The Huawei Mate 8 is the new flagship to beat for battery life

Posted on by Michael Fisher

When Huawei announced its new smartphone lineup at CES earlier this month, it followed up the hoopla with its usual generosity. That is: it gave everyone in attendance a review sample of either its new Mate 8 phablet, or a gold-colored refresh of the Nexus 6P. My colleague Jaime Rivera, perhaps anticipating an After The Buzz video in his future, went for the 6P. But despite my deep respect for the newest Nexus, I ...

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Debacle over Samsung- and TSMC-sourced Apple A9 processors

Posted on by Jules Wang

Apparently. when you tell two people to do the same job, no matter how detailed the instructions are, you might get some different results. In the case of Apple working with Samsung and TSMC, these three have had a history after a turbulent period where Samsung could’ve lost its whole Apple contract to TSMC. The two are in now in their current coexistence doing their own jobs.But some iPhone 6s ...

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Extending smartphone battery life: how to become a real road warrior, if needed

Posted on by Adam Doud

Ok, I promise, this is the last time I talk about my vacation – which was freakin’ great, bee tee dubs. But as I mentioned in a previous article, I found myself in a difficult situation – I had the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge and I was out on the town for 11 days straight. Battery life was an issue pretty much every day I was out there. I managed to muddle through using a couple of tricks which I’ll talk to you about, but I also did a little digging and put together a sort of “best practices” ...

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WALDIO could mean faster phones and longer battery life

Posted on by Joe Levi

We’ve all experienced it, as time passes our smartphones and tablets seem to get slower and slower. We’ve told ourselves that it’s just all the crap valuable software that we have installed. We’ve told ourselves that applications keep getting bigger and more complex (and ultimately slower). We aren’t wrong. All those things contribute to both actual and perceived slowdowns, but there may be one other contributing factor that is not only slowing us down, but hurting battery life in the process. How much? According to one study, smartphones could be 20 times ...

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The era of great smartphone battery life has come – and gone

Posted on by Michael Fisher

Editor’s note: In the gulf between iPhone releases and in the run-up to the next Windows Phone resurrection, the ratio of Android to non-Android phones in our review inventory continues to rise. As a result, this piece is written from a predominantly Android-centric perspective.Everybody wants awesome smartphone battery life. Whether you’re addicted to the latest power-draining augmented reality game or just trying to get through a day of texting and talking, the panic moment is a familiar ...

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Move over Qi-charging – every smartwatch should have third-party battery bands

Posted on by Jules Wang

By USB or by wall outlet, our gadgets receive energy and store it in their batteries. Once they’re unplugged, they’re immediately powering through your day. That is, if they can last as long as you do. And in the case of wearable technology, where battery capacity only goes so far as the technology inside of it and the limited physical footprint, sometimes they don’t.With discharge cycles lasting anywhere between 18 hours and seven days, we’re not excited with having ...

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Power saving modes are not the answer

Posted on by Taylor Martin

Having a long past with legacy BlackBerry smartphones will do something to you. It will make every new phone you buy feel inferior in at least one way: battery life.I often write that a phone’s battery life is great, decent, amazing, or passable. But when I write it, I only sort of meant it. That’s not to say I’m lying, but I typically quantify a phone’s stamina in relation to other, modern smartphones when, honestly, I’m rarely ever impressed by a ...

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Quick charge or capacity: which is more important to you? (poll)

Posted on by Joe Levi

Cellular phones used to allow us to make and receive telephone calls on the go, and not much more. Somewhere along the line, text messaging was added, letting us ditch our pagers. Over time, simple apps were added, and we were able to pass away the time with games like Snake. Back then battery life wasn’t all that important, not when compared to today since back then our phones could last a week between charges. Now, however, we’re lucky to make it through a day or two. Manufactures are faced with a dilemma: customers want phones that are thin and light, but batteries are ...

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System updates can improve battery life; here’s proof

Posted on by Joe Levi

When we went hands-on, and gave Amazon’s Fire Phone the full review treatment earlier this month, we didn’t have many nice things to say about its battery life, rating it as “poor to fair”. This rating carries with its own measure of irony since Amazon touts “uncompromised battery life” as one of the selling points of its phone.“You’ll definitely want to take a charger with you if you’re planning on ...

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Every smartphone needs Oppo’s Rapid Charge technology

Posted on by Taylor Martin

For the better part of the last five years, battery life has been an issue. I’ve never managed to get the alleged four hours of screen-on time some forum users claim, and I’ve rarely been able last a full day with just about any non-BlackBerry smartphone. It happens, but it’s rare. “It’s just the way or how much you use your phones.” That’s what everyone always tells me, but that’s not the problem, I assure you. Just because I’m a “tech ...

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Are third-party battery saving apps worth it?

Posted on by Joe Levi

CPUs, GPUs, RAM, and even storage space all seem to be headed in the right direction: more! Thickness and weight are headed in the opposite direction: thin and light. What’s stuck in the middle? That’s right, your battery. Batteries are interesting things. They store energy, exactly how they do that has evolved over time — albeit slowly. There are many kinds of energy out there: solar energy, kinetic energy, nuclear energy, potential energy, hydro, wind, heat, pressure, rotational, chemical, and more. No, those aren’t all the same “kinds” of energy, but ...

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Extreme Power Saving turns the HTC One M8 into a cameraless dumbphone (that lasts for days)

Posted on by Michael Fisher

Sometimes, all you need is a phone. Not a digital assistant, not a pocket internet tablet, not a gaming platform. Of course all of those things are nice, and the enhanced features smartphones bring to bear have become essential to millions around the world. But thanks to the realities of battery endurance and processor capabilities, most of today’s smartphones offer a variation on the same promise: “From the moment I come off the charger until the moment I lose power, I will be a smartphone. Nothing less.” With the unsubtly-named Extreme Power Saver feature, HTC looks to ...

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How much longer until we can enjoy week-long smartphone battery life?

Posted on by Taylor Martin

Battery life is an ongoing struggle many of us smartphone users deal with every single day. Most days, I unplug my phone around 8:00 AM. Depending on the work I’m doing that day, I may not actually turn the display on until later that evening, but rest assured the phone gets some sort of use – music streaming in the car, countless email and social notifications, etc. Other days, I’ll spend an hour or two staring at the display before noon. No matter what kind of day it is, however, by the end of the day, my phones make their way back to my nightstand, begging to be plugged ...

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Pocketnow Weekly 056: two hours of your tech questions, answered

Posted on by Michael Fisher

Sometimes, you push obligations back for too long and they just pile up, week after week after week, until they never get done. Well, when we started the Pocketnow Weekly technology podcast just over one year ago, we decided that listener mail -your mail- was going to be a big part of it, and it’s consistently added flavor to the show. But the last few weeks have been so packed

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The battery dilemma: big and long or short and quick?

Posted on by Adam Doud

Ok, now stop giggling. There are a few things in life more boring than talking about batteries. Baby showers come to mind. Rain delayed baseball games. Sharknado. But in the mobile technology industry we have to get to write about battery life in between product release cycles. Because not a whole lot has changed in the battery life department over the years. It really should change. It’s really barely acceptable as it stands right now. Upcoming technology might give us a bit of a battery dilemma. Of course we start to think of this in light of Motorola’s

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