Battery life: Apple's solving for x | Hacker News Reader

Battery life: Apple's solving for x

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72 pointsmmastrac59 comments

To me, a 2-3 day battery life wouldn't be worth much. I did like having the old dumbphone weeks worth of battery, but believe it or not, that thing was without battery way way more often than my smartphone is. Why? Because smartphones you charge every night. It's a habit. You brush your teeth and charge your phone. So actually, unless they make the battery life substantially better, I'm going to take Apples side here: it's better to make the phone slightly cheaper/lighter/brighter/faster/..., than to make the battery life slightly better.

Of course, this may vary with location and usage pattern and I can see how someone in an area where battery drains in less than a day is very frustrated. I'm nowhere close to draining my battery in a days worth of near-constant use.

You're completely right but I think it's more about <always> getting through one day. Even if there's heavier than usual usage, or even after your phone is a year or two old.

So we actually need a phone to last for 2-3 days of regular usage so it's up to the task of lasting a full day in the worst case.

Also for periods of heavy battery use. My iPhone 6 gets roughly 3-4 hours of playtime on games (most recently Knights of the Old Republic). I'm not complaining because that's great for a phone today; but 8-10 hours of playtime would be nice a few years from now. I take a lot of long flights and it's nice not to have to carry a spare battery or plug into my laptop.

Agreed, charging every night is fine as long as I don't have to worry about whether the backup battery is charged when I'm at the airport.

When I had a phone that held a week's charge, the "low battery" notification meant I had a day's worth of charge left, so I never let that run out. Now, if something breaks my habit (travelling during the night, most often) the battery will run out in the middle of the next day with the low battery notification often being useless because I can't get to a charger within an hour or two.

My most recent phone, a Note 3, can go through fairly heavy all-day usage and end a late day at work at around 50%, which I think is pretty good. By the time I go to bed, and my long commute home listening to music on it, or podcasts or whatever, it's hit 30%. But I don't have battery anxiety with it for the first time since I last used a Blackberry (about 5 years ago).

If I use it sparingly, I can get it through a day and a half to 2 days. It sips power when in standby.

My last phone, one the other hand, a Nexus, barely got me to lunch before I had to charge, with a ridiculously extended battery in it. It was aggravating and made the phone adversarial, or like an infant that constantly needed attention and feeding.

Still, I'd welcome a 2-3 day battery life under normal usage. I'd be willing to have a phone twice as thick if that's what it took. The thinness doesn't mean much to me. My phone is already ridiculously thin. I have a flip-open case on it, and people mistake it for a moleskine notebook, but those are usually twice as thick as my phone and nobody really seems to mind carrying those around.

I see your point, but a counter example: I have a Galaxy Note 4 (a large phone, large battery) that I only charge every 2 or 3 days. I like not having to charge my phone as often, and a slight increase in weight is worth it. Also, in a pinch during travel having much longer battery life is great.

I mostly agree - it's habit to charge my iPhone every day at the office.

But, I really get killed on long weekends or vacations. My usual routine is broken, and I frequently find my iPhone running out of charge. Hardly the end of the world, just a minor annoyance.

As noted elsewhere, having the juice to get through a full day, even with heavier than normal usage, would mostly alleviate the problem. Of course, if that's going to cost me another $100 or turn my phone into a phablet, then I'm not intereted. :)

For these kinds of situations, power banks are great. I get the impression that they're not very popular in North America (dunno, haven't lived there for a while), but they are everywhere in Asia. I just bought a new one that gives me over 10k mAh. Enough to charge quite a bit of both my phone and iPad (and it comes with both USB and Lightning connectors to boot). For a long weekend or vacation, it's well worth packing these things, it's not like they're cumbersome or heavy either. About the same size and thickness as my phone for 10k more mAh.

North American here. Power banks are commonly available (ie, present in almost every electronics store), but I am one of the few people I know who regularly has one.

>10k mAh

Interesting choice of units.

I agree that I don't need more than a day of battery life, but I don't agree that i'm getting that now with my iPhone 5S. I'm OK on a day when I'm near a plug a couple of hours through the day, but a day when I'm out, or traveling, or somewhere where the coverage is less than perfect, I need to make sure I bring an external battery with me.

That's also what I feel. You either has iPad battery life or has kindle battery life. Anything in-between does not worth the effort.

2 days of battery life for you can mean just 2/3 of a day for someone else. So I'd rather all smartphones default to 2-3 days of battery life, just to ensure even the heaviest users get a full day. If you start your day with 20 percent battery life, then you have no one to blame but yourself, in that case, no?

This is basically the reason I got a 6+ over a normal 6. Previous iPhones have been great, except they saved a few mm and made me carry a cable around with a playing-deck-sized external battery. Real stylish.

I think many people would want something like an iPhone 6S with the option of having a bigger battery and built-in case at the expense of a few mm of thickness. Basically, make the back removable (even if just when ordering or at Apple stores) and make a more rugged version which also contains a second battery. The fronts and guts can all be exactly the same for manufacturing efficiency, then the wrap-around back can be swapped out to change color / if it gets smashed or bent / if the user wants to replace the battery etc. I really think this could work while retaining their fit and finish + manufacturing efficiency, and it's surely make consumers happy. And again, I'm not talking about a user-replaceable part, just an ordering option or possibly a paid in-store swap.

When Apple acquired Beats, it was thought they wanted their efficient manufacturing techniques for different combinations of styles/materials. The customization of the Apple Watch bears this out.

It seems reasonable they might next apply this to the iPhone - and it seems the different battery sizes you suggest would be easily accommodated. (Unless there's another reason they want to constrain battery sizes).

EDIT just thinking of Christiansen's ideas on evolution of products, basically from "integrated for performance" to "componentized for customization", it does seem that iPhones are now overpowered for... well... phones (they are pretty much last-gen console/low end PC level now, or will be soon). Therefore, people might soon stop being willing to pay for even more performance (maybe). This is a problem for Apple, because they don't like commoditized products, not from a margin point of view, not from a building cool new stuff point of view. A way out of this is cool designed customization - it's something that Apple likes, and has great margins (like Beats).

> it does seem that iPhones are now overpowered for... well... phones (they are pretty much last-gen console/low end PC level now, or will be soon)

The race to idle means that we still have room for more powerfull mobile CPUs. It's just that the extra power will appear as extended batttery life at the marketing material.

Anyway, I think the current generation is very near "good enough", people may switch once more, but the fast replacement of phones are getting to an end.

I wish most phone manufacturers would start to pay attention to this. I don't need to save the last few mm. My pocket can handle it. But there are times when I definitely do need the extra battery life.

Marketing wins, actual practical use of the product loses.

In my experience, those days when I need the extra bit of battery life are almost always at events, or while travelling. I can spot those days in advance, they're not surprises.

So I found a remarkably simple and obvious solution: I spent £50 and bought an external battery pack, something like http://www.amazon.co.uk/RAVPower-15000mAh-External-Generatio... . It charges overnight, weighs not all that much at the bottom of a shoulder bag, but on those crucial days when battery is getting slim, I can just pull a cable out, plug it into my phone, and bingo: the phone is charged.

It's capable of charging an iPhone several times over so easily solves the problem for you and even some of your friends.

and bingo: the phone is charged.

Isn't it more like "Bingo: now I have a battery pack dangling from my phone for the next few hours"?

Nope. iPhones tend to charge most of the battery in about an hour with a decent charger, so you sit down for a presentation or two, while still tweeting/etc, and by the time the presentations are done your phone is charged again.

I was recently at the airport and the airport was nice enough to provide power plugs. I happen to be sitting next to them for about 1.5 hours and counted six phones, one Samsung Galaxy S3, and a 3DS.

I used to own a battery pack too, back when I had an iPhone, it was a required accessory unfortunately. Since then I've owned a Samsung Note (1), LG G2, and Sony Z3, and all three of them last 2-3 days, and I have no need for a battery pack.

Even if size was a concern I could purchase a Sony Z3 Compact which is "iPhone 6 sized" but has twice the battery life or more.

Back in the iPhone 4 (ish) day the iPhone had "impressive" battery life. However Apple has stood still while everyone else has continuously improved. Now most non-Apple phones (Galaxy S5, LG G3, Sony Z3, Note 4, Windows Phone, etc) last substantially longer than Apple unless you're buying an unbranded piece of junk.

You'll want to check out the Moto G/X line then, I'm a happy Moto G owner, and that thing lasts a good 36-48 hours without a charge (admittedly, mine is a year old now, and can only take 24h without a charge) and the hardware isn't completely low-spec.

Not to mention it's about the same size as the iPhone 4. Great battery life, packed into a small handset.

Except that this line "I don't care about thickness, give me better battery life!" is repeated over and over by geeks like us, yet people pretty much always pick form over function - ie pick thinner phones over the ones working longer. So companies keep catering to the needs of those people, because that's what sells.

Samsung is interesting here. they still make their phones with removable backs. Thus third parties can offer larger batteries and replaceable backs. And I seem to recall a claim that in SK Samsung sell their phones with two batteries in the box. One small for "style" and one large for endurance.

> they still make their phones with removable backs

Only Apple makes phones without removable backs. Anybody else wouldn't be able to sell their phones if they removed that feature.

There are currently many 3rd party cases that provide exactly what you're asking for.

While it sounds clever at first, giving the iPhone variable thickness would ruin compatibility with countless accessories. Cases, docks, armbands, wallets, etc. Everything would either fit poorly or come with caveats: "Fits iPhone 6s 6.5-8.5mm thick." Along with hurting economies of scale, this would confuse and annoy users.

It really seems like your usage style is rare. I've never had an issue with my iPhone's battery life. It easily lasts two days without worry. On the other hand, I've never thought, "This phone is too thin." Apparently, Apple thinks that the best compromise is to keep the same dimensions and let others manufacture charger cases.

Since the edit deadline has long-passed, I'll reply with a note:

I suspect my comment was downvoted by people trawling my history after seeing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8879389 and disagreeing strongly. It may just be confirmation bias, but this isn't the first time I've noticed my older comments getting downvoted after a comment of mine gets a lot of eyeballs.

I realize karma means nothing, but this behavior harms the quality of HN. The mods may want to consider writing a detection/mitigation feature to ignore such downvotes.

This seems like someone Apple can address themselves and if you're not buying Apple accessories do Apple even care?

They get royalties from the MFi program (that "Made for iPhone" logo)

I've noticed that battery life changes dramatically on where you are. When I visited the US, I bought a local SIM card and my 4S died long before the day was over. The same in Japan. But in Denmark I have no problem lasting a day.

Yes, this definitely happens. I live in Australia and have gone out to north-west Queensland many a time, when you do your battery life is halved compared to being in the city. You'll even find the same thing catching a train from Gold Coast to Brisbane. Basically, anywhere there is spotty coverage, you'll see your battery life drop dramatically, this is because the phone will increase power to the cell radio to keep you connected when there is low signal. I've always found it fascinating.

Back in the dumb phone days, driving through New Jersey, of all places, used to kill my battery. If you're not familiar, NJ is the most densely populated state in the US, but the northwest part of the state is mostly wooded, fairly mountainous, and sparsely populated.

I'd be driving from Pennsylvania the NYC suburbs, but northwest Jersey at the time had spotty service and a lot of analog networks. It was a real battery killer.

Thats an interesting observation, and is line with what I have seen.

We develop various GSM products, and I have noticed network packets delivered to our products at various times of the day, different for each GSM network. On one network it was every morning 08:00 a packet would be sent from the network to our device. (I could see it by seeing the modem would exit it's low power mode). I have not yet tried to do a capture of the packet, as it might be something destined for the modem baseband or sim card.

Anybody care to venture a guess? Perhaps a network ping or something?

GSM networks ping all devices on regular intervals (besides the handoffs between cells when traveling and when there is data to transmit). This interval is a setting of your network, from minutes to hours.

Thanks PanMan,

I suspected something like this.

I've noticed the same. I get the impression that the stronger the network signal, the better the battery lasts - I assume because the radio has to increase the power with which it communicates with the tower when the signal is weak.

Correct, the GSM modem do indeed vary its transmission power depending on the RSSI (received signal strength). Also with low signal strength packets get dropped, so needs to be retransmitted, which also drains the battery more.

This is interesting, do you have any resource on this topic?

I wonder how a phone with dual sim can handle battery life? Thats totally an interesting problem to solve. I use micromax which is a dual sim and the battery life is pretty good, last for a day.

Yep, and it's very obvious even in different parts of the city for me. In one office, the phone is still at 60-70% after a day's work, while in another it's usually dead by the end of the work day.

Which may account for the wild variance in reported battery life from different people with the same model of phone.

Can verify this. I was working for a client who was located in an area that had maybe 1 or 2 bars of LTE service - my phone was below 20% at the end of the day if I didn't charge it. Now that I'm in a big building with AT&T microcells, I get 5 bars LTE so my phone is at over 50% by the end of the work day.

I think Apple's focus up until this point has been to make the devices thinner. That's meant that as the SoC has been getting smaller and more efficient, the battery has also been getting smaller due to the reduced phone size.

Now in the case of the iPhone 6 it can't get any smaller as its only slightly thicker than the headphone jack. Removing the headphone jack only gets you an extra few millimeters before you hit the Lightning port. So without a major redesign it's as thin as it can get for the moment.

So from this point onwards I would expect so see battery life increase as extra space in the case grabbed from size reductions from the SoC goes to battery. The 6 plus seems to follow this design pattern.

(Assuming there isn't a major advance in battery technology)

It won't go to battery life, it'll go to higher performance, more screen brightness, additional sensors, more allowed background processing by apps, more GPS check-ins, more chatting with your connected devices like the Watch, and more awareness of the radio-transmitting devices around you. There's a LOT more our phones could be doing if they had 2x, 3x, 10x battery life, that would eat up every bit of juice within a typical day.

You could put the jacks on the center (or end) of the sides of the phone and make the back side sloping, giving the phone a much thinner feel even if its maximum thickness doesn't change. This is exactly what Apple did on the MacBook Air, and it worked.

For me, the iphone 6+ has been the first iphone with a truly confortable battery life. It lasts 2-3 days on average for me when my iphone 5 often didn't even last a single day.

It seems reasonable to assume that Apple, being a competent design house, did some research and listed "x hours of battery life for function y" on their market requirements docs. I guess I don't understand how meeting their design goals is a profound observation.

As far as battery life goes, the one feature I'm jealous of on Samsung phones is the extended battery life mode. Do they still do that? Anyone know if it's on other Android phones? I'm happy to compromise with a sleeker phone, a la Apple, if I can get some extra battery life while traveling.

They still have that, and other Android phones have different apps with the same goal. But turns out that it's not really needed at the latest models - both my wife's Moto G and my LG G3 have plenty of battery for lasting a few days in light usage, and it does not help in heavy usage anyway.

his own graphic says that the 3G has 7h while the 4S has 11h. This is a huge difference. It only looks like small changes in battery life because the 6+ was included in the graph.

I think a lot of people don't understand why the iPhone 6+ lasts that long. It does so because the battery is specced out to last a certain amount of hours with the screen on. Because the screen requires more energy they've put in a larger battery. The standby and talk usage getting a bump is just incidental.

Using Apple's promo material? Really?

I'm extremely satisfied with the battery life of my iOS device. Even after a day of above average use, it will have more than 50% remaining.

I keep going back to the iPhone as all Android phones are empty while even hardly using them and they take forever to charge. I have an iPhone 5s and Galaxy s5. The s5 takes hours to charge fully while the iPhone is full very quickly. And while actively using them, the s5 is empty far before the 5s. Both have had this since they came out of the box.

I had similar issues with the iphone 4 vs galaxy s2 and iphone 5 vs nexus 5.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7903/samsung-galaxy-s-5-review...

The galaxy s5 charger pretty quickly compared to most phones.

Interesting I get downvoted for something which just happens to me and I can prove if you sit next to me. It's slower, much slower. With any charger including the original one which came with the phone. I create apps and have a ton of devices; it's not like i'm an Apple fanboy or whatever, it's just an observation.

I didn't comment on battery life because it is almost impossible to measure since it depends on many factors. Charging time on the other hand is easy to measure. The Galaxy S5 charges very quickly compared to other phones. I'm not suggesting that you are lying but that your charger probably didn't let the phone charge as fast as it can.

I do not know the reason but I would love to know it; I use the 5s + s5 together every day, all day for business. And it is very simple; after about 5 hours the one I used most will be dead (it differs per day which one that is) and for the s5 the day will be over; it will take more too long to charge to even put in the loader, while if it's the 5s, it'll be fully in a jiffy. Now I could have a faulty model (I can rule out chargers as I have many of them, always use wall chargers and official cables) but I have the same experience with every other non-Apple phone I have. For tablets I have; iPads + Windows 8 tablets take the longest to charge, Android the shortest.

Anyway; it does not really matter; I like Android phones but for me short battery life (like you said, depends on many factors and is about similar on iPhones) life is killer and then long charging adds insult to injury.

It should depend (mostly) on the charger and battery size.

Try to charge the S5 with the same charger you use for the iPhone and my guess is that they will take more or less the same time.

Never use third party chargers of dubious origin, apart from being not safe they tend to be slow.

I do use the same charger.

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