OPO vs. BB Passport battery life

[ubizmo]

I've had my BlackBerry Passport since launch last September. I've had the OPO for about six weeks, give or take. The Passport battery is rated at 3,450 mAh; the OPO at 3,100 mAh. In terms of pixels, the screens of the two devices are the same, at about 2.07 million pixels. Both screens are LCD. The OPO's CPU is clocked slightly faster, at 2.5 Ghz, compared to the Passport's 2.26 Ghz. Both have 3 GB of RAM. In short, they are very similar in the specs that matter to battery life.

Since buying the OPO, I've been switching phones every so often, for several days to a week at a time; and I've been keeping an informal battery life log. That is, I just write down how much charge is left when I put the phone on the charger when I go to bed. My usage habits don't change that much. I listen to podcasts in the car, do some WhatsApp messaging, receive a fair amount of email, read a bit on the Kindle app, kill time playing Desert Golfing, update apps, and so on. If I watch any video, it's the odd YouTube clip that someone sends out a link to. I almost never watch a movie or TV program on my phone. A fair amount of web browsing.

Network reception in my office is poor, so even with wifi on, a certain amount of battery power is wasted as the phones drop the network connection and try to get it back.

I keep the settings the same on both phones. GPS always on; screen timeout at 30 seconds, medium brightness, etc.

After doing this for almost a month, my results are:

1. Both devices get more than satisfactory battery life. That is, they have power to spare when I charge them at night.

2. The OPO typically has more power left over than the Passport. Usually, the Passport is down to about 20% when I go to bed. The OPO is almost always above 30%.

This is surprising, since the Passport has a substantially bigger battery. Moreover, the "common wisdom" in the BlackBerry community is that Android itself is inherently inefficient. This common wisdom, like a lot of common wisdom, appears to be wrong.

I wonder if what's draining the battery faster on the Passport is the use of some Android apps that use the baked-in Android runtime. Checking battery stats on the Passport seems to confirm this.

I use Greenify on my OPO, which I can't use on the Passport. But the Passport has settings that allow me to block apps from running when minimized/closed, so the effect should be similar. I have roughly the same suite of apps on both devices, except for utilities that are device-specific.

So, I'm just posting this here in case anyone's curious about it.

 

[anon(9029232)]

Wow this is very interesting. I was thinking about getting a passport because I thought the battery life would be amazing but I guess its not as good at this phone. Thanks for the post!

Posted via the OnePlus One On Oxygen OS

 

[maj71303]

I have both and it is indeed the android runtime and apps that makes the battery life of the blackberry PP less. Running less of the android runtime I get way better battery life that the OPO. I had installed the play store and a bunch of apps from it but then decided it wasn't worth it and installed them all.

 

[ubizmo]

I've heard some people say the Play store itself eats battery on the Passport. But I haven't installed it. I use Snap which doesn't run in the background. I also don't keep android apps running, but apparently when they are running in the foreground they use a lot of juice.

But I still consider the Passport's battery life to be very good.

 

[Fr3lncr]

That's good to know I guess. I used to get about 2 full days with my OnePlus One before weird battery drains started in the last month or so. And I get about a good day and half on my Z30 which has a smaller battery than the Passport.

I still want to try the Passport again (owned it for a week but sold it for a profit) once it get down to about $500 taxes in... By then though the slider may be out and we'll have to see what that offers.

 

[dannykavs]

I own both devices as well. I tend to switch between the 2 every couple of days and It really is difficult to decide on which one lasts me longer because everyday presents a new way that I use my phone.

Having used a variety of devices, I can safely say that both the Passport and One Plus One have given me satisfactory battery life and this one feature is always at the top of my must-have list when making the decision to purchase a new device.

 

[ubizmo]

Having used a variety of devices, I can safely say that both the Passport and One Plus One have given me satisfactory battery life and this one feature is always at the top of my must-have list when making the decision to purchase a new device.

Agreed. I don't want to have to charge my phone before I go to bed at night. I know there are people who don't do this, but let the phone run down the next day before charging in the middle of the day. I honestly don't know why they do this, but I know a lot of people do it. Although my usage patterns don't vary that much, there are certainly days when I use the phone more -- especially when I have to do some navigating -- so I like to have enough extra power for those occasions.

So far, I think CM12s (Lollipop) isn't quite as good as CM11s in terms of battery life, but it's still acceptable.