Might battery life be a non-issue?

[elchip]

I posted a thread over in the Inspire 4G forums to see how peoples' battery life was...

http://forum.androidcentral.com/htc-inspire-4g/64269-hows-your-battery-life.html

...and most people have been pleasantly surprised, much to my relief! Considering the Inspire and the TB sport the same processor, display and RAM... could it be that the battery life on the TB -- which has a somewhat bigger battery -- might be acceptable after all?

Or is LTE a much bigger battery drain than HSPA+ or whatever AT&T is calling "4G"?

 

[Cyber Warrior]

CDMA phones use more juice then GSM... not saying the Bolts battery wont be good but you can't really compare it to AT&Ts so called 4G network.

 

[rigorx]

LTE is a bigger drain.

How do you ACTUALLY know yet ? Let's just wait and see. Don't always rely that someone else's words are the truth and accurate. Judge for yourself, first hand.

 

[Forgetful]

How do you ACTUALLY know yet ? Let's just wait and see. Don't always rely that someone else's words are the truth and accurate. Judge for yourself, first hand.

Well supposedly LTE runs on a lower power consumption frequency than ATT's/Sprint's 4G.

 

[edoublediz]

How do you ACTUALLY know yet ? Let's just wait and see. Don't always rely that someone else's words are the truth and accurate. Judge for yourself, first hand.

i would say it is a very educated guess!!

 

[Cyber Warrior]

How do you ACTUALLY know yet ? Let's just wait and see. Don't always rely that someone else's words are the truth and accurate. Judge for yourself, first hand.

I'm basing it on Verizon's phones and AT&Ts phones. CDMA radios use more power then GSM.

 

[rigorx]

i would say it is a very educated guess!!

I'd say it's a 50/50 guess. It either will or won't be worse on battery life.

 

[rigorx]

I'm basing it on Verizon's phones and AT&Ts phones. CDMA radios use more power then GSM.

But as you stated yourself it's an LTE radio for the 4G data... so, I'm confused on your logic. Were we not referring to if the 4G LTE radio will suck down more power than a VZW 3G radio ?

EDIT: You meant VZW LTE vs other carriers HSPA?

 

[Cyber Warrior]

We will see what happens with LTE.. no one knows for sure yet but you can't compare battery life of a device on Verizon to a device on AT&T which the OP was suggesting.

 

[Cyber Warrior]

I will take back the LTE is a bigger drain... not what I meant.

 

[Droid800]

How do you ACTUALLY know yet ? Let's just wait and see. Don't always rely that someone else's words are the truth and accurate. Judge for yourself, first hand.

Because its common sense? LTE is very similar to WiMax spec-wise, and WiMax has absolutely atrocious battery life. It is a safe (and probably the most accurate) assumption to say that LTE will be bad too.

You have to also keep in mind that this is the first LTE spec and chipsets. They won't be efficient, and won't be great on battery life, because of that. Once chipmakers start to shrink the components and can focus on efficiency, battery life should increase dramatically.

 

[zshazz]

LTE will be a bigger drain for now. This is because we don't have voice over LTE... which means both the CDMA and LTE radios must work at the same time. It's guaranteed to have less battery life.

 

[Forgetful]

Because its common sense? LTE is very similar to WiMax spec-wise, and WiMax has absolutely atrocious battery life. It is a safe (and probably the most accurate) assumption to say that LTE will be bad too.

You have to also keep in mind that this is the first LTE spec and chipsets. They won't be efficient, and won't be great on battery life, because of that. Once chipmakers start to shrink the components and can focus on efficiency, battery life should increase dramatically.

No, LTE is a completely different frequency than wimax.
700Mhz vs 2500Mhz. Different energy levels of the radio waves, latency is also less with LTE.



Here's an article for you to read -

http://www.slideshare.net/marioeguiluz/analysis-wimax-vs-lte

 

[realitydigg]

LTE will be a bigger drain for now. This is because we don't have voice over LTE... which means both the CDMA and LTE radios must work at the same time. It's guaranteed to have less battery life.

I think you have hit on the key. Either disable LTE when you aren't using it and just run 3G, or you will be running both and using more power than any one. 3G for voice and LTE for data. If we ever get VoLTE we might see a dramatic reduction in power drain.

Being new to Android can anyone tell me how easy it will be to fire up LTE before heavy data usage (browsing, etc.) and leave email and simple stuff to 3G most of the time?

 

[zshazz]

Being new to Android can anyone tell me how easy it will be to fire up LTE before heavy data usage (browsing, etc.) and leave email and simple stuff to 3G most of the time?

I'm sure there will be plenty of toggle widgets for LTE. Also Tasker might be useful to help program when it should be on or off.

 

[paulmike3]

Believe Panda or not, but he said LTE radio is a MAJOR battery drain. Leave it off when you don't need it, and the battery is as good as any other 4.3" beast (same as the DX, per Panda).

 

[tekhna]

2 radios>1 radio. It's that simple, really. And unfortunately CDMA already sucks more power than GSM. So the Inspire's gonna be better of for two reasons. GSM draws less battery to start off with, and HPSA+ doesn't require a second radio, much less a second radio that might suck battery at an inordinate rate.

 

[withravenoushunger]

I don't think it will be that bad. If the delays are because of the battery life then it damn well better not be an issue. If not I can only hope for an extended battery?

 

[RHChan84]

I know people like thin phones but why not just make the phone slightly thicker with a bigger battery. How thin do we really need to go?

 

[anon(149276)]

I know people like thin phones but why not just make the phone slightly thicker with a bigger battery. How thin do we really need to go?

In all seriousness I could see them getting thinner and thinner to the point of possibly folding in on themselves. So you have a tablet 10" screen that can be folded to the size of a phone. I dunno - it was just a thought. But I agree, what's the point when your battery sucks. I wonder how many people would say, "I could give up some battery for .3mm of thickness"