Nokia N95 With US 3G Support Cell Phone Review - Battery Life
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Richard Baguley Published on December 17, 2007 Comment on this |
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UPDATE: Nokia has just released a new firmware update that they claim will improve the talk, music and browsiing battery life. We were unable to verify their claims.
Call Time (4.44)
To test the N95's battery performance during calls we made a phone call to the device using Skype and piped an audio book over the connection to simulate conversation. We then timed how long it took for the battery to run out. The Nokia N95 with US 3G managed to hold the call for 3 hours and 43 minutes; a time that's shorter than most. All of our other comaprison phones maanged more then 4 hours, and the BlackBerry Curve 8320 held the call for over 7 hours; nearly double what the N95 could manage.
Interestingly, this is also much shorter than the old N95, which must be down to the faster (but more power-hungry) 3G data connection. Once nice touch is that the N95 gave a visual and audio warning about 5 minutes before the call was dropped; that's long enough to politely end the conversation before the phone's failing battery cuts you off.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Nokia N95 with US 3G support | 3 hours, 42 minutes | 4.33 |
| BlackBerry Curve 8320 | 7 hours, 24 minutes | 8.88 |
| Apple iPhone | 7 hours 4 minutes | 8.48 |
| Palm Centro | 4 hours 8 minutes | 4.96 |
| Pantech Duo | 4 hours 20 minutes | 5.20 |
| Nokia N95 | 5 hours 43 minutes | 6.86 |
Music Playback (3.16)
Cell Phones like the N95 do more than just make phone calls; these days, we expect them to keep us amused with music. So, we test the battery life of phones by setting an album playing on repeat (we use MP3 files ripped straight from a CD), then timing how long the phone can keep playing it before the battery runs out. The N95 with US 3G kept the tunes coming for 4 hours and 23 minutes; a respectable, but unspectacular time. Especially compared to heavyweights like the Apple iPhone, which kept the tunes coming for an impressive 10 hours and 46 minutes.
And again, this battery life is shorter than the older version of the N95 without 3G support. It isn't clear exactly why this is the case, but we think that the 3G support is also to blame; we run our tests with the phone features enabled, and 3G connections use more battery power, even when you aren't browsing.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Nokia N95 with US 3G support | 4 hours, 23 minutes | 3.16 |
| BlackBerry Curve 8320 | 12 hours, 2 minutes | 8.66 |
| Apple iPhone | 10 hours 46 minutes | 7.78 |
| Palm Centro | 6 hours 47 minutes | 4.88 |
| Pantech Duo | 4 hours 53 minutes | 3.52 |
| Nokia N95 | 5 hours 40 minutes | 4.08 |
Web Browsing (7.44)
To test battery performance while browsing the Web we pointed the phone's browser to a test page that refreshes every 10 seconds. We then ensure the phone's screen stays on and timed how long it took for the battery to die. The Nokia N95 with US 3G support kept on browsing for 6 hours and 12 minutes; a very creditable score, but not the longest we've seen; that honor belongs to the 10 hours and 43 minutes that the BlackBerry 8820 managed.
This time, there is only a very slight difference between this N95 and the older one without 3G; that kept browsing for 6 hours and 8 minutes. Although this isn't part of our normal testing process, we did test what happened to the battery life of the new N95 with US 3G support if we disabled the 3G connection and restricted it to an EDGE data connection (which is what the older N95 used). In this case, it kept browsing for 9 hours and 14 minutes. This goes to show what a difference 3G data connections make; they may be faster, but they are also a big drain on battery life. The moral of this story is that if you have an N95 and want to extend the battery life, turn off the 3G data connection and the bigger battery will give you a boost.
Incidentally, the extra memory on this new N95 also seemed to fix the problem that we had with the old model (which kept crashing); this new model ran through our browsing test with no problems whatsoever.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Nokia N95 with US 3G support | 6 hours, 18 minutes | 7.44 |
| BlackBerry Curve 8320 | 12 hours, 2 minutes | 8.66 |
| Apple iPhone | 5 hours 13 minutes | 6.26 |
| Palm Centro | 4 hours 22 minutes | 5.24 |
| Pantech Duo | 3 hours 14 minutes | 3.88 |
| Nokia N95 | 6 hours 8 minutes | 6.80 |
Idle Time unscored
In order to ensure that we deliver reviews in a timely fashion we do not test idle time. According to Nokia, the N95 should be able to sit in standby mode for over 220 hours; that's over 9 days.
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