What Gadget's Battery Life Leaves Something to be Desired? DROID's Does

Not since the iPhone has there been as much excitement as there was Friday morning, when Verizon (News - Alert) Wireless unveiled the new Motorola DROID. Likewise, hardly a device in the crowded smartphone market has generated as many comparisons to the iPhone as the DROID has.

 

But at least one reporter is a little skeptical that the new gadget will measure up in the category of battery life. According to Tony Bradley, an information security and unified communications reporter with PC World, customers showed up for midnight launches to be first to get the new Android 2.0 device, which Verizon Wireless calls the world’s first smartphone that runs off the Google (News - Alert) Android 2.0 platform. This was no surprise, considering the device’s wealth of applications and functions like high-speed Web browsing, voice-activated search, a customizable large screen and access to thousands of Android (News - Alert) applications and hundreds of widgets. 

 

However, once you put some of these DROID functions into use, your battery mileage will vary, said Bradley.

 

“The phone has to be powered up to be of any use beyond a glorified paper weight, so poor battery life could be an Achilles heel for the DROID invasion like the bacteria that took down the alien invasion force in War of the Worlds,” Bradley said in his review. “Mobile phone manufacturers like to talk about battery life in terms of talk time vs. standby time -- essentially how long will the battery last if you are talking constantly, and how long will the battery last if the phone is just sitting there doing nothing. Fair enough for traditional old-school mobile phones, but smartphones are doing stuff even while they’re just sitting there. Clearly we need a new way of considering battery life.”

 

Bradley noted in his battery critique that PC World senior editor Robert Strohmeyer “rushed out and braved the crowd at the Verizon store to get his Droid on Friday. He took it home, charged it up until the Droid displayed a full charge, then set off for a busy day of work -- new Droid in hand. He was surprised, and perhaps a little disappointed, when the Droid battery ran out of juice before he got home.”

 

According to Strohmeyer, “I can tell you that, so far, this thing consistently dies by 7 p.m. if I take it off the charger at 8 a.m. It definitely uses some serious battery. It’s just a power-hungry phone.”