HTC Touch Diamond Cell Phone Review - Battery Life
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Marianne Schultz Published on October 14, 2008 Comment on this |
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| The Touch Diamond has a power-hungry cellular radio that operates on a 3G network, with less- than-average talk time battery life. Web browsing was the real killer for the Touch Diamond, and music playback time wasn't so good either. For more information about our battery tests see this article. | |
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Call Time (4.80)
The Touch Diamond lasted exactly 4 hours in our call time talk test, just shy of the claimed 4.2 hours of talk time. This isn't spectacular among our comparison phones, but it does surpass its predecessor, the HTC Touch and matches the Nokia E71, though every other one of our comparison phones surpasses it in this area. Smartphones aren't generally known for long battery life, particularly those that operate on a high-speed network since these cellular radios require a lot of juice and connecting to the network can use more power as well. We always appreciate longer call time battery life, for obvious reasons, but the Touch Diamond doesn't quite ring our bell in this area.
Music Playback (4.81)
To test battery life during music playback, we start off with a full battery and set the phone to play back music in repeat/continuous mode at maximum volume while leaving all other settings at their default. The Touch Diamond lasted 6 hours and 41 minutes in this test, which is far better than its predecessor at 4 hours and 45 minutes, but it's still well shy of every other one of our comparison phones. If music is your thing, you will want a spare battery for the Touch Diamond, or opt for another phone entirely that can satisfy your music-listening needs in terms of battery life.
Web Browsing (2.94)
To test battery life during web browsing, we again start off with a full battery and direct the phone's browser to a test site that redirects to a new page every 10 seconds. All settings are left at their defaults, except for the screen, which is set at full brightness and to never turn off. The Touch Diamond did not do so well in this test, lasting only a paltry 2 hours and 27 minutes, less than any of our comparison phones and the average of all the phones we've tested. Needless to say, this is a disappointing result. The Touch Diamond's battery life is definitely not its forte, which is a shame since it is quite a capable phone overall with a decent browser and screen.
Idle Time unscored
Testing a phone's idle time, also called standby time, could take several days or even weeks with most phones these days, so in order to complete our reviews in a timely manner, we don't test and score idle time. The Touch Diamond's claimed standby time is over 16 days. Idle time is largely influenced by cellular signal strength - the further away a phone is from a tower, the harder it works to maintain a connection, which drains the battery more quickly. In general CDMA phones expend less energy to do this than GSM phones, so the Touch Diamond has a bit of an advantage over its GSM counterparts in this area.
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