When most people express their thoughts on battery life it is an incredibly exact science. They use the phone throughout the day how THEY normally do and tell you in relative terms how it performs. Good, decent, really good, not so hot, etc… but I wanted a more precise way of measuring the battery life so that YOU folks knew EXACTLY what I meant. So here is what I did:
I turned the phone on 100% brightness, set the screen to “Never Sleep”, loading a bundle of MP3s on my SD Card and opened the media player to “Play All” with “Repeat All Songs”. I also used Google Navigation for an hour… WHILE the music was still playing and phone was on full brightness. Here are the results:
So there you have it… 7 hours and 1 minute. That is REALLY good.
That big vibrant screen sucks a LOT of life out of the battery. Not quite as much as Google Navigation but still, unnecessary use of the screen is a huge waste so I would STRONGLY consider using the “automatic” brightness setting so the phone’s light sensor can make the determination of what’s appropriate. Combine that with an appropriate length for screen sleep/timeout and you’ll certainly be saving yourself several hours of use.
As you can see, one hour of Google Navigation catapulted it to #2 on the battery use indicator which means a few things.
That being said, the PURPOSE of the test was to do a few ridiculous things to drain the battery rather quickly. Try as we might, this thing still lasted 7 hours. If you’re using your phone normally throughout the day, I can’t imagine you’ll be disappointed in battery life unless you’re a web streaming media juggernaut. The battery isn’t huge – just 1400 mAh – but the device and Android 2.0 seem to do a fantastic job of energy management.