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Battery Life

There are quite a few factors to take into account when looking into battery life.

Batteries deteriorate over time and when new will not achieve their full potential for at least two or three FULL charge/discharge cycles.

The Network

The number one cause of poor battery life is the network that you're connected to.

• Every so often (10 minutes to 2 hours), the network checks all the phones in a certain cell, this is called the PLU (periodic location update). This causes the phone to transmit where it is so that the network can route calls etc. Every time you move around or drive somewhere you change cells, particularly in poor coverage areas. If you leave coverage area the phone will continually try and find a network resulting in more power drain.

• In poor signal areas, GSM phones will use a lot more power when transmitting, whereas in good signal strength areas the phone will use as little as is necessary.

• Another power user is Cell Broadcast (normally used to tell you what suburb you're in or weather etc).

• There are products coming out to help combat all this power drain, one of these is the phase 2 sim card that uses less power and supports sleep mode on some handsets.

With all of these factors alone you can use up to 50% of your phone's quoted standby time.

The Battery

Batteries play a large role in keeping your phone going. The type and the capacity of your battery will adjust your standby times. If your battery is continually letting you down and you've tried all of these tips, consider upgrading to the next size and/or a different type of battery.

Treat your batteries well as recommended in the battery tech topic and they will reward you with years of faithful service, always use good quality batteries (like genuine) and always use top quality chargers (again genuine are a good choice).

The Phone

Use of the phone can also influence the power consumption, things like turning off the backlight, not playing with the phone (and turning the backlight on), lower ring tones, turning off the vibrate option and so on will make your standby time improve.

Manufacturers are starting to use 3.3v technology instead of the more common 6v technology, this will enable components to be smaller and thus use less battery power.