Smartphone Features That We Would Happily Trade For Better Battery Life

We all have dreamt of the day that our smartphones can even be half as good as the clunky handsets of yesteryears, in terms of battery life. However, as it stands, all we’ve been getting this past decade are the products of smartphone arms race from manufacturers who seem to have little or no regard about battery life.

That being said, we’ve listed down some of the prevalent smartphone features that we can probably live without in exchange for better battery life. And by better, we mean the handset can last for at least two days on normal use without charging it or being able to use all of its nice features without having to worry that the battery will be drained before the day ends.

Overkill display – Displays, regardless of its size and resolution, have always been one the most power-hungry components of a smartphone. Whether we’re using our device for content consumption or an input device, there’s really no getting around the simple fact that it will consume power – it’s just a question of how much.

So when it comes down to it, we feel that we can probably settle for 720p resolution for any display panel smaller than five (5) inches and 1080p for any screen sizes beyond that. As we explained in the past, most consumers don’t really need gazillion of pixels on their smartphone’s screen, but rather just enough of it for a non-pixelated viewing experience.

Uber-powerful processor – Mobile processors nowadays, especially those in the upper echelon, have enough fire power to run almost anything you throw it’s way. While that may be good to the consumers’ ears, it can sometime be a liability as some of these chips tend to be too powerful for their own good.

Don’t get me wrong, I want a smartphone that doesn’t buckle under heavy pressure. However, having used different types of device over the years, I can definitely say that having a powerful processor with superfluous processing cores is just a bonus rather than a necessity to keep things steady and lag-free for your smartphone.

The Apple iPhone is a good testament to our last claim. Despite running on a modest dual-core processor, both the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus (and its predecessors for that matter) still manage to perform admirably and arguably way better than similarly spec’d Android smartphones.

Just to make things clear, I’m not an iSheep or an Apple fanboy (don’t even own any Apple device), but if having a powerful processor will come at the price of battery life, I would rather have a slower but decent chip on my smartphone than worry every time that I’m away from a wall outlet. And besides, how many apps are there in the market (regardless of what platform) that can really harness the true potential of these super-powerful processors? And how many of those do most consumers use on a daily basis? Not many we suppose.

Razor-thin form factor – What does the Gionee Elife S5.1, Oppo R5 and Vivo X5 Max have in common? All of them held the “thinnest smartphone in the world” title at one point in time thanks to their under-5mm waistline and, more importantly, their respective battery packs are borderline mediocre.

And while having a svelte form factor doesn’t contribute to the handset’s power consumption, the process of shaving every possible fat out of a handset leaves less and less room for manufacturers to fit in a respectable battery pack on their device.

So in essence, claiming the title for “the thinnest smartphone in the universe” maybe good for these brands’ ego, but it doesn’t bode well for consumers like me who don’t mind having a slightly thicker and heftier phone for longer battery life.

Other Gimmicky Features – In a highly-saturated Android market, every possible feature, be it useful or just a marketing stunt, helps brands to market their devices. But oftentimes these added features just hampers our handset’s battery pack even more which is already having a hard time getting us through an entire day without begging for its charger.

So unless brands already got the battery life all figured out, we feel like these “features” will just make the battery life worse than it already is.

I hate to be a party pooper; all of these aforementioned features actually make for a good smartphone. I mean who wouldn’t want a handset with crisp display, a sexy design and runs on a very powerful processor, right? So the main takeaway from all of this is that we don’t really have to sacrifice any of the features, mentioned above or otherwise, if our smartphones are only equipped with a high-capacity battery pack to begin with.

I mean, is it really too much to ask for manufacturers to stuff a 5000mAh battery pack at the very least on their flagship smartphones? I’m not sure that it will, but in the event that it does add an extra thousand pesos or two on the device’s SRP, I know that most consumers would gladly pay that price in exchange for better battery life.

ALSO READ:
Eight smartphones with at least 4000mAh batteries
Five Apps to Help You Save Your Phone’s Battery
5 Tips to Extend your Smartphone’s Battery Life

Ronnie Bulaong

This article was written by Ronnie Bulaong, a special features contributor and correspondent for YugaTech. Follow him on Twitter @turonbulaong.

https://www.yugatech.com

15 Comments

arg says:

10 years ago

san po ito available sa pinas yun sure original? thank u
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Vincee says:

10 years ago

Yung previous list ng yugatech about smartphones with at least 4000 mAh battery ang nakatulong sakin sa pagpili ng bagong phone <3

Now a proud owner of Cherry Mobile Fuze S <3
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apatal says:

10 years ago

Unfortunately, all aspects of modern smartphone technology is progressing very quickly and exponentially but battery technology is one thing that remained more or less the same for the past couple of decades. if you want a good performing phone with decent battery life, you can either get a phablet (huge bettery inside), or get something that finds a way to manage power on the software side. I have always been a fan of stock Android, but this year, I chose to go with an Xperia phone because of the Stamina mode built in. Sure this is something you can do with your run-of-the-mill Nexus with Greenify but I feel like Sony’s implementation is working better. I’m getting excellent battery life on my Z3 compact, at least enough to not me worry about running out in the middle of the day. As a bonus, it doesn’t look indecent in my pants as my previous phone, the OnePlus One. hehe
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hyperjack says:

10 years ago

that’s what im talking about. specs of almost all of the smart phones were upgraded even to the highest level. But how about the battery life? maybe they need to focus on that one
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pekto says:

10 years ago

>The Apple iPhone is a good testament to our last claim. Despite running on a modest dual-core processor

Not modest. Hindi po padamihan ng core yan, nasa design po. E.g. dual core i7 is more powerful than quadcore atom.
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kj2k says:

10 years ago

Best phone I’ve ever owned/used is the HUAWEI ascend mate 2. Not quite 2 days use, but average of 30 hours between charges is awesome. And with native power management and a host of actually useful features, it is the best 6″ phone I’ve found for less than $300.
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FiatLux says:

10 years ago

If you really want it all, go for the Gionee Marathon M3.

– 720p, 5 inch, IPS display
– Slower, 1.3GHz processor
– 1 GB RAM, 8 GB internal storage (with 128 GB microSD card limit)
– 5000 mAh Battery (!!!)
– Android 4.4 Kitkat

All for just 7,999 pesos!
The catch? Where are they?
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Kurimaw says:

10 years ago

you need a good AND efficient processor to handle all the multitasking and processing that the current version of Android does. iPhone can afford to use lesser processing speeds and cores because iOS is highly streamlined with optimizations as DICTATED by Apple. iOS in its current form by the way doesn’t have true/full multitasking for 3rd party apps. if they ever do the same multitasking that Android does, i’m sure those phones in their current processors will lag like hell.

of course the next question would be if your casual user would ever need true multitasking.

anyway the only things that i’m willing to sacrifice for battery life:
– Display 1080 is the new minimum for 5+-inch phones. I do think 4K is overkill for such a small screen
– Thickness. At most I’m willing to take 7mm. anything more than that would be going backwards to the era of heavy phones. as a guy, i like my phones light and thin on the pocket.

for me, more important than just the battery life in terms of charge capacity is the battery life in terms of the number of cycles you can charge/discharge its battery. i would like for my phone battery to still hold charge well even after 3 years of usage.
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Jay says:

10 years ago

Use a galaxy note. Specially note 3 and 4. Multi tasking will part of your everyday mobile phone use.

Split screen was heaven sent. Example. During gym training i need a note app and a timer app opened at the same time. Note does it for me. Thats real multitasking. And whats good is that you can turn OFF THE FEATURE when you dont need it.
Paul chan says:

10 years ago

I agree with kurimaw ios is ok because all of its apps are designed for its chip give the i phonea third party app it will lag and consume batt.. So much for their premium phones????? Duh
gadgeteer says:

10 years ago

agree with kurimaw, and the author also failed to mention that if ios would have multi tasking, it will surely be a battery hungry device itself!!!

mon says:

10 years ago

I also agree with this, but I don’t think a bigger battery is also the answer, maybe android can improve with it’s power efficiency? (Was project volta released yet? Haven’t noticed lol)

and this is why I’m waiting and hoping for project ara to succeed, that seems the only way I can avoid the useless feature trend in flagship devices lately
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aha says:

10 years ago

ayos lang yan!!

basta fandroids, ok lang na madali malowbat basta octacore at 4gb ang ram, super taas ng screen resolution,,, kahit di naman kailangan.

para sikat kuno…
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BMS says:

10 years ago

i totally agree with all of the above, specially the overkill displays
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Cecil says:

10 years ago

You forgot the cheap Price!
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