T-Mobile G1 Cell Phone Review - Battery Life
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Marianne Schultz Published on November 05, 2008 Comment on this |
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| The G1 surprisingly offers decent call time battery life despite its 3G radio and this power-hungry network standard, and web browsing time isn't too bad, either. Music playback time is not all that great however, so the G1 probably won't be suitable to replace a dedicated digital music player for music lovers. For more information about our battery tests see this article. | |
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Call Time (6.54)
To test a phone's call time battery life, we charge the battery fully, set up a call using a simulated recorded conversation, and time how long it takes for the battery to die. We had some difficulties with the G1 in this test - after the four-hour call mark when most carriers, including T-Mobile, automatically disconnect a call, the G1 would not ring and routed all calls to voicemail and it took several tries before it would accept an incoming call again.
The G1's stated call time battery life is 5 hours, and it surpassed this in our battery tests, reaching a call time battery life of 5 hours and 27 minutes. This isn't bad call time battery life, particularly for a 3G phone, but it's still behind the iPhone 3G at 5 hours and 50 minutes.
Music Playback (5.32)
To test battery life during music playback, we load a test album on to the phone, charge it fully, set the music to repeat mode, and time how long the battery lasts during playback with the volume at its highest setting and all other settings at their default. The G1 lasted 7 hours and 23 minutes, which is decent for a smartphone but only good enough for second to last place among our comparison phones, where the king of the hill is the LG Dare that lasted 16 hours and 34 minutes.
Web Browsing (6.40)
To test battery life during web browsing, we charge the phone fully, set the display to its brightest level, navigate to a test page that refreshes every 10 seconds, and, leaving all other settings at their default, time how long the battery lasts. The G1 performed reasonably well here, lasting 5 hours and 10 minutes, beating the iPhone 3G at 4 hours and 13 minutes, but falling far behind the Sidekick LX at 8 hours and 54 minutes.
Idle Time unscored
A phone's idle, or stand-by, time can be several days to several weeks. In order to complete our reviews in a timely manner, we don't test this aspect of a phone's battery life. The G1's claimed stand-by time is over 5 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, and GSM phones generally expend more energy to do this than CDMA phones. Most users will see great variations in stand-by battery life since changing locations constantly affects what towers the phone can connect to and the energy required to do so.
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