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Non-Stop Heavy Usage (battery usage report)

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dyezak

Well-Known Member
CLIFF NOTES: 6hr heavy usage to 15% warning (no streaming)

So I travel for my job quite a bit and am consiquently on an airplane a lot. So today after I bump charged my phone twice over the weekend, I started the day at 7am by unplugging my phone and starting to use it heavy. Here is my activities for the day:


  • 7am - Check email
  • 7:10am to 7:40am - Stream pandora while walking dog and showering
  • 8am - update facebook and foursquare for arrival to work
  • 8:15am to 9:15am - Random texts and emails as I had my morning meeting
  • 10am to 11am - Download robo defense and played it while on conference call
  • 11am to 1pm - Watched movie during lunch (Lord of War in MP4 720p format)
  • 1:07pm - 15% battery warning, point at which I plugged it back in.
To me this is fairly heavy usage (Robo Defense SUCKED the battery down). It seems to eat as much battery as watching movies. What this means to me is that on a normal flight I can make the entire flight with playing games, watching movies, listening to music just fine. Get into the rental car and plug in my car charger and I'll be golden.

Also, this was in a 4g area the whole time. 4g battery usage with very little actual data consumption via 4g. This should improve in airplane mode, and degrade if streaming data continuously; but it should be a good indicator of battery life.
 
This is pretty interesting since some users are "claiming" 2 hours of heavy use and the battery is dead.

Good info, Thanks!
 
This is inline with my experience. I'm a heavy user of data with emails going nonstop pretty much. I'm getting about 6 hrs as well.

I suppose if I watched youtube nonstop or playing games it would drain faster. but i charge when i can and been fine so far
 
UBRocked said:
This is pretty interesting since some users are "claiming" 2 hours of heavy use and the battery is dead.
Click to expand...
And those users would be 100% accurate. What isn't accurate are people claiming to get 20 hours of 4G "usage" when what they mean is the phone not going dead while sitting in a 4G coverage area - which means NOTHING since you're not using the Internet to upload or download much of anything at any speed.

1) All usage is not equal. It's about time people figured that out. Audio is not video is not 4G web usage. It's all different. This is why you see on sites, like Apple's for instance, average usage time.

- Would you be disappointed if you knew that the iPhone can do 10 hours of video and your phone appears to only do 5-6?

2) 4G usage is intense and, if you use the Internet for work, you'll find usage to decrease significantly.

- He streamed audio for only 30 minutes. Played a game for an hour. Video for 2 hours. No phone usage at all. Minimal Internet usage. Phone dead. Not impressed.

------

Bottom line - if this phone had a 1800mAh battery in it, you'd see some acceptable usage times that one might expect in a 4G phone's stock battery. You guys can talk about power savers all you want - it won't magically add to the battery life and convincing yourself that this "heavy" usage is impressive isn't going to make it better for many who use their phones during the business day with 4G data being utilized.

I got the extended battery. Works well even though it has heft. I've accepted that, the same way I had to that the Incredible's battery was rather small and weak and, like compared to the Droid X, HTC underpowered its 4G phone as compared to the Bionic. Like the Incredible, I still like the phone and, unlike the Bionic and with this battery, I highly doubt I'll have a juice problem on the road.
 
slinky said:
And those users would be 100% accurate. What isn't accurate are people claiming to get 20 hours of 4G "usage" when what they mean is the phone not going dead while sitting in a 4G coverage area - which means NOTHING since you're not using the Internet to upload or download much of anything at any speed.

1) All usage is not equal. It's about time people figured that out. Audio is not video is not 4G web usage. It's all different. This is why you see on sites, like Apple's for instance, average usage time.

- Would you be disappointed if you knew that the iPhone can do 10 hours of video and your phone appears to only do 5-6?

2) 4G usage is intense and, if you use the Internet for work, you'll find usage to decrease significantly.

- He streamed audio for only 30 minutes. Played a game for an hour. Video for 2 hours. No phone usage at all. Minimal Internet usage. Phone dead. Not impressed.

------

Bottom line - if this phone had a 1800mAh battery in it, you'd see some acceptable usage times that one might expect in a 4G phone's stock battery. You guys can talk about power savers all you want - it won't magically add to the battery life and convincing yourself that this "heavy" usage is impressive isn't going to make it better for many who use their phones during the business day with 4G data being utilized.

I got the extended battery. Works well even though it has heft. I've accepted that, the same way I had to that the Incredible's battery was rather small and weak and, like compared to the Droid X, HTC underpowered its 4G phone as compared to the Bionic. Like the Incredible, I still like the phone and, unlike the Bionic and with this battery, I highly doubt I'll have a juice problem on the road.
Click to expand...

Hmmm....

I don't know why you insist on arguing the point over and over and over and over again.

But as I see it, your argument is that the phone with a 1400mAh battery can only yield 2 hours of usage...yet a 1800mAh battery would yield "acceptable usage times"? Let's look at this...

1800mAh battery is approximately a 28.5% increase from the 1400mAh battery. That 28.5% increase would only yield an extra 34 minutes a to a user that only gets 2 hours of battery life.

The extended life battery which has a 90% increase will yield the same user an extra 108 minutes for a grand total of 3 hours and 48 minutes.

As far as the iPhone reference, why would I be upset that the Thunderbolt isn't as battery efficient as the iPhone? I'm not the one complaining ;) Maybe you are disappointed by that and all I can say is that I'm sorry you were misled that this phone would rival the iPhone in video playback time. If someone told you that, your complaint should really be with that person.

Bottom line: This argument has reached the point of insanity. You should really consider finding someone else to debate you on this issue because I am completely past it. Your logic is flawed, your numbers are flawed, and now you are trying to pass this information off on me as if it were fact. Sorry...I don't buy it.

I honestly mean no disrespect...but I'm done with it.
 
dyezak said:
CLIFF NOTES: 6hr heavy usage to 15% warning (no streaming)

So I travel for my job quite a bit and am consiquently on an airplane a lot. So today after I bump charged my phone twice over the weekend, I started the day at 7am by unplugging my phone and starting to use it heavy. Here is my activities for the day:


  • 7am - Check email
  • 7:10am to 7:40am - Stream pandora while walking dog and showering
  • 8am - update facebook and foursquare for arrival to work
  • 8:15am to 9:15am - Random texts and emails as I had my morning meeting
  • 10am to 11am - Download robo defense and played it while on conference call
  • 11am to 1pm - Watched movie during lunch (Lord of War in MP4 720p format)
  • 1:07pm - 15% battery warning, point at which I plugged it back in.
To me this is fairly heavy usage (Robo Defense SUCKED the battery down). It seems to eat as much battery as watching movies. What this means to me is that on a normal flight I can make the entire flight with playing games, watching movies, listening to music just fine. Get into the rental car and plug in my car charger and I'll be golden.

Also, this was in a 4g area the whole time. 4g battery usage with very little actual data consumption via 4g. This should improve in airplane mode, and degrade if streaming data continuously; but it should be a good indicator of battery life.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info!

You guys hiring? I want a job that lets me be on my phone nearly 5 hours. ;):D

Justin
 
dyezak said:
You can't multitask?
Click to expand...
I too chuckled at the 2-hour movie lunch. When I was younger, I used to think I could multi-task, now I suspect I never could, but just thought I could. Or maybe I'm just old and no longer capable of multi-tasking.
 
There's no such thing as multitasking. It's just a cover word for doing one thing while you're supposed to be paying attention to something else. Have you ever driven down a stretch of road while playing with the radio, then thinking you have no recollection of driving down that patch of road?

Anyhow, usage is never going to be nailed down completely unless you are using an activity monitoring app. Just using browsing for a few minutes doesn't mean that's all your phone was doing those couple of minutes. It may have been updating facebook, rss, syncing contact changes, etc. Those getting the worst battery life most likely have not turned off news/weather sync, fb sync, or turned to a sync time that is still acceptable while minimizing battery use.

Change your own settings on every app to what is good for you, then live with the battery life you get. If you can deal with not syncing mail but every hour, then do it and save juice. I don't even have FB syncing on at all - it only takes 10 seconds to refresh when I open, so why would I want it to sync every 15 minutes the whole day?
 
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