And that's a best case: middle of the day, clear sky, outdoors, not too far North, etc, so on average it will be less.
 
The fact that solar battery packs for phones already exist is something positive. I'm looking forward to more inventions in the future in this area.
 
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