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Comment by mesozoic | Hacker News Reader

The battery life must be immense right? AT least one advantage there? How long does it last.

The screen helps a lot, but because the device runs full Android (we have a complete Wifi and Bluetooth stack) there’s only so much we can optimize.

In very passive use (using airplane mode liberally), it can last 7+ days but realistically most users will see it last between 3 - 7.

Some more work can go into antenna tuning, however. We support two different markets (North America and Global) which have different bands. In areas with poor mobile service, devices usually spend a lot of battery power searching for signal. We’re hoping to improve on that in a future FOTA update!

Well they're using Android so... Probably not much. Display isn't that important to battery life (unless you're using it all the time.)

Yup, exactly. I would have liked to use something like KaiOS, but we had a short deadline and that would have meant porting/rewriting a bunch of Qualcomm drivers for the snapdragon on KaiOS.

We also couldn’t preempt the new features we’d like to add (directions, find my phone, etc), so full android felt like a safer option all things considered.

Yep, Android was the right choice. You'd still be coding the OS stuff by now I'm sure.

If you go this direction in future, take a look at ofono.

There are QMI as well as AT/RIL drivers in the works.

According to the website's FAQ, 1-3 days.

Yup, we generally prefer to underpromise on battery life.

So you can get 3+ days of usage?

About a day and a half, making a few calls and texting a bit. So effectively I have to charge it every night.

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