Standby time compared - KJAM and Nokia 9500

[Rafe]

Steve compares the important, but often ignored, metric of standby time between a i-mate JAM (Windows Mobile 5) and a Nokia 9500 (Symbian OS 8). He comes away with an interesting result which may bear on purchase decisions for true mobile warriors.

Read on in the full article.

[TANKERx]

Far be it for me to support a Windows Mobile device (my blood type is Symbian) - pretty much all of my Nokia Smartphones have lasted for ages with a 'full' battery, but once the bar drops by one, the rest spend hardly any time at all in falling.

Any chance of a lok at how long the other bars last on the Nokia device (I'm toying with the idea of getting one of those y'see)?

Top article though - anything that shows the world how pants Windows Mobile actually is has got to be good ;-)

[slitchfield]

Yes, I had thought about this, but you're right, it should be in the article. I've added a sentence about the 'bar' system and have tweaked the wording elsewhere.

Anyone else got anecdotal evidence about the bars? My gut feeling is that it goes something like 100%=7 bars, 90%=7, 80%=7, 70%=7, 60%=6, 50%=5, and so on.

Steve Litchfield

[Bassey]

Firstly, I agree completely with the findings. My MiniS (O2's K-Jam) went with me on a long weekend. After three and a bit days of virtually no use (two phone calls, half a dozen texts) I had just over 70% left. And the power reporting characteristics of a WM5 device are, in fact, similar to that of a Symbian device. They report very little power drain to start with and then the drain seems to accelerate. It's caught me out a few times.

I do think the results for the K-Jam are pretty outstanding though. I mean, have you compared the size of the battery to that in the 9500? My first digital watch had a bigger battery than the K-Jam (well, almost ).

And my P900 does something similar. Shows little drain for ages then the flood gates open. but you'll still get 6-7 days out of a P900 whereas I wouldn't push the K-Jam beyond 5 days.

And I agree with TANKERx that, for the results to be meaningful, you really have to let them die and then work the percentages out backwards. Without a min and a max to tell you what the 100% is of, you might as well measure one in cm's and one in doughnuts.