The Real Battery Life of Your Phone

Whenever we compare phones we always talk about battery life and as we’ve all learned the numbers reported by the manufacturers have almost no correlation to reality. The problem is that the battery life reported is from lab results and not real life use. Well the other day I was browsing around the web and saw CNet’s battery life comparison. They use real life results and in each case they set the backlight to 50%, backlight timeout to 10 seconds and volume at 50% and conduct a call to a landline playing recorded audio and they do repeated tests until they are within 5% of each other. Here’s a few of the popular phones side by side in order of rank:

Sony Xperia X1: 9 hours

HTC 8525 (AT&T): 8 hours

Blackberry Bold: 7 hours

Blackberry Storm: 7 hours

HTC Fuze: 7 hours

Palm Treo Pro: 5.5 hours

HTC Touch Pro (Verizon): 5 hours

Apple iPhone 3G: 4.95 hours

HTC Touch Diamond (Sprint): 4.5 hours

HTC Touch Pro (Sprint): 4.25 hours

HTC Tilt:: 3.5 hours

So you can see how much networks (and possibly carrier customizations) can hurt or hinder a phone. Also, the real talk time on a Tilt is fairly miserable at 3.5 hours but it doubles compared to a Fuze…unless you’re using the Touch Pro on Sprint in which case you’re not as happy. I left the 8525 in there just to remind us what happens as they evolve our phones.  Personally I’ve been satisfied with the battery life of the Fuze – what do you think?