Battery meters: which phones are best? (and what other "little things" matter to you?

ianonline

I know mobile phone companies are forever marketing their phones on the basis of their hi-tech capabilities - ie touch screens and high speed internet with social networking features and built-in coffee frothing devices (it's just a matter of time!!!)

I'm a fairly basic mobile user - calls and texts are all I really need a phone for (a camera is just an added bonus) so as far as I'm concerned, it's the little things that count when choosing a phone - ie:

• a speakerphone with easy one-touch access (ie rather than having to navigate through a menu to switch the speaker on)
• a strong call vibrate so you can actually feel it when it's in your pocket
• and the obvious things such as decent call clarity and long battery life ....

.... which leads me to my question:
WHICH PHONES HAVE THE BEST BATTERY METER SO YOU CAN ACCURATELY TELL HOW MUCH JUICE IS LEFT IN YOUR PHONE ?

I've been a Sony Ericsson user for a while now, mainly because I like the fact they have lots of bars on the battery meter, and you can also find out the percentage charge in the battery so you know exactly when it needs charging. Is this feature unique to SE phones, or do other phones have this? (I'm not talking about apps for smart phones that tell you the percentage charge, but a standard feature on "normal" phones).

I once had a Samsung phone for a short while but that only had a three-bar battery meter which seems pretty pointless - if you've only got one bar left on your phone, you've no idea whether it's 33% charged or 1% charged, so you end up charging the battery more often than necessary (which obviously isn't good for the long-term longevity of the battery !!) :eek:

I'm slightly regretting getting rid of my SE K550i as it satisfied my needs perfectly. I've now got a SE C510 which I thought would be a suitable upgrade, but it turns out the vibrate function is very weak and I can't feel it vibrate when it's in my pocket.

I'd also be interested to hear what "little things" other people find useful (or conversely, things that people don't particularly like) and which are specific only to certain phones.

DUTR

My ericsson T39 was best, press the volume button and it would give the standby and talk time in hrs and minutes.

ianonline

DUTR wrote: »

My ericsson T39 was best, press the volume button and it would give the standby and talk time in hrs and minutes.

Cool - why don't all phones do this? (far more useful than many of the pointless features on most modern phones!!)

sham123_2

I have the nokia 5310.. Its just a great all round excellent phone it was cheap

The Battery lasts very long, Its a small very slim sexy phone

It just does everything, the vibration is very good!

gjchester

ianonline wrote: »

Cool - why don't all phones do this? (far more useful than many of the pointless features on most modern phones!!)

Because it's pretty pointless as a feature, on first glance it seems neat but then consider the reality.

Standby and talk time is not fixed. Say the phone has 40 hours standby and 2 hours talk time. That does not mean you can leave it on standby for 40 hours and then talk for 2. It's simply an indication under ideal circumstances. if what it can do.

In the case of the phone the fact it's miving and as such contact base stations at various times, not to mention that you will always lose and gain signal strength, maybe as you go into a building means the amount of power used by a phone changes at any given moment. If your on 3g when the phone l;oses 3G and dropps to 2G it will then re-hunt for the 3G signal using the battery up faster. Even noticed that if you fo into say London and use the tube a lot in a day your battery life is less than if you were not on the tube?

If you are stood right next to a mast when you make a call, it's clearly going to use less transmitting power than if you are say 10 miles away. More power used to transmit, more power out of the battery.

Batteries also lose capacilty over time so it's never going to be 100 % accuarate.

Because of these factors it's not a constant discharge from the battery, and so and calculated talk / standby time is just an estimate at that time. It's not a reliable indicator of how long the phone charge will last, just an instanat in time.

ianonline

gjchester wrote: »

Because it's pretty pointless as a feature ..... It's not a reliable indicator of how long the phone charge will last, just an instanat in time.

Not pointless if you use it as a guideline rather than an absolute measure - it's got to be better than the Samsung's three-bar battery meter.

Phone manufacturers still quote stats for standby / talktime whenever they bring out a new model, and I think people DO take them with a pinch of salt as everybody uses their phone differently, and as you point out, there are numerous factors which can affect battery life, but the stats are still there as a guideline.

TBH, I think a percentage battery reading is the most meaningful way of expressing how much charge is left in a battery, which is probably why (Sony) Ericsson have now adopted this standard.

DUTR

gjchester wrote: »

Because it's pretty pointless as a feature, on first glance it seems neat but then consider the reality.

Standby and talk time is not fixed. Say the phone has 40 hours standby and 2 hours talk time. That does not mean you can leave it on standby for 40 hours and then talk for 2. It's simply an indication under ideal circumstances. if what it can do.

In the case of the phone the fact it's miving and as such contact base stations at various times, not to mention that you will always lose and gain signal strength, maybe as you go into a building means the amount of power used by a phone changes at any given moment. If your on 3g when the phone l;oses 3G and dropps to 2G it will then re-hunt for the 3G signal using the battery up faster. Even noticed that if you fo into say London and use the tube a lot in a day your battery life is less than if you were not on the tube?

If you are stood right next to a mast when you make a call, it's clearly going to use less transmitting power than if you are say 10 miles away. More power used to transmit, more power out of the battery.

Batteries also lose capacilty over time so it's never going to be 100 % accuarate.

Because of these factors it's not a constant discharge from the battery, and so and calculated talk / standby time is just an estimate at that time. It's not a reliable indicator of how long the phone charge will last, just an instanat in time.

Actually it worked very well indeed, if for arguments sake, it said you had 3hrs talk time and 150hrs standby, after a call of say 30mins, it may show 2hrs 25 talktime and 120hrs standby.
The T28 and T39 came with li-ion batteries (a handset well above it's time)
Naturally the talk time was what to keep your eye on, from what i remember it was less than once a week it required charging.

gjchester

DUTR wrote: »

Actually it worked very well indeed, if for arguments sake, it said you had 3hrs talk time and 150hrs standby, after a call of say 30mins, it may show 2hrs 25 talktime and 120hrs standby.

But thats the instant value. Take that phone in and out of the tube network and if you look at it in 10 hours time the standby will more than likely have dropped not by 10hours to 110, but by a lot more to say 70 or 80 as the phone will have used more power trying to poll for bases when it lost signal