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Verizon iPhone 4 Has Better Battery Life than AT&T Version

S

SomeDudeAsking

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 23, 2010
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You get about 45 minutes more wifi browsing time with the Verizon iPhone 4 than with the AT&T version due to the new Qualcomm chips (which happen to support both GSM & CDMA).

With this the case, I expect the iPhone 5 to have at least 11 hours of wifi browsing time, up from the current 10 hours I get on GSM. Optimistically, I hope to see at least 12 hours of wifi browsing time from the iPhone 5 if Apple is able to put in a larger battery. The current iPhone 4 has a battery with a capacity of 1450 mAh. Compare this to the Motorola Atrix which has a battery capacity of 1900 mAh. The Motorola battery did not even change form factor over the previous Motorola Droid battery and is quite compact (more so than the iPhone 4's I believe):

Motorola-Droid-X-Verizon-54-slashgear--540x325.jpg


If Apple were to use this type of battery for the iPhone 5 coupled with the new Qualcomm radio chips, I think we can expect to see 14-15 hours of solid wifi browsing on a single charge.

Don't disappoint me, Apple. You have been getting on my nerves of late with all your fiascos. Battery life is the only thing you have going for you.
 
I also noticed that my Wifi battery usage outperforms ATT iPhone's, but I thought I'm an anomaly.
 
I thought I read somewhere that CDMA uses less power than GSM (or it was vise versa)
 
SomeDudeAsking said:
You get about 45 minutes more wifi browsing time with the Verizon iPhone 4 than with the AT&T version due to the new Qualcomm chips (which happen to support both GSM & CDMA).
Click to expand...
That makes sense, you would probably need that extra battery time since the data speeds are slower.
 
ihav0frnds said:
i heard opposite. this test is flawed. cdma uses more battery normally if we are not talking about solely wifi.

http://forums.crackberry.com/f71/tr...-more-battery-life-than-gsm-technology-10200/
Click to expand...

That's not necessarily true, it depends on the implementation. On 3G web browsing, the Verizon iPhone 4 has even better battery life than the AT&T iPhone 4:

35400.png


Here, we see that the Verizon iPhone 4 has 1 hour more battery life doing 3G web browsing than the AT&T version.


JamesMB said:
That makes sense, you would probably need that extra battery time since the data speeds are slower.
Click to expand...

I was talking about WIFI browsing battery life previously which is not dependent on CDMA vs. GSM.
 
SomeDudeAsking said:
That's not necessarily true, it depends on the implementation. On 3G web browsing, the Verizon iPhone 4 has even better battery life than the AT&T iPhone 4:

35400.png


Here, we see that the Verizon iPhone 4 has 1 hour more battery life doing 3G web browsing than the AT&T version.




I was talking about WIFI browsing battery life previously which is not dependent on CDMA vs. GSM.
Click to expand...

Most likely in most cases it might be the faster data on ATT?
 
SomeDudeAsking said:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4163/verizon-iphone-4-review/7



They don't have the same radio chips. The new Verizon iPhone 4's use Qualcomm chips while the older AT&T ones use Infineon chips. And Anandtech is a very detailed and reliable source.
Click to expand...

I'm not tallking about the 3G chip dude...the wifi radio is the SAME in both iPhones as I was told...do you have a source that states otherwise? again I'm talking about the WIFI radio not the Qualcomm chip
 
SAD*FACED*CLOWN said:
I'm not tallking about the 3G chip dude...the wifi radio is the SAME in both iPhones as I was told...do you have a source that states otherwise? again I'm talking about the WIFI radio not the Qualcomm chip
Click to expand...

The 3G radio has to work in concert with the WIFI radio. You don't have web browsing data going through both at the same time. When one is active, the other one is in a deep sleep or off. It is probably also the case that the Qualcomm chips are more energy efficient maintaining a background connection with the 3G base towers than the Infineon chips do, which helps contribute to the higher battery life of the Verizon iPhone 4. And just who "told" you that the wifi radio is the "SAME"? The antennas were changed for the Verizon iPhone 4, yah know?
 
SomeDudeAsking said:
The 3G radio has to work in concert with the WIFI radio. You don't have web browsing data going through both at the same time. When one is active, the other one is in a deep sleep or off. It is probably also the case that the Qualcomm chips are more energy efficient maintaining a background connection with the 3G base towers than the Infineon chips do, which helps contribute to the higher battery life of the Verizon iPhone 4. And just who "told" you that the wifi radio is the "SAME"? The antennas were changed for the Verizon iPhone 4, yah know?
Click to expand...

yeah I read that on the site that you linked...but it contradicts what ifixit said...not that it matters to me...I've already tested my GSM iPhone against a Verizon iPhone in speed, and battery life with a co worker...the death star won every time...maybe my phone is the fluke...yah know?
 
SAD*FACED*CLOWN said:
yeah I read that on the site that you linked...but it contradicts what ifixit said...not that it matters to me...I've already tested my GSM iPhone against a Verizon iPhone in speed, and battery life with a co worker...the death star won every time...maybe my phone is the fluke...yah know?
Click to expand...

iFixit doesn't test for battery life. And just how did you "test" your phones? Anandtech does it in a standardized manner with every phone they review. I highly doubt that you do the same.
 
JamesMB said:
That makes sense, you would probably need that extra battery time since the data speeds are slower.
Click to expand...

+1:cool:

Why would someone consider moving to verizon for 45 minutes? It is pitiful that these Verizon people feel the need to protect their purchase.
 
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SomeDudeAsking said:
The 3G radio has to work in concert with the WIFI radio. You don't have web browsing data going through both at the same time. When one is active, the other one is in a deep sleep or off. It is probably also the case that the Qualcomm chips are more energy efficient maintaining a background connection with the 3G base towers than the Infineon chips do, which helps contribute to the higher battery life of the Verizon iPhone 4. And just who "told" you that the wifi radio is the "SAME"? The antennas were changed for the Verizon iPhone 4, yah know?
Click to expand...

It sounds like you are trying to convince yourself that the verizon phone is better! LOL! How old are you?:p
 
What's apparent to me after seeing the diagrams is how much better the iPhone is in terms of battery life compared to all the other smartphones.
 
It really is disappointing to see Atrix's battery like that. All this talk from NVIDIA about TEGRA 2 being power efficient and how dual-core can save battery. LG Optimus 2X and Motorola Atrix 4G is still more of the same.

Hearing about the Verizon iPhone 4 model getting an extra hour doesn't bother me one bit or really affect me, so I don't understand why I see insecure responses between Verizon vs ATT fans. I can understand being bothered if it was like 3-5 extra hours and such. As long as I get close to 10 which is more than an entire work day, I should be content. I'm always near an outlet anyway and normally just charge every other day. I want 24 hour WiFi battery life someday. It is the nature of tech that things do improve.
 
This is a bad test. Only reason the Verizon gets better batterly life is because of the removal of the dedicated GPS chip from the ATT iphone.
 
Mjmar said:
What's apparent to me after seeing the diagrams is how much better the iPhone is in terms of battery life compared to all the other smartphones.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Come iPhone 5, they'll all be the same anyway.
 
Ace134blue said:
This is a bad test. Only reason the Verizon gets better batterly life is because of the removal of the dedicated GPS chip from the ATT iphone.
Click to expand...

Wrong. The Verizon iPhone 4 has GPS just like the AT&T version. In fact, it's better than the AT&T version because its now handled by a BETTER chip:

GPS is no longer being handled by a discrete single-chip solution from Broadcom (the GSM/UMTS iPhone used a BCM4750 for A-GPS). Instead, the CDMA iPhone 4 uses the integrated A-GPS on the Qualcomm MDM6600.

I set out to find whether performance was any different, and discovered that the CDMA iPhone has slightly better GPS accuracy and tracking.
Click to expand...

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4163/verizon-iphone-4-review/2



Savor said:
It really is disappointing to see Atrix's battery like that. All this talk from NVIDIA about TEGRA 2 being power efficient and how dual-core can save battery. LG Optimus 2X and Motorola Atrix 4G is still more of the same.

Hearing about the Verizon iPhone 4 model getting an extra hour doesn't bother me one bit or really affect me, so I don't understand why I see insecure responses between Verizon vs ATT fans. I can understand being bothered if it was like 3-5 extra hours and such. As long as I get close to 10 which is more than an entire work day, I should be content. I'm always near an outlet anyway and normally just charge every other day. I want 24 hour WiFi battery life someday. It is the nature of tech that things do improve.
Click to expand...

Well, its not that black and white. The iPhone 4 is only middle of the pack when it comes to battery life for making calls:

35401.png


The Motorola Droid 2 and Droid X easily beat the iPhone 4 in that test. The Motorola Atrix is probably even better. And if you look at the 3G web browsing battery test chart, you will see that the Atrix has 1 hour more battery life than the Droid's. This is with the speedy rendering of the new Tegra 2 chips so the move to the new architecture is definitely worth it and is more power efficient even when you have way higher peak processing capability.
 
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