Motorola's Droid X and Droid 2 smartphones, along with the Dell
Streak, came out on top of a battery-life contest for Android-running
handsets, recently devised by Laptop Magazine.
The Motorola Droid X was the big winner, with enough juice to run for 7
hours and 42 minutes, according to the contest results. Dell's
Streak—which some analysts say is either a large smartphone or small
tablet PC—ran for 7 hours, 35 minutes, while Motorola's Droid came in
third, at
7 hours, 7 minutes. Bringing up the rear was the HTC Incredible, which
exhausted itself after 4 hours and 33 minutes.
The test consisted of the devices running an Android application,
created by Laptop’s Web director, that the magazine writes “opens the
phone’s Web browser to one of 60 popular Websites, remains there for
60 seconds, closes the browser, then reopens the browser to the next
Website on the list. It does so until the phone’s battery dies, all
while recording the time elapsed.”
To create a level playing field, several adjustments were made to each
handset. First, two free applications, My Settings and Advanced Task
Killer, were downloaded to each device. Then, in My Settings, the
Laptop gang turned off auto brightness and set the brightness of each
screen to 40 percent. They also turned off WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS
location, cell location and auto sync, deactivated the screen timeout
and turned off Flash support and plug-ins in the Web browser. Lastly,
they placed each phone in a place where it was receiving at least four
bars of service.
Each phone was then tested twice, and its score was the result of the tests’ average.
“We know this doesn’t take into account things such as texting, making
phone calls and using multimedia apps, but we feel it gives a fair
indication of how long one phone will last compared to another under
similar settings,” Laptop reported.
That said, it’s still difficult to say all phones were equal. Screen
size has long been equated with battery life, making the Dell Streak an
unexpected second-place finisher, as it features a 5-inch display—the
largest in the industry, and the reason why many it consider it more of a tablet. Dell included.
Additionally, phones with AMOLED, or Super AMOLED (active-matrix
organic light-emitting diode) displays—the Samsung Captivate, Samsung
Vibrant and HTC Incredible—put in the poorest battery performances,
by Laptop’s measure. The benefits of the S-AMOLED technology are said
to be an ultra-brilliant display, capable of producing up to 16 million
colors. By design, they’re said to enable a slimmer form factor. And
lastly, according to Samsung, S-AMOLED displays also create images
using a black pallete, instead of a white one, which eliminates the
need for a backlight—thus reportedly boosting battery life.
Laptop points out that this is why Samsung uses a black background for
the application menus on its Galaxy S phones. However, the devices
weren’t able to benefit from this clever bit of design during the
Laptop testing, as most Websites feature white backgrounds.
Which phones offer the best battery life, then?
“It really comes down to what you view most often on your phone,” Laptop concluded.
The battery life average was 5 hours, 5 minutes. Coming in just under
that, for fourth place, was the Samsung Epic 4G, at 5 hours, 34
minutes, followed by the HTC Evo 4G at 5 hours, 27 minutes. The Samsung
Vibrant finished in sixth, at 4 hours, 44 minutes, and in seventh place
— putting in 10 more seconds than the HTC Incredible — was the Samsung
Captivate, with a battery life of 4 hours and 43 minutes.
The Laptop test also put to rest iFixit’s fears, regarding the battery life of the Dell Streak. Tearing down the Streak earlier this month,
and discovering a 3.7V, 530mAh, the repair site wrote: "The fact that
Dell didn't publish the battery life hints at the fact that it isn't
too great.”
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