Pantech Duo Cell Phone Review - Battery Life
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Mark Brezinski Published on November 15, 2007 Comment on this |
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Call Time (5.2)
To measure how well the battery tolerates calling, we set up a call with Skype and leave it going until the battery is depleted. To better simulate what a user could reasonably expect, we play staggered voice clips over each end of the call in order to simulate a conversation.
Under the strain of constant chatting, the Duo lasted a slightly sub par 4 hours, 20 minutes. Typically phones score 5 hours or above on this test. It's not such a short time that you'll have to carry a charger around with you wherever you go. It's even thoughtful enough to give you a low battery warning when it only has 5-10 minutes of battery life left. Also, 4 hours, 20 minutes is more than the estimated 3 hours of life AT&T gave it on the phone's spec page.
| Cell Phone | Talk Time | Score |
| Pantech Duo | 4 hours, 20 minutes | 5.20 |
| Helio Ocean | 4 hours, 7 minutes | 4.94 |
| BlackBerry Curve 8320 | 7 hours, 24 minutes | 8.88 |
| Palm Centro | 4 hours, 8 minutes | 4.96 |
| HTC Tilt | 5 hours | 6.00 |
| Nokia N95 | 5 hours, 43 minutes | 6.86 |
Music Playback (3.52)
Testing music playback is easy. We simply put a playlist on repeat and record the playback. The Duo performed worse here than on the calling test, only managing to sing for 4 hours, 53 minutes. Typical scores here are between 6 and 8 hours. Though not really bad in itself, the Duo's poor call time compounds the matter, because listening to music for a few hours suddenly leaves you with only two hours of calling time.
| Cell Phone | Music Playback Time | Score |
| Pantech Duo | 4 hours, 53 minutes | 3.52 |
| Helio Ocean | 8 hours, 9 minutes | 5.87 |
| BlackBerry Curve 8320 | 12 hours, 2 minutes | 8.66 |
| Palm Centro | 6 hours, 47 minutes | 4.88 |
| HTC Tilt | 6 hours, 47 minutes | 4.88 |
| Nokia N95 | 5 hours, 40 minutes | 4.08 |
Web Browsing (3.88)
To test how the battery fares under this intense stress, we point it to a ring of web sites that refresh to each other every ten seconds. Typical scores here are between four and five hours, with exceptional phones lasting nine or more. The Duo buckled under the force of the internet in a mere 3 hours, 14 minutes, which isn't something to brag about. This is probably due to the Duo using AT&T's 3G network, which is rather a battery hog. With battery scores that are all fairly low, the Duo is the kind of phone whose users need to make choices: if you browse for an hour, you can only listen to music for 2 hours if you want to make a call, etc.
| Cell Phone | Browsing Time | Score |
| Pantech Duo | 3 hours, 14 minutes | 3.88 |
| Helio Ocean | 4 hours, 19 minutes | 5.18 |
| BlackBerry Curve 8320 | 9 hours, 43 minutes | 11.66 |
| Palm Centro | 4 hours, 22 minutes | 5.24 |
| HTC Tilt | 3 hours, 3 minutes | 3.66 |
| Nokia N95 | 6 hours, 8 minutes | 7.36 |
Idle Time unscored
As phones typically last a week or longer for idle time, testing it would requires months of simply letting the phone sit around. In the interest of timely reviews, we simply believe the carrier. AT&T undershot the Duo's call time, so its estimated standby time of 10 days is probably accurate.
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