40 minutes iPhone battery life?

[mikelove]

http://theappleblog.com/2007/04/04/dvorak-iphone-battery-dead-after-40-minutes/

John Dvorak's not exactly the most consistently reliable of tech commentators, but given the iPhone's screen size and the rather-foolish lack of a removable battery (you'd think they'd learn from the mistakes of Palm et al on that) this doesn't stretch the imagination that much.

Personally, given Apple's attitude towards developers I'd be downright delighted if the iPhone did fail, though all of these problems sound very fixable in version 2. (along with, dare I hope, the lack of third-party software development options)

 

[gato]

Doesn't seem to jive with specs. See also Nokia N90's specs. Apple will need some magic to get the battery to last 5 hours of active use, but maybe not that much magic.

The battery's not replaceable because Apple wants you to buy a new one every two years when the battery dies.

http://www.apple.com/iphone/technology/specs.html
iPhone specs
Screen is 320 x 480 pixels
3.5 inches diagonal
Up to 5 hours Talk / Video / Browsing
4.8 ounces / 135 grams
4.5 x 2.4 x 0.46 inches

http://www.nokiausa.com/phones/N90/0,77 ... :1,00.html
Nokia N90
2.1 inch active matrix 262,144 colors (352 x 416 pixels)
Standard Li-Ion Battery 760 mAh
Digital Talk Time up to 3 hour
Weight: 6.1 ounces
Dimensions: 4.41 x 2.0 x 0.94 inches

 

[mikelove]

Well yeah, but the Nokia's twice as thick and has a much smaller screen. Even assuming Apple manages to match their battery capacity (which they probably can, using the same super-thin lithium polymer batteries they use in iPods) it's highly doubtful they'd get 5 hours of talk time when the Nokia only gets 3.

Apple may have good business reasons for having a non-user-replaceable battery, but it presents much more of a practical problem on a cell phone (which people genuinely *need* to use a lot of the time) than on an iPod (which is mainly a recreation/entertainment device) - if watching movies on the train ride home requires you to constantly monitor your phone's battery to make sure you have enough power left to call your wife when you get off the train, you're not going to end up watching a lot of movies.

 

[gato]

Nokia N90's probably the right example.

How about the Motorola Q? It has about the same dimension and weight as the iPhone and packs a 1130mAh battery.

http://direct.motorola.com/ENS/q-specif ... ctid=30419
Motorola Q
# Weight: 115 g (4.1 ounces)
# Dimensions (H x W x D): 4.57 x 2.52 x 0.45 inches (116 x 64 x 11.5mm)
# Display: 2.4-inch 320x240 65K TFT
# Talk Time: Up to approximately 4 hours² (voice and data)
# Standard Battery: 1130 mAh Lithium Ion

 

[mikelove]

Impressive that they managed to fit a higher-capacity battery into the Q than the N90, but still not really a good comparison; the Q again has a much smaller screen and no touch sensor, not to mention a considerably slower processor and what I imagine is much much less RAM (even a super-duper-scaled-back version of OS X is likely going to need at least 128 MB; the Apple TV has 256).

 

[panamajack]

I think Apple is clearly catering to their ever growing network of third party hardware companies focused on iPod accessories, which provides of course external battery packs for the shuffle and other models. I'd except something similar for the iPhone.

If these packs could effectively re-charge the internal iPhone battery I think it would be great; have a high capacity battery that you keep near you (in the car; computer bag extra), allowing your iPhone far greater range.

Still, it certainly doesn't really make sense to not provide a replacable battery for a phone internally... any more than it would make sense to do it with a laptop, it really makes you stratch your head.

Do Treo/smart phone or PSP users regular carry spare battery packs ?