Best Android phone for high system usage

[jseldon]

I currently am a customer with Telus who bought a LG Shine Plus a while back and have been fairly unhappy with both preformance and battery life. Preformance is not a HUGE issue, as my phone generally will run everything I need, even though it's a bit sluggish at times. I do not need extraordianary battery life, but would like a phone that will work for a full day (15 hours+) with GPS and 3G enabled. The Shine Plus has never been a great phone for battery life, and I'm lucky to get a day of usage out of it under normal conditions with moderate 3G browsing.

I quite regularly use my gps when skiing to track my vertical/distance totals and find my LG Shine (with a full charge) lasts 2-3 hours and then starts to run low on power. Obviously the cold weather is also a factor, so a device that works a little bit nicer out in the cold would also be good, but I suspect this is a direct factor of the battery sucking. I've replaced the battery and found it worked a little better for a while, but not much, and soon the new battery life was just like the original.

Any suggestions on what phone I might consider purchasing that will work with Telus and provide the battery life I need with a preformance jump? I knew the Shine Plus was one of the lower-end phones when I bought it, but I was hoping for a little more out of it.

Thanks for your opinions/help.

James

 

[AndroidSPCS]

One of the major factors on how long battery life will last is cellular signal. If you're skiing then it sounds like you may be on the outlying areas, farther from cellphone towers.

You should consider buying an extra battery or two on eBay for your phone, charging them and keeping them with you daily as spares. That's the beauty of Android, swappable batteries.

 

[jseldon]

The ski hill here actually has really good cell coverage, and to be honest I get fairly poor battery preformance everywhere. That said the battery drain with the GPS enabled is quite extreme on this phone - a few hours is all it takes to drain to empty regardless of cell coverage - I'd prefer not to have to carry a spare battery for 1 day of skiing as this seems a bit silly and surely some phones out there can run the GPS for 8 hours on one charge!

 

[AndroidSPCS]

The only way to know for sure is to ask your local Telus representative for their recommendations. Every Android phone will give different battery usage to each one of us as we all live and work in different locations with different cellular coverage.

That said, the Galaxy S2 and HTC Sensation seem to have pretty decent battery life as their batteries are bigger than previous Android phones. However, you will need to really do research with Telus on your own to confirm.

And if I was skiing / snowboarding, I would definitely carry a spare battery or two, whether I use GPS or not, in case of emergencies.

Even with my Galaxy S2 device, Evo 3D, iPhone 4S, whatever, if I use GPS, battery drains rapidly, to the tune of 1-2% every few minutes that GPS is on. So having a phone battery drain with GPS being actively used within a few hours is not unreasonable. I think it would be tough to find a phone that you can actively use GPS for 8 hours and still have plenty of battery life left. My iPhone 4S, vaunted for its battery life, probably can't even last that long, even in great cellular coverage areas.