Palm Treo Pro Cell Phone Review - Battery Life

With almost 5 hours of talk time battery life, the Treo Pro should be able to keep up with busy users without needing to be charged before the end of the day. Music playback battery life is also decent, though web browsing battery time is the weakest area. For more information about our battery tests see this article.

Call Time (5.68)
To test call time, we charge a device's battery fully and then set it up on a call with a recorded 2-way conversation with the phone's volume at the maximum level. The Treo Pro lasted 4 hours and 44 minutes in this test, a time better than some of our comparison phones, including the Palm Treo 750 and the Nokia E71, but still behind the iPhone 3G by more than hour.

Music Playback (5.96)
To test battery life during music playback, we load test music files on to the phone, charge the battery fully, start the music playing in repeat mode at the highest volume level, and time how long the battery lasts. The Treo Pro played music for 8 hours and 17 minutes, a decent amount of time that puts it in the middle of the pack among our comparison phones.

Web Browsing (4.76)
To see how long a phone's battery lasts for web browsing, we charge the battery fully, turn the screen's brightness to its highest setting, browse to a test page that refreshes every 10 seconds, and see how long it lasts. In this test, the Treo Pro lasted 3 hours and 58 minutes, besting the Treo 750 by nearly an hour but falling well shy of the T-Mobile G1's 5 hours and 20 minutes.

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 Treo Pro's claimed standby time is over 10 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. If you keep your cell phone with you as you go about your day, the constant movement and connections to different towers along the way can make it difficult to predict how long your battery will last even without regular use.

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