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Comment by seanp2k2 | Hacker News Reader

Also consider how thick the crystal on a watch is vs how thick the glass on a phone is.

Personally, I'd rather have "the new iPhone 6: exactly as thick as the last one, but now it lasts 2 days on a charge"

I would be absurdly happy to find a phone like a Note 3/4 that's 2x as thick and has 2-3x as much battery. Not that the Note has poor battery life (it easily last a full 12-16 hours of pretty heavy usage).

I really don't care much about thinness in phones, but I do care about having a forever battery and I'd happily trade 3mm of pocket space for it.

You can get battery with extended capacity. E.g. ZeroLemon have 10000 mAh battery:

http://zerolemon.com/product/zerolemon-samsung-galaxy-note-3...

But phone becomes very bulky with it.

The Note 3 has a replaceable battery, so there is nothing stopping you from replacing it with a thicker, higher capacity battery. There are lots of options available, like this one: http://www.mugenpoweronline.com/zaspx/product_details.aspx?f...

If you really don't care about size there are plenty of options, especially for phones like the Note3 with replaceable backs[1].Even for the iPhone you can buy a wrap around case that embeds a battery.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Hyperion-Extended-Compatible-Internati...

Yeah absolutely, but I wish it was just part of the phone model.

A Note 3 with the pack you linked to could easily do 2 full days of medium to heavy usage.

Motorola did have their Maxx models that were thicker with more battery, but it seems like they gave up on that when they were acquired by Google.

The first batch of reviews are starting to come in and saying the 6+ actually does last around 2 days under normal usage.

Meanwhile I get 3-4 days on my Galaxy S5 (which can be further increased with their "ultra" power saving mode). Battery life has come a LONG way (again) in recent times. I'm almost back to feature phone levels and I can honestly say it's a bit of a relief. I went on a weekend trip to London and forgot my charger... no problem whatsoever. Just a couple of years ago I'd have been forced to trudge down to a crummy store and buy a charger right there and then.

Doesn't the ultra mode pretty much leave the phone unusable? Everything except Phone calls and SMS is off. Same can be achieved with any Android smartphone or switching off Mobile Data/WiFi/GPS/Bluetooh on the iPhone, I used to do this when hiking etc with my iPhone and it lasted me days as-well.

Actually you can still use the 3g / browser in that mode (except it is in black and white).

Is this a joke?

No. My understanding is that with an AMOLED screen it uses substantially more power when displaying a range of colours.

http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/180110-how-samsung-galaxy-...

This isn't a dig at you personally, but the idea of somebody saying "This phone is unusuable! You can't do anything except make calls and text with it!" is just so hilarious to me.

It is, until you start replacing the word "phone" with "pocket computer". Our smartphones are now computers with phone call making abilities, not phones with some computing abilities.

It's not so hilarious when you consider that this is a smartphone.

But yes, taking things out of context can make them amusing.

Whenever someone says that I'm inclined to say that all statistics show that Android users use their phone less than iPhone users. Could it be that you use it less than an iPhone user? Be honest now... could you drain the battery in less than a day if you used it thoroughly?

"Android users" includes people getting free android phones because there is practically no alternative. They use their phone as a phone, nothing more. I'll wager that Galaxy S5 users are going to be far more similar to iPhone users in their usage patterns than the average android user.

My Note 3 has wifi and data running all the time, and bluetooth/GPS running whenever I'm in the car (~an hour a day, usually?), and I haven't ever gotten more than a day on a charge. Are you using that much less than I am, or is my dumb, giant screen finally catching up with me?

I have had the same experience with my note 3. Everyone raves about the battery life, but there's no way I could make it through a day with out a full charge.

When I held a S5 it felt a bit too thick to be comfortable for my hand size. I don't think I've got particularly small hands, but it was definitely a bit too much for longer than quicker interaction use.

You can always hold your phone up to the screen and determine if a new one is going to be a bit too large...

http://www.piliapp.com/actual-size/

its not perfect, you cannot simulate wrapping your hands around the device but you can actually hold an existing device up and get a good idea of what it will be like

Sure, and on screen the S5 might not look too big, but in my hands it felt ungainly and awkward for anything longer than a few minutes. The point I was making was that the 6+ might be a better tradeoff with less battery life but a slimmer profile to 'fit' better in hand.

On the other hand, the first thing I did when I got my note 3 is buy a case so it wasn't so blasted thin. I think the fact that there is barely any side edge on these phones makes them difficult to hold onto.

That depends on normal usage. Also, if this is correct, then putting bigger battery would still gain more days, only it would be 3 or 4 days, which would be great.

Not according to http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-6-battery-life-review-...

That article refers to the iPhone 6 which has only a marginal increase in battery size to offset the extra draw from the larger screen.

The iPhone 6 Plus (the one hellweaver666 is referring to) is the one with the much larger battery.

Nope. The article covered the Plus as well.

"critics said the iPhone 6 Plus offered slightly longer battery life"

"saying that the iPhone 6 Plus only lasted one full day of constant usage versus the iPhone 6's near two-day battery life"

I can't imagine Apple didn't think of that. And then make many foam, clay, and metal models based around that idea. I have a feeling that the bigger 4.7" display forced them to make the overall device thinner in order to maintain a good "feel" in your hand. A 4.7" iPhone as thick as the 5S probably feels like a brick after just a short period of use.

Can't you achieve the same effect by buying a case with a built-in battery? Admittedly you would have to remove the case in order to use the lightning port for syncing, but I suspect most people do that rarely, if at all, anyway.

I tether quite a lot (where I live usable free wifi is practically impossible to come by, where as LTE is everywhere). To prevent the phone battery going flat after an hour I tether over USB.

>> Personally, I'd rather have "the new iPhone 6: exactly as thick as the last one, but now it lasts 2 days on a charge"

can't believe this wasn't how it turned out.

I totally would accept iPhone 6 as thick as 3GS with 3x or even 4x battery life and flat back panel. This one with 1800 mAh battery? Not in the 2014.

FYI, the new iPhone 6 plus is thinner and has longer battery life than the 5S.

Apple says the 6 plus gets 12 hours internet usage compared to the 10 hours on iPhone 5S

You're confusing it with iPhone 6 Plus:

http://i-cdn.phonearena.com/images/articles/138994-thumb/iPh...

Also, battery life improvement was very much expected. The resolution barely increased (for the 6), the GPU is more powerful, and the battery is larger. If everything else besides the screen size stays the same or gets more efficient, and the battery increases linearly, too, then the increase in battery life should be positive.

> FYI, the new iPhone 6 plus is thinner and has longer battery life than the 5S.

Could it have something to do with the two of three dimensions expanding considerably?

I was always under the impression that this is why screen size initially was increased, to cover the space needed for a larger battery. The side benefit of course being, look we have big screens.

I haven't found a site that breaks out power usage by hardware features in a phone, I have seen sites on how apps can affect it. Would be interesting to know jut which parts of the phone are the worst consumers of power

Android has an embedded energy monitor. On my Nexus 7, the screen consistently uses >60% of the whole, even though the tablet spends most of its time in idle (with the screen turned off) and I keep wifi turned on the whole day, including during commute when it connects to dozens of APs.

EDIT: Oh, and I also listen to podcasts and music over bluetooth for hours/day. It hardly seems to make a dent.

The screen is the number one power draw, though I think it's true that generally the larger the device the larger the battery and that more than cancels out the larger screen. See iPad vs. iPhone battery life for example (but remember to include/exclude 3/4G for fair comparisons).

This is also a feature in iOS Settings now as well to help determine where the loss is.

Oh I'm not pretending it's not. Just making the observation. Also, the battery was increased beyond the power needed for the extra display.

> Also, the battery was increased beyond the power needed for the extra display.

Yes but that makes sense. Horizontal phone size 5S->6+ increased by ~69%, screen size increased by say 65%. Overall phone volume increased by ~58%. If battery was 50% of the 5S volume and volume of electronics hasn't changed in 6+, the battery volume has increased by 116%. Some of these assumptions are likely off and the volumes slightly inaccurate but the point should stand.

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