The modern smartphone just does too much, with a fixed battery, that it can't last a full day for a typical “road warrior” and a second power source (such as the Powermonkey or Proporta’s Turbocharger) is needed.
Take the journey to America. Will the current crop of smartphones have the battery stamina for the “big” journey from my front door in Edinburgh to the hotel reception desk in Austin? Maybe a few years ago, but the Symbian^3 devices are a little more power fragile. It’s some 21 hours (as I have the delights of changing at Heathrow and Dallas Fort Worth), and for the first time, I’m not confident that running my smartphone as my primary MP3 player and video device is going to cut it.
Take off some time for queuing at customs (and a lot more at security!) which will take about an hour, plus another hour for when the plane is below 10,000 feet, and I’m thinking that I’ve got about 19 hours of “entertaining myself” in Economy class (and Heathrow Terminal 3, yuk) to endure.
Using the cable connection will save your smartphone's battery life
Will the Music player, which is my main distraction, last the distance? Probably, especially as my in-ear headphones don’t need the volume to be set loud to mask the noise of the engines. But throwing in some quick status updates to Facebook, a few games (Fruit Ninja!) and maybe West Side Story on the video player and, well, I wouldn’t hold out much hope of making it over Canada, let alone to Texas, without that portable charger being used (or, ahem, having another portable MP3 player in my kitbag).
How it works in practice is something I’ll be sure to explore in the upcoming video diaries of my trip to Austin.
But this is the curse of the modern smartphone. As everyone packs in all the features into a single box, that box picks up increased memory, faster CPU’s, bigger screens, more multimedia options, a greater expectation...
...and the laws of physics and dimensions mean the battery is not going to be getting any more milliamp hours. The current range of batteries on the Symbian^3 devices (1050mAh on the C6-01, and 1200mAh on the others) isn’t that much more than in the smartphones of yesteryear.
The general market has spoken though – the consensus is that a phone that can get through a business day (say ten hours with travel) and a bit of night time action if you decide to let your hair down, is enough. You’re going to charge it up overnight in any case.
It’s when the edge cases start to push their phones, ask them to work longer hours, do more activities, that the smartphone burns brightly, but at both ends. You're going to have crisp clear HD movies, music, and some games… for some of the trip, and some of your conference.
Lots of web based tools, all of which eat battery life
That’s the one piece of advice for those attending South by Southwest. Charge. Keep charging. And if you get a plug for five minutes, then charge up some more. That’s because when you start maxing out the connectivity, the functions, the power and built in applications, well, technology is going to put a time limit on what you do.
This is the point where many will lament the lack of user replaceable batteries, because it’s a simple matter to switch one of them out – but with the general population apparently happy at the one day lifespan of a smartphone, and the resulting drop in production costs with a fixed battery, it looks like power users are going to carry on demanding more of their platform, eating up even more battery power to do so.
And I, along with many others, am left lamenting the fact that my one box solution is back to needing two boxes – the smartphone and a portable battery recharger.
-- Ewan Spence, March 2011.