Is there a phone with decent battery life..?

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stevewestern

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I have an HTC desire which is about 2.5 years old.
Its battery, even when new wasn't up to much, and now, with a cheap replacement it still isn't.

I wouldn't mind a new phone but would really like one that will last a bit longer than the 5-6 hours mine does.
My needs are so basic - it needs to be good at getting a signal - we live right on the edge of any signal and O2 is the only provider we can get. My daughter has a £50 LG that gets a signal anywhere in out house - I can only get one in one room, and even then I need to stand right by the window.

My main use is internet and texts - I have no friends so use about 20 of my 300 minutes a month (could be in part down to not getting a signal..?) I am old and my eyes are going, so a blackberry or something with tiny buttons is out I guess.
Are new phones much faster to load web pages etc - even when using my home network it seems slow, or am I expecting too much ?

I currently have a sim contract but could go with a phone deal, but it has to be O2.

Any thoughts ?

I also have a daughter who wants a new phone - a Blackberry Curve 9320 to be precise. Currently on pay as you go I am wondering about putting her on a very basic contract - does wanting 2 phones make it likely that some sort of deal might be offered and if so do I really have to go into a phone shop and queue up for 3 hours waiting to be seen..?
 
stevewestern said:
I have no friends
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:( :hug:

stevewestern said:
I am old and my eyes are going, so a blackberry or something with tiny buttons is out I guess.
Are new phones much faster to load web pages etc - even when using my home network it seems slow, or am I expecting too much ?
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If you can find an old Blackberry Bold 9000, the phone and keypad were a lot larger than the current Bold so the keypad was much easier to use.
I now use the iPhone and find it good for loading web pages etc but ATM a phone just isn't going to cut it in comparison to a home network.
 
Of course you have friends you have the TP family.
 
do you have Virgin Media at all? you get some decent customer offers on mobile tariffs including BBerry...

cannot help you but for your daughter I would defo consider a small tariff, I assume a BBerry is wanted for BBM? this is why my 2 eldest have them (both 9320s very decent phone).. it gives us peace of mind that we can always be contacted and they can BBM their friends without running out of service or incurring any further charges.
 
I feel touched....(if only..!!)
Maybe I should have said that I have no friends that I call or who call me...!
 
stevewestern said:
I feel touched....(if only..!!)
Maybe I should have said that I have no friends that I call or who call me...!
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Post up your number ... you will be inundated :D (joke!)
 
I have a DORO phone, which is a bit left field as today's mobile phones go, BUT, on standby it lasts over a week on one charge.

David
 
Is it available in the uk or is it import only
 
Small Nokia none smart phones are great
Was given 2 free ones at the start of old contract
They got better signal than the actual smart I payed for
 
Steve, I have a spare Desire battery I can send you, I have the desire and bought a spare battery for it. Don't use the phone now but never had a signal problem when I did.
 
Solved my battery life on my Galaxy S2.
I bought two high capacity batteries and a standalone wall charger for £18 off eBay.
Means I don't have to worry about finding a charger while I'm away, and I can always top up the batteries without tethering the phone.
 
ChrisH said:
Get an iPhone 3GS from an apple store, the battery last for ages, if you want latest get a Samsung galaxy s3.
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My 3GS was dire for battery life. There is no really good smartphone with a decent battery life. Some will say Blackberrys have good battery life, but the phones themselves are terrible. I have a new Blackberry bold for work purposes and its the worst piece of s##t I've ever used, feels so good to use my iPhone after using that piece of cack!

Get a good phone and always have a charger in the car.
 
nokia 3310, i charged mine once a week when i had one and could get signal anywhere ;)
 
my desire is the same, i check for any texts, emails once every 2 hours at work, get home and its 60% battery...ive not even used it! Im looking at the htc one s :P!!!
 
Steep said:
Steve, I have a spare Desire battery I can send you, I have the desire and bought a spare battery for it. Don't use the phone now but never had a signal problem when I did.
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How very kind of you !
PM on its way.....
 
odd jim said:
My 3GS was dire for battery life. There is no really good smartphone with a decent battery life. Some will say Blackberrys have good battery life, but the phones themselves are terrible. I have a new Blackberry bold for work purposes and its the worst piece of s##t I've ever used, feels so good to use my iPhone after using that piece of cack!

Get a good phone and always have a charger in the car.
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The droid maxx has 21.5 hrs talktime, so pretty good specs (though no personal experience). Agree re blackberry's, mine gives me error messages saying 'memory low, too many tabs open in browser' with only one tab open...

pepi1967 said:
Is it available in the uk or is it import only
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Some deals here:-

http://www.phoneslimited.co.uk/Motorola/RAZR+MAXX.html
 
My iPhone 4S with a Mophie battery pack case lasts a whole 2 days! ;)

Due to you getting signal on and off I'd suspect that your dire battery life is down to the constant hunt for signal. If I were you I'd get something cheap, they seem to have better antennae/radio's and often work better when out in the middle of nowhere. Maybe due to not having fancy cases too... but that's my experience so far.

Don't get a Blackberry, unless you can borrow one and see that it works better than the HTC. Blackberry use the cheapest radio's going. Though I will say a 2G Blackberry that I have runs for about a week or so without needing to charge.
 
Adam - one of my daughters friends comes round with her blackberry and she gets a decent signal in all the rooms, and both wife and child get a fair signal with their cheap phones, so something cheap may well be the way to go, but I do want decent internet speeds. Anyway, it is my girl who wants a blackberry !

Steep is sending me a spare battery (very many thanks fella !) which will help keep my desire going for a while but is seems that so far the battery issue on almost all smartphones has yet to be resolved - why does no-one sell a phone off the shelf which is slightly thicker but has a bigger and longer lasting battery - surely I am not the only one who doesn't really think of his phone as a thing of beauty, more a tool, and one that doesn't really do its job all that well ??
 
My Galaxy S3 will last a whole day without charge.

At work I hardly get any network signal so it's using more power hunting for it, when I do get 3G I'm checking facebook, playing games for 15-20mins, checking emails etc.

I take it off charge at around 7am and it's generally still got 20%+ left when I got to bed around 22:00.

When I'm not at work, the charge will only tend to drop to 70% over the course of a day.
 
I'm impressed by my 4s, use it constantly on the train for an hour each way. Wifi always on, location services enabled (carefully) email always syncing etc etc and will easily have 30% left by bed time.

You just need to be careful what apps you have running constantly and which use location services. GPS will rip the battery to shreds too.
 
My iPhone 5 is giving me 2 days of charge and its used quite a bit. Definitely an improvement on my 3.
 
neil_g said:
I'm impressed by my 4s, use it constantly on the train for an hour each way. Wifi always on, location services enabled (carefully) email always syncing etc etc and will easily have 30% left by bed time.

You just need to be careful what apps you have running constantly and which use location services. GPS will rip the battery to shreds too.
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To me that's awful battery life. I'd want 70% left by bedtime with that same use!
 
srichards said:
To me that's awful battery life. I'd want 70% left by bedtime with that same use!
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Why? plug it in overnight and you're good to go again next morning.
 
srichards said:
To me that's awful battery life. I'd want 70% left by bedtime with that same use!
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Easily being the min I've ever had depending on call usage etc.

Currently on my return train I'm at 70%, the screen is on auto brightness and is on of the time too when on the train.

Either way its better than my previous htc :-| considering the horror stories about iPhone batteries I've always been impressed.
 
stevewestern said:
Steep is sending me a spare battery (very many thanks fella !) which will help keep my desire going for a while but is seems that so far the battery issue on almost all smartphones has yet to be resolved - why does no-one sell a phone off the shelf which is slightly thicker but has a bigger and longer lasting battery - surely I am not the only one who doesn't really think of his phone as a thing of beauty, more a tool, and one that doesn't really do its job all that well ??
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There is - i linked to it above!

It has a 3300mah battery vs a 1432mah battery for an iphone 4s.

;)
 
Steep said:
Why? plug it in overnight and you're good to go again next morning.
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Because you shorten life of battery with constant recharging and such short life means not being able to make calls when you need to as battery power too pathetic to survive rest of day if you actually do. I want 3 days normal use so an abnormal heavy use day will still mean battery left over not a dead phone.
 
With regard to Lithium batteries, regular top-up charging is better for them, the only thing that's really bad for a Lithium battery is deep discharging, i.e. to zero or near it. Discharging to 30% regularly might adversely affect battery life over a long time but certainly not enough to worry about.
 
srichards said:
Because you shorten life of battery with constant recharging and such short life means not being able to make calls when you need to as battery power too pathetic to survive rest of day if you actually do. I want 3 days normal use so an abnormal heavy use day will still mean battery left over not a dead phone.
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No so with modern batteries.
 
I think a lot of the bad press phone battery life gets is unwarranted.

What is "bad battery life", what's the bench mark? Our old Nokia 3310 lasting 4 days without a charge? What did we use that phone for? Calling & texting, perhaps with the odd game of snake :lol:

Observe most people with their phones now and they hardly leave their hands and are constantly connected to the internet in one way or another.

If anything, 10+ hours battery life is pretty incredible IMO if you take into account the usage. Leave your laptop unplugged and see how long the battery lasts for while surfing the internet etc ;)

Admitedly, if the powers that be could get a little more juice into the batteries then it'd be great (I believe there is new battery technology on the horizon) but they're not as bad as a lot of people perceive them to be ;)
 
joescrivens said:
isnt the downside though that by having to recharge it every night you are in fact reducing its life?
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Joe - That was the advice for older technology, but lithium batterys prefer to be discharged less before being topped up:

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries


A partial discharge reduces stress and prolongs battery life. Elevated temperature and high currents also affect cycle life.
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If at all possible, avoid full discharges and charge the battery more often between uses. Partial discharge on Li-ion is fine; there is no memory and the battery does not need periodic full discharge cycles to prolong life, other than to calibrate the fuel gauge on a smart battery once in a while.
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Conversely, it is better to leave the batteries in a partially discharged state if leaving them unused .

Exposing the battery to high temperature and dwelling in a full state-of-charge for an extended time can be more stressful than cycling
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odd jim said:
No so with modern batteries.
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Not what apple says. Theirs after 400 recharge cycles have 80% of original capacity and are designed with that in mind. They also specifically say to run battery down low once a month ie to around 10%

Even with careful treatment and variable charging strategies all my Nokia phone batteries are noticeably dodgy within 2 years and a few hundred charges.
 
srichards said:
Not what apple says. Theirs after 400 recharge cycles have 80% of original capacity and are designed with that in mind. They also specifically say to run battery down low once a month ie to around 10%

Even with careful treatment and variable charging strategies all my Nokia phone batteries are noticeably dodgy within 2 years and a few hundred charges.
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But that's Apple....... I would be correct in saying that you can't easily remove the battery from an Apple device wouldn't I?

Don't Apple bring new products/models out every 12-18 months?
 
I can get a full day out of my Samsung galaxy S2 and thats texts, emails, calls, game playing and net surfing and thats with the SG2 clocked at 1400mhz on demand
If I take the last 3 scenarios out the equation I can get 2 days out of the battery.
I used to be able to get something similar on my Desire when I had it.

My secret is I use Juice defender to switch of the data connection when the screen is off, auto brightness when the screen is on and a CPU controller to set the lowest CPU speed at 200mhz when not tasking and deep sleep for long periods of inactivity. works a treat.
 
Russ77 said:
But that's Apple....... I would be correct in saying that you can't easily remove the battery from an Apple device wouldn't I?

Don't Apple bring new products/models out every 12-18 months?
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Got nothing to do with it. They can replace the batteries anyway.

I've never known even a li-on not lose capacity after being used over and over. If batteries didn't lose power there wouldn't be so many after market replacements for every phone model you can think of.
 
li-on can be top up charged over and over with no bother, however one day they just die and wont hold a charge. same with every li-on camera battery ive owned.

apple say a lot of things, i wouldnt read into most of it personally :D (incidentally ive had my 4S for coming up to a year now and battery life hasnt been affected by top up charging).
 
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