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At last someone has answered the question that everyone wanted (and needed) to know, instead of all the obligatory one-sided complaints about anything connected with the iPhone.

Yep, the iPhone battery life is just terrible...but better than all the others.

Sure. But which of the phones have a replaceable battery and/or the option for a stronger battery. With my Treo, I could opt for a stronger battery and take a spare when I traveled. I love my iPhone and (now) iPhone 3G. I'll just have to keep a portable charger in my bag.
We can only hope that Steve Jobs is using an iPhone 3G as his personal cell phone; that's our best chance of seeing a replaceable battery in next round of iPhones.

All of the iPhones have the ability to connect to an external battery, a charger, or any computer with a USB port. You only need a cable. Does your Treo charge from any USB port? And carrying a cable in your bag is no harder than carrying an extra battery.

I don't think you'll ever see a replaceable battery in an iPod or iPhone. It would make the device too big and it would reduce the battery life--that's right, battery life is worse with a removable battery because the battery has to be smaller. However, you can be sure that Apple will continue to push the chip makers for lower power chips.

The complete ommision of blackberrys make the conclusion that the 3G iPhone is better than all it's rivals entirely invalid and unproven.

My nokia lasts days on a 3g network with normal usage. I think the artical writer is one of the apple fanboys who is trying to do selective distortion of facts to prove the point that "Looks you guys should be oblidged to steve for such a terrible battery life"... ha ha ha

I will be happy to include battery life for a 3G BlackBerry when we get one. The Bold isn't out yet.

Yardena Arar, Senior Editor

What about the 3G blackberry's currently on the market? ie. 8800 series. I know my 8830 with verizon is EV-DO.

"The good news for AT&T and other HSDPA/UMTS customers is that they can make voice calls while using their phones for data (that is, tasks such as browsing the Web or reading e-mail); Sprint and Verizon users cannot simultaneously do both."

You would be wrong...I have an LG Voyager from Verizon, and can indeed make & receive voice calls while connected to the 3G network.

Does this mean that I might get BETTER voice coverage with a new iPhone than with my current AT&T GSM phone? (if the 3G coverage in my area happens to be better than the GSM coverage, which is spotty even though I live in an urban area)

I can maybe understand leaving off the battery-friendly Nokias since there's simply not that many of them here in the US. But how in the world can you justify leaving off the EVDO Blackberries? You can't throw a rock around here without hitting somebody on Verizon with a Pearl (which is very much aimed at a similar audience as the iPhone.)

The way you have the graph cropped is also more than a little misleading. You'd think the iPhone gets 3x the battery life of the Treo judging by the chart (as many people will do.) I understand going for a headline while it's popular, but leaving off one of the most popular smartphone brands on the market (from the biggest US network) and then making a 40% gap from worst-to-'first' appear like a 200% gap is a little disingenuous. I'd expect something like that from Engadget, but not PC World.

For all my complaints, it's still nice to see the numbers for several of these phones in one spot. I would also be curious to see how the LG Dare fares here as I got to tinker with one of those this weekend. It lacks true smartphone capabilities, but for somebody just wanting a nice feature phone for email, texting, music, browsing and turn-by-turn GPS it was actually pretty nice.

You are a little out of touch. The iPhone 3G does have a removable battery, unlike the first gen phone, but it is still not user removable.

The first gen phone had its' battery hard wired into the phone; this version has a more traditional battery. The battery in the new phone is larger than the old, so the idea that replacable batteries are smaller does not hold up.



It appreas that maybe, just maybe, they are setting this up to where you can have the battery replaced at an ATT / Apple store, rather than sending the phone back.

I find it funny that you found it convenient to leave out the ENV2, the Dare, the Voyager, and the HTC Diamond... all of them have significantly better battery times than the iPhone 3g. PC Mag and CNet both recently reviewed the Dare and both confirmed over 8 hours of talk time on it.

I find your research and objectivity to be in question.

That's because there is no 3G Blackberry to compare the iPhone with. The first 3G Blackberry will be the Blackberry Bold, coming out later this year.

How exactly is an EV-DO blackberry not 3G???

Then it's not mediocre is it? It's the best battery life available.

No Blackberry 3G battery tests got you down? Read 'em and weep, babe:

http://www.informati...2008/06/batterylifeis.html

Seems RIM can't get the thing to work. The biggest problem? Battery life!

How the haters hate!

JoeL

It's exactly the same way that a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk isn't a ribeye steak and a glass of IPA.

Not having read all the comments... (This may have been asked.)

Seems absurd to limit battery testing to 10 hrs max. I can't imagine....

Forbes' 500: The 82 people worth more than $1B (in alphabetical order)

Wow! What a cover!

Not to kick a horse, but the point is that blackberry has been excluded from these tests allegedly because they do not have a 3G phone. This is incorrect. They do not currently have a 3G GSM unit, but they have many 3G CDMA units. If this test is merely for HDSPA phones, then it should say so, it should not claim that the iPhone beats it's rivals while leaving out it's largest 3G rival.