T-Mobile Razr2 V8 Cell Phone Review - Battery Life
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Mark Brezinski Published on December 10, 2007 Comment on this |
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Call Time (3.90)
The Razr2 V8 lasted 3 hours and 15 minutes under the duress of a never-ending conversation. This is a weak time; most phones last between four and five hours. It's also far short of T-Mobile's quoted 8 hours. It even did worse than the rest of the comparison phones on the below table, and none of them have particularly noteworthy scores. Low talk times are very detrimental for media handsets like the Razr2 V8 because they encourage constant battery use with music or video playback. Media handsets therefore need excellent batteries in order to compete with dedicated Mp3 players, because an iPod won't kill your cell phone when it runs out of batteries.
We test call time by setting up a call via Skype, our voice-over-internet protocol of choice. We then use HATS and a test PC to play audio over both ends of the call to simulate a conversation.
| Cell Phone | Talk Time | Score |
| T-Mobile Razr2 V8 | 3 hours, 15 minutes |
3.90 |
| Helio Fin | 3 hours, 41 minutes |
4.42 |
| Samsung Juke | 3 hours, 30 minutes |
4.20 |
| Sony Ericcson W580i | 4 hours, 25 minutes |
5.30 |
| LG Chocolate VX8550 | 4 hours, 43 minutes |
5.66 |
| LG Venus | 3 hours, 19 minutes |
3.98 |
Music Playback (3.32)
The Razr2 V8 lasted for a meager 4 hours and 37 minutes of constant music playback. For context, a good score would fall between seven and nine hours. Again, low battery life is especially bad for a media handset like the V8. At under five hours, the V8 might be good to listen during morning and evening commutes, but it'll need a charge every night, especially if you make calls during the day.
We test music playback by setting a playlist to repeat and recording the decibel output. This gives us a clear start and stop time.
| Cell Phone | Music Playback Time | Score |
| T-Mobile Razr2 V8 | 4 hours, 37 minutes |
3.32 |
| Helio Fin | 7 hours, 50 minutes |
5.64 |
| Samsung Juke | 7 hours, 45 minutes |
5.58 |
| Sony Ericcson W580i | 5 hours, 35 minutes |
4.02 |
| LG Chocolate VX8550 | 13 hours, 55 minutes |
10.02 |
| LG Venus | 8 hours, 52 minutes |
6.38 |
Web Browsing (1.82)
In one of our most depressingly bad battery tests to date, the Razr2 V8 could only put up with the internet for ninety-one straight minutes. Other than phones that lack browsers entirely, like the Samsung Juke, we really can't fathom a phone putting up a worse time. Any length of browsing will cut so far into battery life that it really isn't worth it unless you're browsing while the phone is plugged in.
| Cell Phone | Browsing Time | Score |
| T-Mobile Razr2 V8 | 1 hour, 31 minutes |
1.82 |
| Helio Fin | 3 hours, 10 minutes |
3.80 |
| Samsung Juke | N/A | 0.0 |
| Sony Ericcson W580i | N/A |
0.0 |
| LG Chocolate VX8550 | 2 hours, 32 minutes | 3.04 |
| LG Venus | 3 hours, 23 minutes |
4.06 |
Idle Time unscored
We don't score idle time in the interest of releasing our reviews in a timely fashion. Phones typically last a week or two idling, so a reliable data set would take months to obtain. T-Mobile claims the phone can idle for 11 days without a charge, but we'd take that with a grain of salt given their call time estimate was more than twice our result.
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