iPhone 3G was launched last Friday and many iPhone reviews have been published since then. Most iPhone 3G reviewers had one common compliant the battery life of the phone is not good. So the question is how bad is iPhone 3G’s battery life? According to most reviewers, iPhone 3G gave them around 4 to 6 hours of battery life on 3G network. PCWorld has published their battery test results and iPhone 3G beats every other 3G phone except BlackBerry models that support EVDO. Now we can rule out BlackBerry with EVDO because EVDO network only support data and not voice. So basically you can either surf or make call, you can’t do both and the average speed of an EVDO network is lower than HSDPA network. If we consider all other 3G phones, iPhone 3G has the best battery life. PCWorld still says, “The battery life on Apple’s new 3G iPhone isn’t great, but it beats that of other AT&T 3G smart phones we’ve seen.” So being best won’t make iPhone’s battery life great than what will?
I have used two other 3G phones in past one and a half year Nokia N95 and Sony Ericsson K850i both the phones never lasted more than three hours on 3G network. The iPhone 3G that I have be using for past 5 days has always given me more than 6 hours battery life in combined use (web surfing and calls) on 3G network. Actually, I don’t know a single 3G phone that would give 6 hours battery life, then why is iPhone 3G’s battery life not great. Some reviewers say that though other phones have less battery life they come with replaceable battery and iPhone doesn’t. Now my question is how many people carry an extra battery with them? In fact I have just met three in my whole life. Most people I know have a car charger or a charger in their office. In my past 10 years of mobile phone usage I have never carried an additional battery.
Most reviewers are comparing the iPhone 3G battery life to original iPhone that gave more than 8 hours of talk time on 2G network. If you want more battery life, you can switch off the 3G network on iPhone 3G also and you will get 10 hours of talk time on 2G network. To get a proper idea of how good the battery life of a mobile phone is, the phone should be compared to comparable phones. In comparison of battery life for 3G smartphones, iPhone 3G comes on top and has the best battery life. The average mobile phone usage for a person is around two and half hours per day and iPhone 3G will give you more than double of that time.