Smartphone battery life under ‘Mobile Internet’ conditions – Terrible

Like I said last week, the CPU is out of the power equation now for mobile Internet devices and I think I’ve just proved it.  Smartphone manufacturers have a serious problem on their hands with battery life and no amount of CPU jiggery pokery is going to help.

As you might have seen in my last post. I had set out on a little hike with my Everun and my N82. 45-minutes into the hike the battery warning sounded and the end effect was that I lost my live GPS tracking, my instant messenger, my music, my digital camera and my navigation device. Oh, and my mobile phone too! The test, while theoretically possible was, in practice, a complete failure due to pathetic battery life. a 4Wh battery is nowhere near enough for decent mobile Internet action. Always-on, high-speed Internet evices will require, luckily enough for Intel, a much bigger battery that would seriously compromise the pocketable designs that we are seeing in Barcelona this week. It’s no surprise that Apple didnt release a 3G iPhone and that Robert Scoble has to carry multiple batteries and devices when he’s livecasting with the N95.

In my little hiking ‘test’ the N82 drained a whopping 3W of power while it was in action. For all-day battery life doing a similar set of activities you would need a battery the size of the one you find on a Fujitsu U810. The N82 certainly wouldnt be the attractive candybar that it is with that great lump of Lithium attached to it! In these sort of scenarios, low power MIDS will win every time purely because the readable screen sizes of 4-5″ result in more space for batteries.

Yes, my test is an extreme case but its not unreasonable to expect this scenario to happen a lot as people start getting used to the idea of mobile Internet.

I’m very very glad I’ve got my 30Wh Everun HSDPA with me right now!