No 3G on the iPhone, but why? A Battery Life Analysis
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 13, 2007 3:53 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
The Real Shocker: Impact of 3G on Talk Time
The impact of WCDMA vs. EDGE on talk time battery life is important, because while simply talking you get absolutely no benefit from faster download rates while power consumption increases. There is one side benefit from being on a 3G connection vs. EDGE - you can receive phone calls while maintaining a data transfer, which simply isn't possible on either of these two devices over EDGE.
The Samsung Blackjack, by default, will attempt to connect to a WCDMA network first. If no UMTS networks are available, only then will it default to EDGE, and likewise if no EDGE networks are available then it will fall back to regular GSM. You can change the behavior of the Blackjack, especially when it comes to how to prioritize the various networks, but ideally the user would never have to bother with any of that.
The iPhone doesn't really have an option here, the voice connection took place over AT&T's EDGE network.
The most shocking results come from the Blackjack and the impact of leaving 3G enabled on talk time: battery life is cut in half. The 52% reduction in talk time takes the Blackjack from lasting almost 9 hours to slightly over 4 hours. If the iPhone would be impacted similarly, a 3G version of the current phone would result in less than 3 hours of talk time.
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tuteja1986 - Friday, July 13, 2007 - link
well if someone would just copy the user interface they could sell craploads of phones. Take the heat for a clone but who cares as you will benefit by alot of sales.halfeatenfish - Friday, July 13, 2007 - link
Just like with every other Apple product, the iPhone is for people that value the experience over the specifications. My phone can do all the iPhone can (feature-wise) and more... but I hate using it. As a matter a fact, a great deal of my features go unused b/c its too much an ass-pain to get to them. Same story with my XP machine over my Powerbook... My Win box is faster, etc... but I hate dealing with it.It reminds me of the difference between a Subaru and an Audi. Similar performance, but huge price difference. In one you to holler on the freeway, in the other, you speak. One has you tired after long trips, the other has you wanted to take longer trips. Etc, etc, etc
The point is... for a whole lot of people, spec's alone are just not enough.
AlexWade - Friday, July 13, 2007 - link
America is 3-4 years behind in all cell technology because our government believes competition on standards is a good thing. Obviously, it is not. Every network has dead spots, a problem we wouldn't have if there was only 1 cell technology like Europe.bigboxes - Sunday, July 15, 2007 - link
You're right. We should all be on CDMA in North America. CDMA is faster and better than GSM. That would solve all our problems. Thanks for pointing that out!Zaitsev - Friday, July 13, 2007 - link
You mean its feature set is 3-4 years behind, but has a completely novel user interface. It's certainly not "best bang for your buck," but that's not Apple's goal in the first place.tuteja1986 - Friday, July 13, 2007 - link
Battery life was the problem .. well no iphone sales in Australia as we are 3G.