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Comment by j1elo | Hacker News Reader

I hope he posts an update saying that the battery charge was a mistake and it had been at 49% not 99%. Otherwise, not even reaching 12 mere hours of battery life is... let's leave it at underwhelming

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No, that is likely not a mistake. The battery life on my Librem 5 is ~8 hours for me on standby with the Modem/Wifi on, I can probably get a bit longer without wifi on. With moderate usage, I would say it drops to ~5-6 hours? But I haven't done any rigorous testing to tell you exact numbers.

Since I am usually either at home or at work, it isn't far away from a charger so battery life isn't a huge deal for me.

This is pretty awful if true. I've been through a fair number of mid-priced android phones (I'm more of a buy what's good enough and replace every couple of years for fun guy than a flagship phone guy), and I don't recall /any/ of them lasting for less than ~24 hrs on mostly standby/light usage. Obviously battery life drops a fair bit if you play a bunch of games or stream video or whatever though.

Is that really that surprising? Android is heavily modified OS, with plenty of engineer hours poured into it, hell, even the kernel is patched to better fit its niche.

My surpise isn't directed at Android, it's at Purism for releasing a product with such poor battery life.

Based on my recent experience with a Librem 5, this is an accurate figure if anyone has doubts. Not doing much with the phone, just a few (like 4) photos and SMS and some light browsing of Mastodon, I can get up to 12 or 13 hours with WiFi turned off (via hardware kill switch) at best - with WiFi on I land where kop316 is.

Both of these figures are way better than they were a year ago, back then I managed to get 8 to 9 hours with WiFi off.

There’s work happening to make suspending the phone an option (that’s how the less efficient PinePhone, that’s equipped with a smaller battery manages to deliver better battery life).

I get 8 hours on my GPD Micro PC with the screen on. An x86 laptop, as "open" and "supported" as any device. According to these figures I could plug a USB 4g modem into it and enjoy a superior phone experience in almost every respect - performance, support, battery life.

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