Hacker News Reader

Comment by threeseed | Hacker News Reader

Pretty sure the hundreds of millions of people using untethered smartphones negates your argument that the battery life is "unusable".

I would guess most people are okay using their phone during the day and charging at night.

View on HN

People put up with all kinds of crap when it's the best option available. They're OK with it until something better comes along. In this case, a smartphone with a day of battery life trumps a flip phone with a week of battery life just because it can do so much more. You know what trumps a smartphone with X battery life? One with X+1 battery life, as long as it still fits comfortably in a trouser pocket. With the behemoth-screened phablets that are common these days, I think it's reasonable to make them a little thicker and a little more useful.

My phone's about 3 years old now. Even when it was new, I couldn't use it indiscriminately and expect a full day of charge. If I want to have it available for critical purposes like emergency calls, it's literally not usable in the way that I'd like to use it. I don't think that it's even remotely unreasonable to advocate for better battery life, and I think it's only a slight exaggeration to call current phone battery life "unusable".

Considering that only Apple phones run iOS, and there's only one Apple phone per physical device size bracket a generation, people don't really have a choice.

At least in the iPhone ecosystem it's not so much best option available, it's the only option available.

There's no immediate danger of people not buying iPhones because they want better battery life, so Apple doesn't even have to try harder than an average show of effort.

It doesn't negate the argument (even if it was hyperbole). I took an iPhone 5S out on a car trip yesterday across L.A., and forgot the car charger but hey it was fully charged. Used it for navigation for about 20 minutes total, and maybe 10 minutes total of phone calls. Checked email maybe 5 times. By about 8PM, the battery was at 2%, and I still needed to drive home. So the phone was unusable to me if I wanted to have ability to make an emergency call. And if the battery had gone down another 2%, the phone would have been entirely unusable.

My iPhone 2G had better battery life than this given similar usage patterns. Sure you can cite LTE vs. 2G and processor ability etc, but battery life made the modern(-ish) phone less useful to me under what I consider are not that strenuous of conditions. This is a real problem, and battery life will definitely be a major consideration to the next phone I buy.

That happens with most 3 year old phones though... Batteries degrade unfortunately.

Being a phone announced 3 years ago, doesn't mean it's 3 years old. He could buy that phone last year, or get a new battery in it recently.

The point is that the battery didn't last even a full day.

All these gimmicks and breakthroughs don't mean shit, make a phone that lasts 3 days and that will be a game changer.

> All these gimmicks and breakthroughs don't mean shit, make a phone that lasts 3 days and that will be a game changer.

Oh, I completely agree with that. It's more that I have an iPhone 5S that I replaced the battery in and it lasts for about 24 hours with my usage patterns -- would I love more? Heck yes I would! A phone not making it through from morning to evening though implies that it's likely a dying battery, as the iPhone 5S should last longer than that.

How many of these people have to consciously adapt their usage to make sure their phones still have juice at the end of the day? Yes, I can work with a phone where I look at the battery level and think "ok, better not do X now", but it would be better if I could always use it when I want to.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com