Is mAh everything?

[elchip]

This is kind of a silly question, but I had to ask it anyway.

When it comes to battery performance, is the charge capacity (measured in mAh) the only metric that matters?

I ask because I have owned a Droid Eris (1500 mAh battery) and a Droid (1400 mAh battery), and the battery life on the Droid was vastly superior.

This is despite the Droid having a larger, higher-resolution screen.

So, why the disparity? Are there some components of the Sense UI that drain the battery more heavily? Or could it have been because the Eris had Android 1.8 when I had it, while the Droid had Android 2.0?

I'm mainly concerned about the 1400 mAh battery on the HTC Thunderbolt. Will I be able to expect reasonable battery life out of it, or will it be poor -- much like the Eris was when I owned it? Will the 1930 mAh battery on the Droid Bionic sustain it significantly longer, or is the Tegra 2 much more power-hungry than the Snapdragon MSM8655?

Thanks.

 

[fade2green514]

there are many things that go into the battery usage on your phone.

for instance, processes running. performance settings in the android system. screen brightness, screen size, type of equipment (i.e. snapdragon 1ghz processor).

so yes, while the milli-amp-hours of the battery does generally matter somewhat, the amount of power that your phone is using will matter more.

what i mean to say is that if you have a 3500mah battery, and you use it heavily on full brightness you can still drain it throughout the day, whereas if you have a 1500mah battery (less than half) and you use it in moderation on lower brightness then you could still have a good chunk of battery life left at the end of the day.

another thing to keep in mind is that WIFI uses about half the battery of your 3G signal.. or less even. anyways, if you are in range of wifi you can save battery life by keeping wifi turned on and making sure you're connected to the signal

another great way of saving battery life is by going into airplane mode. a lot of the time when im at work i know i won't be able to answer the phone or reply to text messages, airplane mode puts my power consumption down to a small fraction of the power that my phone normally uses. its like basically shutting the phone off without having to wait for it to turn back on almost. of course, if im on break, just turn airplane mode off, check my messages / emails / voicemail, take care of my business, and then switch back to airplane mode and get back to work