Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Verizon iPhone 4 Has Better Battery Life than AT&T Version
- Thread starter SomeDudeAsking
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
If the tests are accurate then I don't buy any of the explanations about it being down to the Qualcomm chip or GPS or anything like that.
I have an original iPhone 4 and I'm a light user so I have gone 240 hours (10 days) between charges on quite a few occassions since I got it. What that says to me is that the basic stuff of staying connected to the network (at least in my reception area) takes so little power anyhow that even reducing it by a half would have a minimum impact when measured over the 11 hour runtime of these tests.
On the basis of my original iPhone getting 10 hours WiFi browsing or 240 hours of standby then that gives about 24 hours of standby draining as much battery as 1 hour of WiFi browsing. So even if the Qualcomm chip has 100% power reduction vs the old iPhone (i.e. it's genuinely magic and consumes no power whatsoever) then over the 11 hours of the test (let's call it 12 hours for easy arithmetic) that would provide enough power for an additional 30 minutes of WiFi browsing. Taking a more realistic case of Qualcomm having half the power consumption vs the AT&T chip that would only extend the WiFi results by 15 minutes so there must be other efficiencies somewhere (again, if those tests are valid and not flawed in some way such as different battery ages).
I hope there is substance in this though and that it can be carried through to the iPhone 5. One can never have too much battery life and both the 3G -> 3GS and the 3GS -> 4 upgrades had very worthwhile improvements in battery life so I'm hoping that the pattern will continue with the 4 -> 5 upgrade. The 4 was the first retina display and I believe that the screen is by far the single biggest factor here (apart from the battery capacity of course) so I'm really hoping that they'll manage to make the next generation screens more power efficient than the first generation.
- Julian
I have an original iPhone 4 and I'm a light user so I have gone 240 hours (10 days) between charges on quite a few occassions since I got it. What that says to me is that the basic stuff of staying connected to the network (at least in my reception area) takes so little power anyhow that even reducing it by a half would have a minimum impact when measured over the 11 hour runtime of these tests.
On the basis of my original iPhone getting 10 hours WiFi browsing or 240 hours of standby then that gives about 24 hours of standby draining as much battery as 1 hour of WiFi browsing. So even if the Qualcomm chip has 100% power reduction vs the old iPhone (i.e. it's genuinely magic and consumes no power whatsoever) then over the 11 hours of the test (let's call it 12 hours for easy arithmetic) that would provide enough power for an additional 30 minutes of WiFi browsing. Taking a more realistic case of Qualcomm having half the power consumption vs the AT&T chip that would only extend the WiFi results by 15 minutes so there must be other efficiencies somewhere (again, if those tests are valid and not flawed in some way such as different battery ages).
I hope there is substance in this though and that it can be carried through to the iPhone 5. One can never have too much battery life and both the 3G -> 3GS and the 3GS -> 4 upgrades had very worthwhile improvements in battery life so I'm hoping that the pattern will continue with the 4 -> 5 upgrade. The 4 was the first retina display and I believe that the screen is by far the single biggest factor here (apart from the battery capacity of course) so I'm really hoping that they'll manage to make the next generation screens more power efficient than the first generation.
- Julian
When will you folks learn that there are a few things you can NOT tell to a AT&T fanboy.
1-They are wrong
2-AT&T sucks ass is many places
3-That there is indeed companies better then AT&T
1-They are wrong
2-AT&T sucks ass is many places
3-That there is indeed companies better then AT&T
That rule of thumb dates from the days of comparing TDMA 2G to CDMA 2G. It does not apply to 3G vs 3G comparisons, because:
GSM 3G also uses a CDMA type of radio. Moreover, it can use a wider bandwidth (WCDMA - that's how it gets higher speeds and voice+data), which usually means it requires more power.
So the coin is flipped now. A device using CDMA2000 network EVDO 3G should normally get better battery life than one using GSM UMTS-3G.
Last edited:
But what if someone calls you then who cares about Browsing the www's because you can't. Hehehe. I actually like AT&T. I know that's crazy of me to say! :/
Last edited:
Yeah, but I still maintain that over the 11 hour duration of the test being discussed here then the power drain attributable to either model of iPhone keeping contact with the cell network is so small as to be unable to account for even half of the claimed battery life increase. It's just not that big a power draw for either technology when in standby mode in a half decent reception area.
Yes, you'll see a difference when you're actually testing the cell connection by doing voice and/or data traffic, but this test was for WiFi browsing so I assume the cell connection was not being actively used. To try and get consistent test conditions I would have hoped that data services would be totally disabled for all phones being tested wherever the OS allowed that.
- Julian
Agreed, for a valid test of just WiFi, they should both be in Airplane mode with just WiFi turned on. I haven't read the article yet; did he do that?
Seriously? You obviously don't know anything you are talking about, just a stupid rant. When did i say Verizon DIDN'T have a GPS chip? Never. I said it didn't have a DEDICATED chip like the ATT version. Which btw, is better than that integrated crap on the Verizon iphone qualcomm chip. There has been several stories about how crappy the GPS is when they swapped from ATT to Verizon.
Time to get your facts straight.
Are you an AT&T fanboi or something (OMG, is there even such a thing)? Why did you cut off the second part of my quote, ie: quote mining? You seem to just like to put out unsubstantiated conclusions without anything to back it up. Time to get YOUR facts straight, go read the Anandtech article:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4163/verizon-iphone-4-review/2
lol damn noobs on this forum. Anandtech is one of top benchmark-review sites when it comes to benchmarking electronics. You fanboys are so dumb. It's funny seeing Apple fanboys fighting against each other now because the Iphone is on a different network. If Anandtech shows the CDMA Iphone is better then you better believe it.
No, you seem to be a raging fanboy. I told you that there have been several forum posts about how crappy their GPS was when switching from ATT to Verizon. Cant beat a real world test which the Quallcomm chip failed at.
"The Ugly
- GPS - it is much slower to acquire a lock than my AT&T iphone. Once it gets a lock it loses it easily. For example, on my way home tonight I launched Navigon, set the iphone on the dash as far forward as it could go, selected 'take me home' and had a clear view to the sky. While driving it warned me on 3 different occasions that it was losing its' lock and was accurate to 90 meters. A four mile drive and losing the location lock 3 times. When I came to a stop light the location would jump around, not knowing which direction I was heading. This never happened on my AT&T ip4. I also tested the GPS with Runkeeper. I used this program frequently with my AT&T ip4, without issue. On the Verizon iphone it was 1/3 of a mile off, with a GPS lock."
This thread is called Verizon Iphone - The good, bad, and ugly
I have seen several more threads complaining about the GPS
And your anecdotes from some unknown guy on here who is only testing one phone at a time is supposed to be more reliable than Anandtech who tested both phones at the same time and has a stupendous history of thorough and detailed reviews?
I propose a new law similar to Godwin's Law.
The longer a discussion goes on, the likelihood that the discussion will turn in to a pissing match between the home(fanboy) team and the competitor(obvious loser due to a majority of the website being part of the fanboy team) team grows exponentially until the thread has been shut down or a winner declared and both sides accepting.
The longer a discussion goes on, the likelihood that the discussion will turn in to a pissing match between the home(fanboy) team and the competitor(obvious loser due to a majority of the website being part of the fanboy team) team grows exponentially until the thread has been shut down or a winner declared and both sides accepting.
This thread has degenerated into mud slinging which is sad because there might well be something of interest in this data.
In answer to your question, I speed read the article and didn't see anything that explicitly mentioned the test conditions for the WiFi test but Anandtech is a pretty good and experienced site in testing things, they're usually very good about outlining their test conditions for stuff like mobo and CPU testing, so I personally find it almost inconcievable that they've done anything as dumb as actively use the cell connection for voice and/or data while running the WiFi test, it's more a matter of whether the cell circuit was in airplane mode or simply in standby at the time and unfortunately that does seem to be unspecified. Don't forget that the graphs have more than just the iPhone test results on them and I'm not sure if every phone OS has the capability to set airplane mode and then re-enable just WiFi. Maybe that is a feature that all phones have but to keep consistent results I think I would have left the cell connected but just been sure it took no calls and also turn off as much sync and push as possible to cut down background data traffic although that's not a huge deal since it should all go via the WiFi anyhow.
When I read the article I did notice on the page before (http://www.anandtech.com/show/4163/verizon-iphone-4-review/6) a few interesting quotes:
"Our Verizon iPhone 4 review unit also has a noticeably warmer screen than the other AT&T iPhone 4s I've seen. Side by side with one, the difference is clearly visible. ... I whipped out the X-Rite i1D2 used for display calibration and measured the white point. Sure enough, the Verizon iPhone 4 has a much different white point temperature than the AT&T iPhone 4. Brightness and black are similar enough to not be a huge difference, but that white point is seriously noticeable. Whereas the old iPhone 4 was reasonably close to 6500K, the panel in our Verizon iPhone 4 review unit is at 7120K. ... It's not clear whether Apple changed parts suppliers or this is simply a different batch of dissimilar panels."
That was my suspicion all along regarding the WiFi tests. Even if it's just a different batch from the same manufacturer then it's possible that some tweaks have been made that reduce power consumption slightly and even a small reduction in the screen power is far more likely to be boosting battery life on the WiFi tests than a significant reduction (percentage wise) in standby power for the cellphone circuitry (assuming my assumptions about the testing methodology are accurate).
As for the 3G tests and the AT&T vs Verizon wars going on elsewhere in this thread, just to be clear on my position - I'm from the UK so I have no opinion on this. In fact, what are these AT&T and Verizon things that you're all talking about? Are they reality TV shows?
- Julian
Thats sucks, My verizon iphone, navigon, and a 60 mile drive.. no issues here.
One day was even cloudy and snowing.
Seriously, what is your problem? I am not doubting Anandtech at all. But reviews NEVER trump real world tests. If someone is having a problem in their daily usage, you are going to say $h*t and tell them they're wrong because anandtech reviewed it? Sorry, you fail and are wasting my time.
It would be nice if Anandtech outlined what their "standard" test involves.
Their results do deserve scrutiny at times. In the past, Anandtech did a technically awful "3G vs EDGE" comparison in an attempt to excuse the first iPhone on battery grounds, the poor results of which unfortunately were repeated everywhere. (They used different phones with varying chipsets, and even different battery sizes which they failed to report.)
In that test, they said they used web pages with automatic linking every 30 seconds, with Bluetooth on, WiFi off, and displays set to 30%.
In the current tests, we have no idea how far they are from Verizon and ATT towers, or what the tower load is like, etc.
Anandtech's intentions are good, and the empirical results are interesting, but they're certainly not doing the kind of in depth technical testing that real engineers would do. Anand is more like blogger style simple testing.
(Hooking up an ammeter to get exact power usage for different parts is the least they could do. Having professional cell and other radio test gear is another thing. At least Consumer Reports uses their own purpose built radio test chamber with pro cellular test gear.)
Their results do deserve scrutiny at times. In the past, Anandtech did a technically awful "3G vs EDGE" comparison in an attempt to excuse the first iPhone on battery grounds, the poor results of which unfortunately were repeated everywhere. (They used different phones with varying chipsets, and even different battery sizes which they failed to report.)
In that test, they said they used web pages with automatic linking every 30 seconds, with Bluetooth on, WiFi off, and displays set to 30%.
In the current tests, we have no idea how far they are from Verizon and ATT towers, or what the tower load is like, etc.
Anandtech's intentions are good, and the empirical results are interesting, but they're certainly not doing the kind of in depth technical testing that real engineers would do. Anand is more like blogger style simple testing.
(Hooking up an ammeter to get exact power usage for different parts is the least they could do. Having professional cell and other radio test gear is another thing. At least Consumer Reports uses their own purpose built radio test chamber with pro cellular test gear.)
The only fail here is in your swiss cheese logical fallacy that "reviews NEVER trump real world tests". Guess what? Anandtech did real world tests with both the Verizon AND AT&T iPhone 4's at the SAME TIME. That was a large part of their freaking review! Let's see you do the same thing.
As i said before, you are wasting my time. You sure are all about defending Anandtech. Since they reviewed it, everyone who has problems are wrong. My dad swapped to verizon and he said the Maps does take a bit more time to locate his position.