T-Mobile Dash Cell Phone Review - Battery Life
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Alfredo Padilla Published on March 22, 2007 Comment on this |
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Call Time (10.0)
To test how long a phone’s battery lasts while making a call we use Skype to call the phone and play an audio book over the connection to simulate a conversation. We time how long the phone lasts from the beginning of the call until the either the battery dies or the phone hangs up due to a low battery. The T-Mobile Dash posted an impressive 8 hour and 20 minutes of call time in our test. This is significantly longer than T-Mobile’s stated talk time of 5 hours. The Dash blows the Motorola Q (3 hours 45 minutes) out of the water, this despite the fact that the Q has a larger capacity battery (1130 mAh) than the Dash (960 mAh). The Dash also did significantly better than the Blackberry 8703e’s 5 hour and 23 minute time. This is a big factor in the Dash's favor: although your battery life will vary (with things like the network signal strength having a significant impact on battery life), but HTC are obviously doing soemthing right to extend the battery life.
Music Playback (5.33)
To test music playback we set the device to play a looped album at maximum volume with all settings at their default. We time how long it takes for the phone to run out of battery power. The T-Mobile Dash lasted 7 hours and 23 minutes in our music playback test. This is not a impressive a score as the Dash’s talk time test, but is still good. The Dash will give you about the same battery life when playing music as phones like the Treo 700p (8 hours 8 minutes) or the LG Chocolate (7 hours 37 minutes). It again did much better than the Motorola Q, which was only able to manage 5 hours and 25 minutes.
Web Browsing (6.5)
To test web browsing we point the phone’s browser to a custom page that is set to refresh every 10 seconds. We then set the device’s backlight to never go off and hit a key every minute to simulate real web browsing. The T-Mobile Dash continued its solid battery performance lasting 5 hours and 25 minutes in our browsing test. Again, the Motorola Q got blown out of the water with the Dash lasting twice as long as the Q’s 2 hours and 42 minutes. The Dash also lasted longer than the Treo 700p (4 hours 3 minutes), Blackberry 8703e (4 hours 35 minutes) and Treo 750 (3 hours 3 minutes). Overall we have been extremely satisfied with the Dash’s battery performance in all situations.
Idle Time (unscored)
T-Mobile’s stated standby time is 9 days (216 hours). We weren't able to test this.
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