
It’s the battery, stupid: The looming 4G smartphone crisis - Lazare
http://pandodaily.com/2012/03/17/its-the-battery-stupid/
======
jerrya
How do many or most women feel about women's fashions and how they fit on the
average woman?

Is that a problem with cotton?

How do most people feel about battery life on an iPad compared to an iPhone or
droid?

Is that a problem with batteries?

The problem is in design and marketing, designing women's clothes for stick
figures and boys, and designing and marketing the thinnest phones ever.

Would you prefer a) the phone you have now, or b) the phone you have now but
1/8" thicker and with a battery that lasted 30% - 50% - 100% longer that you
didn't have to baby?

Whatever happened to "form follows function"?

~~~
ugh
Phones 30% to 50% larger would be disastrous. Uncomfortable, just too big. I
think the way phones are now is about right. Still a bit too large to
basically disappear in your pocket, but small enough to not be annoying.

It's not about fashion. Making phones larger would be a stupid idea indeed.

~~~
Roritharr
i disagree, my nokia 3210 was 100% thicker than my galaxy s2, but it was still
comfortable to carry in my jeans pocket. i bought the extended battery for the
galaxy s2, but would still buy a larger one if i would find one that provides
the same confidence that the original Samsung one does.

~~~
ugh
The 3210 has less volume. Being huge in three dimensions the deal breaker.
Volume is the name of the game, and the screen constrains that.

Also: The 3210 is still annoyingly large.

------
sbierwagen

      Notice also that the new LTE-enabled iPad doesn’t sacrifice 
      battery life compared to its 3G predecessor.
    

Between generation 2 and 3, the iPad battery increased in capacity from 25
watt-hours to 42.5, a 60% increase.

It's a safe generalization to describe the iPad as "a large battery with a
thin layer of electronics wrapped around it":
<http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPad-3-4G-Teardown/8277/3>

~~~
gks
But that probably isn't the whole story.

Has anyone done any battery comparisons between the LTE model and the wifi
model? My bet is that the wifi model doesn't get much better battery life than
the LTE model, at least not 60% more. A good reason for that increase in
battery capacity is likely needed for the video upgrades, both the screen and
the quad-core graphics.

A better comparison would be a LTE model running on LTE and then a similar
comparison of the same model running on 3G instead. This would tell you what
the difference in the two would really be like. My guess, it's probably not
insignificant, but it probably isn't as bad as we see on Android phones.

------
Sephr
One of the biggest problems with LTE on most phones nowadays is that you're
forced using LTE _and_ CDMA at the same time, with no option to only use LTE,
as no carriers support VoLTE (Voice over LTE), only voice over CDMA.

Unfortunately, Google or Samsung haven't included an LTE-only mode on the
Galaxy Nexus because of this, so I must pay for a constant CDMA connection
with my battery whenever I want to use LTE, even if I'm using SIP over LTE
(e.g. Google Voice, so I only need a data plan for data/texting/calling).

~~~
jsight
Just curious, which gateway are you using to get SIP service via Google Voice?

I've tried a few, but ultimately gave them all up due to reliability and
performance issues. It seems like the latency was always too much for me.

~~~
Sephr
I don't use the official Google Voice SIP server as I didn't have a Gizmo5
account before it was shut down. I just use an sipgate.com account added to my
Google Voice account. If you're worried about latency, you could try using the
undocumented Gmail Google Voice API through GrooVe IP
(<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gvoip>) to get a direct
connection to Google Voice.

------
FilterJoe
The author asserts that "The first company—whether it’s an incumbent phone
maker or Ph.D.-laden start-up in a garage—that figures out how to solve the
smartphone battery problem will see enormous gains."

Nope. Blackberry has had battery life nailed for years and they're steadily
losing market share in the U.S. I owned a Blackberry 9700 for a couple years
and recently replaced it with an iPhone 4s. When using for a similar set of
apps and voice calls, I get less than half the battery life I did with the
Blackberry 9700.

I wrote a detailed comparison between these two devices
([http://www.filterjoe.com/2011/12/23/blackberry-vs-
iphone-4s-...](http://www.filterjoe.com/2011/12/23/blackberry-vs-
iphone-4s-after-two-months-of-use/)) and there are actually a few ways
Blackberry beats the iPhone 4s. The most important to me is voice call
quality, where the difference is stark and impacts me every day.

Battery? I just keep it plugged in when I'm at home or at the office. Problem
solved.

~~~
jsight
I believe that the Blackberry 9700 has a 624Mhz processor, 256MB or RAM, and a
relatively low resolution 2.44" screen. The battery is about the same size as
that of a modern smartphone, though (1500Mah).

I don't think it's fair to say that they have battery life nailed, as their
approach to nailing it (low hardware specs) is one of several things that is
killing them in the marketplace.

~~~
FilterJoe
Fair point but the 9700 is over 2 years old - and when it came out it had
better battery life than the competition. The 9900 which recently came out has
better specs and still a good battery life. What's killing Blackberry IMO is
that it's nowhere near as good a pocket computer as iPhone or high end Android
devices. The apps are much more difficult to install and upgrade as far too
many reboots are required. And the difficult app development environment means
there are far fewer apps.

I think consumers have spoken: "We love great pocket computers and we're
willing to sacrifice voice quality, battery life, and data efficiency to get
it."

~~~
jsight
The 9700 is over 2 years old, but it had a smaller (much less power draw)
screen and a slower CPU even by 2 year old Android/iPhone standards. The 9900
has better specs, but still has a small screen and a single-core CPU. If they
fix those limitations, the battery life will likely drop to iPhone levels.

I don't really think they can be competitive in applications without fixing
the hardware, though.

------
zdw
Right now, almost all LTE chips everyone is using are from Qualcomm. Qualcomm
has voice features that integrate with their CPU's - without that you don't
get voice over over the cell network. The MDM9600 in the "new" iPad is this
way, so an even newer chip would be needed in an "iPhone 5":

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/4925/why-no-lte-
iphone-5-blame...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/4925/why-no-lte-
iphone-5-blame-28nm-maturity)

Right now, pretty much every 4G LTE phone has two entirely separate cell
network chips, antennas, etc. which is the main reason battery life is so bad.
When we get better integration of components and smaller chips, we'll get over
the "bad battery life" hump.

~~~
sklnd
That's a bit of a simplification. Because VoLTE is still being standardized,
phones must keep multiple modems active and multiple receive portions of the
transceiver ASIC powered on in order to be able to receive voice calls when on
LTE. This can be mitigated some on UMTS, because I believe a LTE device can
get paged over to WCDMA when a voice call comes in through CSFB, but that
cannot be done with the current deployment in traditionally CDMA networks.
There was a proposed standard for CSFB to CDMA 1x voice, but I don't think it
was adopted by any of the carriers due to some concern with call setup delays
and delays to being able to deploy LTE.

Aside from that, you're perfectly right about how power-hungry the current LTE
implementations are, because they're early implementations. They will get
better as time goes on, within reason.

~~~
tsotha
Another thing that's probably hurting battery life right now is the relatively
large size of LTE cells. While coverage is pretty good, if you're a long way
from a cell tower your mobile has to transmit at a higher power.

------
nextparadigms
Obviously it's good to focus on having as big as possible a battery in a
device, and since the RAZR Maxx I thought all phones should have at least a
3000+ mAh battery, but it shouldn't be the #1 priority. Energy efficiency
should be a higher priority than that.

The new iPad is just highly inefficient because of LTE, GPU and resolution.
The chip is made at 45nm, so is the LTE one, and the resolution is very
battery consuming.

~~~
huxley
I think you mean that the iPad is demanding on batteries because of the combo
of LTE/GPU/Resolution.

Relative to most electronic devices (outside of some phones and specialized
devices), it is a model of efficiency.

------
olofsj
Actually, in most cases 4G (LTE) data should use less energy per bit to
transfer your data than 3G. This may not be true for some of the early radios
released since they are not as mature as 3G chipsets yet. It'll also take some
time until the networks start using all power saving features available. But
when devices and networks mature a little 4G should in general be more
efficient.

However, since you get faster speeds you tend to use more data, which of
course will use up your battery faster as well. But if you'll use it the same
way you do today you'll just get faster access and should see about the same
battery life, so there's nothing to be afraid of.

------
pragmatic
I have a Droid Bionic with 4G LTE.

I bought the extended battery right away.

However, I am considering going back to the regular one.

This phone has the best battery life of any I've used to this point. I come
home at night with plenty of battery left.

Now of course this is anecdotal and YMMV.

I think apple's problem is fitting enough battery power in the iPhone form
factor. You just can't go get an extended battery.

~~~
maximilian
> This phone has the best battery life of any I've used to this point. I come
> home at night with plenty of battery left.

This is the singularly, most unbelievable thing I experience with my "new"
smartphone (iPhone 3GS). I was used to going 1-2 weeks without charging my
dumb phone -- Now I have to think about it every 1-2 days. My smart phone is
great for internet, and is great as a phone; as long as I charge it every
night.

~~~
dasil003
In a way it's easier though. Now I instinctively remember to plug in my phone
every night, whereas on a dumb phone I wouldn't have a good routine for
charging it and would often have it die at inopportune times.

------
JoelSutherland
Poor 4g battery life is not a core property of the technology. The radios in
current phones are still made on an outdated 45nm process. That will change to
28nm this year which will improve things quite a bit.

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/4925/why-no-lte-
iphone-5-blame...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/4925/why-no-lte-
iphone-5-blame-28nm-maturity)

~~~
megablast
I can't imagine that it is the CPU, more likely the radio required for 4G.

~~~
nerdtalker
I see this misconception propagated a lot - that process node only affects the
AP's power draw in the main SoC.

This is a fallacy simply because the baseband is itself another SoC. Take the
MDM6x00 family inside the iPhone 4 CDMA and iPhone 4S. Inside is an ARM1136 at
up to 512 MHz, and two QDSP4000s at ~150 MHz for modem. It is an SoC itself,
but for cellular, and thus moving from one process node to another will change
power draw.

The fatter traces in some of the ASIC in the transceiver and the PAs after
that front end is one thing, the power hungry baseband is another.

------
6ren
Apple solved 4G (+retina) on the iPad with a 70% larger battery.

But I think they'll solve it differently on the iPhone ("4GS"?): using
Cortex-A15 + PowerVR G6200 (Rogue), both drastically _underclocked_ , to give
the same performance (or slightly better) than now. The A15 has x2 the
efficiency of the current A8; the G6200 is x5 (five) as efficient as the
current SGX543. Performance does not seem to be particularly an issue since
the 4S went double core, so instead "spend" this improvement on power
consumption. It will be hard for tech-focused competitors to make this trade-
off.

4G efficiency will also improve slightly (or maybe a breakthrough); perhaps a
slight increase in battery; and they might even delay the next iPhone until 4G
is efficient enough. After all, it has limited coverage so far (I was
surprised they put it in the iPad, since it's of no benefit to most users so
far).

------
joejohnson
I have the same phone (a year-and-a-half-old iPhone 4, I'm writing this
comment on it now) and I can easily make it through a day on one charge. If I
use my phone a little less, I can make it through about 40+ hours on a single
charge. Maybe this guy just needs to turn his brightness down?

------
GiraffeNecktie
Any chance we'd see hot swappable batteries? (i.e. with a tiny backup battery
to keep the phone running for a couple of minutes). I don't mind carrying a
spare for my Galaxy s but I hate waiting for the boot.

~~~
dspillett
Not quite as convenient as a hot-swap battery, but I carry one of these in my
general bag: [http://www.dabs.com/products/veho-vpp-002-ss-pebble-
smartsti...](http://www.dabs.com/products/veho-vpp-002-ss-pebble-smartstick-
emergency-portable-battery-
pack-7S5T.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=product+search&utm_content=Q200)

It holds enough for a full charge for my phone and extra. If they seem a bit
steep keep a watch around special occasions as they (or identical devices)
have been half price both last Christmas and the one before (when I bought
mine).

There are models with larger capacity too, like
[http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.208-7092.aspx?utm_source=GoogleS...](http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.208-7092.aspx?utm_source=GoogleShopping&utm_medium=GSF_NormalFeed&utm_campaign=GSF_TescoDirect&utm_content=208-7092)

While more hassle than a hot swap battery (while charging you've got a device
hanging off your phone) they have the advantage of not being phone specific so
can be used to charge a variety of devices rather than just being a spare for
one.

------
afterburner
You can buy spare phone batteries on eBay for $2 each. Carry one or two around
with you (they're small, of course, since the phones are thin to begin with),
and you're set. You'll likely need extra chargers for them too, so a little
more money spend there, but eBay provides there as well.

Of course, iPhone users (such as myself) can't do this because the battery
can't be easily removed.

Making the phones a bit thicker probably couldn't hurt at this point either...

------
CHsurfer
I agree that battery life is one of the most important aspects of smart-phone
selection (or any mobile device) but I think the bigger issue is that China,
one of the main suppliers of certain rare-earth metals used to mae modern
high-performance batteries, is now choking the supply:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/business/global/20rare.htm...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/business/global/20rare.html?pagewanted=all).

------
bsphil
I got a backup 2800 mAh micro usb charger for under $12 on Monoprice. Has
worked just fine for all the times when it looked like I'd want a bit more
charge.

Pretty cheap compromise to me.

------
teyc
Perhaps smartphones need to degrade gracefully to a dumb phone when battery
hits 20%.

~~~
pclark
Blackberry devices do this. It is infuriating.

~~~
teyc
Yes, it would be infuriating wouldn't it?

That's interesting, because once a phone runs out of juice, is it because we
tend to see it as "dead", and no longer fret over it. However - if it still
runs, but with some disability, we'd be constantly reminded of our loss every
time we made a phone call.

------
drivebyacct2
I don't understand these articles. There are TONS of people very happily using
4G phones right now. Sorry iOS users, you're just late to the party. My
friends mocked me when I was excited about the 4G in the Galaxy Nexus I was
buying. I bought the extended battery (still the thinnest phone I've seen save
for my mom's RAZR) and it easily lasts me an abusive full day of use.

Combine that with the fact that many people work desk jobs or spend 20 minutes
in the car at a time, it's not unreasonable at all to think that a 4G phone
can last plenty of time.

I mean, sorry for the iOS comment, but the 4G/battery naysayers seem to always
be coming from the iPhone angle and, my Galaxy Nexus gets only slightly worse
battery life than my father's 3G iPhone and he only checks his email on it.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
I've got a 4G phone. When I go out to the bars on the weekend, it NEVER NEVER
NEVER makes it until the end of the night. Which, oddly enough, happens to be
exactly when I'm most likely to need it to find friends and regroup from the
chaos. (Even when I turn off data to try and stretch it out, it'll die..) My
phone also gets buggy, and seems to flake out at the exact movement I actually
need to text someone. I'm not buying another 4G/android phone again for a long
time, I"m switching to a 3G iPhone for my next phone, hands down.

~~~
daed
Yeah, my roommate has a 4g phone and has to charge it everyday after work...
And he turned 4g OFF to save battery

------
dasil003
This is a lot of words to pursue a false premise. There's nothing inherently
more battery consuming about 4G. It's just the way the current phones chipsets
are done.

~~~
CognitiveLens
This seems like an odd re-framing. You could make the same claim about any
technical specification - e.g. there's nothing inherently more battery
consuming about 10 petaFLOPS, it's just the way current hardware is done.

We can take it as given that any article talking about the weaknesses of a
current technology is referring to its current hardware implementation.

