Mango and 1.5Ghz CPU Improve Windows Phone Battery Life
|I saw the specs on the HTC Titan and I couldn’t believe the battery life on that thing. Here take a look:
Granted 1600 mAh is a large batter but we’re talking about an almost 12 hour talk time here on GSM. Compare that to the iPhone that rates at 7 hours (with 300 hours of standby). I only mean the comparison to show you how significant 12 hours is. But let’s compare apples to apples…uhm or NoDo to Mangos. I put together a little chart for all of you:
Notice what happens once you put Mango on Windows Phones? It appears to improve battery life. Just look at the Radar and see how it rolls with its healthy battery life and otherwise standard battery and screen size. To be clear, lots of factors go into battery life and I tried to show a few of the relevant factors. One other factor is that the HTC Radar actually has a different (and newer) Snapdragon so even though it’s the same 1Ghz it’s a different core. So we have CPU and OS at play here but what seems pretty clear is that the upgrade to Mango helps battery life and pumping the CPU to 1.5ghz doesn’t seem to hurt battery life at all and in fact, considering it has the largest screen, it may actually be the most efficient in terms of talk time. Again the battery sizes are different, the CPUs and OS’s change but it’s still pretty clear that the bump in CPU is not hurting battery life, at least for talk and standby time. Of course, the CPU can throttle down if it’s not being burdened so this may not ultimately pan out in real life usage but it’s at least encouraging that the extra speed doesn’t appear to come at the expense of battery life. And in any event the next generation of Windows phone appear to be more efficient than the current generation, and that says a lot since the current devices are great on battery life.
Now I’m sure the Battery Boss will tell me none of this matters, but I gave you guys a fancy chart and that has to mean something.
Not to try to make you feel like you did all that fancy charting for nothing, but I (I’m the battery boss he’s referring to) just ran some tests and it turns out that my phone when on the phone (talk time) and when not on the phone (standby) ramps the processor down to 128MHz. That makes me think that for non-SIP calls, using the phone for traditional purposes hits up the battery via means essentially independent of the processor and quite possibly the platform as well, with exception to the radio firmware. I’d wager that these figures improve over time as a result of improved hardware of the phone as well as signal strength and protocols in the air, not new APIs and socket access or continued lack of turn by turn.
By the way, next time you’re doing the fancy charts like this maybe you could do some math for us to help get your point across, specifically in this case how many minutes per amp hour for the devices to even the battery capacity playing field.
I’d ask you for a source on this data and the methods involved in producing these figures given my history of encountering utter bullshit in almost every direction in the battery world, but whatever. Happy for you and your talk time, hope it changes the luck of your platform from zero to something even if the figure is incidental to what you’re suggesting.
Regarding what’s flying through the air, that stuff is changing and in ways that may significantly affect battery life. For instance certain types of HSPA+, LTE and WiMAX employ much different things that are said to carry improved device power efficiency, like all-IP architecture and things I don’t understand.
Perhaps these breakthroughs you attribute to Mango and faster processors that you people used to say were unnecessary and counterproductive for a proper operating system like WP are actually, even though I’d bet against AT&T’s HSPA+ being the one with the best efficiency for everything including standby time and not having to shift from no data to data, are the variable between these devices.
So maybe look up whoever invented this stuff, run my theory by them and if they say yes and it sounds legit to you, write them a thank-you article.
The lesson here is that when you’ve got a healthy flow of devices being pumped out for your platform of choice, well if you wait long enough that is (in your case), you get more of a gateway to improved hardware technology like this. And when word gets out that your latest and greatest device is no longer the Focus finally, maybe your percentage of new smartphone owners might go up a notch.
Also, Mango ftw.
LOL, oh yes I’d wager that going forward we’ll see access to more current hardware from a few manufacturers. The OEMs who produce pedestrian Windows Phone devices and subsequently sell less than regularly priced TouchPads will bail out. Fine by me as I have no need for choice if it is only in name. Give us some real choices. Android does at the end of the day drive hardware innovation and progression. If Windows Phone users can benefit by having the same OEMs utilize their leftover part orders and placed in Windows Phones fine by me.
My hope for Windows Phone fades, as it seems Microsoft is not serious about competing. When is the last time anyone saw a commercial or TV ad for Windows Phone? When is the last time anyone saw any marketing for Windows Phone at all?
I just got through reading this piece at WMPoweruser.com, and it shows how pathetically out of touch Microsoft is. Do they really want WP to succeed at all? They don’t care. This is a pathetic effort at an industry trade show. They can’t even be bothered to get a booth inside the event. Is it any wonder Zune failed, with no marketing and Zune Pass not even being available outside of the U.S. or the U.K.
I love Windows Phone. Having used the big three mobile OS, it’s easily the best of the three in so many areas. But this platform won’t succeed if Microsoft can’t do any better than this. They aren’t even trying. It would be one thing if they put forth tremendous effort and still failed. But most of their failures are due to a lack of leadership or just plain not putting forth the effort to succeed.
http://wmpoweruser.com/ifa-2011-microsoft-stand-windows-phone-general-situation/
Read the article. Shameful effort!!!
By the way, the Titan is the first HTC device I’d buy, and I might still. But the WVGA on a 4.7 inch screen is suspect, and 512 MB of RAM aint too hot either. Why no qHD screen resolution, and why not 1 GB of RAM?
@Joe: I’ve been over this several times with posters. The screen resolution is set at 800×480 to allow for devs to have the simplicity of coding for one resolution. I don’t know if you develop or not but programming for multiple resolutions is a major pain.
So what you’re telling me Murani is that Windows Phone is stuck on WVGA resolution forever, while the rest of the mobile OS world moves to higher resolutions like qHD and even HD? If that’s the case, they should have started with a higher resolution to begin with.
Ugh, that’s a good way to continue to fail to keep up with the competition.