Bad smartphone battery life continues to get you worked up, with views coming in from Facebook, Twitter and here on Which? Convo. Is battery life one of your top considerations when buying a smartphone?
Katherine has an iPhone 5S she needs to charge every night, but she has ways to save battery life:
‘I turn off ‘location services’ unless I really need it because – despite what Apple say – it EATS batteries. I also tidy up my apps often to stop them running in the background.’
Lesley told us on Facebook that she does the same:
‘Just turn off the stuff you don’t use, don’t leave too many apps etc running in the background and don’t allow them automatic updates. Really helps with battery life.’
However, Claire-Marie thinks this is all a bit hands on:
‘Bit time consuming to turn off the apps you don’t use every time you turn the phone on, and a lot of them seem to be generic system apps that cannot be turned off.’
The ‘ultra power saving mode’ on the Samsung Galaxy S5 might be up Claire-Marie’s street, as it promises to eke out more life from the last 10% of your battery by turning off certain features. Our Tech team sent the Samsung Galaxy S5, HTC One M8 and Sony Xperia Z2 to our labs to put their power saving modes to the test – check out the results.
Got a spare?
ND is a fan of carrying around a spare phone battery:
‘It’s much less of a problem for non-iPhone users (and yet another of the many reasons I avoid iPhones) because you can simply carry a spare charged battery around with you and switch batteries over whenever needed. It’s a hassle to charge two batteries but means you never run out of charge and only have something really tiny extra to carry around with you.’
‘This is one of the drawbacks of an iPhone and one I was unhappy about when I switched to an iPhone four years ago. I always used to carry a spare battery with previous phones, but I’m amazed at how few non-iPhone users don’t bother to do this and still complain about running out of power.’
And on Twitter, Victoria told us:
@WhichConvo Yep. I won’t buy a phone if I can’t easily replace the battery.
— Victoria ❀ (@beaneee) May 14, 2014
Comment of the Week
John Ward gets our Comment of the Week for his musings on the effects smartphones might have had on society:
‘Being a shade more serious for a moment, although I suspect there was a hint of humour in the headline to this Conversation, it is worrying that people actually are becoming stressed out over the performance and capabilities of their devices, and the extra money they are having to spend to stay connected. The object of many of these goods was to make life less of a pain, bring us closer together with our friends and families, and do useful things at times when we might otherwise be unoccupied or doing something robotic.
‘Is it going too far to say that the technology has turned against us, and given us more problems than we ever had?’
You can read the rest of John’s thoughts on where we might be heading right here.
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