Smartphones are a wonderful invention but they're seriously lacking in one department: battery life. Smartphones are more powerful and can do a lot more than just your regular dumbphone. Hence, the battery doesn't last nearly as long. Manufacturers are always working to improve battery life, and there are steps you can take to conserve power (such as turning off 3G or WiFi when they're not needed), but what phone has the best battery life to begin with?
If you've got your heart set on Android, your best bet for battery is the DROID X, as the device has just come out on top in an Android battery test. Laptop Mag recently pitted eight Android phones against each other in an effort to find the phone with the best battery life. It's safe to say that the results definitely offer some food for thought.
Probably the most interesting find is that phones sporting the latest in screen technology, an AMOLED display, didn't perform as well as those with regular LCD screens despite the fact that they're supposed to consume less power. So if you're in the market for a new phone and just have to have one of those super pretty AMOLEDs, make sure you're willing to give a little in the battery department in exchange for that crisp and vivid display.
Laptop Mag made a couple of settings adjustments to each device to ensure they were all on equal ground. They installed My Settings and Advanced Task Killer on all eight phones (necessary applications for anyone with an Android phone); set the brightness for all the devices to about 40 percent and switched off auto brightness; turned off WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS location, cell location, and auto sync; switched off screen time out, making sure all the displays stayed on indefinitely; switched off Flash and plug-in support in the browser; and placed all the phones in an area with four bars of signal.
So how did the phones fare? Laptop Mag reports that the Droid Incredible, Samsung Captivate, and Samsung Vibrant, which all have AMOLED displays were the worst performers clocking 4:33, 4:43, and 4:44, respectively, on a single charge. The top three were the Motorola DROID 2, the Dell Streak and the DROID X with respectable times of 7:07, 7:35, and 7:42, respectively. Laptop Mag points out that the Dell Streak and the DROID X both have massive screens (5- and 4.3-inches, respectively), proving that a bigger display doesn't always mean inferior battery life.
Right smack, bang in the middle were the nation's 4G sweethearts, the Epic 4G and the EVO 4G. The Samsung Epic did slightly better with 5:34. The EVO 4G was about 7 minutes behind with 5:27.
