3G Apple iPhone has the best Battery Life?
Posted by Chris Leckness on 07/14/08 in At&t, iPhone
PC World has done some battery testing and it looks like the 3g iPhone edged out the Samsung Instinct by a narrow margin. The test looks fairly complete, but Gizmodo points out that they forget to include Nokia devices, maybe it was intentional? We all know that Nokia has some magic dust in their batteries.
PC World says that the result is remarkable knowing that AT&T’s HSDPA/UMTS network is very power-hungry because voice calls use the more battery-demanding 3G band. By contrast, the Samsung Instinct—which runs on EVDO—switches to CDMA for voice, which they say it uses less power. In theory—as the results show.
My 1st Gen iPhone had a less than stellar 1st day in the battery life department. I used the leaked Rom on Thursday and it could have contributed to this. James Fee, former moderator/admin here, pointed me to a MacRumors post stating that this leaked ROM could have been designed for the 3G iPhone Hardware. I went ahead and reflashed to the Official ROM. We’ll see how it goes.
You can also participate in other conversation in our active forums with 200,000 other Members. It only takes 2 minutes to 
I just got a chuckle out of how the chart is cropped in such a misleading fashion. You’d expect the iPhone to get 3X the battery life of the lowest-rated phone judging by the visual representation on that chart (as most people probably will take it) until you realize the chart was cropped so the first 3 hours don’t show. I’ve seen that done on tests for things like video cards, but some geeks actually know to look for that. A person reading a more general publication like PC World likely would never even notice and would conclude there’s a massive gap.
Not only did they gloss over (typically) battery-friendly Nokias, they also didn’t include EVDO Blackberries in their test as well. Given how many people use Blackberries on Sprint and Verizon (and that they did include some other EVDO-flavored devices in this test) that’s not exactly an accurate representation of the iPhone’s competition. There were definitely some convenient omissions. But at least they’re getting a load of traffic from the article.
Moral of the story is the iPhone’s battery life is pretty much in-line with everyone elses 3G offerings. Maybe slightly better in some cases, maybe slightly worse in others. It all depends on your network strength, your apps usage, etc.
The iPnone 3G battery does not even last through the day with less than heavy usage. This is a big deal for most people and as this comes to light over the next week, I think you will see many returns.
GK have a look at apple’s battery guide Apple’s Battery Guide or this site for a whole bunch of extra tips Great tips for using your new 3G iPhone.
What I found was turning of 3G for me made all the difference I can still make calls and it lasts me the whole day!