iPhone 4 Battery life test - Undisputed video playback champ

[Lord Nemesis]

iPhone 4 battery life test is over

Here’s a little spoiler for you. The Apple iPhone 4 excelled in the dedicated video playback test. It scored the whopping 9 hours and 40 minutes of looped playback of our usual test video (converted to the proper format, of course).

So here come the real-life iPhone 4 battery test results – 68 hours operation time, including the following:

• 30 min of general usage
  
• 90 minutes of video playback
  
• 40 minutes of voice calls
  
• 40 minutes of web browsing
  
• 40 minutes of gaming
  
• 40 minutes of photo browsing
  
• 2 hours of music playback
  

The final verdict is that the iPhone 4 is a pretty good performer. Its score is day shorter than what Galaxy S and Samsung Wave achieved but my guess is you’d have a hard time depleting the iPhone 4 battery on a single day of regular use. And compared to the iPhone 3GS, the iPhone 4 is hands-down a superior performer, although at the announcement Apple promised only a marginal improvement. Well, that’s one lie we can take.

Looks like its a tonne better than previous iPhone's, but Wave and Galaxy S still seem to have an advantage in terms of avg battery life.

 

[jaganm]

I can corroborate on the Samsing Wave, my wife's phone has lasted for 4 days on a charge, with light usage. Try getting that on any smartphone, even with simple standby.

 

[Lord Nemesis]

There are other smart phones that last much longer. I charge my Nokia 5800 only once a week or at worst 5 days (with 30m~1 hr phone calls every day) i.e unless I it used for browsing or watching video for considerable lengths, but the point is that these new phones (Wave and Galaxy S) last that long with their heavy hardware.

 

[nitant]

[SARCASM] OMFG We are finally free of the horrible practice of charging [/SARCASM]

As long as the phone lasts ~18 hrs m happy.

 

[Lord Nemesis]

^^ Well you may be so fond of charging that you want to charge your phone every day... but according to a poll I posted,

http://www.techenclave.com/mobile-phones/how-long-should-smartphone-battery-last-169142.html

most people are not going to be happy with phones that last less than 24 hrs. 2 days is the battery life most of the voters preferred.

 

[nitant]

Maybe but I like to keep my phones charged. AFAIK you should not take lion batteries below 20-30%.

 

[dhruvrock2000]

My E72 lasts over a week easily without charging and this with light music and light messaging + phone calls... Its a true smartphone with a 600Mhz proc and lasts crazy long

 

[smoky004]

this test is obviously done by an android fanboi. Honestly never knew the Galaxy S has such an amazing battery life.looks like a pretty decent phone.Great hardware(can run 1080p vidz without any issues) and pretty amazing battery life.if i were to get an android phone , this will be it.the only downside --don't like that TouchWiz interface.

 

[Lord Nemesis]

^^ Hmm, don't know how you came to that conclusion that the test was conducted by an android fanboi (but knowing you, there's no rhyme or reason for that) when there seems to be slight indication that the test was conducted with the iPhone in flight mode while the ones with Wave and Galaxy S were conducted in regular mode.

 

[smoky004]

^^ Hmm, don't know how you came to that conclusion that the test was conducted by an android fanboi

That was a joke.That's what iphone or for that matter android fanbois say when they hear something good about the other OS.Like i said in the earlier post, am impressed by the battery performance of Galaxy S.

when there seems to be slight indication that the test was conducted with the iPhone in flight mode while the ones with Wave and Galaxy S were conducted in regular mode.

40 minutes of voice calls

You can't make or receive calls in flight mode.So i don't know how they magically tested 40 minutes of voice calls in flight mode.

 

[kauzy]

loved this one..

Shiv, AFAIK, we are the only site taking time to present such detailed battery test and all we get is whining. You are right – no point of wasting our time for a bunch of whiners.

BTW, of course it was not in flight mode – otherwise, it could take months to discharge the battery.

 

[Lord Nemesis]

You can't make or receive calls in flight mode.So i don't know how they magically tested 40 minutes of voice calls in flight mode.

If you have actually read the article, you can see that there are two sets of tests performed on each of the phones. One was battery life for avg usage of different aspects of the phone and the second was a continuous vid playback test which the iPhone 4 won while for avg life, the Galaxy S and Wave fared better. I don't see any one there questioning the results of the avg life test. Since the image in the article showed an iPhone 4 in flight mode, and add to that, the disparity between avg life and vid playback tests between Wave, Galaxy S and iPhone 4, some people thought that some of the tests may have been performed in flight mode (maybe not deliberately, but accidentally) .

loved this one..

gsmarea is of the most neutral sites for mobile phones reviews/tests. They are usually better than carelessly posting a pic of a iPhone 4 in flight mode along with an article talking about battery life of flagship products. IMO, It a serious mistake on their side to include such a pic and cause confusion. The clarification didn't come quickly either after the question was raised. As for the comment you quoted, I hope you don't seriously think that any Phone (including iPhone 4) would last months for video playback or any other tests they are performing just because the phone is in flight mode. I don't think they would last a month in standby even.

 

[kauzy]

^^ haha.. come on LN.. even u know that was sarcasm.. unless it is powered by nuclear batteries ofcourse..

did they test the X10 by any chance?? i hope they did not.. coz it wud have died up on them even before the tests started.. Sony seriously needs something done wrt the battery issues..

 

[Lord Nemesis]

^^ LOL.. I did think that you are kidding about that comment. As for X10, I don't think they tested it.

Quite frankly I was surprised by the Galaxy S results myself. To think that it had all that hardware and a 4" display and still do well with battery life when most of the 4"+ devices have been know to have crappy battery life. iPhone 4 on the other hand has better resolution, but its still in the same 3.5" form factor which should to some extent offset the power consumption due to the higher resolution and the A4 CPU also seems be clocked around 750~800MHz according to some tests conducted by AnandTech and that should boost battery life a bit more for it to triumph in the video playback tests.